*boy o boys* ;)

Yeehaw! Yo, so one of the coolest experiences thus far is to be back in Dr. Essani's class...what a truly joyous experience!

We were discussing how the importance of viral studies have affected discoveries today, and somehow ended up at the issue about stem cell research. *WARNING THIS INCLUDES R-RATED MATERIAL. THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE NOT MATURE ENOUGH TO HANDLE ASSASINATIONS SHOULD CONSULT THIS SITE AFTER THEY ARE MORE MATURE. (as I now am)* ;)
Dr. Essani (from what I remember): "See, the issue isn't really pro-life or pro-abortion because life was already there! The sperm had to still be alive and bouncing around like hell and the egg was still alive too! So there is no such thing as life beginning at any particular stage because there was life all along!! If you really want to call the isolation of stem cells the death of a human at any particular stage of development that might be considered as 'alive' or a part of 'life' then every time a boy takes his Playboy magazine to the closet he is committing MASS MURDER!!!!!!"

Needless to say, I was massively blushing, gasping, having my mouth widely open and covered with both hands, and laughing uncontrollably ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!! *hahaha*

Some wonderful cool facts though: from "Fundamentals of Molecular Biology" -Acheson
"There are 10-50 million bacteriophages on average per ml of seawater, and even more in many soils. Given the enormous volume of the oceans, scientists have calculated that there may be as many as 10^31 bacteriophages in the world. This is about 10-fold greater than the estimated number of bacteria. In terms of mass, this many phages would weigh about 100 million tons, or the equivalent of 1 million blue whales (the largest animal on Earth). More astonishing, these 10^31 phages, if lined up head-to-tail, would stretch some 200 million light years into space-that is, far into the universe beyond many of our known neighboring galaxies (Milky Way measure about 150 light years edge to edge, and the furthest visible galaxies in the universe are approximately 10^9 light years away). Ecologically, more than 95-98% of the biomass in oceans is microbial the rest of which is made up of all other forms of life, fish, marine mammals, birds, and plants, and about half the oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere is generated by photosynthetic activity of marine microbes. It's been estimated that 20% of the microbes in the Earth's oceans are destroyed each day by virus infections. Therefore, viruses play a major role in the carbon and oxygen cycles regulating our atmosphere and feeding the world's population."

*wicked* eh?