I assure you, it can't possibly be as clever as 14 year old aspiring geneticist and generally know-it-all me thought it was. But I appreciate the nerdly solidarity.

No, they don't. When I said the cells of every animal, plant, or virus, that last was meant to be "fungus".

Probably not as terrifying as having children die because of mitochondrial defects.

Oh my god, what monstrosity will they think of next? A child with the DNA of FOUR different grandparents?

Right. I'll be that person too, with the GATTACA. Honestly, guys, you desperately need a competent science writer/editor on staff. You get this stuff wrong all the time. Not a little wrong, but all the way, wearing-a-tube-top-on-your-head wrong.

The second mother is specifically contributing mitochondrial DNA (mitochondria are the energy providers of the body and are where the defect for these diseases lie), not genomic. Scientists don't believe it will influence the characteristics of the child. It's not designer babies in the way we think of them from…

There's no splicing. There's no manipulation of the actual DNA in that they're taking the nucleus out in tact and putting into another egg that has healthy mitochondria. There's no changing of the DNA.

OMG I love designer babies.

I hate to be That Person, but it's Gattaca with three a's. Which is important because the title is based on the letters for the four nucleobases of DNA (guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine).

Mr. Baker, as a man, I fail to see the problem with having multiple highly-qualified women candidates. If a strong woman scares a man who is considering a run for office from pursuing it, I think that says a hell of a lot more about the quality of the male candidate than the female candidate.

Who have no idea where they are, or where their passports are.

and by "women" you probably mean 15 year old Russian girls.

He could easily not have known, because as you can imagine, at these kinds of parties you're not always dressed, and I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.

You can tell the difference between a naked prostitute and a naked woman because the prostitute will sleep with you. BOOM, DOMINQUE. BOOM.

Shouts and murmurs is pretty terrible. I've subscribed to New Yorker for the past three years and in that time I have read maybe two or three that were funny.

Um...what?

Can men be funny?

i personally don't have very high standards for humor — or, i have juvenile standards for humor that accommodate contemptuousness and lots of south park — but i just genuinely do not understand how one single person could read this and think it was funny or clever, let alone ready for the new yorker

I've often wondered why so much modern comedy (Jost, SNL, the Hangover movies, etc...) appears to be openly contemptuous of its audience. It's like they are performance artists who are trying to be terrible and daring you to pretend to like it.

I hope no one reports on it if they do know. I hope she's safe.