Thursday, October 7, 2010

Essay Question

met·a·mor·pho·sis (mt-môrf-ss)
n. pl. met·a·mor·pho·ses (-sz)
1. A transformation, as by magic or sorcery.
2. A marked change in appearance, character, condition, or function.
3. Biology A change in the form and often habits of an animal during normal development after the embryonic stage. Metamorphosis includes, in insects, the transformation of a maggot into an adult fly and a caterpillar into a butterfly and, in amphibians, the changing of a tadpole into a frog.
4. Pathology A usually degenerative change in the structure of a particular body tissue.

Change is something to be feared. An alternative to change is stagnation, which in itself, isn't much better. The degree of fear is relative to the amount of change. I have heard of people changing hair colour or maybe grow a massive pimple over night. This is not change to be feared. You start to sweat and shiver on possibilities of change when you tutor tells you, you will be spliced with a lobster. That is something to be feared. Waking up with a larger than life pimple could be the worst nightmare for a young text messaging teenager, but for a reasonable, mature and serious student like me, it is inconsequential. Waking up on your back like Gregor Samsa, and finding yourself merged with one of those delightful sea invertebrates is what terrifies me. Now, thankfully this is only a project, but you never know, with all the chemicals they release into us.

I got quit interested while watching the Fly's remake, when Veronica Quaife dreams of giving birth to a weird larva like baby. about the evolution process and how descendance is affected by a drastic change in the genetic sequence. How would my great grand children look like with lobster genes? What comes up to mind as well is how my social postition would be affected by this rather unfortunate change. Would I even be able to find a wife? Knowing that a male lobster has to "turn the soft female over, cradles her body to hold her up off the bottom while he mounts her and inserts his modified first pair of pleopods (known as the gonopods) into the seminal receptacle of the female." Hoping that I am spliced with a masculing lobster.

Animals evolve over time, adapting to their environment, but it takes time. Nothing can change quickly enough to match the splicing of two different genetic materials. Two topics have come up to my mind. The first revolves around the effects of drastic metamorphosis on futur generations, and the affect of change on ones position in society, the latter complementing and adding to the former.

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