sunday morning musings

beaverotterplatypus fossil discovered from the jurassic in china. or as those snooty scientists like to call it, Castorocauda lutrasimilis.

goal: start reading more journals about mammalian evolution. because it is really cool.

last night i watched a movie called Godsend with a couple of friends. it came out a few years ago, and the plot is basically: cute 8 year old white kid meets untimely death, grieving parents are approached by brash scientist (played by robert deniro) for cloning project, parents get child back- live happy new life in secluded suburb, kid reaches age when his predecessor died and all hell breaks loose....with a twist...

now the movie wasn't bad. it was suspensful, kinda scary, and was, well... generally original. but it lost me when the underlying message shot out, grabbed the audience, and shook us like neglected babies. the message: cloning bad. scientists worse. scientists are arrogant and like playing god. they are manipulative and have done nothing to help humanity. now i saw this creeping into the movie from the getgo (i mean the movie is about cloning), but it went a little over the edge when robert deniro is confronted by angry clone father in a church and preceeds to beat angry clone father over the head with some religious artefact, setting the church on fire in the process.

plus there were lots of issues with the "science" of the movie....but i'm not going to get into that. because it's just a movie.