Embryonic Stem Cell question

Columnist MichaelKinsley reasons that those who oppose embryonic stem cell research need to oppose the work of fertility clinics:

Stem cells used in medical research generally come from fertility clinics, which produce more embryos than they can use. This isn't an accident -- it is essential to their mission of helping people have babies. Often these are "test tube babies": the product of an egg fertilized in the lab and then implanted in a womb to develop until birth. Controversy about test-tube babies has all but disappeared. Vague science-fiction alarms have been crushed by the practical evidence, and potential political backlash, of grateful, happy parents.

In any particular case, fertility clinics try to produce more embryos than they intend to implant. Then -- like the Yale admissions office (only more accurately) -- they pick and choose among the candidates, looking for qualities that make for a better human being. If you don't get into Yale, you have the choice of attending a different college. If the fertility clinic rejects you, you get flushed away -- or maybe frozen until the day you can be discarded without controversy.

And fate isn't much kinder to the embryos that make this first cut. Usually several of them are implanted in the hope that one will survive. Or, to put it another way, in the hope that all but one will not survive. And fertility doctors do their ruthless best to make these hopes come true.

In short, if embryos are human beings with full human rights, fertility clinics are death camps -- with a side order of cold-blooded eugenics. No one who truly believes in the humanity of embryos could possibly think otherwise.

The rest of the article can be found here.

Arts observation - One for Brad

When my friend Brad spoke lovingly of ukulele music, I scoffed, I laughed, I thought "You've got to be kidding me."

But youtube has shown me that Brad is right on this one - or that it actually is possible to make good and even incredible music on a ukulele.

First there is my musical hero, Bruce Springsteen playing the uke (He's playing a song from his first album):

Here's a rock version (sans uke):


But this is amazing. Jason Shimabukuro is playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" I hope to see him at a Borders store next month here in Chicago

So Brad,
I take back my laughter, my scoffing, and my questioning. I shall once again dine on crow. I've learned so many ways to serve it.