Mixing chickens with global warming
In case you missed the news, a Harvard professor named Arkhat Abzhnov, an “evolutionary biologist,” has tampered with the DNA of a white Leghorn and created chicken embryos having a snout similar to that of an alligator. We are not making this up.
The professed result of his experiments is the reversal of the evolutionary process.
Dr. Abzhnov claims to be able to produce chickens from the cretaceous period several million years ago—a time when today’s mild-mannered omelet producers were blood-thirsty, marble-eyed little dinosaurs.
The story goes on to say that a “rule of ethics” does not allow Dr. Abzhnov to let his eggs actually hatch.
Rules that permit him to alter fertile eggs, to give life to creatures out of Jurassic Park but terminate them as embryos, are rules made to be broken.
Dr. Abzhnov seems anxious to do just this, telling reporters he hopes to soon complete the process of converting ordinary eggs into pre-historic Manirap-tora (chcken-raptors).
Personally, I’d let him go ahead. I’m skeptical. I suspect that creating a chicken with a bill-shaped beak is just re-inventing the duck.
Whether this is the case or not, there is an alleged useful purpose to Dr. Abzhnov’s experiments.
According to an article in Science & Tech On-Line, some believe this adjustment of DNA will lead to the development of species better able to deal with global climate change.
And while we’re contemplating Harvard graduates and climate change, does it seem to anyone else that Al Gore has become a caricature; a cartoon figure who will eventually be taken seriously only by himself?
His bizarre remarks—running the gamut from observing that a zebra could not change its spots to acclaiming that energy costs would decrease with the transition to renewable sources—make him seem like the Yogi Berra of the far left.
Yogi, though, is a nice old geezer whose blunders are harmless. He says he really didn’t say much of what others say he said.
Gore is now telling his minions that skeptics of the global warming theory are the moral equivalent of racists.
Respond to doubters, he suggests, just as high-minded people did to bigoted extremists during the Civil Rights movement.
I actually watched a tape of his FearLess Revolution interview to make sure he wasn’t being misquoted. He wasn’t.
To Al Gore the sort of person who would question his position on climate is the type who’d wear a white sheet and pointed hat. Forget the fraudulent data, misrepresentations, the plethora of reputable scientists and meteorologists who think Al Gore is a profiteer. Just believe.
Gore also, in the same interview, reiterated his position that eating meat is a big part of the world’s problem. Large-scale farming has to end. Organic vegetables might get a little boring but, Gore tells us, they are the only salvation.
And there you have it—two Harvard men who made the news in late August. One says he’s about to unleash a flock of predator chickens capable of hamstringing a buffalo. The other was within a few hanging chads in Florida of becoming President of the United States.
Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com