Hi! I’m your pet jellyfish, and you can call me Farfel!

You think it’s easy, writing headlines? Imagine having to write a headline for this.

“In 2016, a Japanese scientist reported that three months after the death of his pet jellyfish, a sea anemone-like polyp rose out of the degraded body, and then astonishly aged backwards, reverting to a younger state” (https://sg.news.yahoo.com/harvard-university-uncovers-dna-switch-180000109.html).

We’d love to check this story, but there are so many unanswered questions. What was this scientist’s name? Where did he report his findings? How does anybody wind up with a pet jellyfish? I mean, I’m sure they’re nice and all that, but I never heard of anyone keeping a jellyfish for a pet. What would you name it? Oh–and what was this guy doing, hanging on to the “degraded body” of a jellyfish for three months?

But wait, there’s more!

Scientists at Harvard have discovered a “DNA switch that controls genes for whole-body regeneration,” suggesting it might someday lead to people being able to re-grow lost arms or legs. Uh-uh. They have discovered this gene in worms. Worms are great at growing stuff back. It can also be found in human beings, but we’re not so great at growing stuff back. Not so much as a finger.

Even so, regeneration is the great humanist hope of immortality–that, or loading your mind into a robot. Once they work out the details, George Soros and Nancy Pelosi can stick around and screw up our country for another 700 years. No corrupt rich person will ever have to die!

I think Robert Silverberg wrote a science fiction novel about that, back in the 1950s, but I’m running too late to look it up.