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+31 +1
“If there is a God, then anything is permitted”: On Dostoevsky, freedom, and religious violence
Most people today are spontaneously moral, and the idea of torturing or killing another human being is repulsive to them — in order to make them do it, some “sacred” Cause is needed which makes their concerns about violence seem trivial.
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+5 +1
Video shows illegal lobster killing method
A top seafood plant in Maine is killing lobsters and crabs using a "primitive and painful" method that violates the state's cruelty-to-animals statute, according to an animal rights group that shot video of the alleged abuse.
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+7 +1
In cancer drug battle, both sides appeal to ethics
Andrea Sloan is dying of ovarian cancer. Having exhausted all standard treatment options, her doctors say her best hope now is a new class of cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors.
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+10 +2
It looks like Pope Francis is serious about cleaning up the Catholic Church
In some respects, the Catholic Church is like any giant, multinational organization. It has some amount of corruption, bureaucratic dysfunction, even crime. But it's also a religious institution, which we generally (and rightly) hold to higher ethical standards than, say, Coca-Cola or ExxonMobil. The Catholic Church is also different in that its chief executive, the pope, has more control over his organization than any CEO.
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+11 +3
Ethical issues as scientists peek into baby genes
Little Amelia Sloan is a pioneer: Shortly after her birth, scientists took drops of the healthy baby’s blood to map her genetic code. Amelia is part of a large research project that is decoding the DNA of hundreds of infants. New parents can soon start signing up for smaller studies to explore if what’s called genome sequencing – fully mapping someone’s genes to look for health risks – should become a part of newborn care.
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+17 +1
Norwegian school using The Walking Dead to teach ethics
Norwegian teacher Tobias Staaby is getting a fair bit of good press today for playing Telltale's The Walking Dead with his students at Nordahl Grieg Upper Secondary School in Bergen, Norway. Staaby incorporates the game into his religious studies curriculum to help spur discussion about morality and ethical choices.
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+9 +1
Should a robot decide when to kill?
By the time the sun rose on Friday, December 19th, the Homestead Miami race track had been taken over by robots. Some hung from racks, their humanoid feet dangling above the ground as roboticists wheeled them out of garages. One robot resembled a gorilla, while another looked like a spider; yet another could have been mistaken for a designer coffee table.
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+13 +1
Why we should love material things more
The problem with our society is not that it values material things too much but that it doesn’t value them enough
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+13 +1
A baby with three parents?
The FDA is weighing a groundbreaking procedure that could make this a reality, but critics question whether it's ethical
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+18 +1
Creating a 'morality pill' more a question of ethics than science
Is there any way that we could create a drug that would make us moral? This is the question Molly Crockett, neuroscientist at Oxford University, posed to the crowd at a Brain Boosters event organised as part of the NERRI Project in London this week.
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+12 +1
Should You Return Your Tent After Burning Man?
Is it ethical and legal to buy something and return it after you trashed it?
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+18 +1
Why Archeologists Hate Indiana Jones
The jungles of the Peten are hot and sweaty. Most of the best places for archeology are. Field seasons are especially hot, since they are always during the driest time of year so that the site doesn’t get flooded. Howler monkeys boom from the parched trees, which barely twitch during the windless days. Meanwhile, pasty grad students toil away in the hot sun, quietly picking away at a stucco relief or the markings on a stone pillar.
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+15 +1
The ethics of using anonymous sources
Should you quote anonymous sources? Miranda Marquit explains how the pros handle this thorny question. As a professionally trained journalist, I’ve learned that if you want to establish yourself as...
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+5 +1
Inside The Secret World Of Games Journalism
Evidence has mounted that gaming journalists from key publications like Kotaku, Ars Technica and Polygon have been colluding with one another to control industry-wide news coverage, adding further credence to the widespread belief that biased agenda-pushing is running rampant in the field.
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+11 +1
The big “middle class” rip-off: How a short sale taught me rich people’s ethics
So many of us are clueless about business and finance. Here's why that's just the way the investment class likes it
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+19 +1
Cruel and Usual Punishment: Is There a Humane Alternative to Prison?
The failures of our moral imagination lead us to overuse prison as punishment. Millions of people are serving unjustifiably long sentences in living tombs as a result of our inability to take prison time seriously.
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+16 +1
Viral Photo of Great White Shark Stirs Debate Over Cages, Baiting
A schoolteacher's dramatic photo of a great white shark has gone viral, inspiring a lively Internet debate about whether it's ethical to bait sharks, many of which are threatened species, so that tourists can see them up close.
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+14 +1
When Keurig fights “coffee pirates,” who actually loses? Consumers.
As you may have heard, Keurig is engaged in a battle with a host of companies that aspire to provide consumers with ‘pirate’ coffee pods. And who is losing this battle? The consumer.
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+3 +1
Abusing Chickens We Eat
If you buy a Perdue chicken in the grocery store, you might think it had lived a comfortable avian middle-class existence. “Doing the right thing is things like treating your chickens humanely,” Jim Perdue, the company’s chairman, says in a promotional video. The company’s labels carry a seal of approval from the Department of Agriculture asserting that the bird was “raised cage free,” and sometimes “humanely raised,” although it says it is phasing that one out.
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+11 +1
The Right to Be Forgotten, the Privilege to Be Remembered
My mom was born in February. She died in February, too. And this year, as in past years since her death, in February lame marketers and data brokers remember her. They send her letters which say, right on the envelope, “Happy Birthday!” Personalized, for her. I wish they would forget her. What does it mean to be “forgotten”? So many people are, whether they have a right to it or not. But being easily linked, forever, to certain search engine results — is that the opposite of being forgotten.
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