Super Natural Selection

I dont know if that is such a thing or if it is refered to as something else but it seems to me that when we select mates based on anything but raw desire or when we choose to abort children, that we engage in something beyond "natural selection" or as the title sugests, supernatural selection. Of course to say this is to say that there is something about human intelligence that is not natural (another blog post all together). I write this to direct your attention to an article that I caught in Slate that sort of describes the decay of our taboo in dealing with abortion for the sake of gender selection. I have to admit, there are some examples in which I would agree that "gender selection" is appropriate. What do you think?

pro-choice in action

i want to talk about a discussion we had in class. someone said something along the lines of square supporting the abortion because he agreed with circle that it was for the best. i don't believe this at all. i definitely don't think that square wanted her to have an abortion but i do believe he's pro-choice and it's part of the reason he didn't try to stop circle from the procedure. i think circle took complete control of the situation and he didn't object. even if he had, she probably wouldn't have taken it into account. she seems like she might be the one to wear the pants in this relationship. i support this with random things throughout the book, for example...when mother is telling them to have another baby and square doesn't disagree with her at all. circle is the one who says no. he probably does want another baby because he was prepared for one that never came and there's a void that needs to be filled and i'm sure he thinks another baby would do that. another time, when he went off on one of his rambling sessions and he was imagining that oval was picking out traits for her baby, i think that showed that he is excited to someday be a grandfather because he probably really likes babies and children. someone else in class said that square's a romantic and i definitely agree with that. he married a realist who tells it like it is and she probably keeps him grounded.

random question: is the title of this book, Vas, just short for vasectomy?


side-note: it took 25 pages to write out the code for the SHGC-110205 gene. human beings have 20,000-25,000 genes. it would take 500,000-625,000 pages to decode all our genes. just sayin.

Train Wreck of Thoughts

So I think I should start writing my posts earlier because there's always someone else that writes about what I wanted to write about and always does it first. But anyway... here we go. We can call it WTF part II.

So I'm also extremely confused with the book. At first I thought it was really interesting how we have the storyline intertwined with scientific facts or anecdotes about our species or other species. But now I'm getting kind of irritated with how the side notes don't seem to make sense half the time. For example, what do all these Hitler quotes have to do with the story? They try to tie it in by putting words like "goose-stepping formations" (p. 117) in the storyline, but they use it to describe Circle's attitude towards an abortion rally. I just really don't understand the correlation between the two. I feel like the book is reaching to make these connections but they seem so contrived.

I think the genetic engineering part is a little more sound. For instance when they start talking about cleansing the gene pool (even though this is a very Nazi - supremacist point of view) it does tie into the fact that abortions are now common legal procedures and that we are giving people the legal choice to decide who gets to live and who doesn't even get to be born based on their own judgment. So I guess it does show how abortion in some ways is a supremacist point of view. (Just to make it clear, I'm pro-choice... I'm just trying to make sense out of the book.)

The language... I don't get this relationship at all. It would be great if someone could guide me in the general direction as to where these things are going, because I'm just missing the boat. But what does the language thing have to do with anything? For example they say 95% of languages that have at one point started have disappeared... not that that isn't interesting, because it is, but I'm just reading this book by reading the story line as one set, and then the interesting facts as a separate completely disjoint set. Some of you seem to find meaning in how the two are related... a little help?

So the last thing I would like to mention is the salad dressing. I really like the salad dressing theme. I guess I like it because when I first moved here I had that exact sensation. I went to a grocery store with my parents and we were going to buy toilet paper, and I remember distinctly thinking it would take us forever to figure out which one to get. There were SO many options and it seemed overwhelming. But I agree with the idea that is partly the essence of America.