I'm on record with my plans to retire someday to a chateau somewhere in the Black Forest, build a lab, lose my hair gel and become an honest-to-goodness mad scientist. But crikey, is the competition getting stiff. Used to be you could hack up a few things, sew them together, crank the assemblage up into a thunderstorm and then generally just wait around for the mob of fire-wielding peasants.
But then along comes some uppity dude like Steven Benner. He's got some artificial DNA, and now has got the stuff ginned up to evolve. And I don't mean science fiction, grow some weird protuberances and get all monstery "evolution," but the real kind, the kind that takes multiple generations, miscopying DNA, adapting, that sort of thing. If they leave this stuff in a dark corner, watch out. It might somehow replicate Charles Nelson Reilly—
and that would make the Large Hadron Collider black hole business look like a walk in the park. Although I'm not sure how something looks like a walk in the park.
Scientists will soon be able to go consult Benner to see how alternate/extraterrestrial forms of life might work. Now that is cool.
