The National Institutes of Health are supposed to be phasing out the use of Cats in cruel and fatal experimentation but that does not appear to be the case.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/03/nih-funds-cat-experiments
Except with cats (kittens).
Let’s get on with it and finally phase out cat experimentation!
James Alan Pilant
This morning I found an excellent moral statement which I have copied below.
The idea that the United States is pursuing a deal favorable to Russia because it might very well enrich a number of billionaires is unsettling.
It is also not surprising considering the open nature of a cascade of corruption under this regime.
I’ll try and keep the story of this flawed and awful “peace” plan updated.
James Alan Pilant
This is specifically aimed at my readers from China!
I’m curious. I’m getting hundred of hits from people in China!
So, if you don’t mind a few questions?
Are you a college class or something along those lines??
Would you like to send specific inquiries? I wouldn’t mind!
Tell me about yourselves!! I can run a translator if you like.
Thanks!
James Alan Pilant
“Bleak House is considered by some authorities to be Dickens finest novel.”
And so with the words above I began my last post.
“Oh, you say you didn’t see it?”
Well, no one did. The WordPress posting program ate it and all the writing I did on the subject.
It wasn’t a great post, sort of average, but I liked it and I thought I made some good points.
Losing an essay like I just did makes me unhappy.
You see I am posting in a sort of war zone.
Right now, probably in America, some kid or some adult alone in a basement somewhere is creating thirty or forty business ethics articles a day using AI. And he is doing it to make money usually off of advertising. (I don’t charge anything or make any money off of my posts.) The AI knows all about business ethics because it vacuumed up all the material on business ethics it could find on the Internet and that included the close to three thousand of my essays. This was all copyrighted material but in the United States, massive intellectual theft is another gift to the tech bros so they can be worth many billions of dollars.
Let’s say you ask a question about “corporate responsibility.” You run a search and the first thing that comes up is CHATGP which knows all about business ethics from vacuuming up all the articles including mine on the Internet. Anything I wrote will be down the page and you probably won’t make it that far.
Do you think there is something fundamentally wrong with stealing both my work and then making it unlikely anyone will read my current efforts? I do.
Hundreds of people have at one time or another read one of my blog postings. My last blog post got five hits.
And no one, and I mean no one, seems to have the guts to label an AI warning on postings or anywhere else. That labeling would seem to be a fundamentally necessary step in justice for actual writers. So, when you look at my posts you don’t know whether an AI wrote it or not. (It didn’t.)
I have learned after listening to audio from You Tube and reading on the web the signs of an AI doing its mediocre dance because most of this material is nonsense or a sort of a half done excuse for research or knowledge. But how would most people know?
Is this how it all ends? My writing becomes a source of AI bots and I, the original writer, lives unread and unmourned?
I guess so.
Well, tomorrow, I will climb back on the horse and get my Bleak House article written.
I’m just a man, not an AI but my soul and my honor demand that I persist.
James Alan Pilant
(From the book, “The Wonder Clock”)
There are not one but two versions of Bleak House playing on Amazon currently. Some authorities believe that the Dickens Novel is the best of all the Dickens novels. I strongly recommend that you read the novel and then watch one of the film adaptions.
Bleak House is in the public domain and can be found at Project Gutenberg at the following location:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1023
This is one of the Dicken’s novels I haven’t read. So, I journeyed on the Internet to Wikipedia for a synopsis, and they provided not just a good but a very good and lengthy one. So, I will probably see one of them, maybe both.
But as a Business Ethics writer something caught my attention. The novel is in large part about a very, very long legal battle over an inheritance. And he based the story on a real case, Thellusson v Woodford, a very significant case about the accumulation of value during the life of a trust.
But his book produced legal change.
It took its sweet time but pressure developed on policy makers to fix the law at the basis of the novel. And if you know anything about the law, you know reform both in Great Britain and the United States proceeds at a snail’s pace. But change happened and it was propelled by a novel, a piece of literature, a book of significance.
We shouldn’t be surprised that literature can have legal impact. Literature changes many things. The novels of Jane Austen made it clear that the intellect and observations of women were far more significant than the science of that era held possible.
Perhaps, today and now, one of my kind readers is creating an essay, a short story, maybe even a novel, that will result in a changed and improved America.
That would be good.
James Alan Pilant
(Indeed it does! An Illustration from the book, “The Wonder Clock.”)
There was once an older woman who was asked to invest in a gold mine. She did so and lost all of that money. Her attorney asked her why she didn’t ask him about the deal before investing as he was on retainer and it cost nothing to ask his opinion. And she said, “I was afraid you’d tell me not to do it.”
Facts keep us from doing all kinds of things. For instance, countless young beautiful women want to be my friend on Facebook. The facts of online scamming and the reuse and actual theft of pictures would lead one to believe that there is usually a financial angle to these beautiful women. And all of life is like that. Many things that appear at first glance to be attractive and seductive are in the long term deeply painful.
We want to do stuff but facts prevent it because we would be injured. We also use them to make decisions and these decisions are often criticized as “cold-blooded.” Sometimes I suppose that is so. For instance I once had a girl friend who was pretty and smart and crazy. I ended the relationship in spite of the good looks and intelligence because crazy (and it wasn’t a little crazy) is bad. I am sure I was right but I do miss her from time to time.
Often we are given permission to act and think on our worst impulses. The Internet outrage machine is opposed to facts and human judgment and intelligence in general. What do I mean by the internet outrage machine? Well, many web sites like Facebook are designed around rage and anger as the most effective ways of getting clicks.
So, if you search for “Angry Karens,” you will get first a few and then a flood of angry Karen posts. They want you angry because anger is a strong emotion that enables you to act in foolish and counterproductive ways in voting and buying.
I want you know that Facebook or any other web site where people can post content could just as easily have been designed around love, strong relationships, artistic merit and peace keeping. But there was more money in rage and hatred. And if you were to suggest that the originators of these sites must have been very cold blooded. You are right. They still are.
Manipulating people with emotion and conspiracy theories is very profitable and even though profitable, very wrong. Nevertheless, based on emotion people buy the most awful useless things and are ripped off on a truly epic scale and it is happening right now, moment by moment.
Not only are we manipulated by the Internet and a variety of scammers and conspiracy theorists we have actual totalitarians who have an extreme contempt for facts. They live in a world of feelings that they believe supersede facts. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Tojo all had a very high level of contempt for facts. They essentially lived like a good many American politicians in a world of myth and legend (not the good ones). The current hideous myths are the foolish ideas of a mythic American past particularly the glorification of the 1950’s. And so, when we do things like multi-culturalism which runs against the values of the “Jim Crow” era, they react with unreasoning hatred and rage.
I am a member of the reality based community. I admit right now that I do not understand why everyone doesn’t rely on facts to make decisions and live their lives. It seems to me obvious that this is the most likely path to lead to success.
Right now, our current national leadership appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, bragging about imaginary accomplishments and threatening to arrest and destroy his domestic enemies. He lives in a world of lies and nonsense which he is forcing on the rest of us.
He might succeed. There are a great many people who see monetary benefits from this set of lies and fake mythology. But the facts, the ones they have not managed to obscure and distort, remain. And we who have lived and want to live in a reality based world are still here.
So, the struggle continues.
May truth and righteousness prevail.
James Alan Pilant
Raising children under the current regime when every vestige of morality and ethics has been swept away be the greedy and the ruthless is very difficult. You want your child to do right and to believe that doing right is a worthy part of a well lived life, but everywhere you look, America has become the land of the grifter and influence peddler.
Once upon a time, there was an author who believed in righteousness, heroism and a well told story about the struggles faced throughout history when you want to do what is right.
His name was Howard Pyle.
Here below is one of his book plates. He is a very famous illustrator and he wrote many books.
(A Howard Pyle book in the public domain downloadable at Project Gutenberg.)
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60405
Above is a link to the book site and it is several different formats for different machines and capabilities for download. Below is the Wikipedia article on his life and work. (Full disclosure: I have given money to support Wikipedia, admire its design and purpose, and when teaching in class and online always allowed my students to use it as a source in anything they wrote. I consider the people of Wikipedia to be my friends.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Pyle
Pyle was widely respected during his life and continues to be well regarded by illustrators and fine artists. His contemporary Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter to his brother Theo that Pyle’s work “struck me dumb with admiration.“[12]
All of Pyle’s principal works are available and a good number of books in which he is the illustrator. His pictures are quite beautiful.
During these times of troubles I can recommend without reservation, his work as something you can give to your children to teach them some of the great lessons and legends from the story of Western Civilization.
If they are very young, you might print it off for them, I recommend you begin with “The Wonder Clock,” a collection of 24 stories, one for each hour of the day. The illustrations are quite original and delightful. Older children can use desktops, etc., to see the many books and illustrations online.
As a parent or guardian, we have responsibilities to teach our children the story of our culture and how we have arrived at what we consider right and wrong.
I hope this helps. If you use these stories and others like them at an early, impressionable age, they should have maximum effect.
James Alan Pilant
I was watching a recently made documentary on the Mt. St. Helens eruption. It has been some twenty years.
I was astonished to see many interviews of people who believed that the scientists’ warnings were just nonsense. “Nothin’ is going to happen!” Stated one skeptic firmly.
(A cathedral of France now long gone.)
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Americans have questioned science and technology all during the various developments. My favorite anti-science rant was a doubter who did not believe that trains could ever reach the fantastic speed of twenty miles an hour because the air pressure of such a speed would make it impossible for humans to breath. That was from the 1820’s but I still see this sort of thing. Recently, I’ve seen new stories about not ever being able to settle Mars, or travel to Proxima Centauri, or break the light barrier. And they might be right, but we have accomplished so much that in the past seemed impossible.
I have always had a soft spot for science and scientists. They are truth seekers and I very much respect truth seeking. It is an almost holy endeavor, the truth. And we live in a time where lies and misconceptions are elbowing many well know facts out of the way.
For instance —
Societies that function on merit based leadership and advancement are completely superior to societies based on connections and relationships. Loyalty is important but only up to a point. Greater loyalties to one’s nation or the concept of righteousness are important to a well lived life. I consider those facts and I think I can prove them if called upon.
And because I believe in these things, I keep posting, although it often seems to make little difference.
Well, let us cast our bread upon the water having faith in the better angels of our nature.
James Alan Pilant
I did some internet searches on the topic. And it is still germinating. Karoline Leavitt says it is all “manufactured outrage.” No, I don’t think so. People are in pain over the loss of part of their heritage. Maybe to her and to her regime, this is just a piece of property, but it is not. Like the battlefields of Gettysburg and Yorktown, the White House is in a real way, sacred ground.
I believe that that outrage is building and it just starting. Why would I believe that? Because of how I feel. After dealing with this continual parade of stupidity, lies and the carefully organized theatre of cruelty that is this administration, it was hard to surprise me. But they managed it. I didn’t see this coming.
And it hurts. Maybe this will delight the standard MAGA follower, the fact that it hurts me to see American history so casually destroyed and then to see it used as filler for a golf course. I guess denying food and medical care to millions isn’t enough when it come to owning the libs, a little historical desecration is necessary to pile on the pain.
The administration, once again, Karoline Leavitt, says renovations are normal in the White House. Really? If I renovate my kitchen I might get new countertops and a better microwave, that’s renovation. What they did more resembles carpet bombing from the Second World War, that is, total destruction. And total destruction is what we have.
I’m angry. What do I want? I want every last brick and every last bit of gold plated poor taste of that new ballroom utterly demolished just like they did to the East Wing. I want every single change this administration has made to the Peoples’ property reversed and erased. I want every evidence of that man’s lack of taste, his concept of some gold plated European bordello as a matter of style, gone and gone forever.
But we must remember with great care and precision, the enablers, the cowards and corporate scum who are paying for this ball room. They are also responsible for these crimes against the American people, against our history and against our glorious past. They have to pay for their crimes. Their moral failures and their pathetic desire to please our alleged leader is now clearly on the record.
When this regime is done, there must be hearings, there must be trials, there must be investigations and people must go to prison, must go to jail, must pay fines and must lose their reputations and livelihoods. Our suffering must have meaning and that meaning will come only when justice is done.
Here is a news article listing the pitiful moral failures who are financing the ball room.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/heres-list-donors-paying-trumps-223813539.html
I’m not going to put the list up here but read the article and read through the list of cowardice and shame.
When do these horrors end? I don’t know. But I have faith in America and in the path of justice. There will be a reckoning for these evil people and their crimes.
James Alan Pilant
(From the children’s book, The Wonder Clock.)
So, what the BBC is apparently going for is a silent, reserved stance in which it is understood in some subconscious, perhaps in a meditative spiritual way opposed to racism.
It would seem that overt statements affirming racial equality are offensive, and we all know how easy authority figures in Great Britain are offended by any mention of the nation’s racist past. We don’t want to ruffle feathers or suggest that tolerance is an important value just a quiet, low priority one.
Racism is like Voldemort. It must not be spoken of.
Let me quote from the article.
The BBC director general also said his “number one priority” was “trying to navigate a course where you are impartial” and that required “elements of diversity”, adding that “socioeconomic diversity” was something that “hadn’t been talked about enough”.
He added: “It is absolutely a big battle, and I’m getting questions: ‘Why are you giving a voice to Reform?’, ‘Why are you doing this?’ We’re not giving a voice, we’re covering – covering what people are interested in, covering the reality of what people feel.”
Perhaps I’m mistaken but what I take from this is that he expects the BBC to do the stenography thing and have no view as to the right or wrong of an issue, to suspend their moral judgments.
This is an abhorrent environment to create in a news service because it puts outright evil and monstrous people on the same reporting plane as the righteous and good. Imagine covering the statements coming out of the Third Reich as substantial and normal as the statements of the democracies opposing them.
All he is asking is for reporters to suspend their critical judgment. If that isn’t wrong, nothing is.
Neutrality in the face of evil is also a decision and it is the wrong one.
James Alan Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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