And God Said, "Let There Be...."

And there was light. But darkness, too.

Remarkable bit of news in science when sperm meets ovum, and life begins, zinc radiates out in a "breathtaking" burst of light!

When.  Life.  Begins.

(The knowledge, alas, will almost certainly be used to grade the lives deliberated created to be ranked, and to off those of our brothers and sisters who shine less brightly.)

The discovery could help fertility doctors decide the best fertilised eggs to transfer during in vitro fertilisation.

Well, no, not "off them" outright, just consign them to the attic* as we used to do with other children who didn't make the grade, at least in horror films and gothic novels.
You know.
Cripples. Idiots. Bastards. Monsters.
Fine old custom, with a long pedigree.....

Oh, they were so cruel in the olden days! How could parents do that? Why didn't they just kill him before they had to look at him, like we do nowadays?

(*Nowadays our more advanced civilization uses refrigerator tanks.)

Research Finds Researchers Found Other Researchers Didn't Find....

I think we've all begun to feel, in the last few decades that any sentence that begins "Studies show...." or "Researchers have found...." will continue in an expression of utterly arbitrary ox dung that will be flatly contradicted within a week or two by other researchers in other studies paid for by other persons who wish to have other findings.

I'll be honest, I thought it was a result of bias, (the White Asparagus Council is pretty likely going to discover that White Asparagus prevents malaria/promotes REM sleep/allowed the Queen Mum to live to be 101.) (And that people who purchase White Asparagus, whether or not they actually consume it, are more likely to win the Powerball jackpot.)

But not so! Studies show (sorry, couldn't resist,) that study results are not biased ox dung, they are simply regular old ox dung.
Behavioural science, social sciences, well, you'd expect that, wouldn't you? anyone who's ever been part of a "random" sampling knows how not random you are, how leading the questions or statements are, and how self-reporting is... well, ox dung.

But sadly, even more objective areas of science deliver ox dung.

I don't care, I'm sticking with the research that shows most of us don't have enough fried food in our diets, the average human being needs 9 1/2 hours of sleep a night for optimum productivity, vitamins are overrated, and watching football makes you stupid.

It's science.

"But it's a breakthrough!"

"But it's a breakthrough! Isn't that progress?"

A good piece in the Herald, laying out the stakes, on science and morality, on three biological parent embryos, (and thus, three biological parent infants,) and whether the fabrication of human life is worth the extemination of human dignity.

A Little More About Why Humans Need Not "Be Like Rabbits"

The Pope was right -- we needn't be because we CAN'T be.
Our plumbing doesn't work the same way their does' does.

Did you know doe rabbits ovulate "on demand" as it were?

Or at least, so Those Interwebs seem to attest.
The actual way sciencey persons put it:

 Rabbits are induced ovulators

(I heard so this morning, so I thought I'd look in to whether it was just True Fax, the inventing of which is a hobby in which members of my family famously partake, or actual science. A vet friend also confirms, actual science.)
I think I read somewhere that the Holy Father was a chemist, so all this isn't exactly in his wheelhouse, but fair 'nuff.