1. For those who are indeed looking for Sui to provide real–world wardrobe solutions, she offered a plaid jacket–and–jumpsuit set –– worn with a colorful print blouse underneath –– as well as a white–and–black, Art Deco–themed dress.

2. By commercialising cloning, Sperling‘s company is taking steps to turn the tedious, painstaking black art of cloning out of the hands of lab experts and into a high–throughput money–making process.

3. To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you‘d think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding, a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants.

4. It concluded that the ‘scientific information genealogy tests could provide might not be as precise as some of the companies may be suggesting‘. The Nobel prize–winning scientist Sir John Sulston, the pioneer of the human genome project and deputy chairman of the commission, said: ‘While there is no doubt that these tests can be a bit of fun, people should not believe them to be 100 per cent accurate. ‘The worry is an individual might be sent on wild goose chases or told things about parentage that are subsequently found not to be the case.‘ Dr Helen Wallace, of the pressure group Genewatch, was much more critical, calling the tests a ‘black art‘. She believes the science behind them is not sufficiently developed to give accurate results.