About The Do-Gooder

The Do-Gooder is Seth Madej, a writer, producer, and layabout living in Pittsburgh, Pa. He has no qualifications to publicly make ethical arguments. You may know some of his non-ethics-related work from the networks Noggin and The N, or from other places. Please contact him here.

From The Do-Gooder

January 28, 2005
Alas, I'm not feeling well today, and News of the Week will be delayed. My apologies.

January 5, 2005
Does Wednesday count as early in the week? Please forgive my long holiday break.

And this might be a bad time to ask, since I just took two weeks off, but how about nominating The Do-Gooder for a Bloggie award? I'd suggest any or all of these categories: Best Topical Weblog, Best Writing for a Weblog, Best-Kept-Secret Weblog, or Best New Weblog. Nominations are accepted until Monday. Thanks.

December 31, 2004
Theoretically, during this time of year when work slows down, one would find more time to spend writing essays for one's ethics Web site. Alas, instead one finds the great desire to spend that time eating cookies, playing new video games, drinking Havens, and enjoying the fact that work has slowed down. Sorry. Expect new stuff early next week, when life returns to normal.

Also, happy new year. Please give generously to help the victims of the tsunami.

December 9, 2004
The 12/8/2004-12/15/2004 issue of Pittsburgh City Paper features Dan Eldridge's interview with me about The Do-Gooder, along with a fine photograph by Heather Mull. You can read it online by clicking here.

December 2, 2004
Since I like to use this news section as CMA, I should tell you that the next (holiday-themed!) essay will be slightly delayed, as it's becoming a bit more epic than expected.

Have I mentioned that the RSS feed is an easy way to keep up with site updates?

November 29, 2004
Thank you for allowing me an extended holiday break. The Do-Gooder will now resume a normal, slightly less infrequent, update schedule.

November 23, 2004
After some internal debate as to whether readers would prefer pop-up footnotes or traditional ones, I've decided to use both. You should see the new pop-up notes in the latest essay, Do Re Fa Mi. If you have a strong opinion as to what type of footnotes you prefer, please let me know.

Also, for those readers interested in the essay Inconvenient Evidence and living in the Pittsburgh area: The Andy Warhol Museum will be hosting a poetry reading and panel discussion called Abu Ghraib, Inconvenient Evidence, and the Resonances of War. It takes place on Saturday, December 4 at 2:00 p.m., and one of the panelists will be David Griffith, a member of The New Yinzer editorial board and the author of an insightul essay about the Abu Ghraib photographs, which you can read at Godspy: Faith at the Edge.

November 18, 2004
TheDo-Gooder.com now has an RSS feed. For those who know what an RSS feed is (i.e. not me), this is very exciting. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed, its URL is: http://www.thedo-gooder.com/thedo-gooder.xml. Or, if you're using Firefox (which I recommend), you can click on the orange icon at the bottom right of your window.

November 4, 2004
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Do-Gooder, a collection of "daily" essays about ethics.

"Why," you may ask, "would anyone be interested in such a thing?" I have no idea. But, I can tell you that I started this site simply because I take great, strange pleasure from puzzling out the rightness and wrongness of the things we do often (or not so often). If TheDo-Gooder.com serves as a starting point for people to spend more time thinking about whether or not they're acting ethically, and this eventually leads to a world where we throw all of our guns down bottomless pits, eat only whole grains, and are frequently hugged by strangers, I guess I'll have to live with that.

You can read more about this site in the FAQ. Please check back often for new essays, and expect expanded functionality and generally improved prettiness in the very near future. Let me know what you think, and tell your friends.