A couple of days ago I was talking with a friend about the graphic novel (no, not the ‘comic book’) Watchmen . In this story there is a character who at one stage is discorporated, yet somehow manages to reincarnate himself as a being closer to the angels than the apes.
This Dr Manhattan is a nuclear physicist — and a pawn of the US government. He has the ability to create duplicates of himself which can function independently of each other. The full implications of this become apparent when after an intimate moment with his girlfriend he goes back to the lab … and recombines with ‘himself’ who has been doing rather different sorts of experiments the whole time.
The thought sends a tingle down my spine. In the absence of an ‘intrinsic field’ deus ex machina, this is the best argument I’ve ever seen for human cloning (previous arguments on NN about what to do with excess bioinformaticians notwithstanding). I want a clone of myself. And I want the ability to imprint and transfer memories and experience.
Imagine.
I think I need three of me. One to work in the lab, one to write and do analysis and one to be a father/husband/social butterfly. At around 3 in the morning we’d all plug into the Neural Equalizer™ and synchronize our minds. The benefits – at an individual level – would be immeasurable. At a societal level imagine the progress we’d make. People would become essentially immortal, untiring — complete with ‘off-site’ backups.
All I have to do now is persuade the Wellcome to fund my research. I will of course be asking for volunteers to be experimental subjects, and as I can already see you rushing forward, I’d like you all to form an orderly queue behind Maxine.
Thank you.
All I want is a wife.
Oh yes – I forgot about laundry.
Make that four of me.
This sounds basically like the premise of Kil’n People, David Brin, which I highly recommend. Except in that case its a production process and everybody has a kil’n for knocking off reproduction selves. The catch is that you need templates and basic templates are cheap and high quality ones are expensive. You send off the cheap ones to basic, low mental capacity, things and only use the expensive ones for important jobs so you get the story through multiple second person narratives with different levels of awareness and ability to communicate.
>sniff< I’m not your cheap knock-off, mate. I’m the genyoowine article.
I was thinking of Kiln People, too. Don’t know where that extra apostrophe came from, though.
Like all good research ideas, someone’s already got there first. I’m convinced that there are at least three Jennifer Rohns.
That would explain a lot.
Which one does lablit?
(And never heard of Ki’ln People, no matter where the apostate apostrophes)
My secret is out.
Don’t tell Wellcome.
The apostrophe? Came from the title I just assumed it was a not so subtle abbreviation of ‘killin’ [sic]
Richard, I don’t think anyone could accuse you of not being an original…
But it does explain how Jenny manages to be successful scientist, writer, blogger, and scientific social gadfly.
/me checks definition of ‘gadfly’.
I say sir. I shall have to ask you to step outside.
slap
Would firefly be better?
{giggle}
Such chivalry, though sweet, is entirely unnecessary, Richard. ‘Gadfly’ in the Socratic apologia sense is a compliment. (Although I suspect Cameron is both entymologically as well as entomologically muddled and actually meant ‘butterfly’.)
Its true – I’m not sure how that got transposed. I’m probably also ethnologically confused. Still my excuse is that I am still at work (and was also last night). Right: enough typing, time to go and induce my bugs (bacteria that is).
I quite like ‘firefly’, in fact. Don’t know about Socrates, Jenny: it’s all Greek to me.
Well, I’ve come late to the party as usual, but had I been the first to comment, as hinted (?), I would have written the same comment as Heather has done. I’ve been advertising for a wife since 1991 but none has as yet applied.
Neural equalizing, though – sounds painful.
Forget about laundry: that’s what you hang while you wait for lunch to cook. I want another me to play rummy with my eight-year-old and take her out on a bike ride, while another me finishes Tuesday’s course (for which I fly to Italy tomorrow), and another one plays croquet, tennis, THEN soccer with the older kid – they gets jealous, you know – and yet another one can settle down with the Jasper Fforde novel I wanted to kick back with. Sorry, editors, for ending on a preposition. That was today’s program, and the day ain’t done.
I’m definitely ordering Kil’n People. How about we start a book recommendation thread? (Okay, I’ll put a basic template copy on that one.)
Book recomendation thread is an excellent suggestion. Read a lot of rubbish recently. Or at least things that weren’t as good as I’d hoped.
And if anyone happens to care. I didn’t get to induce my bugs. Someone’s swiped the #!&?@# IPTG. Hoping they’ll run out of glucose and autoinduce overnight…if not it was a wasted weekend at work [sigh]
autoinduction is your friend.
Yep, should have done it properly that way in the first place. I was in a hurry, which is always a mistake…Man, I hope you’re just up rather than still up…
yeah, just up. About to get the girls’ breakfasts, make lunches. You know, stuff for which I want the 3rd me.
Yep, I really don’t know how people with children cope. Well at this end of yesterday I’m off to bed. Early start tomorrow.
The apostrophe? Came from the title I just assumed it was a not so subtle abbreviation of ‘killin’ [sic]
How odd. When I reviewed it, the apostrophe had yet to happen.
the apostrophe had yet to happen
My word, Henry. You’re older than you look .
Yes, I know, it’s the portrait in the attic.
Wierd. The apostrophe definitely coloured the way I looked at the book. If it had just been ‘kiln’ it wouldn’t have been quite the same. I wonder who inserted it? I only read it in paper back. Was the hard back different?
The copy I saw was a bound proof for reviewers…
Nature Network reading group, anyone?
The saw I found was bound to…..
CheddarNature Network reading group, anyone?
Good plan, Maxine. You start…
I’ll go off and sleep on it, Henry—and see if anyone else is interested other than the amazing multi-taskers on this comment thread. I’m up at the crack of dawn to make the breakfasts and help revise the Latin and the limestone formations.
I’d never heard of the Watchmen until my husband started working on the movie. I’m planning to read the book after seeing the film, otherwise I probably won’t enjoy the film. I’m looking forward to it actually, most of the films he works on are terrible (but the sets always look great! Hi honey, if you’re reading!)
BTW, if you’re a fan, I’ve been told there’s footage on YouTube of the crew using one of the main city block sets for a game of paintball after filming ended. It’s apparently quite well hidden, but it’s there somewhere!
your husband works in the movies?
Mad props!
Yeah, he’s a carpenter. When I met him and asked him what he did, he replied “I build spaceships”. (He was working on the X-Jet for X Men 2 at the time).
Just in case this is ever useful to you, when you meet movie set carpenters, it is apparently not cool to squeal “just like Harrison Ford!!”
Can I come back to this apostrophe? Presumably this was changed at a very late stage of publication (perhaps in response to a focus group?). Does this happen often with books?
@Cameron – the version I read (and reviewed) was at an early stage. The author told me that it had yet to receive a final edit. These days I am wary of reviewing bound proofs, as one never quite knows if the book you are reading will be the same as the one the authors will see. Once upon a time, I was asked by a well-known magazine (not Nature) to review a book by some Famous Scientists. The bound prrof arrived and it was so full of elementary spelling, grammatical and scientific errors that I began to distrust the whole exercise, and after several attempts failed to deliver a review that the magazine’s reviews editor was happy with.
The bound prrof
Precious.
Yup. Prrofread, prrofread, prrofread. All the time. Absolutely.
Looking through the different editions it looks like its only the ‘New paperback’ that has the errant apostrophe. Still unclear to me why you’d bother at that point. Particularly when it means searching on the title leads to the wrong place.