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By the way, in case you missed the mention beneath the talk about D-level Sci-Fi movies from the 1990s, I bought Galaxy Quest this weekend.

moonlightalice has proposed a viewing alongside the very beloved show that Quest so obviously riffs, only in movie format because we don't have time to cover three years of Kirk and Spock 4-evahs. We're thinking Star Trek 4 and Galaxy Quest. Drinking will happen. Location to be determined, but we're gonna throw it together, if people are interested, for this Friday.

Who wants to play?

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( Live-blogging Heroes 1.21: 'The Hard Part' (SPOILERS!) )

Let's Talk

Okay, live-blogging Heroes is way too much fun, but it's time to get serious. Because this shit won't stand. No matter how the damned show tries to distract me with the Sylar-pretty. And the everyone else pretty, too.

To Tim Kring and anyone else responsible for writing this show, I would like to show you something. It's called a textbook. They have many of these things at bookstores. You can order them online or go in person to retrieve one. One of the many subjects textbooks cover: biology. It's the study of life (another textbook to find would be a Latin 101 text), meaning you could make a habit of educating yourself about all sorts of things that the remarkable realm of all creation can and cannot be or do. If you read the occasional textbook, it would inform you that while some ridiculous fraction of DNA codes for nothing whatsoever (thus giving you a basis to extrapolate a theory that superpowers might be contained within), all parts of the human brain are used. Maybe not all at once, but there is not a bunch of dead space up there that you could safely knock out and still have a person. M'kay?

Now, if you're still with me, you might remember I used the term "DNA." It is what makes you you. To put it into terms you'll understand: DNA is the typewriter (computer, whatever); proteins are the script; cells are the actors using the script (proteins); many actors using many scripts from the same typewriter make a scene; and a scene is the whole organism that was printed out from that typewriter. You cannot fix the typewriter. The typewriter is not broken. The typewriter was lovingly crafted down from the Gutenberg press of old into a more efficient device. In fact, the typewriter is now the word processor. The typewriter can evolve, for good or bad, and you can change it, but you cannot "fix" it. There is no "fixed" state of typewriter. In the same way, you cannot "cure" DNA. You can treat it; you can alter it; you can mutate it; but it is not a disease. It is you. DNA IS PEOPLE. People, at least in the literal sense, are not a disease (no matter what Agent Smith and certain other philosophers might think about people metaphorically).

Last, people are not born with antibodies if their mothers don't have them. You do not have a baby so it will be born with antibodies to cure another baby of the same parental lineage. You can get genetically similar bone marrow, but not antibodies. Antibodies are formed by random couplings of light and heavy chains at birth and through antigen exposure. There are some similarities between siblings, but it's not perfect (hell, bone marrow isn't even perfectly matched most of the time and you have to have a lot fewer things matched there to be compatible than you would to have antibodies match). If you expose a baby in the womb to antigens for the sake of producing antibodies for its full sibling, you are a monster. Also, I'm not even sure that would work.

There. Science lesson over. Now, I scream. AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!