How to escape your legacy, or why it’s good to move on September 29, 2005 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

Last night a moderate windstorm knocked over my bird of paradise plant that was on the fire escape. I’ve since brought him (her?) inside to my bedroom, where she sits uncomfortably in the corner like Andre the Giant in a low-ceilinged elevator. The plant wouldn’t be so obtrusive if it wasn’t for the fact that I have a dozen other plants already in the sunny corner. And this one retreival marks the slow, but certain ascent of winter as I have to either take in the dozen or so pots I have outside or let them die. Some of them are annuals, so I don’t feel so bad. But one spiderplant which I’ve had for about four years is terribly infected with a parasite, and a dieffenbacchia just hasn’t grown in years. Perhaps I’m pathetic, but I feel guilty euthanizing my plants. They’re like my (silent and lazy) friends.

It’s not April, but this article from Wired news might make you think it is. The article says, “Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.” (The strain of mice was originally engineered to develop lupus!). And, according to the article, “[The researcher] and her colleagues wanted to find out what other parts of this strain of mice would grow back, so they snipped off the tip of a tail, severed a spinal cord, poked an eye and cauterized various internal organs.”

I don’t know why but I can’t escape my posting yesterday. Things keep leading me back to it, though I didn’t intend to go that way this morning. Your mileage may vary, but I find the above disgusting. Go poke your own eye out.

Okay, now I’m intentionally changing the subject. Yes, I’m now going to talk about something new and interesting and cool.

Time magazine has a recent interview with Neil Gaiman (Sandman, American Gods) and Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel) about the rise of the geek, Neil’s blog, and the new film Serenity based on the short lived Firefly.

Solar Flare has a nice review of the Battlestar Galactica DVD set for season one. Galactica has quickly gained respect among science fiction afficionados for its gritty realism and its cliff-hanger like tension between each episode. It’s darker than most science fiction, but in some ways it’s an accurate mirror of our times. Season two expanded on the first season, and though as a whole, season one is still my favorite, season two has some killer episodes which might rank near my favorite for the show. If you haven’t yet seen the show, you’re missing something grand. But do yourself a favor and start from the pilot.

And finally, proof that the world has gone insane, Michael Crichton, famous fiction author of Jurassic Park and the TV show “ER” has been asked to tesify before a Senate panel on climate change. The Senate has ignored the warnings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and hundreds of scientific papers and instead defers to a writer of fiction for ways to “counsel Congress on how to consider diverse scientific opinion when making policy.” This reeks of the same tactics used in Intelligent Design, i.e. how do we convince people that our point of view is the right one while silencing the opposition?

Digest that one for breakfast.