The Book of Ashes

The Indian dairies... 8:46AM

So I had to pick up some milk on my way to Bonnie's last night. Its only a 10 minute walk but theres four dairies on the way. Competition must be very stiff in this area. They work 13 hour days, open from 8am in the morning till 9pm at night. Although having said this they don't have to do that much all the time. They take turns during the day and sit watching TV otherwise. Also they are recruiting their kids to do the job, they are getting younger and younger as well. At the dairy I went to there was a very small little girl with big glasses who spoke excellent English and worked out my purchase perfectly. The mother watched over making sure she made no mistakes but still she was pretty good. Probably better than an adult. I think it all comes down to attracting the customer. If you're served by a cute little kid then you're likely to come back so each of the diaries in this highly competitive area are putting out their cutest kids in order to attract the customer. I think the little boy across from my place is the cutest though. He is so polite.

""You see your purpose laid out clearly before you now, a feeling really, rather than a picture, a knowing that you are going somewhere and that that somewhere has a purpose. Unfortunetly this is the nature of humans, to mistake chemical imbalances in the body for supernatural phenomena. It comes down to a lack of understanding.""

Just reading my New Scientist, my most favourite magazine. In it an interesting article can be found, its topic the regeneration of human tissues and body parts. Currently we know of a number of species with regenerative abilities, tape worms, salamanda's, newts and deer (with there antlers). Our understanding of the process is that at birth we are made up of many undifferentiated cells (stem cells) that can become any other cell. Once differentiated they are effectively hard coded and stay this way. In some animals it is possible to stimulate the undifferentiation of cells (or creation of stem cells) at the site that has been injured. These stem cells know ""read"" the structure of the body (from the DNA supposidly) and rebuild the damaged body part as brand new. They know exactly where to put bone, muscle, skin, etc and know exactly when to stop building. Remarkable in itself but recent research has shown evidence that mammals (possibly humans) once had this regenerative ability. In an experiment done on mice they found a special breed (human bred) that when tagged (hole punched through the ear) the hole fixed up and regrew hair on it like brand new. Also with this breed of mice small parts of their tail would regrow and most importantly of all parts of a damaged heart would repair rather than scar over. The theory is that somewhere down the track mammals favoured quick scarring of injuries over regeneration. Possibly even the scarring process blocks our ability to regenerate. Currently researchers are searching for a technique to block the scarring process to see if regeneration will occur instead. Maybe some day, not so far in the future we will be able to take a drug or injection and a severed finger will grow back. Its not actually that proposterous and the implications are far reaching. Should your hand grow wrinkly and scarred from much farm work you could just chop it off and take 6 months off while it regrew, good as new. No longer would pianists have a need for such high insurance plans on their hands, no longer would people be limbless, but not only this but we would regenerate damaged or aged hearts (the liver currently does this to some degree), bone, or possibly even the brain. Scary stuff.

""The day will come when man makes man like the child plays with his playdoh.