Well. I don’t see the point of this study, but I suppose there are people who need to be clubbed about the head with the obvious who would be well-served by reading it. It’s a study to determine whether clones would have separate identities.

Umm, yeah?

They determined this by interviewing twins, who are clones of one another.

OK, yes?

From these findings the scientists said they could assume a clone would probably not feel their individuality was compromised by sharing genes with someone else; that their relationship with their co-clone was a blessing; and their uniqueness was not a negative thing.

That’s a relief. We can stop worrying about the clone armies full of self-loathing bodies with a single mind between them, I guess. I wonder if they also pursued the question of why, in any pair of twins, one individual gets all the good qualities, and the other is always pure evil?

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Never mind. Try googling “soul” and “clone”—there are way too many people in the world who take that worry seriously. Maybe this was a necessary study after all.

I’ve made it to St Paul and am sucking down some caffeine before strolling over to the venue for my talk this afternoon, and I’ve got a few minutes for a quickie link dump from the mailbag. Digest these for a while…

• There’s a great new response to the Randi paranormal challenge. Unfortunately, while I think her power is real and immense, it isn’t paranormal.
• This settles it. The war of the annoying you-tube videos has gone too far—now we’ve got singing Christian pirate puppets.
• They say Nelson’s Column is being renovated—I say it’s being used as a clandestine staging platform for the invasion of the Elder Gods.
• If you think scientists are obnoxious freethinkers, we’ve got nothin’ on the damned poets. “I am expelled for Atheism.”
• This could be a popular new ride at Sea World: take a ride on a Great White Shark.
• Uh-oh. It runs in the family…now my daughter is arguing with some creationist friends. (She’s a tough cookie, too—she won’t let me help at all, and is going to fight it out herself.)
• Well, I’m safely ensconced in a coffee shop in the worldly big city of St Paul. Do you think I should surprise the wife and come home with something like this?

Because if there were no anthropocism contest, I wouldn’t be able to enter it.

(via Uncertain Principles)

Monkey what?

The Apostropher is committing blasphemy, heresy, and sacrilege with this surreal “Monkey Jesus” abomination. I must respond in kind with…Dr Monkey.

There’s no way I can argue with a Countess.

No wonder George W Bush is such a screw-up. He’s actually handled by Johannes Schlüter, a very tiny German with poor English skills.