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unjapanologistThe reason why this talk delights me beyond anything I can express is rather long and convulted, so I've put it after the video. tl;dr version: It's Jurassic Park for real, and Jurassic Park pretty much made me.
Jack Horner: Building a dinosaur from a chicken (16min)
Summary from TED:
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He's found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he's taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a "Chickenosaurus".
About three quarters of my entire intellectual life for the past sixteen years grew straight out of Jurassic Park. Nearly everything that still interests, enchants, and mesmerizes me was right there in that one movie. I was eleven when it came out, and not a single sentence that came out of my mouth for the next couple of years wasn't connected to Jurassic Park somehow (I finally replaced my dinosaur obsession with an Elfquest obsession at some point).
Jurassic Park rekindled my interest in biology, history, and paleontology, and it never really went away again. It first got me fascinated with computer-generated art and other creative ways of making spectacular, beautiful things. Seeing the movie convinced me to read the book it was based on, a big doorstopper that was chock full of sciency talk about genetics, mathematics, paradigm shifts, and countless other topics that I understood zilch about. Every word fascinated me. I soaked it up, and today, I still regularly happen upon mentions of science-related topics that make me think "Hey, that was in Jurassic Park". It was the first real grown-up book I ever read, and it made me realize that science was cool and that there was so much more stuff in the library than what was on the kiddie shelves.
Devouring both the book and the movie countless times first made me aware of the different ways in which a single story can be presented, to very different effects. I wasted ridiculous amounts of time pondering the ways in which the book and the film diverged -it was my introduction to media analysis, pretty much. Jurassic Park was also one of my first real fandoms. I'd never even heard of fic at the time, but I spent hours upon hours of recess time in school just wandering across the playground, spinning new adventures for Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler in my head. (FYI, they never got married. They just fought dinosaurs for all eternity.)
The movie also contained the first reference to open source software that I ever heard, although I didn't realize it at the time. And it was a girl my age who was at the keyboard. I can still see Lex sitting down in front of that computer while shrieking raptors were throwing themselves against the door in the background, exclaiming "This is a UNIX system, I know this!". That one character was so very important to me at the time -she was just like me, she even kind of looked like me, and she tricked dinosaurs and knew stuff and had all the awesome adventures I wanted to have. The way she was portrayed was easily the most fascinating difference between the book and the movie to me. In the book, she's a whiny little brat who contributes very little to the story. The movie made her a take-charge, kick-ass kid, and it gave her the computer savvy that is her brother's in the book.
No, this isn't really going anywhere. I'm just so very glad that there is someone trying to make a Chickenosaurus, and that I was reminded of Lex today. I hadn't thought about her in ages. Thanks for everything, Lex.
Edit: Here she is, with the tyrannosaur-bait lawyer guy who got eaten while sitting on a toilet. Good times.
Jack Horner: Building a dinosaur from a chicken (16min)
Summary from TED:
Renowned paleontologist Jack Horner has spent his career trying to reconstruct a dinosaur. He's found fossils with extraordinarily well-preserved blood vessels and soft tissues, but never intact DNA. So, in a new approach, he's taking living descendants of the dinosaur (chickens) and genetically engineering them to reactivate ancestral traits — including teeth, tails, and even hands — to make a "Chickenosaurus".
About three quarters of my entire intellectual life for the past sixteen years grew straight out of Jurassic Park. Nearly everything that still interests, enchants, and mesmerizes me was right there in that one movie. I was eleven when it came out, and not a single sentence that came out of my mouth for the next couple of years wasn't connected to Jurassic Park somehow (I finally replaced my dinosaur obsession with an Elfquest obsession at some point).
Jurassic Park rekindled my interest in biology, history, and paleontology, and it never really went away again. It first got me fascinated with computer-generated art and other creative ways of making spectacular, beautiful things. Seeing the movie convinced me to read the book it was based on, a big doorstopper that was chock full of sciency talk about genetics, mathematics, paradigm shifts, and countless other topics that I understood zilch about. Every word fascinated me. I soaked it up, and today, I still regularly happen upon mentions of science-related topics that make me think "Hey, that was in Jurassic Park". It was the first real grown-up book I ever read, and it made me realize that science was cool and that there was so much more stuff in the library than what was on the kiddie shelves.
Devouring both the book and the movie countless times first made me aware of the different ways in which a single story can be presented, to very different effects. I wasted ridiculous amounts of time pondering the ways in which the book and the film diverged -it was my introduction to media analysis, pretty much. Jurassic Park was also one of my first real fandoms. I'd never even heard of fic at the time, but I spent hours upon hours of recess time in school just wandering across the playground, spinning new adventures for Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler in my head. (FYI, they never got married. They just fought dinosaurs for all eternity.)
The movie also contained the first reference to open source software that I ever heard, although I didn't realize it at the time. And it was a girl my age who was at the keyboard. I can still see Lex sitting down in front of that computer while shrieking raptors were throwing themselves against the door in the background, exclaiming "This is a UNIX system, I know this!". That one character was so very important to me at the time -she was just like me, she even kind of looked like me, and she tricked dinosaurs and knew stuff and had all the awesome adventures I wanted to have. The way she was portrayed was easily the most fascinating difference between the book and the movie to me. In the book, she's a whiny little brat who contributes very little to the story. The movie made her a take-charge, kick-ass kid, and it gave her the computer savvy that is her brother's in the book.
No, this isn't really going anywhere. I'm just so very glad that there is someone trying to make a Chickenosaurus, and that I was reminded of Lex today. I hadn't thought about her in ages. Thanks for everything, Lex.
Edit: Here she is, with the tyrannosaur-bait lawyer guy who got eaten while sitting on a toilet. Good times.
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