Last night at dinner our daughter was recounting some experiences and thanking her daddy for teaching her that science is about the how, religion, the why.
Today one of the speakers at church was a scientist at Stanford. He came bounding up to the stand with a little planter full of beautiful small white flowers, like he couldn’t wait to share this! He talked about discovery and learning and how glorious it was to gain new insights into this beautiful world G_d had created for us to live in.
And then he held up his pretty little flowers for all to see. They were petunias (clearly one of the mini varieties).
But what made them different, he said, though we couldn’t see it yet, was that they had been given the gene from a firefly: they glow in the dark.
Then he invited everybody who was curious to come to the mother’s nursing lounge (where I bring chocolate every week, that’s my assignment) because that was the darkest room in the building that could hold a number of people. (I wondered for a moment about kids finding out what else that room held, but I don’t think any noticed.)
First he had one of the women knock on the door and peek in to make sure we weren’t interrupting anybody.
So. Cool!
(Ed. to correct what my hearing missed: this NPR article says the firefly gene didn’t take well enough so they used other bioluminescence genes from a mushroom and a fungus. But you can actually buy these now.)