Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 02, 2011

Glad you showed up, Wiley!

When it’s just two, gay isn’t an option.

kind of like obama and biden

Gay is no more an option than is race or gender. I’d like to think this particular installment is a commentary on the lack of equality for women in the field of science, but unfortunately, I’m not than naive. How sad.

This is the best news this planet could receive. No.hope of a large human population to muck up the works.

Maybe the next trip.

Didn’t realize they had crashed. Snack time for dinosaurs!

Hey y’all don’t lose hope. Steve could be a brainy scientist guy & could have a complete knowledge in cloning.

Dino Chow!

Nozzi, our current ability to clone is FAR behind what would be needed to help these two. They’d still need an egg and a womb for gestation. Of course, since Adam and Steve have access to space-faring technology beyond our current capabilities, maybe they could whip up a gestation chamber (they may still need to find a compatible ovum into which to splice donor DNA).

If the strip showed two women (Stephanie and Eve?), they’d have a better chance, since two ova could be spliced together, and they could alternate carrying the offspring to term. Of course, since both eggs would have X chromosomes the offspring would all be female, so you’d have to rely on artificial fertilization indefinitely (whereas, since sperm can be either X or Y (like Rebel Fighters in “Star Wars”; I can’t believe that’s a coincidence), two men would need only need to create ONE generation in the lab, and let Nature do her thing thereafter).

Maybe this is E.L.E.’s planet? Hey MR. Wiley if you are reading you inspired me and my kid to name our new Kitty EL-E! Thanks!!!!

Nozzi, as cloning works now, it involves extracting the DNA from an already-fertilized egg and inserting donor DNA from another individual. The egg divides normally thereafter, creating a clone of the donor. But you still need an egg and someplace for it to gestate. (Tissue of different sorts can be made to reproduce under laboratory conditions, which means that we’ll soon be able to “clone” an infinite number of steaks from one cow, but that’s different from cloning a whole new cow.)

What I was talking about were more specifically ways to create NEW individuals rather than copies of existing ones, sort of a cross between cloning and in vitro fertilization (there’s a lot of overlap between the two processes). If all Adam and Steve could do is clone each other, then you’d have a population made up of nothing but Adams and Steves.

I’d find it difficult to believe if I were told that NOBODY out there is trying to think up ways to get one ovum to fertilize another. There’d certainly be a market for it, among upscale Lesbians; no need to find a sperm donor, and both of Heather’s Two Mommies would have contributed to her genetic make-up. Boy, would THAT raise some hackles…

“It’s about time , it’s about space, about two men in a crazy place…” How I love the 60’s….

Just a quick little trip…But a re-entry slip…Put you down in the bogs…Swimming with frogs…You think all will be well..But it’ll all turn to hell…It’s not all right jack…You’re just a velociraptor snack…

I wanted to see them do an episode of “Star Trek: Next Generation” where Picard and his crew visit some planet that hadn’t been contacted since Kirk’s captaincy. In this scenario, Kirk would have “gone native” and left behind a Li’L Jimmy, but the nature of this particular hybridization means that human DNA completely overwhelms the indigenous genome, and his child is basically his clone. Kirk 2.0, in adulthood, in turn spread his seed widely, resulting in more clones. So on and so forth.

By the time Picard and the gang get there they don’t even know what’s happened at first, except that the over-ratio of male births to female births is rising to dangerous levels, and a large number of the male population is…speaking in a very…distinctive and OVERDRAMATIC way, including the anNOYing HABit of…STRESSing EVery OTHer SYLLable!

In order to preserve the native gene pool, they have to “cleanse” the planet of every descendant of Kirk, either by killing them or relocating them. I think it would have been a very FUN way to acknowledge the old show, as well as being a very good metaphor for the dangers of cultural imperialsm.

There’s one episode where Kirk impregnates a local, but he had amnesia at the time, and she’s killed at the end anyway. And in the movie “Wrath of Khan” of course it turns out that the grown son of his ex-girlfriend is in fact his son (to the surprise of both). There are hints at times that the crew has access to contraceptive technology, but shore-leave being what it is…

I also thought it would be fun to do an “Next Generation” episode where Picard is invited to give a lecture at Starfleet Academy about the history of the different ships named “Enterprise”, in which the legacy of James Tiberius Kirk would feature heavily. At the lecture hall, he’s faced with a crowd of protesting cadets (including but not limited to coeds and Klingons) who consider him to have been a sexist, imperialist, Prime-Directive-violating warmonger (besides, he cheated on the Kobayashi Maru). Even amond the faculty there would be strong feelings on both sides. Picard has to figure out how to give a speech with reconciles the two sides. As in my earlier scenario, it would be an opportunity to show how our own attitudes had changed between the 1960’s and the 1990’s. I recently watched the entire original series for the first time in many MANY years, and while it was tremendously fun, it was still alarmingly “Mad Men” in a lot of its assumptions (although very progressive in others).

A Scented Flower, before you volunteer for that job you should check out the movie “A Boy and His Dog.”

Last words from a redneck? Hey Y’all, watch this!

Yes, the example you are thinking would be the Cnemidophorus neomexicanus, a species of whiptail lizard where all individuals are female. But there are other species of reptiles that reproduce by parthenogenesis (not always exclusively), and parthenogenesis has been observed in other species including sharks (separate case with different shark species here) and mice (but the last one required human intervention).

Why Speilbergs’ First Terra Nova pilot didn’t work.

Pokerfaced Parrot not all dinosaurs are in oil fields. Dinosaurs are the ancestors of birds, but you already knew that.

A Scented Flower, the relevant portions of “A Boy and His Dog” aren’t going to appear in a synopsis, at least without a big “Spoiler Alert.” Soooo…

SPOILER ALERT!!!

The dramatic climax of the movie comes when the Boy discovers (or is discovered by) an underground society where the women are young, beautiful, and fertile, but the men are all sterile. The Boy is recruited to become the “Father” of the new race (and in fact abandons the Dog to take the job), but end ends up being hooked to a “milking” machine. He doesn’t enjoy it.

The thing about parthenogenesis is that it doesn’t allow for a lot of genetic variation. It’s asexual reproduction, sort of like an overly-complicated amoeba. And you only need ONE parent (albeit female) to start the ball rolling; if Eve had been able to induce homozygotic pregnancy at will, there would have been no need for Adam at all. (And again, of course, the offspring would all be female, so you’d have to continue the process forever.)

There are also some species which, if there’s drastic gender imbalance in the population, are able to change genders (not true hermaphrodism, since at any given time an individual is either male or female, but not both); Michael Crichton used this as a plot point in “Jurassic Park”. If we could introduce that capability into humans, we could start with either two males or two females, but THAT technology is FAR out of reach at this point, and it’d be a lot simpler just to make babies in a test tube.

Adam and Steve. ROTFL. My gay cousins WILL be seeing this one.

Once again, the great cosmic god has bestowed infinite wisdom on Riley! Good Show, what!

See… even cosmic gods can’t spell… Wiley!

A real life B.E.?

Whoooooops!!!

it’s about time, it’s about space, it’s about tow men in a crazy place…