Tuesday's comment from the papers in...

Today in Times Comment

• Libby Purves: Cherie Blair: enough to make you weep
• David Aaronovitch: Burma - the case for intervention
• Chris Patten: Who's afraid of big bad China? Why?
• Chris Ayres: There will be blood around here too
• Mick Hume: Bouncy castles: a dangerous ruling
• Peter Riddell: Gordon Brown is another prime minister bitten by his pet subject
• Bronwen Maddox: Why it is not easy to impose help in Burma after Cyclone Nargis
• Ann Treneman: The father of Embryo Bill is not all there at its birth
• Gerard Baker: Greenback shows those green shoots

And from the rest of the papers...

• David Hughes: (The Telegraph) - Gordon Brown may get a flicker of sympathy
• Andrew O'Hagan: (The Telegraph) - Bravo to Jimmy Mizen's mother for rejecting revenge
• Tracy Corrigan: (The Telegraph) - It's so British to let our firms become foreign
• Stephen Pollard: (The Guardian) - The serial killers
• Polly Toynbee: (The Guardian) - Despite the baby boomers ageing, we can afford to care
• Robert Harris: (The Guardian) - Who brought on this implosion? Not Gordon Brown, but his predecessor
• Dominic Lawson: (The Independent) - Will we never escape class in this country?
• Neal Lawson: (The Independent) - Labour requires a different leadership
• Simon Carr: (The Independent) - Has Ann Widdecombe been genetically modified?
• Quentin Letts: (The Daily Mail) - The street which was love-bombed by Mr Cameron
• Gideon Rachman: (The Financial Times) - The oily truth about America’s foreign policy

And from around the world...

• David Brooks: (The New York Times) - The neural Buddhists
• Bob Herbert: (The New York Times) - Here come the millenials
• E.J.Dionne Jr: (The Washington Post) - Post-crucible Clinton
• Bret Stephens: (The Wall Street Journal) - From Lebanon to Hezbollahstan
• Dan Barber: (International Herald Tribune) - Change we can stomach
• Ramesh Thakur: (The Japan Times) - Let the Asians push aid to Burma

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

David Brooks on neurons: A century-old philosophical joke goes like this: "What is mind? No matter." "What is matter? Never mind."
I have certainly learned from neuroscientists and their expositions for the general reader. But I cannot help but feel that our neural circuitry is influenced in significant part by the various choices we make, which in my view are not entirely determined either by our inherited genes or the physical structure of the brain. Even old Epicurus, who espoused the materialistic theory of the universe and human action, believed in the unpredictable swerve of the atom.