Shapeshifting
4:05 PM, Wednesday afternoon. Well, the aerobic aspect to one of my New Year’s resolutions is going fine. I also started weight training again on Monday — and I’m a bit sore today. It seems like every year I tell myself that I’m going to get to a level of fitness that I’d really enjoy. This year I’d actually like to achieve my goal.
I’ve never been into team sports that much — but I do enjoy things like swimming and martial arts. For a long time I was never big on general exercising, either. (I was the skinny, quiet, bookworm type for a good portion of my life and still retain quite a few of those characteristics even now.) In college I did start lifting and such — and enjoyed the results. I’ve never really carried a lot of muscle, though. (It took me ten weeks of heavy lifting and lots of eating to add on ten pounds a couple of years ago — the neat thing about that experiment was that I went up to 165 pounds and lost and inch around my waist at the same time. Sort of cool.)
When you think about it, bodybuilding is sort of like slow motion shapeshifting. It’s the “slow” part that tends to test my resolve. Of course, if it happened all at once it would probably be downright shocking — not up there with the little change-a-roonie in The Howling, but a bit of an eye-opener anyway, if you know what I mean.
I’ve read a lot in the papers recently about cloning, genetic engineering, and such. In general, I think that the fears over Dolly and her barnyard buddies are over-blown. At the same time, I think that the potential for vast change relating to those technologies is, if anything, underestimated.
It’s just a guess, but I don’t see human cloning becoming a common activity at any point in the near future. Cloning of human organs or tissue (perhaps “in situ”) is another matter, as is the cloning of other organisms. Those activities will, I believe, become much more widespread.
Even more profound, though, is the probability that science will not only enable humans to reproduce in new ways but also provide means for people to select and alter their own genetic make-up. Things really become interesting when we can (through genetic engineering and other technologies) “customize” ourselves or our children. Transgenic animals and other “designed” lifeforms have already been created.
I wonder what will happen when we really start bodybuilding?
Time for me to do my lifting…
— JWR, 1/21/98