The Real Jurassic Park?

So there’s a billionaire in Australia, who, according to the Daily Mail (raise an eyebrow ceremonially) is going to be building a real-life Jurassic park. I hope for the sake of my faith in humanity that he realizes, and has taken into consideration, how much more difficult it is to clone a dinosaur than a sheep.

Apparently this guy’s already been behind some pretty crazy ideas in the past so it’s not surprising that he’s thinking about building something that science hasn’t managed yet.

First and foremost, you need DNA. Surely the amount of damage a molecule with the stability of DNA takes over tens to hundreds of millions of years, will greatly reduce the likelihood of finding a molecule complete enough to create an entire dinosaur? Perhaps well-preserved dinosaur DNA exists somewhere that I’m not aware of, but given the many attempts you may need, and given the complication surrounding the actual birthing of the dinosaur… well, you’d probably need a fair bit of it.

When we talk about resurrecting prehistoric species people usually point to the woolly mammoth, and one of the reasons why this could be done in future generations is that woolly mammoths have extant relatives that are similar in both genetics and morphology. In theory, the DNA of a woolly mammoth could be placed into a [fertilized?] egg (God, I hope I’m getting the science right here) and implanted into a female elephant. There are problems with this still however, the differences between the two species could still cause problems.

And when we think about this in terms of dinosaurs, the closest thing we have to them today is, well, all of the birds. If you wanted a T-Rex you’d have a challenge on your hands, and I’m not sure how much more complicated this process gets when you’re talking about an organism growing in the egg of another. Would it even be possible for, say, an ostrich egg to give a dinosaur what it needed to hatch?

Needless to say, the issue is a lot more complicated than the Daily Mail thinks.

But isn’t it always?

Jurassic Murgh…

Quick new thursday epic post before I fall into the abyss that you normal people call sleep.

Apparently I can’t write it at the moment but you know what it is, even if your printer has about enough ink to print out ‘help me I have no ink’ in ink language. For the sake of security I must enforce the truth that such a statement does not mean that I have been withholding the use of ink from said internet user’s internet; only that they could not access it themselves.

This is the world of the lord; and if you went to Catholic school, you shall know that it’s answered; ‘thanks be to God’; and thank Yoshi too, because cartoon dinosaurs are awesome.

It sucks.

People should love dinosaurs more.

Stephen Spielberg!

We demand more dinosaurs!

Having Myself A Time

To any one who didn’t see the mid-season finale of South Park you probably won’t care what I have to say here, although I suppose you might derive some odd form of idle pleasure out of watching my brain turn to some sort of fibrous mush as I try and work out what the hell I made of it.

Either way if you want to take a look the episode’s called ‘You’re Getting Old’ and the description focuses on Stan’s tenth birthday.

You see the last episode really did a number on me, in short it fucked me up.

For those who didn’t give it a look they began the episode as if it was about dubstep or some similar music, teased us with X-men first class and then essentially broke the fourth wall through Randy and Sharon Marsh, you see it turned out that the joke indeed was on them, it was on Trey Parker and Matt Stone whose frustration knocked me back a little given how taken in I was by the extensive metaphor of Stan’s ‘being a cynical asshole’ seeing everything as a shit or someone shitting, and by the time the joke was getting a little stale, we knew why, and I was a little taken aback, in fact scratch that, I was dumbfounded and found myself thinking about that self-deprecating scene more and more afterwards, trying to work out whether they were giving us a surprise ending to the series, setting up for the show’s return in Autumn or trying to tell the world that their cynical outlook was far from as humorous as we had been taking it.

Either way the final scene was almost… moving.

Am I allowed to say that within the confines of a block of text about South Park, I sure as hell wouldn’t have thought so before I saw it last night, and really I still don’t really know what I think about it, and at the same time I’m not even sure why I’m so bamboozled, why I can’t stop thinking about it like it’s the end of an era when the show’s contracted to continue through to 2013.

Maybe I just need some counselling, or just to start watching The Big Bang Theory again, that show never left me this deflated.

Hypocrisy!

So in the throes of many species’ ecstasy spring has arrived in full force and with it a load of optimistic eco warriors are beginning to arrange something for the upcoming season, the infamous summer.

I have nothing against these people, in fact I would be more than willing to do my part for the earth but it turns out that they’re not.

So sometime in May, in a park very close to where I live many organisations and businesses are gathering to promote a sustainable environment.

But somewhere along the way they must have gotten lost because they seem to have mixed up the words ‘natural’ and ‘sustainable’.

I don’t have to point out to you that given that we are all within the confines of the universe there really isn’t anything that isn’t natural around us, and the lines that people draw for this natural world still include poisons, earthquakes etc. good start.

However, the main problem I have is with the fact that Organic food is being promoted as sustainable under this guise and if there is anything that organic food isn’t it’s sustainable.

There’s no proof that it’s more nutritious for one thing, but what’s more important is that it’s NOT sustainable.

In fact, the reason non-organic food exists is to be sustainable, GM crops and modern farming have the potential to feed many billions of people, whereas organic food alone would struggle to feed the world’s population at its current state, it just doesn’t work.

Never mind the CAM stuff, I know that on my crusade of truth I should really be angry at the complementary medicine booth that’s going to be there but that’s just off topic, it’s got nothing to do with the environment and for the moment, I think I need to take a few deep breaths before I jump on that shit again, but seriously, this is just a case of simple fact checking.

Crops are altered to make them better, why would anyone make a crop worse and then spread it around, that much is common sense.

So, when we’re meant to be promoting a sustainable ecosystem, promoting something inherently unsustainable is just one of those hypocrisies that drives me insane.

I stared at this leaflet for minutes shouting at it in my head, praying that it was some kind of twisted, ironic joke, but sadly not, my area, it seems, just like everywhere else, is littered with ignorance and assumption.

Need I say think for yourself again? No, that’s sort of becoming cliché.

Isn’t that right kitty?

Offended?

Let me clarify, I don’t knock Jesus, I just like to point out a couple of humorous things along the way, some call it blasphemy, I call it satire, sue me Ratzinger, I dare you.

But how could I resist? I was a couple of hundred words off what I wanted to write and everyone’s always going on about how it was his big day, so, Jesus, although I would gladly shake your wounded hand for encouraging the building of beautiful architecture and many other things, I can poke fun of you just as much as the next person and not feel guilty about it.

However sometimes satire is censored to a level that is extremely disappointing.

Many of you may have heard that the openly racist, sexist and heavily offensive collaboration Encyclopedia Dramatica was recently converted to the special K of satire ‘Oh Internet’ following an controversy down under stemming from their article mocking the aboriginal people of the country as they made fun of everything and everyone.

Let me state my point right here, people have rights, but they do not have the right not to be offended.

I think I’ve said it before about profanity and I will reiterate here, free speech is much more important that catering to how much every oversensitive individual cringes at the mention of some forbidden word or satirical slur.

There was a hell of a lot of backlash to this decision and I’m not about to get involved in it, I am of no place to say anything regarding this change however, I cannot possibly see how this is a good move, what is allowed to be printed? Everything supposedly. If we can make jokes about the holocaust without a cringe why is it shock value should be treated with such a tantrum, nobody is beyond ridicule and I think south park pointed that out brilliantly in their 200/201 heavily banhammered double episode, which I thought to be hilarious, and could not for the life of me understand what the problem was.

Speaking of south park, even before this episode, which didn’t feature Muhammad directly, the image of Muhammad was censored in the Family Guy oriented episodes ‘Cartoon Wars’.

But the really special thing is that, before this, they had already depicted Muhammad on their show, to little controversy, the ‘Super Best Friends’ episode was not attacked by the extremist muslims that went after Parker and Stone later, and the picture is not in the least offensive, showing a middle eastern man with the power to manipulate flame. Should this direct image not have done something? No, because that particular community hadn’t got their knickers in a twist back then, and the very fact that the world is responding so sheepishly to these threats is surprising to me.

The fuel to the fire argument is a good one against this and I have used it a few times myself, however, in this discussion the line really appears to be drawn between fear and expression.

As with my first example, people do not have the right not to be offended, however, when things are done to deliberately cause a controversy is there some special rule that kicks in? It seems to be how the world is reacting, and although it doesn’t make sense in a freedom of speech stand point, could it be that we might as well prevent the remaining hatred reserved for the western world from being unleashed?

However, the very fact that Muhammad was previously aired, the very fact that ED spared no-one in their quest to ridicule everyone in the most offensive manner possible forces me to raise a sceptical eyebrow at this, something about this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but above all, I find the fact that this question causes such hesitation fascinating.