QUESTION Did the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, try to clone his dog?
Not only did he try, he succeeded. Javier Milei, a libertarian and self-identified “anarcho-capitalist,” adopted an English mastiff named Conan, after Conan the Barbarian, in 2004.
This dog died in 2017 and the following year, Milei received the Conan clones, one of the same name, as well as Murray, Milton, Robert and Lucas, named after her favorite economists Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman and Robert Lucas.
At his political rallies, Milei held up photographs of his dogs, which he distributed to the crowd before grabbing a chainsaw, his subtle metaphor for the spending cuts he promised to implement.
Milei, single, described 200-pound Conan as her “closest friend and confidant.” According to The Madman, the unauthorized biography of Milei written by Juan Luis González, after Conan’s death, a devastated Milei visited a medium to communicate with her late pet in the afterlife. Milei said that Conan transmitted to him God’s mission for him to be president of Argentina.
Milei paid PerPETuate, a US company, $50,000 (£40,000) to carry out the cloning. Normally reluctant to talk about his ‘grandchildren’, he has said: ‘What do they say? My dogs determine my strategies, yes? What are they like a strategic committee? They are the best strategic committee in the world.
Javier Milei successfully cloned an English mastiff named Conan, in honor of Conan the Barbarian, and when he died in 2014, he adopted one of Conan’s clones.
Javier Milei won the Argentine presidential election with 56% of the vote in November with some unorthodox tactics. Pictured holding a chainsaw at one of his rallies.
Dog cloning involves the nuclear transfer of somatic cells. The nucleus of a somatic cell (a cell other than a sperm or egg) from the donor dog is inserted into an egg from which the nucleus has been removed. The reconstructed egg is then stimulated to begin dividing and then implanted into a surrogate mother. The first cloned dog, the Afghan hound Snuppy, was created in 2005 by South Korean scientists.
Rachel French, St Andrews, Fife.
QUESTION What are the most condescending pop songs of all time? Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins comes to mind.
I like Phil Collins, but he probably deserved some of the pain he suffered for Another Day In Paradise, a song about the guilt of ignoring the homeless in which he orders us to “Just think about it.” Phil later left Britain for the tax haven of Switzerland.
Some of the responses to the song were even more condescending. Enter Billy Bragg, who piously told us, “Phil Collins could write a song about homelessness, but if he doesn’t have the action to go with it, he’s just exploiting it as a theme.”
Bragg recently updated her already moving song Sexuality to support the trans movement with discordant lyrics: ‘Just because you’re Them, I won’t turn you away / If you stay, I’m sure we can find the right pronoun.’
Another excruciating song about homelessness was If That Were Me by Mel C, which contains the line: “I couldn’t live without my phone / But you don’t even have a home.”
John Lennon’s song Imagine included the lyrics: ‘Imagine without possessions’. I wonder if you can. There is no need for greed or hunger. A fraternity of men’
Phil Collins at a 1997 gala honoring The Prince’s Trust
Paul McCartney is the king of beautiful melody, but without John Lennon to add some value, his lyrics can come across as saccharine. No more so than with Ebony And Ivory, in which ‘Ebony and ivory live in perfect harmony / Side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why not us?’
That said, it was John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band that gave us the boring hippie anthem Give Peace A Chance, while he sat in bed doing nothing. Then, in The Luck Of The Irish, Yoko Ono offended an entire nation with her comment on Northern Ireland’s troubles: “Let’s walk on rainbows like leprechauns / The world would be one big Blarney stone.”
However, the king of them all has to be Do They Know It’s Christmas? by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure. Not only because Ethiopia has a longer Christian tradition than the British Isles, but it even refers to Africa as a place “where nothing grows, nor rain nor rivers flow”, a surprisingly misleading description of Ethiopia.
Gus Evans, Carlisle, Cumbria.
Surely one of the most condescending pop songs has to be Imagine by John Lennon. ‘Imagine not possessions. . .’ No one saw John, or any other pop singer, give away their wealth and his property.
Paddy Bowen, Great Torrington, Devon.
QUESTION How can the liver regenerate? Can any other part of the body do this?
The liver is the only solid organ that can use a regenerative mechanism to return to its full capacity after being damaged. Surprisingly, the body can cope with removing up to two-thirds of the liver and it will return to its normal size within three months after a substantial hepatectomy.
Other solid organs, such as the lungs, kidneys, and pancreas, adapt to the loss of tissue but cannot return to full function.
The liver plays three key roles in the body: as a protein factory to maintain the thickness and consistency of blood; a filtration system that cleans the enormous volume of blood that flows from the gastrointestinal tract back to the heart and supports metabolic processing by creating bile, which aids the digestion of food and helps the body absorb medications.
The liver is the only solid organ that can use a regenerative mechanism to return to its full capacity after being damaged.
The main functional cells of the liver are called hepatocytes. During liver regeneration, they proliferate and divide rapidly to restore liver mass and function.
The process is complex, but a key factor is a reciprocal relationship between hepatocytes and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels. Hepatocytes produce factors that help new blood vessels feed the growing liver, and endothelial cells generate growth factors that help hepatocytes proliferate.
Non-solid organs may also have important regenerative powers. Blood vessels can undergo angiogenesis, where new vessels form to replace damaged ones.
The skin is constantly renewed through cell division at the base of the epidermis. It can regenerate to heal wounds and replace damaged tissue. But the deeper layers of the skin do not go through this and therefore do not replace themselves.
Kavita Shah, Isleworth, Middx.