From Slate:

British regulators approved an application to reject embryos for the probability of early Alzheimer’s. Circumstances: 1) The age of onset in the husband’s mother was 49. 2) The disease runs only in the husband’s mother’s family. 3) To make sure he doesn’t produce a child with the disease, the clinic “will screen embryos to ensure only the chromosome from [his father's] side is passed on.” 4) The husband refuses to be tested to find out whether he carries the gene in the first place. Consequently, the approved weeding process poses “a one in four risk that a healthy embryo will be discarded.” Clinic’s arguments: 1) Nature discards healthy embryos, too. 2) This kind of screening is so hard that people will do it only for “life-threatening diseases.” 3) Early Alzheimer’s might leave the kid “only half a live worth living.” Rebuttals: 1) So now we’re snuffing embryos that would live normally to 49. 2) And we’re snuffing embryos that might never get the disease. 3) You’re promising us an imminent Alzheimer’s cure from stem cells—but you’re tossing embryos on the theory that they’re doomed to Alzheimer’s 50 years from now? (Related columns: The slippery slope of embryo screening.) Question: In this situation, would you use the same test? Debate it here.

From First Things:

The West finds itself divided between two strong impulses that correspond, in the main, to the political right and left or to what in the United States we have come to refer to as red and blue, after the election maps. At every turn, our collective resolve to confront those who provoke us encounters fierce internal opposition, which cannot always be distinguished from the spiteful and, in effect, suicidal wish that the enemy of my enemy prevail so as to show up the neocons, the Republicans, the religious right, and the bogeyman, with whom the bien-pensants might go down in flames as well, but then self-sacrifice in the pursuit of world peace is no vice.

And so the right feels itself to be fighting a war on two fronts. These days, it’s against the Jihadist from without and the antiwar militant from within, as during the Cold War it was against the communist in Moscow and Beijing and the anti-anticommunist in New York and Paris. Insofar as the antiwar left emerges from the constellation of political sympathies that include abortion rights and, more broadly, the right to die (go to an antiwar rally and poll the demonstrators there on which side they took in the Terri Schiavo case), a disturbingly reciprocal relationship between fundamentalist Jihadism and liberal antiwar sentiment begins to come into focus.

I’m not sure who this “antiwar militant” is. If we’re referring to folks like the ANSWER coalition, I’m right there too: I don’t like those guys either. But if the author, Nicholas Frankovich, honestly believes that the all of the various Catholics who opposed the war are “militant” and are pro-choice and right-to-die types, then I think this is amazingly simplistic. Of course, if you go to an anti-war rally, you’re more likely to find people who support a “right-to-die.” But what about the growing number of Americans (many of them Catholic) who wish we had never gotten in the war in the first place? Or the people around the world (Latin America, Africa, etc.) who oppose abortion and opposed the war (many of them Catholic)? Are they all enemies too?

Think of your sins and plan for a better year.  It’s Yom Kippur.

Under Jewish tradition, Yom Kippur is the day that one’s fate in the coming year will be determined and sealed by God.

Jews around the world fast and repent for their sins in the last year, reflecting on the wrongs they have committed and begging God’s forgiveness.

For many, the season of teshuvah and preparation for the High Holy Days begins a month earlier in the Jewish month of Elul. During the 10 days of repentance, people traditionally make extra efforts to reconcile relationships with others and with God.

As part of the tradition, some partake in tashlich, a ceremony in which many Jews throw bread crumbs into water while reciting prayers to symbolize the cleansing of their sins.

Though the whole season is one of repentance, many Jews focus purely on today, Yom Kippur, to set the year right. But that doesn’t necessarily mean a single day can make up for a year, or a lifetime, of sin.

“This is supposed to be a paradigm for daily behavior,” Rembaum said. Maimonides, the great medieval rabbi and philosopher, said repentance should be done daily, that each day could be one’s last on earth, so one should “clean the docket” before death, Rembaum said.

“This is the time of year that gives you a chance to focus on it and clean up any loose ends, not to initiate the process,” Rembaum said. “It’s the culmination and not the initiation that’s the ideal.”

It actually looks pretty exciting.

This stuff is really interesting and really important.  I love neuroscience, and I’m fascinated by the chemical and biological bases of our actions, thoughts, and emotions.

“The central issue is quite simple. If we want to do something, and we decide not to, how does that brain wire that?” said Rajesh Miranda, associate professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. “They showed the region in the brain that can act as a gate to suppress a plan to do something,” said Miranda, who was not involved in the research.

Here’s what’s tricky though: biological explanations should not come to mean biological determinism.

But what does that even mean?  After all, if we are just bodies, isn’t everything, ultimately, biologically determined?  Isn’t free will, as this article posits, just something in the brain?

Yes.  It is.  But just because the mechanics of what we do is in the brain, and the impulses are ultimately chemicals, and the urges are hormones–that doesn’t mean that we’re not still choosing what we choose.  Even if our choices are limited, marginal, less-relevant-than-we-had-believed, they’re still our choices.

I believe we’re still free.  Even if only a little bit.

This is really important.  Porn is becoming more and more normalized while also becoming more and more degrading to women.  And I’m not just talking about sex scenes in movies.
I know a lot of men out there struggle from addiction to pornography.  There’s hope, and please, know that it’s a struggle you can overcome.  Convenant Eyes is a wonderful service that helps a lot of people.  You’re not alone–and remember, what you do, even in the very private and dark, has consequences on you, on your masculinity, and on how you treat the women you love.  And ladies, I’m sorry we men are up to this sort of evil.  It’s our fault, but the more help you can give us, the better.

In a society in which so many men are watching so much pornography, this is why we can’t bear to see it for what it is: Pornography forces women to face up to how men see them. And pornography forces men to face up to what we have become. The result is that no one wants to talk about what is in the mirror. Although few admit it, lots of people are afraid of pornography. The liberal/libertarian supporters who celebrate pornography are afraid to look honestly at what it says about our culture. The conservative opponents are afraid that pornography undermines their attempts to keep sex boxed into narrow categories.

Feminist critics are afraid, too — but for different reasons. Feminists are afraid because of what they see in the mirror, because of what pornography tells us about the world in which we live. That fear is justified. It’s a sensible fear that leads many to want to change the culture.

Pornography has become normalized, mainstreamed. The values that drive the slutbus also drive the larger culture. As a New York Times story put it, “Pornography isn’t just for dirty old men anymore.” Well, it never really was just for dirty men, or old men, or dirty old men. But now that fact is out in the open. That same story quotes a magazine writer, who also has written a pornography script: “People just take porn in stride these days. There’s nothing dangerous about sex anymore.” The editorial director of Playboy, who says that his company has “an emphasis on party,” tells potential advertisers: “We’re in the mainstream.”

There never was anything dangerous about sex, of course. The danger isn’t in sex, but in a particular conception of sex in patriarchy. And the way sex is done in pornography is becoming more and more cruel and degrading, at the same time that pornography is becoming more normalized than ever. That’s the paradox.

A darn fine movie: I saw a preview with the director and some members of the 28, along with their lawyer.  It’s about Catholic peace activism.  You know, Catholics with political concerns besides abortion and euthenasia.  Crazy huh?

Remember Zahra.

In speaking with the police, Zahra’s brother used a colloquial expression, ghasalat al arr (washing away the shame), which means the killing of a woman or girl whose very life has come to be seen as an unbearable stain on the honor of her male relatives. Once this kind of familial sexual shame has been “washed,” the killing is traditionally forgotten as quickly as possible. Under Syrian law, an honor killing is not murder, and the man who commits it is not a murderer. As in many other Arab countries, even if the killer is convicted on the lesser charge of a “crime of honor,” he is usually set free within months. Mentioning the killing — or even the name of the victim — generally becomes taboo.

That this has not happened with Zahra’s story — that her case, far from being ignored, has become something of a cause célèbre, a rallying point for lawyers, Islamic scholars and Syrian officials hoping to change the laws that protect the perpetrators of honor crimes — is a result of a peculiar confluence of circumstances. It is due in part to the efforts of a group of women’s rights activists and in part to the specifics of her story, which has galvanized public sympathy in a way previously unseen in Syria. But at heart it is because of Zahra’s young widower, Fawaz, who had spoken to his bride only once before they became engaged. Now, defying his tribe and their traditions, he has brought a civil lawsuit against Zahra’s killer and is refusing to let her case be forgotten.

Archbishop Burke of St. Louis is at it again, calling for anarchy in the aisles.

Tell me, Bishop, how do you know what’s in my heart? Whether I’ve been to confession or not? Whether there are extenuating circumstances? Yes, God has the right to judge me, and yes, the Church can deny funerals to people. And sure, if someone says, I am not baptized, or, I am in a clear state of mortal sin, that person should not receive the Eucharist.

But we don’t know another’s soul, and once we start having every random EME deciding on someone else’s soul, well, we’re going to have real problems. This is seriously creepy.

So says Thomas Reese, SJ:

In 2004, Burke and a handful of other bishops said they would refuse communion to then presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Burke also said Catholics who voted for pro-abortion rights politicians such as Kerry should refrain from taking the sacrament until they confessed their “mortal sin.”

In his new article, the archbishop explicitly criticizes his fellow bishops, the majority of whom voted in 2004 to leave the communion decision up to individual bishops.

Burke retorts: “The question regarding the objective state of Catholic politicians who knowingly and willingly hold opinions contrary to natural moral law would hardly seem to change from place to place.”

The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the influential conservative Catholic journal First Things, called Burke’s article “a scholarly tour de force.”

“The (archbishop’s) concern is not a political concern,” Neuhaus said. “The article is about, how does the church preserve the sanctity of the Holy Eucharist?”

But the article is ambiguous in some areas, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center.

If Burke is calling on communion ministers to disobey their bishops and deny communion to Catholic politicians, it would be “revolutionary” and “encourage anarchy,” Reese said.

“Most bishops do not want ministers of communion playing policeman at the communion rail,” he added. “This is a significant change in focus. Suddenly you’re going to have a few thousand decision-makers in parishes across the country.”

They have been making these tapes for 15 years, I’ll bet a billion dollars. Castro is well past dead.

If he actually makes a public appearance, I would eat my hat, if I were the sort of person who regularly wore hats. As I am not, I will eat Castro’s hat.

Okay, okay. So he makes reference to current events. Such as follows:

Castro also referred to current events such as the price of oil hitting $80 a barrel, which happened last week, and the recently released book by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

The book’s $35 price tag probably made Greenspan “a millionaire,” Castro said. He read aloud a few passages, saying, “I tried to understand the essence of this new world. How did we get here?

Camera tricks. Conspiracy. Communists!!!

Anyways, Castro is alive and sort of well on a video.