BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!

Subject: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 07:34 AM

Scientists: Virginia shark's pup a 'virgin birth'

By STEVE SZKOTAK, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 1 minute ago

RICHMOND, Va. - Scientists have confirmed the second case of a "virgin birth" in a shark.

In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

The first documented case of asexual reproduction, or parthenogenesis, among sharks involved a pup born to a hammerhead at an Omaha, Neb., zoo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081010/ap_on_sc/sci_shark_mystery

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:31 AM

Your wife is a firm believer in asexual reproduction isn't she Bruce?

(;<))

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:32 AM

Sorry, Spaw- you can't judge everyone by your own situation...

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:33 AM

What a bastard

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: john f weldon
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:18 PM

Virgin birth is not totally unknown in some species. Rare, though. But humans, with cloning, could make it a commonplace. We could have as many Messiahs as we want!

Yay!

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Escapee
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 12:27 PM

" And what strange beast, it's hour come 'round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
WB Yates

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 01:46 PM

William Butler YEATS.

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Bee
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:05 PM

It has always interested me that, having read the poem long before I read anything of Yeats' reasons for writing it, I internalized an entirely different 'landscape of interpretation', which I cannot shake and don't particularly wish to. I would never have conjectured that the poem laments the fall of the ruling classes, the aristocracy, to revolution and war.

I still think, whatever Yeats' personal motive, it is a beautifully evocative metaphor for any era when people perceive that the future cannot be predicted, that civilizations fall, that foretold divinity may be instead a monster. It is one of my favourites.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:21 PM

I've always liked the poem, but nowadays I keep imagining a voice at the end saying "I'm John McCain, and I approve this message"

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: meself
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:42 PM

(yuk, yuk)

"whatever Yeats' personal motive"

One trait of a great artist is the ability to produce a great work of art despite personal motives. Perhaps this has to do with intuitive distrust of motives, and the desire to communicate with those who do not, or will not, share your particular world-view. Yeats (along with other greats) may have had a sense that while his politics and cosmology were products of his time and place, his art would be 'eternal'.

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Rapparee
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:54 PM

Yeats was not a supporter of the Irish Rebellion until...read "Easter 1916".

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: john f weldon
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 08:23 PM

In Yeats unpublished notes, was this early version...

Who's this?? Unshaved and unshorn...
Cleft hoof, a hump, and a horn...
This odious stranger
Is seeking a manger
In Bethlehem! There to be born!

...which later evolved into the famous poem.

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:26 PM

Omigod! A Yeats limerick!

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 02:48 AM

"We could have as many Messiahs as we want!"

No males, but... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: john f weldon
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 08:48 AM

A little genetic splicing, heck, we can do what we want. We could have a tall blond handsome Jesus with an upper-class British accent.

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:09 PM

Thanks, but I'd prefer one that laughs a lot and enjoys a good party.

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: gnu
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 03:34 PM

A purlpe one?

Subject: RE: BS: 2nd Coming? With Teeth!
From: Escapee
Date: 11 Oct 08 - 04:53 PM

Yeah, Rapaire, that guy. Thats what happens when I type past my bedtime.