Boffins reckon that sex is actually good for the brain! But if that's true, then wouldn't that make this bloke the most intelligent man on earth?

Maybe he is, and he's just been hiding his light under a bushel...

Here are two great pieces on the power of tribal emotion to wash away rational thought in even quite brainy people.

Yet another thought on the Raelians: They're clearly not Christians. In fact, their whole philosophy is about as far away from that world-view as you can get. So why did they call the alleged cloned sproglet "Eve"?

Bloody unoriginal, I reckon.

Lazy cultists.

Gawd. Talk about "cutting edge"!

While I'm making predictions, here's another one: I read a letter in a recent print edition of The Oz. (Sorry, can't recall exactly which issue, so don't have a link or complete text.) Anyway, it was a pithy missive referring to the Windschuttle challenge to the "black armband" approach to Australian history. It more or less stated that "factual correctness" would -- or at least should -- challenge political correctness in the universities.

Well, I reckon this will be the start of a whole new process. Factual correctness will be abbreviated to "FC" and be invoked by non-fluffs in the same way that "PC" is currently invoked by fluffs. For example: "Er, I know I'm being really, um, FC, here. But shouldn't you be able to give me some sort of irrefutable, empirical evidence to back up your claim that all men are rapists?"

Similarly, the fluffs will claim that they are oppressed by the right-wing orthodoxy of factual correctness. Eventually we'll read headlines like: "Australian Union of Students demands an end to FC on Curtin University campus!"

Then we'll know for sure that things are improving.

Sorry, but here's yet another post on the Raelians (I know, I've got sects on the brain). This time I want to make a couple of predictions:

This report tells us that Clonaid has thousands lining up to be replicated. This number will surely grow the longer the cult is in the headlines. At 200 grand a pop, that's extremely big money. This whole cloning claim was clearly a scam to get hold of it (d'uh).

So, I reckon they'll keep taking orders, while all the time delaying inspection of the sprog like Saddam on valium.

Then what? The wannabe clonees will become extremely shat off and demand their money back. But it won't be forthcoming. With the authorities on their tails, the head Raelians will go underground. We won't hear anything of them for several months.

Then they'll hit the headlines again when their lifeless bodies are found in a basement in a secluded farmhouse somewhere in the French countryside. Yep, it'll end just as all them other wacky cults do: with a mass suicide.

You don't reckon? Just you wait and see.

Another thought on the Raelians: It seems odd that a cult that's so heavily into "free love" (i.e. mad rooting) should also be obsessed with cloning, which -- apart from being unethical -- is also hyper-clinical, antiseptic and therefore anti-sexual (sex being synonomous with all them sticky body fluids and all).

Also, Raelians say their interest in the technique is related to their desire to create physically and intellectually superior people. But cloning isn't improvement, it's just replication. So, invoking the super-race argument implies that the would-be clonee thinks he's already perfect.

That said, why do they bother with cloning at all? They just need to get all the sect members who want to be cloned to ditch their frangers and dutch caps before the next "sensual meditation" session (i.e. balls-to-the-wall clusterfuck) then harvest the resulting sprogs.

That'd save a lot of time and effort wouldn't it?

Speaking of the sad randomness of beauty, here's another example: Brigitte Boisellier, self-proclaimed human cloning mastermind. Okay, so she's not Claudia Schiffer, but she does scrub up alright. And that's pretty sad considering what she's just done (or at least, has been trying to do). Wouldn't it be easier to stomach if she was just really butt-ugly?

There are some good points in this Miranda Devine piece about how ferndamentalist zealotry has made things worse for da cute fwuffy aminals rather than better. She argues that halting small hazard reduction fires leads to an immense build-up of ground fuel that ultimately leads to massive conflagrations.

The article reminded me of some ferndies I saw begging for funds a fortnight ago in Sydney. Each wore a t-shirt with a picture of a koala on it and the words "Please help save my home" (followed by an exhortation to give to the Wilderness Society) written underneath. Having heard this ground fuel argument before, I looked at the t-shirts and had a quiet cack. I felt like saying: "Shouldn't that read, 'Please help destroy my home and me with it you arseholes!'?" But I didn't because one of the ferndies was a very scrumptious, bosomy babe and she flashed me this pearler of a smile. I just melted, I'm afraid.

(That's the really tragic thing about these young ferndie sheilas. Why do so many have to be so gorgeous? It's just too cruel!)

Please Lord, not again -- I beg you!