Creep-fest

A big gold star to the first person to tell me why this is weird and creepy and wrong.

Gene scientists Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith hope to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life in a project funded by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Energy Department, The Washington Post reported in its Thursday editions.

If the experiment works, the newspaper said, the microscopic man-made cell would begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist.

...shudder...

For more human sliminess, read this article about a New York class-action lawsuit against McDonald's.

In federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday, a lawyer alleged that the fast-food chain has created a national epidemic of obese children. Samuel Hirsch argued that the high fat, sugar and cholesterol content of McDonald's food is "a very insipid, toxic kind of thing" when ingested regularly by young kids.

This is very, very true. McDonald's food is very bad for children, adults, dogs, anybody who eats it. There are many things in this world that are bad for children. That's why they have PARENTS that are supposed to KEEP THESE THINGS FROM THEM. Or so I've heard.

On the subject of big fat dumb kids, is this cheerful revelation.

The society survey found that only about one in seven -- 13 percent -- of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military warriors, could find Iraq. The score was the same for Iran, an Iraqi neighbor.

Although the majority, 58 percent, of the young Americans surveyed knew that the Taliban and al Qaeda were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find that country on a world map.

Here's a proposal for a new U.N. resolution...before we are allowed to bomb a nation we have to know how to find it on a map!

Didn't I tell you the news was pissing me off lately?