In Christianity Today, Thomas Hibbs examines three recent films in order to tease out “one of the important tasks for a contemporary Christian approach to film.”

I’ve often recommended the novel My Sister’s Keeper as an interesting exploration of what the British call savior siblings — using reproductive technologies and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in order to have a child that can be an organ or bone marrow donor for an ailing sibling.

On June 26, the movie version opens, starring Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, and Sofia Vassilieva.  I wonder if they’ve changed the ending?

Over at The Daily Beast, “Neurobiologist Maureen L. Condic investigates 11 common arguments in favor of embryonic stem-cell research, and explains why science may not need the controversial technique, after all.”

Well worth reading.

A theater in suburban Chicago is hosting MuVChat, which allows audience members to twitter their thoughts about the movie for display on screen.

“I’ve described it as a mash-up of ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000′ and Twitter,” said Rien Heald, the Naperville inventor of MuVChat.

Several members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have weighed in on the President’s Executive Order on Stem Cell Resarch.

Although members of the President’s Council on Bioethics have been divided on this question and some of our colleagues disagree with us, we think it may be useful and clarifying to set the president’s action in three ways into the context of work the council has done over the past seven years.

Is Wired.  Because of the breadth of reporting.  Case in point, “The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Diamond Heist” from this month’s issue. Another great article is “High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace” from March of last year.

My friends at MercatorNet have a thoughtful piece on a new drug that may dull bad memories.

We are only at the threshold of understanding how memory is integrated into our personal identity. Blunting the memory of trauma might bring short-term benefits but long-term anxiety. And what about legitimate feelings of guilt and shame?

Books & Culture has an interview with the always excellent Jean Bethke Elshtain where she discusses, among other things, her assertion:

In our own liberal society at the moment, and in most of the Western democracies in general, we are pursuing a paradoxical project: We are most aware of those with physical and mental disabilities; we want to provide them access. Yet at the same time, our most enthused-about and ideologically fraught projects aim at creating a world with no such persons in it.

Highly recommended reading.

. . . this hasn’t gotten more blowback. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been funding plotline placement in a handful of primetime shows.

William Zinsser writes on drafting and revising his On Writing Well over the past 35 years.

HT: Justin Taylor