27 Feb 97 
 
Cloning. 
 
Almost everyone is against human cloning. 
 
This reminds me of a time when I told everyone around me why I would not  
deign to go see Jurassic Park.  Besides including "pop math", which is  
enough to make any math person pissed off, it basically comes down to the  
fact that Crichton is a hack who can't think up something that's  
interesting in a science fiction way (I do admit, I've never read the  
andromeda strain, and i'll get around to it eventually.  still, didn't he  
write that in the 70s?) 
 
Ok, let's suppose for a moment that people could reproduce beings from 
fossilized DNA alone, perhaps with carefully packaged starter materials 
(such as an egg or a womb).  Obviously, if we had the technology to do  
that, we could clone humans.  There is an embarassing wealth of issues one  
could explore in such a case; hell, he could have even thrown in that  
chaos theory bullshit in such a storyline.  One could even develop an  
action movie from such a base.   
 
The truth of the matter is, Crichton pissed me off with _The Sphere_: you  
see, it was all a dream.  I don't mind giving away the ending, for either  
way its a disappointment.  I've never forgiven him since. 
 
So back to human cloning.  The more I think about it, the more I wouldn't  
care if I was cloned or not.  Sometimes, those of us who are singletons  
wonder what it would be like to have an identical twin.  It's really not  
much different from such a situation (except for the age difference, of  
course, and not necessarily sharing a birthday).  For all the reports and  
amazing coincidences! that occur with separated twins, they are not the  
same people.  They have their friends, loves, jobs, families, lives.  I  
really doubt that a second "me" would end up the same way -- to begin  
with, she'd not have the same parents or sisters, and I think my  
interaction with them is alot of me as I currently am. 
 
It's just a silly thing to do, really.  It would be very expensive.   
Producing babies the old-fashioned way would be alot cheaper, and in any  
case, one gets to see a new face.  One Meep face is enough for me. 
 
(so i forgot to add this yesterday -- so sue me!)