So, it's all fine and dandy for me not to 'steal' CDs and music, but the first time I want a piece of media that I can't legally download, I go and do it anyway. I didn't watch the superbowl and only saw the Pepsi commercial with Pink, Beyonce, and Britney somewhat recently. And I've been obsessed with it ever since. Last week, I searched online and got to see the video, but wasn't able to download. So I downloaded a little tool instead, that let me capture the media stream and saved it to my hard drive.

And I've been thinking about it ever since. If I could buy the commercial I would -- I want a quality copy of it, but no one seems to sell commercials -- at least not that one anyway. And I know this question gets asked repeatedly -- but where is the harm in what I am doing -- I as in me, not I in a general, all of us are Is, kind of way. Having this commercial in my posession so that I can watch it every day is going to encourage me to consume. I will go and buy Pink and Britney Spears albums. I've got Destiny's Child albums, but maybe I'll go buy the Beyonce album, too. I'm easily influenced by music. I'm a huge fan of commercials -- I was talking to a friend of mine about this -- but I'm of the first generation to have grown up with MTV during our formative years and I've been hugely influenced by music videos -- those short clips of amazing and interesting video and sound. My attention span is short, and if you can keep my interest before I zone out, then I'm sold on whatever it is you have to sell -- clothes, music, sex, car insurance. Pair your product with some hot pop stars, and I'm a drooling mess.

I admit I'm guilty of doing something I shouldn't have done, but I'll make up for it.

That three minute, gladiator commercial was produced by Abbot Mead Vickers, BBDO London. Go view the commercials at bbdo.com -- they're all awesome. You can watch the Pepsi commercial here.

Slightly old, but I'm catching up on news slowly: A viable embryo (then a full mouse!) was created from two female eggs producing a genetically different baby mouse who was able to mature into adulthood and have offspring of her own. Eggs and sperm are genetically programmed to behave in certain ways. Parthenogenesis (reproduction via an unfertilized egg) is blocked by this imprinting (during development certain genes are turned off in eggs, others turned off in sperm. In Mammals, there are about 30 genes that are imprinted). By genetically modifying one of the eggs to be more 'masculine', Tomoshiro Kono and his team at the Tokyo University of Agriculture were able to fertilize the second egg without sperm.

The technique is complicated and has a high failure rate so it doesn't appear to be easily applicable to humans any time soon. And I believe the same technique could be used to create a viable embryo using two males.

Biology fascinates me; all the sciences do. But biology especially, in part because of the moral questions so much of its research raises. If a homosexual couple wanted to have a child, why wouldn't you allow them this if it was a real possibility for humans? It would involve genetic engineering, though and I don't think we've answered that question fully. Many people find it objectionable, but perhaps the there will be a time in the future when they won't. I think some conversations are better when they take place at the right time.

Nature article here, and there's also a good article in last week's New Scientist.