Shabbat shalom! And a tip of the kippah to the late Alexei Navalny, who was murdered last week by Vlad “little dick” Putin. Hopefully, Navalny’s courageous death might inspire the spineless GOP morons to get some aide to Ukraine before it’s too late.
We lose something profound if we mark his assassination with supine acquiescence. Courage should beget courage. Navalny was a proud Russian nationalist, but he represented the core principles of the West; and they are worth prudently defending abroad as well as at home. In Navalny, you see a commitment to empirical truth over ideological lies; to transparency over corruption; to courage over brute force; to humor over power; and to freedom over tyranny. We may be chastened as a super-power, and we have every reason to be. But something deep is at stake here in the wake of Navalny’s murder. And we betray our souls if we let him die in vain. - Andrew Sullivan
Looking out our window at the San Jacinta and San Bernardino mountains set against a bright blue sky, I am reluctant this week to go about my usual business of recapping the hideous news cycle or adding my smarmy commentary, for example, to the actions of the douche bags in Alabama who in the name of their God, think we should all be living in a Christian theocracy where woman have no control over their own bodies and couples will be denied access to IVF technologies that enable them to conceive and bring new wonderful life into this tumultuous but beautiful world.
So, out of respect for this beautiful day, I am pivoting instead to a different topic in the news, which caught my attention but, so far, has received little coverage in the lame stream media. Spoiler alter: some feminists will not be happy. But, researchers in a Stanford Medicine study, using deep AI neural networking techniques previously unavailable, have determined conclusively that “reliable sex differences exist in the human brain and suggest that understanding these differences may be critical to addressing neuropsychiatric conditions that affect women and men differently.”
Really? It took a Stanford study of over 1,500 brain scans to figure out what most men who have ever watched a woman parallel park have known for decades? (yuk, yuk) Apparently, according to lead investigator, Vinod Menon, the new study unveils an artificial intelligence model that was more than 90% successful at determining whether scans of brain activity came from a woman or a man. And according to Dr. Menon,
The extent to which a person’s sex affects how their brain is organized and operates has long been a point of dispute among scientists. While we know the sex chromosomes we are born with help determine the cocktail of hormones our brains are exposed to — particularly during early development, puberty and aging — researchers have long struggled to connect sex to concrete differences in the human brain. Brain structures tend to look much the same in men and women, and previous research examining how brain regions work together has also largely failed to turn up consistent brain indicators of sex.
This has been a tricky topic among scientists, and, of course, historically launched a huge amount of debate and some demagoguery from feminists who have argued for decades that there are no important inbuilt differences between male and female brains. In fact, just a few years ago, British neurobiologist Professor Gina Rippon — author of the boldly-titled The Gendered Brain: The new neuroscience that shatters the myth of the female brain — felt confident enough to dismiss the idea that there were any systematic brain differences based on sex alone as “neurofoolishness”. And feminist author Kathleen Block writes recently that the first axiom of the feminist theory on brain differences used to be that “there are no male and female brains at all, except in the trivial sense that there are a variety of human brains, each lodged within male and female bodies and shaped by external “gendered” circumstances that vary from culture to culture. A second axiom tends to follow swiftly: anyone who says otherwise is probably a sexist pig.”
This week, however, the inconvenient truth emerged from the data that indeed, male and female brains are wired differently. Those differences could not have been more profoundly demonstrated than by the decision, led by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, that cells awaiting implantation for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In his concurring opinion, he declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.” Well Judge Parker, you and your inane decision defy the basic constitutional separation of church and state, and have incurred my wrath. So F-you and F your little man brain, Judge!
The Dobbs decision unleashed this nonsense and started pro-life conservatives down the proverbial slippery slope. What’s next? Making contraceptives illegal? When your significant other says “no, I’m too tired tonight honey”, you can press charges? I’d like to press a few charges against Parker’s temporal lobes and give him a lobotomy, but apparently he’s already had one.
Well, there I go again, down the proverbial bad news bunny hole. Where was I? Ah yes, the brain study. It should be interesting to see the impact of this study on feminist theories and the reactions to it across social, political and scientific communities. And remember, you read it here first in the JNR, along with this closing brain joke:
A man decided it was time to upgrade his brain, so he went to the Brain Store to buy a new one. The sales clerk greeted his potential customer warmly and began to show him around the store.
"Here we have the women's brains. They are $500.00 each," said the sales clerk. Together the two moved down to the next aisle. "And here are the men's brains. They are $1,000.00 each."
The customer chuckled softly to himself. "So, the women's brains cost less. I expected as much. Men are so much smarter."
The sales clerk looked to the customer, a confused expression on the clerk's face. "No sir, you misunderstand. Women's brains cost less because they have been used."
In Israel this week, a glimmer of hope that a deal to free the hostages may be in process. The first signs of any positive movement came from Benny Gantz, who sits on the war council and is typically mum on the topic. So, for him to announce anything positive could be a good sign. However, overall the main stream media continues to portray Israel in a very grim light while focusing more on the plight of Palestinians usually without any context of the cause of their plight - Hamas. And that coverage continues to hurt Israel’s image and standing around the globe. If you want to understand how Hamas manipulates the main stream media, here is a link to Dan Senor’s latest podcast “Call me Back:” How Hamas Fooled the World with Matti Friedman. The podcast summary is below. Friedman is a respected journalist who has first hand knowledge and writes eloquently on the topic. Worth a listen.
Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: ‘Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.’ How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the world? And is this a window into what Hamas had figured out long before 10/07 — that the forces of barbarism could manipulate the intentional press reaction to their massacre of 10/07?
Now, onto the news of the Jews. Here then is this week’s generous selection of Jewie journalistic gems, culled and carefully curated, and copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, JTA, The Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Boston, Haaretz, and other Jewish journals:
Postwar plan proposal from Bibi: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu submitted a proposal for the management of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the war to his war cabinet. The plans include provisions for Israel to maintain freedom of military operation in Gaza, and for UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, to be shuttered and replaced by a new international body. Separately, a senior Israeli official said Israel is seeking Palestinians who are not connected to Hamas to oversee civilian affairs in “humanitarian pockets” of Gaza, as a test of plans for the strip's postwar governance. The Palestinian Authority decried Netanyahu’s plan, calling it “a formal declaration of the return of the occupation to the Gaza Strip.”
More on the war:
Three Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Israelis stuck in traffic at a checkpoint near Jerusalem Thursday morning, killing an Israeli man and wounding 11 others.
An Israeli delegation arrived in Paris to participate in a new round of talks over a possible deal for a ceasefire and hostage release.
President Biden may be losing Democratic support in Michigan, which has the largest Arab American population in the U.S., over his support for the war in Gaza.
A new report revealed that a 24-year-old survivor of the Nova Music Festival attack was killed by a kibbutz volunteer who mistook him for a terrorist on Oct. 7.
A group of survivors of the Nova festival and family members of those who died there is suing The Associated Press, accusing the outlet of complicity in the Oct. 7 attack over its work with photographers the suit claims are “known Hamas associates.”
Israel shared plans to build thousands of new residences in West Bank settlements in reaction to a Thursday terrorist attack that killed one.
Israel’s entry to Eurovision faces a new hurdle: “October Rain,” the song selected for Eden Golan, 20, to sing at the festival, is reportedly being scrutinized over concerns that it may be overly political. Israel’s participation in this year’s contest has already been widely protested; Israeli media suggested that if the song choice was rejected, Israel would pull out of the competition.
A Palestinian-American woman has remained in detention in Israel since early February over charges related to Facebook posts she made while in the U.S., raising questions over the jurisdiction of Israel’s military judicial system.
Embryos ‘held hostage’: An Alabama court decision terrifies Jews relying on IVF. A ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court this week equating embryos with children has sent Alabama Jews undergoing or seeking fertility treatment into panic. “The scariest part is we’re supposed to be the experts to advise our clients,” Elana Frank, founder and CEO of the Jewish Fertility Foundation, which is scrambling to help Alabama clients transfer their treatment to Atlanta, told our news editor, Lauren Markoe. But “our attorneys and our doctors are freaking out.”
😳 Google suspended its artificial intelligence chatbot’s ability to create images after the service created pictures of people of color in Nazi uniforms, and said they would fix “inaccuracies in some historical” representations. (New York Times)
et tu Denmark? 😞 Reports of antisemitic incidents in Denmark are at their highest level since World War II, with 121 incidents recorded since Oct. 7. (Associated Press)
The Department of Education will investigate Natick Massachusetts K-12 in the latest in a flurry of federal probes into discrimination since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. A spokesperson for Natick Public Schools would not confirm the topic of its investigation to JTA, but noted, “There will be an investigation to assure the district adhered appropriately to protocols utilized to affirm and ensure the civil rights of our students are protected.” The spokesperson also said that “annual training is mandated for all staff” and that it would cooperate with the investigation. Natick has been the site of some antisemitic activity since the start of the war, according to a district statement made at a December school board meeting. “We stand strongly against any efforts to bring hatred into our community, including denouncing in the strongest terms the recent antisemitic symbols that were found in our schools,” the statement said.
🤦 Former Rep. George Santos — who was expelled from office and lied about his past, including that he’s a descendant of Holocaust survivors — is suing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, accusing the comedian of … checks notes … fraud. You really can’t make this shit up! (CNN)
That should do it. Have a great week everyone! And hey, let’s be careful out there. If you happen to be in Russia, don’t mention my name or stand near any open windows.
Brad out.