Robert cleared his throat. ‘Um, one of the airline hostesses took a shine to Jack and made him some fairy bread. You know, bread with hundreds and thousands? He was pretty happy with that’.

They were faire Ladies, till they fondly ſtriu’d / With th’Heliconian maides for mayſtery; / Of whom they ouer-comen, were depriu’d / Of their proud beautie, and th’one moyity / Transform’d to fiſh, for their bold ſurquedry, / But th’vpper halfe their hew retayned ſtill, / And their ſweet skill in wonted melody; / Which euer after they abuſd to ill, / T’allure weake traueillers, whom gotten they did kill.

The 28-year-old Brooklyn native has risen from obscurity to grab a Tony Award nomination for his portrayal of ubernerdy, grade-school speller William Barfee in the hit musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

My own intuition is that beneficial genetic mutations do not emerge merely as random errors in genetic copying but emerge inevitably when the optimum intergenetic and thermodynamic conditions