[An old draft written and left un-posted. Inopportune time, I thought then. Need it to be the right time now.]
.
.
.
Gattaca_IN-VALID
Gattaca_VALID
Gattaca (1997):
Akan Datang.
.
.
.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq/
Why Are Some People So Smart? The Answer Could Spawn a Generation of Superbabies
[…]
Assuming Zhao and his team succeed, there are implications that will trouble many people. Hsu is confident that through embryo screening during IVF, any genetic markers for intelligence that their team discovered would inevitably be used to select for more intelligent babies. Children tend to fall within a spread of 13 IQ points above and below the average IQ of their parents. But sometimes the apple can fall twice as far from the tree—that is, two parents with 100 IQs producing a child with an IQ of 126. Hsu puts the chance of such a positive outlier at around 2 or 3 percent, and it depends mostly on which sperm meets which egg.
If parents use IVF to conceive, then a genetic test—an extension of the screening tests for genetic diseases that are already routinely done on embryos—could let them pick the smartest genome from a batch of, say, 20 embryos. “It’s almost like there are 20 parallel universes,” Hsu says. “These are all really your kids.” You’re just choosing the ones with the greatest genetic potential for intelligence. But effectively, you could be giving an unborn child a boost in IQ above their parents. As Hsu sees it, this is no Faustian bargain. “Aren’t we doing them a great service?” Over the long term, he proclaims, this would “improve the average IQ of the species by quite a bit.” He hopes governments will even provide it for free; Singapore, he predicts, would be the first to sign up.
[…]
“Singapore, he predicts, would be the first to sign up.”
Heh.
.
.
.
Memorable lines and scenes:
One of my favourite and most memorable films of my life, accentuated by seeing it under somber and trying life circumstances.
One of those films I watched only one time, but so affected me that I could never bear to watch it again. But with scenes and lines which had always stayed with me, like this one:
“You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton… I never saved anything for the swim back…”
-Vincent, the self-validated IN-VALID
“I never saved anything for the swim back”:
The line whispered at the edges of my mind and haunted my life for years. With each dream given-up, path un-pursued, opportunity mutely lapsed, the tremulous passion exhorted from these words lashed at me pitilessly, reproaching and holding me to task:
Have I ever really taken the plunge? To not save anything for the swim back, but rather, give it all I’ve got and strike out into the dark waves and unfathomable depths for the other side…
And worst still, how much of born “wit and lucky looks” had I wasted…
IN-VALID am I.
.
.
.
[Sigh, such lovely sepia tones, bare materiality and clean lines, space and architectonics, from the film. Just a hint of Tadao Endo. Timeless machine aesthetics and utilitarian dystopia.
Have Space Suit — Will Travel, indeed.
]
Late Monsoons... 