I have been reading an interesting and infuriating book. It is called To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek. It is written by a woman who has a PhD in molecular biology from MIT. She is an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School.
The book is fascinating in many ways. For example, I’ll look at her discussion of blood. Human blood is red because we have iron in our blood. Vulcans have green blood because their mineral is copper. And, she explains, Klingon blood is purple most likely because of manganese. She also mentions in connections with this that biological particles are pastel while minerals within us provide bright colors.
But the book is also quite annoying. She is incredibly prejudiced against religion and equates Judeo-Christian beliefs with fictional religions in science fiction novels. And she bases all her beliefs about humanity on biological processes. A human, she says, could never be attracted to a Klingon because their pheromones and their looks are different. According to her, no one cares for a person because of their character or their personality. I feel sorry for Dr. Andreadis’ partner in life, if her only commitment to him is based on looks and pheromones. Looks deteriorate adn so, I suppose, do humanity’s low levels of pheromones. Here is one of the more annoying quotes on this subject:
“Odo may sigh wistfully after Kira, but despite his occasional assumption of human shape, he is a Changeling… He would never be attracted to what his people contemptuously call ‘a solid.'”
No one has ever been sexually attracted- and she says that is all it is, that there is no such thing as love- to someone others find unattractive or ugly. Right. Where has she been hanging out? Surely not everyone at Harvard is one of the “beautiful people.”