I'm an advocate on cloning, but not for the reasons you think. It's not because I need someone to do more chores for me (although I need it). It's not because I want someone to help me play tricks on people (although it would be fun). And it's not for me to rip some lungs out of him when I start dying (although immortality does have a nice ring to it).

No... its simply because I want to be a child again.

When I was a little tyke, I was heavy into science fiction and I use to read everything I could get my hands on. And I use to watch all the shows that even remotely had a hint of sci-fi. I was fascinated by the possibility of cloning, and seeing three or four of me running around. The world I lived in was one of awe, and fascination. It was beautiful.

The only reason I want cloning to become reality is because it will bring me back to those days when I read a book, set it down, and said "wow" and then let my mind wander in the universe that book had created. Naturally, I have a rather biased view when it comes to this issue.

But before anything becomes reality, there is always the long debates about consequences, the ceaseless questions, and hard interpretations of what will really happen. One of the problems that people are stuck at right now is "What is life?"

This is a more important question than immediatly appears. If a clone satisfies all the definitions of life, then he no longer becomes important to us. Mankind is selfish and our first use of clones was to rape them of their body parts and use it to replace ours. If its considered life, then we're screwed.

If a clone satisfies all the definitions of life, then we have to go through a long identification process. He would need to be fingerprinted, measured, social securitied and all that good stuff. But more importantly, we have to remember this isn't a twin. Twins are lookalikes, and maybe thinkalikes to a degree. But a clone is an exact copy of you. It's going to want to live in your house, mess with your wife, and take your children to the park.

If a clone satisfies all the definitions of life, then we can't use them for war. And we can't tell them to test our new theories in the lab. We can't tell them to work our job while we are on vacation. Having a clone wouldn't be any fun.

But what if a clone isn't considered life? How much of cloning do we really know? Do clones "lose" something in the process? Do they become stupider? Sure, they cloned a sheep, but sheep are stupid anyways so that solves nothing. I remember reading a story where a clone becomes more aggressive for each time he is copied. Could we begin to see an army's super soldier... only it's YOU to the 12th degree?

People talk about taking a clone and putting it in cold storage until you need a body part. Sure, that's not a problem. But what if you die anyways? Do we have to have two funerals now? How are they going to dispose of the clone body? We already have enough dead people, do we need to have imitation dead people?

And I haven't even touched on another issue: are we playing God?

I would have to say no. Cloning is much like giving birth. You are transferring life from yourself into a new body. Creating life is being able to take something that is not alive, and to give it life. That is not cloning. From a religious standpoint, life was created only once... everything since then has just been transferred from one living thing to another.

Now... let's get evil.

Imagine your typical mad scientist... bushy eyebrows, wicked gleam, and a bottle of Jolt soda. He's gonna clone himself. He's gonna clone himself twice. Hell, he's gonna make a crapload of himself. With all of him running around, he can finally accomplish his world domination theory: steal people from their houses while they sleep, or when they're on they're way to work, and then replace them with his evil clones.

Sound far off? Maybe... but look at the 1990's compared to what we thought was going to happen when we were a young, naive 1970. A lot of things have come true and some a lot worse then what we imagined.

Imagine a child-size marshmallow candy--something like a pink, frosted "snowball" with a mutant face stuck at one end and a strange little coat hanger or pipe cleaner thingamajigger coming out of its "head." You may not know it, but what you are imagining as you read these words is a "Teletubby"--the latest curiosity from those limey folks at the BBC. We're a long way from Ab Fab here folks. This is programming for the under-two set, and it's headed our way. Educate yourself, and be ready.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on the Teletubbies phenomenon currently sweeping the English nation is peppered with phrases like "neon-green," "shower-heads," "toast and custard" and "weirdest things." You can see we're strangers in a strange land here-- Teletubbyland, to be precise. And we're not even through the first column yet. Other unusual clusters of words reach out to you from the inky pages as well: "banging their bellies together," "sings along," "warm feelings" and "better than yoga."

The strangest thing about this program is, perhaps, the way in which it gives a whole new meaning to that allegedly enlightened turn of phrase "children's television." As the Journal describes it, the distinguishing features of these Teletubbies are "the antennas on their heads and the TV screens in their stomachs." Fair enough. We all feel like that sometimes. But it doesn't stop there, I'm afraid. Consider what gets displayed on the little TV screens embedded in these "alien techno-babies," as the program's creators call them. Why of course it's "videos of real children playing or singing with their parents."

Now if I had written that sentence, I'd have felt morally bound to the put the words "real children" in scare-quotes. Because if the Teletubbies achieve anything, it is a truly thorough interrogation of "the real."

Kids, apparently, love them. They can't get enough of the "silver foil quilts" our Teletubbies sleep in or the "pet vacuum cleaner" our Teletubbies call "Noo Noo." Kids have to have it, and the day care centers of England are prepared to give it to them. Imagine clusters of little children huddled under a TV chanting for their Teletubbies to take them to Teletubbyland where horrific, imaginary creatures project images of "real children" precisely where you'd expect to find their Teletubby-buttons.

Adults seem to need them too, albeit for different reasons. In England, where all headlines invariably end with the word "SHOCK," the Teletubbies have generated something of a controversy. Not because they suggest acid eating television programmers working for the devil. Quite the contrary. Because the show's creators recently fired "the actor inside" Tinky Winky, one of the show's fab four 'tubbies. The powers that be put the sacking down to "artistic differences" and the actor's "misinterpreting the role." But The Sun, England's largest circulation and most scandal-crazed tabloid, stood by "the actor inside" Tinky Winky--a "former Shakespearean thespian" by all accounts.

The Sun managed, in fact, to disseminate across that green and pleasant land some twenty thousand bumper stickers bearing the slogan "Save Tinky Winky." In his own defense, the actor inside Tinky Winky, one Dave Thompson, is reported to have said, "I was always the one to test the limitations of the costume. I was the first to fall off my chair and roll over. I took all the risks." Latest reports indicate that Mr. Thompson is currently licking his wounds in the remote wastes of the Falkland Islands and not answering the telephone.

So there we have it. A feedback loop of the strangest sort: where children look at deformed toys reflecting back images of children doing things other than looking at deformed toys, and where adults advocate the reinstating of the actors "inside" these truly unsettling frighteners. Take a moment and see if you can spot "the real."

"Everything about the show is designed to make very young children feel love and happy," its creators are prepared to vouchsafe. Whereas Q, the British music magazine, characterizes the program as "kiddytime hokum starring four potbellied, big-arsed towelling aliens with speech defects (typical greeting: 'Eh-oh!'), who fanny about for most of the day, do everything fucking twice, and show films of inner-city schoolchildren on tummies."

Is it any surprise, really, that the show is "produced in a remote farm"? Prepare yourselves for a "merchandising blitz" dear readers. The Teletubbies are coming. And they're already watching you watching them watching you. Eh-oh!

What is this world coming to anyway? I saw the movie "Hackers", and I was appalled. In my experience in... um, I mean, what I've seen about hacking, little blue, gold, and green shiny images don't float around in "Cyberspace" while "running around in a unix system"... its all code, hackers dont wear power gloves, and last I knew virii don't project images of people that are explaining the course of action the virus is going to take in plain english. Now, I understand that this movie was aimed at the alternateen's who worship their MTV culture, but giving the message to mommy's little rebel that hacking is that exciting and realistic is just wrong. Granted if the movie industry made a film realistically about hacking, it would be boring... plain and simple

SHIVERS is a UK published horror magazine that dotes upon the X-Files like every other magazine. And, the purpose for this little entry is a small little comment that received little attention. The situation called for a bunch of little children to run around screaming while 60,000 bees (all real) flew and buzzed around their heads. The director says, "And four or five [children] got stung. We had paramedics there who took out the stingers and put on little Band-aids."

The clincher comes in her next line: "But the mother or father would say, 'Get back out there! You're on the X-FILES!"

I guess being able to show your neighbors a videotape of your kid running around getting stung on the X-FILES is far more important then being a parent. It's not like your neighbor's would actually SEE your kid anyways. Kinda reminds me of those people who get photos of the Boston Marathon, and circle this little pixellated dot, all the while yelling out "That's Me! That's Me!"

We all know this happened. And we all know that we're sick to death of hearing it. And after seeing the photos of the car crash, and literally seeing the number of Princess Di websites that sprung up from her death, I have grown just as sick of it too.

Whoop ti doo. I just think it's funny that Princess Di is getting far more media coverage than Mother Theresa. And then they have the audacity to proclaim that Mother Theresa was "saddened" to hear of Princess Di's death. Isn't it great how they pull the two tragedies together, but still make Di seem more important?

What I want to know is since Mother Theresa's last words were "I cannot breath"... were Princess Di's last words "I'm a bloody princess"?

So I'm walking into a convenience store before I go to work. You know, I'm kinda hungry so I buy a Twix bar. No big deal... it wasn't until I was sitting down and reading the back package out of boredom that I saw 3 innocent words: "May contain peanuts".

I was mystified. I turned the Twix bar over... Nope, it said caramel. What the hell is this all about? Is the Twix-making factory right next to a peanut factory and every once in a while a peanut sneaks in? Did they put this clause on the package so they wouldn't get sued?

It just makes me wonder if someday "virtual pets" will contain an advisory "may contain life".

Stop on over to WHITEHOUSE.COM and catch Hillary and Bill making love in whips and chains. Yes, it's true. The Whitehouse is now corrupted, and Bill does a lot more than "just gettin' it on".

Or at that website, at least. WHITEHOUSE.ORG is the official website for our President and First Lady, but most people might make the mistake and type in COM instead. And what they will see is one big porn site. Apparently, the owner first had made a political parody... people would come, get a few laughs, and then never come back. So, in order to keep people coming, he changed it all to porn.

Now the site gets from 100,000 to 200,000 hits a day.

I guess my main problem with this is the fact that all he could think of doing was changing it to porn. Whoop to doo. There are already millions of porn websites out there, the only thing that is making his any better is WHITEHOUSE. I wonder why he couldn't do anything more... intelligent? If all these people are searching for the real Whitehouse, and they stumble onto his site, why doesn't he have articles and reams on information about why the administration is doing a bad job, or what people can do to make America better.

Porn is overrated. Thinking is underrated.

97-Sep-23
rm39@leicester.ac.uk

I've just found your website and printed off issues 1-8.

The reason I am emailing you is to offer a few comments on your Tellytubbies article as this is a subject close to my 2 year old sons heart.

Tellytubbies has caused a flurry of controversy over here but the issue of the sacking of Tinky-Winky is really just an amusing side issue.

The thing that made the tabloid headlines was the outrage from some quarters over a programme that features real toddlers doing real toddler things with minimal adult input. The narrators are just disembodied voices and the Tubbies themselves interact only with rabbits (such HUGE rabbits!) and a vacuum cleaner called Noo-Noo. Thus some parents said it was not "educational" enough. No letters, no numbers and all the characters have silly (child-like) voices. Sesame Street it isn't!

Its simplistic, repetitive and infuriating, in fact just like my little comrade Andrew himself.

I think it comes down to the fact that people are against change. This show is not what they watched when they grew up, it is not teaching what they were taught as they grew up, and it is not the proper way of teaching because it is not the way of teaching that they learned when they grew up.

Anytime someone disfavors something because it is not the same is a pure, blind example of ignorance...

Tellytubbies relates directly to kids and they love it. What these moralists can't stick is the idea that there is a part of a childs life and experience that is impenetrable to the adult. They hate the very idea of childhood. For them it's just an unfortunate preliminary to the Serious Business of Real Life, i.e. making money, making war, learning to lie and cheat and hate etc. These arse-holes had the humanity squeezed out of them long ago.

Isn't it great to know that in a sea of millions of people who follow the above philosophy, the only thing that can undermine their whole life is their very blood offspring? If they were fired from their job, they would immediatly get another, but yet, it is only their children that can make them pause. To quote a show (South Park) that is currently playing over here (this is a very loose quote): "Why can't parents stop to look what is happening in the real world instead of wasting all of their efforts trying to take off what is make believe?"

Childhood should be a magic time the memories of which those of us who have moved on should cling to and cherish.

MORE TELLYTUBBIES! LESS HEAD-FIXING! FORWARD TO A WORLD OF ENDLESS PLAY!

I was thinking about cloning one day. There's not much I know about the actual process but my impression was something like this: They basically create cells/tissues/organs/etc that have the same DNA as you?? Or is it that they create an embryo with the same DNA as you???

The process is extremely important (I believe) to any argument about cloning. For example, it is known that identical twins have IDENTICAL DNA. Yet, they develop somewhat different personality traits, and they experience different things (they are not a single entity experiencing two separate realities... so far as we know). They form different memories, etc. Although its easy to get lost in philosophical lingo about identity(and philosophical problems about identity), evidence is very very very strong that identical twins form two separate identities. Oddly, I learned this in psychology class(the case of identical twins has been used in nature vs. nurture arguments often).

So, if the process of cloning is simply creating an embryo with the same DNA (or even an entire body with the same DNA), it would seem to me that chances are very good that the two people would ultimately develop separate identities and have separate experiences. Then, maybe your clone would want to sleep with your wife, etc, but really, maybe he wouldn't. Of course, I don't believe they have the technology to create a clone of you that is the same age as you, has the same memories as you (and this technology is probably a LONG ways away, or not even possible - compared to an embryo with your DNA)...

The article, I admit, was quite flawed. I didn't think enough stuff out about it, and many people pointed out little things that could become big if discussed in the right way...

Cloning, as far as I know, is the process of creating the embryo and then cultivating it that way. As such it would be very hard for a clone to sleep with your wife simply because by the time your clone has gotten to the age you were, the wife has also aged equally.

And as much as your clone might feel that the wife is perfect for him, in the years that he was growing, he might have made a number of decisions that have changed his output of life. And since it wasn't the same world as your clone grows up when you grew up, things would be a helluva lot different.

Also, the clone wouldn't sleep with your wife or play with your kids, because he doesn't have the same memory as you. That would be impossible to recreate by cloning alone.

Oops. I plan to rewrite and publish as an addendum to the actual article...

I doubt i have any useful (or indeed coherent) reactions to it, but going on the theory any feedback's better than none, here's how the consciousness stream flows:

Clones... hmm, someday, yeah. It has to happen, eventually, if it can be done, someone'll do it... but wanting to be a kid again never works... tho i daresay thatz the real reason for the space programme... in any case, they'll need to come up with a proper cloud of justification... medical ethicists... i hate medical ethicists, worse than lawyers... lawyers at least serve an actual function... even art critics have better justification... well, on 2nd thought...

Could always clone them as brain dead...i mean, if they never had any personality to begin with...prolly still have the ppl claiming immorality...pretty stupid dividing line anyway...it's human=must live, it isn't human=kill it if it gets in the way...incidentally, the 'imitation dead ppl' line was a classic...

Teletubbies?? Is this a piss-take? Sounds like a post-modern satire...television reproductions observers observed... theme issue is it?...

I'm sorry Diana died, i'm sorry Mother Teresa died...but the media blitz for Di is a fucking feeding frenzy deathorgasm & Mother Teresa's being buried in it (no pun intended, forgive me) sez alot about what's going on, here...Diana plays better...technicolour tragedy...blood spatter'd glamour

'May contain peanuts...' You can never be too careful...

Cloning: First the God issue. I guess I look at God in a couple of different ways. Is our God truly the God of the universe and all creation or Is our God a group that created us in a effort of cloning? We perceive our God to be the Master of All the Universe (whatever, call it what you will), but if we too now can create life, are we not their God? In order to understand what I am getting at you must forget about religion, forget the bible or whatever "book" you learned from and just step back and think about it in a realistic sense. If us as humans, small and hardly intelligent when it comes to science, can create life who is to say that we ourselves were not created by another species? I think God is relative to the situation at hand. For Instance, If I were to take two ants (we will call them Adam and Eve) and put them into a large ant farm and from there let them mate, or whatever, and create a whole ant civilization couldn't I too be considered their God? I have the power to Crush them, burn them, destroy them, or let them grow. I can do whatever I want to them, and when done correctly perform magic and call them miracles when they are not looking. I do not have God complex by any means, however I look at God much differently than religions, Maybe a little bit more Realistic. Why should I worship him in Church everyweek. My parents gave birth to me but I dont worship them for it. That would be pretty self-centered of God to expect that, dont you think? I think he has a bit more to do than sit up there and listen to us worship him, or what we do fight over him.

I think cloning is wrong for one reason and one reason only. We can use this for good but give me a break, we split an atom for good and look what us as humans did with it!!!!

Di and Mother Theresa: I think the main reason why Princess Di received so much attention over Mother Theresa is because of the way she died. (Not to mention she makes much more money in the Tabloids) Princess Di was in her 30's and Mother Theresa was in her 70's, She was probably right next to George Burns in the Dead Pools.

There are a few things from DS9 that I had to comment on.

1. SF fantasies aside (I'm still working on teleportation and interdimensional portals, personally), cloning as it works today could at its best take a cell from a 19-year old man and grow a fetus from it, not another 19-year old. Until we also nail down time travel, it will be impossible to raise the clone in an identical environment, and so impossible to create an identical person, who would probably not believe himself to have the same identity as his "father" anyway. The best route for evil masterminds to pursue would be demonic possession, I'd think...

2. The Teletubbies: very scary. That is the scariest thing I have heard all week. Maybe all month. (It is a scary world.)

3. Were you just being sarcastic about the Twix bars, or do you not know why they do that? They use the same machinery in each plant to make several different candy bar brands; some contain peanuts and some don't. They're just protecting their asses in case peanut shavings aren't properly cleaned from the machine when they go on to do non-peanut chocolates, and some allergy-ridden chocoholic dies because of it. Unfortunately, it means that people who do have allergies miss out on some great foodstuffs which 99.9999% of the time don't have peanuts at all. Point about the virtual pets well taken, though.

4. Re. Whitehousedotcom. Yeah, wasted potential makes me mad too. It's very easy to say that most everyone is stupid (and that's a sentiment which, thankfully, has been appearing less and less in your letters column lately) but what hurts the most is when someone who shows evidence of making a mark on the world passes up the opportunity.

So moron you would like to bring someone in this world . That has know reason but to bring you back to your childhood . Maybe your clone will take over your zeen and i'll have more interesting mail . thanks for the letter.

I don't see how that is possible. A clone is an exact duplicate. So, therefore, if he were to take over my "zine" then it would be the same thing. But if we assume that something wrong happens in cloning, then he might be more aggressive. In which case, the zine would swear more. Or he might be stupider... in which case the zine would suck more.

Thanks for the mail.

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Devil Shat Nine was released on 09/11/97. Last updated: 06/21/98.