From: Christian Weisgerber (naddy@mips.inka.de)
Date: Wed May 08 2002 - 11:00:19 MDT
Phil Osborn <philosborn2001@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Reason I ask: until now, the ONLY people I've dealt
> with who see DA (I'll use DA instead of "Max," just to
> avoid confusing anyone with another famous "Max.") as
> a sex goddess have been other women, who are
> invariably catty in the extreme,
Jessica Alba is unusually young. The bulk of American actors
apparently enters the profession post-college, and then it takes
them a few years to grab a role of notice, so the young talents
tend to be in their mid-twenties. That's the usual age for people
cast as high school age characters, which is really quite ridiculous.
(Yes, there are notable exceptions. That's why they're notable.)
I find that my romantic interest is limited to women in a certain
age bracket (which inexorably keeps moving up with my own age), and
presumably I'm not unusual in that respect.
> I actually have never had a single erotic fantasy
> about DA. "Original Cindy," on the other hand (so to
> speak)....
A quick check in the IMDb confirms that Vallerie Rae Miller is seven
years older.
To stay somewhat on topic, I don't agree that _Dark Angel_ is
extropian in outlook. The first season has made its way into TV
over here, and I've caught a few episodes. The background is
blatantly Gibsonesque. Genetic engineering is solidly associated
with evil. As far as scientific gaffe's are concerned, you need
to look no further than Max's abilities. Unless somebody provides
me with plausible explanations, I'm not buying any of them. I
suspect the hype about gengineering supermen will take a serious
damper once you look at actually implementing this.
Along with _Buffy_'s Gellar, Alba shares the problem that she looks
much more convincing as a cosmetics model than as a badass beating
up beefy guys twice her weight. If the actresses were at least
seriously muscled... but of course that would disagree with current
beauty ideals. Can't have that.
If you want to create a human of superior physical strength, you
can take your clues from a Neanderthal skeleton. The result might
conflict with the requirement to look good in an evening gown,
though.
Some corner of my memory says that optimizations for night vision
or color vision, respectively, run actually counter to each other,
so I expect some serious engineering difficulty there.
And I have no idea how to make a human faster. In fact, I don't
know where the bottleneck is right now. Brain processing? General
nerve speed? The muscle fibers? Are there even any animals we can
take a clue from? House cats are quick, but I think that doesn't
scale with size.
-- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de
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