In case of emergency, go to moon

An article on Science Magazine's Web site last week covered two groups of scientists who suggest that we put a Noah's ark collection of DNA on the moon in the event that some sort of enormous global catastrophe wipes out large swaths of the populations of zoos, arboretums and commuter trains.

Talk about cherry picking your disaster scenario. These brainiacs figure that after the asteroid hits, or the nuclear winter ends, or the Ebola-SARS crossover fizzles out, or Mariah Carey stops recording, we'll still have the wherewithal to hop-skip-jump up to the moon, pick up that lunchbox full of skin scrapings and start growing spaniels and butterflies in petri dishes.

One of these groups is called the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, or ARC. If these people knew about the Paris Hilton jewelry collection, they'd know that it was too late.