The wonderful world of genetic Whimsies

BTW, Lola thinks it’s pretty suss, and that they’re going to end up with a Derek rather than a Jesus. Maybe Derek and Valerie the Domestic Android could get together. A match made in, um …?

I badly needed a reality check after that site, so I wandered over to the Leakey Foundation at www.leakeyfoundation.org for an anthropological fix. Did you know that the ability to share meat led to the expansion of the human brain? Well, that’s what Craig Stanford reckons anyway. Lola agreed (she’s got this complicated theory about the size of my brain and my inability to share) and you can read it at www.leakeyfoundation.org/n9_spr2000_4.htm and decide for yourself.

And when I thought of Louis Leakey, I thought of his wonderful students, including Jane Goodall. Why not swing over to www.janegoodall.org and check out all the good stuff on chimpanzees. After all, we primates have to stick together. But whatever you do, don’t blame me if you go to the "Roots and Shoots" section.

After all the homework for this month’s edition, I came to the conclusion that the gene pool can be a very icky thing.

I also believe that Lola needs a pet. She needs to learn responsibility and to develop the self-discipline that comes from caring for someone from a different gene pool.

So, later that night I was reading and came upon a new word.

"Anthropomorphism." "What’s that?" I asked Lola.

"Not sure", she said, "but I think it’s got something to do with attributing human characteristics to animals".

"But not poodles."

Until next time, dear reader.

"Why don’t you write books people can read?" Nora Joyce to her husband, James