[extropy-chat] Books: How to Clone the Perfect Blonde

Giu1i0 Pri5c0 pgptag at gmail.com
Thu Jan 20 05:09:57 UTC 2005


"Could science really make your shallowest dreams come true?" This is
the big question asked by the authors of How to Clone the Perfect
Blonde, both responsible adult correspondents for the BBC. The title
sounds glib, but the answers are entertaining and sophisticated, a
brief collection of mini-treatises on why perceived solutions to
desires like building a perfect partner, turning back time, upgrading
your body or living forever might be more the stuff of nightmares than
fantasy.
How to Clone the Perfect Blonde is billed as a layman's explanation of
cutting-edge scientific practice for people who "couldn't get past
Chapter 2 of A Brief History of Time"--pretty much everybody I know.
The book's success stems in part from humor, a clarity of language and
the authors' ability to neatly condense fairly heady theoretical
background information, but it also offers graceful illustrations of
the interrelationships between complex ideas, using examples that
range from Homer Simpson to Alan Turing and "Star Trek" to string
theory, taking time out along the way to explain why, if we needed
proof, 12 Monkeys is a better movie than Groundhog Day--in terms of
how they deal with physics, at least. And this is fun stuff. Who
really knew, offhand, why Einstein needed both a general and special
theory of relativity?
Eight chapters deal with such cultural staples as cloning, artificial
intelligence, time travel, black holes, teleportation, cryonics and
body modification--and they don't mean piercing. Some of these ideas
have probably crossed most of our minds in the course of one fantasy
or another: Who would you clone as your perfect partner...and what
would you do if the clone had the personality of a werewolf? Exactly
what services would your robot provide? Why wouldn't you teleport to
work--and how might you be reassembled on the other end if you did?
The sections begin with comic or at least conversational approaches to
their topics. "How to Lose your Love Handles" begins by discussing the
false allure of obesity remedies and moves into an explanation of the
human genome, which introduces a discourse on gene therapy, addressing
concerns that are not only physical--genetic alteration can cure, but
also kill--but philosophical: "Eugenics isn't dead," the text notes,
"It's just become more complicated." Witness the growth industry of
genetically modified foods, brought to us by Monsanto, the folks who
introduced caffeine to Coca Cola and Agent Orange to Vietnam. The
discussion of time travel begins with the "If Only" game--as in, "If
only I could go back and..."--to launch its exploration of parallel
universes, relativity and that eternally sticky genre-fiction problem
of messing with the past.
Quite often, the book points out, our misconceptions cut both ways. If
your grandmother has had a hip replaced or a cochlear implant to
improve bad hearing, she's undergone the ultimate in elective
surgery--she's a cyborg. Sure, somewhere in chiaroscuro-lit
laboratories white-coated geeks are hard-wiring lampreys or
transplanting monkey brains, but most of this research is
compensatory--artificial limbs, the book notes, are becoming more and
more like the real ones every day: "At the moment, rather than being
better, stronger and faster, any bionic man would be worse, weaker and
slower."
Some bits are creepier than others. The science behind cryonics is
sound, and embryos can be frozen successfully for later use...but what
about Michael Jackson? The Acor Life Extension Foundation reportedly
has some 50 individuals flash-frozen at its facility in Arizona, even
though we have no idea whether either the human the consciousness or
the human form could survive defrosting. "Of course," the authors add
with typical Brit tongue in cheek, "future generations might have
better things to do than bring back the dead." Which segues into one
of the neat little sidebars that helps make this work unique, this one
on the Frozen Dead Guy Festival in Nederland, Colo.--well, you'll have
to get the book to check that out for yourself.
http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2005/MERC-Jan-20-Thu-2005/25670831.html



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