Monday, January 07, 2013

News me


I spotted a couple of interesting stories on the BBC site today. First we have news that the oldest man in the UK has died at the grand old age of 110, wow now that's a pretty decent innings! It made me think, imagine having the title of being the "oldest" person in any given population, a cursed position if ever there was one.

I also spotted this little Biology story, it's about restoring the sight of mice by transplanting photoreceptor (light sensitive) cells into their eyes. The hope is that similar treatments might be developed that help humans with degenerative sight disorders, I must admit though I was distracted by thought that there was probably only 3 mice and the scientists probably spent a lot of time watching them run.

Lastly we have the on-going saga of gay people and the slightly weird simultaneous obsession and revulsion that organised religion has with them. This time it's my favourite state religion, the Church of England and their recent decision to allow gay men to become Bishops so long as they don't actually have gay sex with anyone. It amuses me how otherwise normal educated people can support the idea that an all powerful omnipotent deity really cares where certain men put their penis. This is doubly baffling to me since this edict is clearly taken from a book Christians supposedly revere (the Bible) that also endorses slavery and treats rape as property crime among many other things that modern Christians would abhor.

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