Welcome to Jurassic Park

The nice thing about this century is how we refuse to learn any lessons from the last century.  Despite a century whose primary atrocities were almost completely divorced from any religious motivations, we emerge from the ashes to conclude that religion is the main culprit in history.  Despite the legacy of nations rejecting their roots in a Christian/Jewish moral universe, and the pandemic disasters that came from it - such as AIDS - we insist that a secularized, post-Christian ethic is the way to go.  And despite the legacy of mechanized warfare, gas chambers, and mushroom clouds, we turn to science with almost worshipful obedience and trust to solve all of our problems, completely blind to any ill results that could occur because of scientific progress. 

So, despite the Frankenstein like cautionary tale that was the book Jurassic Park, the very book and movie that brought not only cloning, but the warnings of what cloning could entail for humanity, to the mainstream, we have researchers in Japan insisting that they will be cloning a good old Woolly Mammoth in five years.  As neat as that sounds, I can't help think this will be the sort of thing that the latest, hippest thinkers of 2211 will be looking back at and saying, "How could they be so stupid?"