You know those gigantic four-legged freaks that fly in your face and swoop about like drunken B-52 bombers? On the West Coast, they’re referred to as “Mosquito Eaters,” in other areas, “Mosquito Hawks.” In reality these things are called crane flies, and no, they do not eat mosquitoes. In fact, adult crane flies don’t eat at all. They mature only to reproduce and die quickly thereafter. The grubs feed on decaying plant life in the soil. Crane flies carry no venom, and do not bite. Because they don’t eat, they can’t do anything dazzling enough to be considered a pest; except of course in the sense of annoyance. And seeing as summer is the season of this winged nuisance, they should be polluting your home in no time, if they haven’t already.

I for one hate crane flies. I wish they would vanish from the earth. I can’t sleep knowing one is dancing about my room, as I anticipate that it will fly into my mouth at any given moment. The only real purpose they seem to serve is as a food source for certain species of birds. Go figure.

It’s not as if most reasoning humans couldn’t have foreseen the day when science would tamper with the chain of life so drastically, but now there seems to be unmitigated technology to clone a human child.

Scientists used the the procedure to create baby mice from the skin cells of adult animals, and have found it more efficient than the revered “Dolly” technique - the process forged to create the world’s first cloned being, a sheep named Dolly.

Unlike the Dolly technique, however, the procedure is so simple and efficient that it has raised fears that it will be seized on by IVF doctors to help infertile couples who are eager to have their own biological children.

One scientist said this weekend that a maverick attempt to perform the technique on humans is now too real to ignore. “It’s unethical and unsafe, but someone may be doing it today,” said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of American biotechnology company Advanced Cell Technology.

“Cloning isn’t here now, but with this new technique we have the technology that can actually produce a child. If this was applied to humans it would be enormously important and troublesome,” said Dr Lanza, whose company has pioneered developments in stem cells and cell reprogramming.

“It raises the same issues as reproductive cloning and although the technology for reproductive cloning in humans doesn’t exist, with this breakthrough we now have a working technology whereby anyone, young or old, fertile or infertile, straight or gay can pass on their genes to a child by using just a few skin cells,” he said.

The technique involves the genetic reprogramming of skin cells so they revert to an embryonic-like state. Last year, when the breakthrough was used on human skin cells for the first time, it was lauded by the Catholic Church and President George Bush as a morally acceptable way of producing embryonic stem cells without having to create or destroy human embryos.

However, the same technique has already been used in another way to reproduce offspring of laboratory mice that are either full clones or genetic “chimeras” of the adult mouse whose skin cells were reprogrammed.

Comforting to know that George W. Bush backs yet another potentially cataclysmic moral and ethical can of worms. Either way, this is something that should be scaring the hell out of everyone. I’ve seen Star Wars waaaaay too many times to ignore the threat of an army of clones. Granted, the ones forged by scientists might be more calculus-savvy, and not so much Jengo Fett, but the potential is frightening.

It has long been rumored that organ transplants bring with them certain personality traits of their original owners, but two recent cases seem to add credence to the theory. First  is the case of Sonny Graham, who after receiving the heart of suicide victim Terry Cottle, went on to not only marry Cottle’s widow, but to also eventually commit suicide in the exact same fashion as Cottle had, 12 years earlier. Even more bizarre is the case of Claire Sylvia, a middle aged mother who received a donated heart from an 18-year-old boy who died in a motorcycle accident. In her new book, Change of Heart, Sylvia notes some of the unexpected side effects of her transplant operation:

Now that I could eat like a normal person, I found, bizarrely, I’d developed a sudden fondness for certain foods I hadn’t liked before: Snickers bars, green peppers, Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway. As time went on, a strange question crept into my mind. Although I hadn’t thought much about my donor, I was acutely aware that I was living with a man’s heart - and I wondered whether it was conceivable that this male heart might affect me sexually.

Until the transplant, I had spent most of my adult life either in a relationship with a man or hoping to be in one. But after the operation, while I still felt attracted to men, I didn’t feel that same need to have a boyfriend. I was freer and more independent than before - as if I had taken on a more masculine outlook. My personality was changing, too, and becoming more masculine. I was more aggressive and assertive than I used to be, and more confident as well.

I felt tougher, fitter and I stopped getting colds. Even my walk became more manly. “Why are you walking like that?” my teenage daughter Amara asked. “You’re lumbering - like a musclebound football player.” This new masculine energy wasn’t limited to my walk. I felt a new power that I associated with strength and vibrancy.

Both cases, of course, are a long way from proving anything about the theory of cellular memory, but it’s certainly food for thought, eh?

In the continuing saga of completely bizarre physiological developments over the course of this year, a baby girl was born in North India recently who has two faces. According to reports, the baby girl has two separate sets of eyes (which she can open and shut at the same time), two mouths (which she can drink milk with at the same time) and two noses (so she can make everyone guffaw with two cute little sneezes at the same time).

She is being heralded in her village, just 25 miles east of New Delhi, as a Hindu Goddess.

A rare find in Utah has biologists stumped. A mysterious fanged critter (pictured above) was found in Utah after some ice melted.

The strange creature was found after about 4,000 fish were discovered dead in a Brigham City pond, according to officials.

Officials said the pond may have been poisoned or the water may have run out of oxygen due to the thick ice.

While checking the pond, the creature was spotted.

“When we first saw that fish, we thought what in the ….. is that thing?” Utah Divison of Wildlife Resources Ben Boyce said.

The aquatic chupacabra-looking thing was found with carp and goldfish that had been stocked in a Brigham City pond. Biologists haven’t a clue what the fuck the thing is, but they postulate that it may be a trout that has decomposed in such a way that the teeth became more prominent. That sounds like bullshit to me, but whatever. Clearly, it’s some kind of underwater demon. Researchers are waiting for it to decompose entirely so they can study the bone structure. More pictures of the creature can be found here.

Fossilized feces, dating back some 14,000 years, stands as the oldest human remains found in America. The ancient shit, found in, of all places, Oregon, “offers important new DNA evidence about the identity of the first North Americans, say the researchers, who published their findings Thursday in the online edition of the Journal Science.” University of Oregon (go Ducks!) archaeologist Dennis Jenkins found the feces in the Paisley caves, which are located in the south-central part of the state. These ancestral leavings, and the genetic data contained therein, suggest that the earliest North American settlers probably came from Eastern Asia and Siberia.

The oldest piece is 14,300 years old, and the samples contain genetic material that is unique to that of the modern indigenous people of North and South American, says Eske Willerslev, a Danish expert in ancient DNA and one of the authors of the paper. It also is similar to DNA found in modern people in East Asia and Siberia.

It also counters a number of theories that suggest the first North Americans were close relatives of ancient Australians, Japanese, Pacific Islanders, southern Asians or black Africans.

The discovery also deflates another popular theory that the earliest settlers of the continent were descendants of the Clovis people, a highly skilled group of hunters who were believed to have come to North America 13,000 years ago across the land bridge that connected Alaska to Siberia. Further inspection of the feces also determined that whoever had left it had gorged him or herself on a meal of sage grouse and chipmunk one day prior to evacuation. Not vegan.

Feel free to make up your own jokes, starting now. When I was a kid, Indiana Jones made me want to be an archaeologist, but he was banging hot barmaids in Nepal, saving the world from the Nazis and uncovering mythical religious artifacts. I suppose finding millennia old shit is pretty cool, too, in it’s own right, but I couldn’t imagine watching Harrison Ford poke around a caveman’s turd for a couple hours would be all that entertaining. What I’m trying to say is, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is going to rule.