On Science

We're finally getting around to making a go at cloning a mammoth. This is awesome.

One of my favorite Arthur C. Clarke books is "3001: The Final Odyssey." Its just filled with so many great throw-away suppositions about the future that it's completely devoid of the hard science-fiction Clarke became known for. He says that every technology is so advanced, so interwoven with other breeds of itself, that no one person really knows how anything functions. Everyone is artificially bald so they can have form-fitted brain caps to connect to the solar system-wide internet. (Some of the pretty ones wear wigs.) You can ride on holographic/robotic dragons. Surnames, forenames and ethnicity are so blended no one can really tell where a person is from or what accent they'll come out with. Circumcision has been forgotten and is at one point mistaken for a mutilation.

Oh yes, and they had cloned dinosaurs doing menial labor.

It turns out dinosaurs were pretty smart, peanut brains considered, but apparently the herbivores were real bad at gardening or childcare, mostly because they'd go off and eat leaves instead of doing their jobs. So instead in the year 3001, most gardeners and babysitters were some breed of man-sized, predatory raptor. Oh, of course a little behavior moderating was chemically worked in, but it got to the point where there was a 31st century joke about never leaving your child home alone without a carnivorous lizard in the house.

I guess what I'm saying is this:

I cannot wait to buy a Scottish fold, munchkin mammoth.

I believe the expression is,
"Haters gonna hate."