Ethics/Morality Archives - Attention to the Unseen

What I learned about billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s private retreat

From elsewhere — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 01:51:08 +0000

Noah Hawley writes: Bezos was everywhere that weekend—in a tight T-shirt, laughing too loudly, arms thrown around his teenage sons. He had recently become the world’s second centibillionaire, his net worth hovering somewhere around $112 billion, about half of what it is today. That number, previously unimaginable, had made him unique on a planet of 8 billion people, and you could feel it in the room. Even the richest and most famous among us were drawn to the energy of...

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Trump is trying to distract us from Pope Leo’s calls for peace. Don’t take the bait

From elsewhere — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:12:47 +0000

Sam Sawyer, S.J., writes: During a weekend full of bad news for Mr. Trump, his post [attacking Pope Leo] followed a lack of progress in negotiations with Iran and the resounding electoral loss of his favorite European leader, Viktor Orban, in Hungary. Relative to the Catholic world, his post came the day after Pope Leo XIV led a prayer vigil for peace in St. Peter’s and was joined in prayer all around the world. It came within hours of a...

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Vance questions the pope on just war theory hours after Leo honored its founder, St. Augustine

From elsewhere — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:12:23 +0000

National Catholic Reporter reports: Hours after Pope Leo XIV paid public homage to St. Augustine, one of the key architects of just war theory, Vice President JD Vance questioned the pontiff’s understanding of the Catholic doctrine for determining whether a war is morally justifiable. “When the pope says that God is never on the side of people who wield the sword, there is more than a 1,000-year tradition of just war theory,” Vance said at a Turning Point USA event...

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Pope opens Holy Week condemning war waged in Jesus’s name

From elsewhere — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:38:26 +0000

Crux reports: Pope Leo XIV opened his first Holy Week as pontiff with a rebuke of those who pray for war, offering his condemnation mere days after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” Hegseth – who prefers to be called the “Secretary of War” – made his prayer during a recent Christian worship service at the Pentagon, attended by military and civilian workers. Speaking during his March 29 Mass...

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Who cares about going to the moon when the world is in chaos?

From elsewhere — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 01:13:06 +0000

Lisa Grossman writes: Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been gearing up to cover the launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. This launch aims to bring humans back to the vicinity of the moon for the first time in more than 50 years, with an eventual eye toward landing humans on the moon and learning how to live there long-term. I expected to feel unalloyed excitement for this moment. I’ve been enraptured with space since I was 8 years...

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The Epstein scandal suggests that everything awful we’ve ever believed is true

From elsewhere — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:22:01 +0000

Joshua Rothman writes: It was odd, for many reasons, to be a journalist in 2016 and 2017, just after the election of Donald Trump. Part of the oddness was that seemingly every story had to include him. If a reporter travelled somewhere to gather material on something apparently unrelated—a natural disaster, a sporting event, a scientific discovery—it felt important to explore whether the people who lived there had voted for Trump, and why. Writing about individuals, one found it crucial...

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In unprecedented move, giant monkey research center may become a primate sanctuary

From elsewhere — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 02:00:27 +0000

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine applauds the Oregon Health & Science University Board of Directors’ approval of a resolution authorizing negotiations with the National Institutes of Health to transition the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) toward closure and potential conversion into a primate sanctuary. With passage of the resolution, OHSU is now positioned to work with the NIH to explore a pathway away from invasive primate experimentation and toward humane, human-relevant science. During a 180-day negotiation period authorized...

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The Chomsky/Epstein puzzle

From elsewhere — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 01:54:12 +0000

Chris Knight writes: Noam Chomsky’s life and work cannot be understood without taking into account his militarily-funded linguistics research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There were, I believe, always two ‘Noam Chomskys’ – one working for the US military and the other working tirelessly against that same military. This contradiction cannot explain every aspect of Chomsky’s puzzling friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. But it is the underlying contradiction that helps us understand why someone as radical as Chomsky ended...

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Is being virtuous good for you – or just people around you? A study suggests traits like compassion may support your own well-being

From elsewhere — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 00:05:32 +0000

Opportunities to show compassion often feel difficult, but exercising virtue seems to help people cope. FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images By Michael Prinzing, Wake Forest University Virtues such as compassion, patience and self-control may be beneficial not only for others but also for oneself, according to new research my team and I published in the Journal of Personality in December 2025. Philosophers from Aristotle to al-Fārābī, a 10th-century scholar in what is now Iraq, have argued that virtue is vital...

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University of Southern California sold dead human bodies to the U.S. military to train IDF medical personnel

From elsewhere — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 00:23:00 +0000

USC Annenberg Media reports: Near the end of 2017, the United States Navy filed a notice of intent to begin purchasing human cadavers from the University of Southern California. The purpose: Use dead bodies in trauma surgery training for the Israeli Defense Forces. Since that notice, the Navy has paid USC more than $860,000 for at least 89 “fresh cadaver bodies,” 32 of which were used specifically for IDF training at Los Angeles General Medical Center. One contract is still...

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