Would You Sell Your Body?

No, I'm not talking about that. Get your mind out of the gutter.

But what if someone approached you and offered up to $2,500 for one of your kidneys? You can lead a perfectly healthy life with only one; and if the procedure is done in a legitimate hospital, it's reasonably safe. Plus, you'd be helping someone else lead a healthy life again - a bit of altruism as an added bonus.

If you think this sounds pretty idealistic, first read this article from the Atlantic; then read this dispatch from a writer who's promoting radical change in the way America deals with organ donation.

Open-Source College?

Here's an example of a contemporary topic - open-source information - that leads directly to a philosophical discussion.

In yesterday's Wired Campus feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education, David Wiley offers his perspective on the value of 'open teaching' - that is, making course materials, readings, assignments, and even lectures freely accessible not only to students in the course, but to anyone at all on the web.

Read the article (and comments posted by readers!), then respond below. How do you balance considerations of fairness to paying students with what we might call the 'open-source ethos' - the presumption that information should be distributed as widely and freely as possible?