Metamorphosis / "why is a raven like a writing desk?"

I saw Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and thought it was good. Anne Hathaway is very beautiful as the White Queen and the actress playing Alice is very good, as is Depp's Mad Hatter, Stephen Fry's Cheshire Cat, Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen and the others.

What was interesting to me was how Alan Rickman's Caterpillar said good-bye to Alice as he finished making his cocoon in preparation of turning into a butterfly. It had a finality as if the Caterpillar would lose his memory after his radical transformation.

This article in the New York Times reports a person's genome can be decoded for $50,000.

Besides identifying disease genes, one team, in Seattle, was able to make the first direct estimate of the number of mutations, or changes in DNA, that are passed on from parent to child. They calculate that of the three billion units in the human genome, 60 per generation are changed by random mutation -- considerably less than previously thought.

So presumably, a child receives 120 mutated genes along with 2,999,999,880 duplicate genes from her parents. Alice certainly received the genes for imagination from her father. I like how she had all of those random thoughts while dancing with her suitor.