Links!

Patum Paterum writes ably about the separation of Art and Church. Lexicography sees opportunities for clever bloggers:

Let’s face it; the MSM cannot even pick the low lying fruit. They are politicized, unwilling to use technology available to anyone to consult experts, lazy and prone to deplorable habits. When an article cites an anonymous source, it is simply a trump card for the writer. It is as if you had to accept whatever your kids said as true because they recited the magic formula. Doesn’t anyone suspect that some reporters make up things attributed to totally forever unverifiable anonymous sources and gloss the credibility by adding “administration”? Only after being sensitized do I see opportunity everywhere. The Travel and Real Estate sections of the newspapers are total puffery. Travel Guide books are similar, does one mention a negative thing about any destination? Show me the Real Estate section mentioning that an interest only mortgage with an introductory subsidized fixed rate might be a touch risky for the typical family?

There are more pictures of Mission, B.C.'s Westminster Abbey on the internet than the ones my wife took a few weeks back. If you live in the lower mainland, the main site might be a valuable resource for you. It has pictures of many of the best parks found in this area. David Warren raises some spooky questions about the direction Canadian law seems to be heading, especially in Ontario. This rabbi writes that "the biggest problem in American culture today is the fact that mere entertainers are its heroes." What do you think? Are we looking too much at reflections and too little at the real thing? It's an interesting question. I've never watched Joan of Arcadia. Am I missing something? Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatry professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, says that embryonic stem cell research is OK with Catholic teaching as long as a certain method of cloning is used to create the cells:

"SCNT is a biological manufacturing process that we may use to produce cells but should not use to produce babies," he said. McHugh also said that somatic-cell nuclear transfer [SCNT] "performed with primate cells produces embryos with such severe epigenetic problems that they cannot survive to birth."

I fail to see how this is different from doing the same thing to malformed embryos that do not originate with this process. The doctor's suggestion sounds to me very much like advocating experimentation on the weak. Weakness does not, however, deprive anyone of their humanity.