The problem is, of course, that some bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics. Remember, these microscopic villains reproduce incredibly quickly; even though some species do not reproduce sexually (and therefore lack the sophisticated variation of those who do), they still have more than enough variation through simple mutation over the millions of individual organisms and hundreds or thousands of generations that are currently living inside me to have a fair crack at it.

But never fear; the Man in the Lab Coat’s mighty constitution (at least 14, for the D&D nerds out there) is up to the task of battling these foul invaders, even if medical science isn’t. The corpuscles are massing, indeed the offensive has already begun, and come Friday my sweet voice shall be unadulterated by germs.

See you all at the show!

In other news, did I ever tell you about the research that suggests bats have an evolutionary trade-off between brain mass and testicle mass? A survey of bat species showed that the larger their brains, the smaller their testes, and vice versa.

I think there’s a message in that for all of us.

One day, we’ll look back on this and wonder why it was all necessary. Seeing something like this makes me wonder why I spend so much time and energy promoting the idea of evolution, but the answer I always come back to is that it’s wonderful. It’s an elegant, beautiful, powerful idea that makes such amazing sense. I find wonder in it without any sort of religious connection, but I’ve no bone to pick with those who find wonder in both. The bone has always been with extremism – both the Creationist kind, and the kind that uses natural selection to justify rascist, classist or otherwise -ist nonsense. Slowly the power of that extremism is ending in America, though there’s still plenty where it came from.

Adelaide is two weeks away. Get yourselves ready.