1. 100 Abandoned Houses in Detroit

Photo by Kevin Bauman

Kevin Bauman's Flickr group, 100 Abandoned Houses, beautifully captures the faded glory of Detroit houses and in many cases their return to nature.

2. Facebook's Eroding Ethics

Image from Gizmodo

Facebook is turning out to be the design ethics story of the year. Gizmodo has a scary summary of Facebook's past and present sins against it's users.

And to top it off, just today, Facebook has been found adding data-collecting apps to profiles without users' knowledge. The jury's out on whether this is a bug or a feature, but read the above article before you decide...

3. Why Did Hunt's Ketchup Go HFCS Free?

Hunt's has announced that it is reformulating to remove High Fructose Corn Syrup from its ketchup. Not because it's the right thing to do (which is controversial), but because consumers have worn them down:

“Manufacturers are tired of hearing about the e-mails, the 800-number calls and the letters,” says Phil Lempert, editor of the Lempert Report, which focuses on supermarket trends. “People don’t want it, so why fight them?”

If companies won't lead, at least they'll follow the market.

4. Your Office Chair Sitting Is Killing You

BusinessWeek has an article explaining how sitting in chairs is bad for us, and how office chair design doesn't account for this.

"The Aeron is far too low," says Dr. A.C. Mandal, a Danish doctor who was among the first to raise flags about sitting 50 years ago. "I visited Herman Miller a few years ago, and they did understand. It should have much more height adjustment, and you should be able to move more. But as long as they sell enormous numbers, they don't want to change it."

Maybe instead of that fancy office chair, I should get a higher desk and some better shoes...

5. The Humble Indie Bundle

In the early days of BlogLESS, we professed our love for World of Goo, both as a game and for it's anti-DRM stance.

For the next five days, you can get it, along with four other acclaimed indie games, and name your own price. Moreover, you can decide where your money goes. You can pay the developers, or give to charities EFF and Child's Play, or choose how you want to split the money.

We're not involved with this offer in any way. But this is a model we'd like to see more of.

Buy good games. Do good. We can get behind that.

1. Hotel Fakeout Photos

Photos from Oyster.com -- Hotel pics on the left; real pics on the right

FatWallet ran a story last week about some "creative" photography resorts use in their advertising. Hotel review site Oyster.com, which encourages users to send their own photos of hotels, has a gallery full of examples.

Of course, it's the photographer's job to make things look as good as possible, but it's a slippery slope.

2. 'The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell'

MIT newspaper, The Tech, ran an interesting opinion piece this month about a student's ethical dilemma in Dubai. But it's probably not what you think.

The story is not about Dubai or the culture there, but rather the troubling practices of a consulting company the author worked for after leaving MIT:

...[C]lients usually didn’t know why they had hired us. They sent us vague requests for proposal, we returned vague case proposals, and by the time we were hired, no one was the wiser as to why exactly we were there. I got the feeling that our clients were simply trying to mimic successful businesses, and that as consultants, our earnings came from having the luck of being included in an elaborate cargo-cult ritual.

3. The Ethics of Flying Gaming Press to Hawaii

Ars Technica asks: Is it ethical for journalists to accept an free trip to Hawaii, in order to view presentations from a game company?

I would add: what about the CO2 from all those trips? Hawaii is a long ways from just about anywhere.

4. Is it OK for vegans to eat oysters?

Okay, so this one is not related to design or business ethics, but as a story about ethical complexities, it made me stop and think. Apparently, oysters are okay for vegans to eat.

I thought vegans didn't eat any animals or animal products. It seems I didn't understand vegans or oysters.

Photo by Ann Verlet, via But Does It Float?

Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream... of spring. - Bill Murray, Groundhog Day