fit into my genes

It took the power of the Supreme Court to decide that your genes are your genes and nobody can patent them.

Which stinks for me, because I had sent thousands of letters to the patent office to get patents for all of your genes.

Then I was going to charge you for having your genes and you would have to pay me to keep being all genie and stuff.

Can’t do that now! Thanks a lot, Supreme Court!

I guess some company found a gene and put a patent on it. The court said that they didn’t actually INVENT anything. They just FOUND something. You can’t patent something that you just find when you’re looking for it!

That’s like you looking in the sky and seeing the sun and thinking, “I just found this giant thing in the sky that is totally bright! I need to patent that because I want to make money from it!”

Doesn’t work that way!

Now, if you created a NEW sun with variations and improvements on the old sun, you could probably patent that. I don’t know where you would put it, though. I mean, the sun is pretty big. It’s bigger than my library. And THAT is BIG!

I wish I could patent my genes. I bet I have some really cool ones. I can jump pretty high. I know my vision isn’t great, but with glasses, I can totally see far.

I don’t really wear jeans, though. I know it’s different, but they sound the same. I like cargo pants. I generally have a lot of cargo, so I need the pants to transport that cargo. Very useful.

I would also like to patent my idea for an envelope that has flavored glue.

I’m off to copyright and trademark and lick an envelope.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj

that's a lot of limbs

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in the heads of animals used for research. Because sometimes Science does really cool stuff!

Have you ever heard of the coelacanth? It's a pretty famous fish. They THOUGHT it died with the dinosaurs, but it totally didn't! It was just relaxing in the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean!

And who can blame them?! I mean, if everybody I knew was going to go and extinct themselves, I would probably go and relax on some island somewhere and not be bothered by an extincting.

Once scientists found these fish, experiments HAD to happen! They found that some DNA in the fish "doesn't code for proteins, but somehow turns genes on and off."

I have no idea what that means, but when you put that DNA into mice, it can turn ON the genes that make limbs!

The article is strangely silent on whether the limbs were actually needed or not. I don't know if these were mice that lost a limb and had it grown back OR if there are now mice with 7 legs and 4 tails.

Possibly a bread tail. (That is funny if you read what I wrote earlier this week. Well, maybe not FUNNY funny, but kinda funny.)

As exciting as this is, it's also VERY scary. This is how Dr. Curt Connors became the Lizard. Well, with lizard DNA, not coelacanth.

Maybe if he did that, he'd become the Coelacanth. Not as easy to say. And maybe not as scary. Since he would be a fish and have to live underwater. I suppose he could attack people on the beach, but I think he would probably go relax at the Comoros Islands.

It's too bad his research was so lizardy.

I'm off to grow some limbs.

Enjoy Everything.

-dj