Hello and welcome to the Michael Benford podcast. We are having a holiday
special today where we're going to watch Jurassic Park together and see just how
the science has moved on in the past 30 years, because Jurassic Park was
released in 1993. And if you cast your mind back to those days, they had a
little bit on DNA and how they made the dinosaurs. So we're just going to watch
it and see how it gets on. So Nabil is going to set the scene for us here now.
But how did I get here? Well, let me show you. OK, so we're looking at the first
clip where they are going on the little sort of interactive tour of Jurassic
Park. And you've got this wonderful, this very Disneyland like amusement park
set up. And they've got Richard Attenborough, David Attenborough's brother, as
John Hammond, the eccentric park developer. Afternoon, John. DNA from what
source? Where do you get a hundred million year old dinosaur blood? Shh. What?
What? Oh, Mr. DNA, where did you come from? And this sort of implies he's going
to be there doing this every single tour. Whatever, it's a work in progress,
right? Whatever. It's just a prototype. Dedication. Yeah. So at this point, you
can see Hammond's got his stick with the ball of amber. And inside the amber is
a mosquito. Now, there is a scientific precedent for that. At the time, I think
there was some publications where this could be done. And we'll have it,
speaking of the others, what do you guys think? Absolutely. What I heard from
trivia is that, actually, the mosquito is clearly male in the amber when they
claimed that all the animals are female. So something's gone astray there. But
tell us more, Nabil. Yeah, so I think Michael Crichton, when he wrote the book.
So this is based on the book by Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park. And there were
some publications about getting DNA, perhaps ancient DNA, out of mosquitoes
entrapped in amber. So on the basis of that, what if it could be dinosaurs?
That's the scientific premise of the film, that you could, what if we could do
that? What would happen, kind of thing. I mean, that's about where the science
starts and stops, as far as the film's concerned. And then after that point, it
turns into a kind of slasher flick horror movie with these dinosaurs chasing
after you. Lee, you have anything to pop in? I was thinking, just mentioning
that with ancient DNA, people may or may not know this. It's just not the best
quality of DNA to work with. So I appreciate that they talked about how
difficult it was to work with. They said that there are gaps in it or something.
Whatever their language was with it, there are gaps in the DNA. And I appreciate
that reflects reality, that when you are trying to play with ancient DNA, it's
really chopped up. In fact, there are both theoretical papers and then practical
papers that have done, trying to look at ancient DNA and pull out as much of
genomic material as possible for a number of different organisms. And what was
known then by scientists, and I think they've made a point, the people, the
scientists involved, who were adjacent to this type of work at the time, were
very quick to point out, this is probably not something you could actually ever
do because DNA degrades over time and it would not last 65 million years. So
you're not going, we're not going to have Jurassic Park anytime soon. I'm really
disappointed actually. Yeah, so you can't, and that was known even then. So 30
years ago, scientists would have said, no, this is, it's not, I mean, I think
the paper, there was one paper that came out in, I don't know if it was
coincidence or someone did it deliberately, but there was a paper that came out
on the day Jurassic Park released, which was describing how they pulled out
intact DNA, I think it was 16S from the mosquito in amber and all of that for
some insect for weevil, I think. And they dated that to some, whatever, tens of
whatever, millions and millions of years ago. But that's a far cry from saying
we're going to get an entire genome. That's a large ask. And so at the time, and
even now, that's not really like a thing that you're going to do. I don't, yeah,
that's just not going to happen. So I thought of one more thing too. So while I
was looking at this scene, I'm not sure if we got to this part of the video
actually now, but this made me go into the huge rabbit hole too, because they
mentioned that there are 3 billion instructions in this code. And I was like,
huh, that's exactly the same size as a human genome. Are they just confusing it?
I think it's a flub by the, because for me, when I was watching this back and
watching the whole film, it was really clear that someone had told them that a
genome is 3 billion base pairs in size. And when they said that they meant a
human genome, but in writing the screenwriter, whatever, that just sort of cut
that bit for probably for pacing. I mean, if you're going to go there and give
all the caveats, like, oh, a normal human genome, like a human genome is 3
billion, it's like, it's sort of whatever. So they've cut like a lot of this,
those numbers. So yeah, 3 billion is like a human genome, right? Yeah, so I
started going to this huge rabbit hole. So I was like, three gigabases, sorry.
So I was like, I started like looking it up on NCBI taxonomy, like, and I found
that there's actually an entry in NCBI taxonomy for dinosaurs. And I started
going through this huge rabbit hole and I was, I got really excited. Like maybe
someone actually did this and I didn't pay attention. And no, like the only, the
only genomes under dinosaur are birds. They've actually categorized, you know,
all the bird genomes under the taxon dinosaur. Wow. Where does Sasquatch fit in?
I think that's, I think I also was curious about it when you brought that up and
I had to dig around it. And I think reptiles or amphibians are like one to three
gigabases. They're a bit smaller than human. Could be wrong. Obviously there's
going to be differences, exceptions and so on. But yeah, but still it's like a
lot of genetic material to sequence, to kind of do this. So even at the time,
this was not going to be possible. People said it wasn't possible and that
hasn't changed. So yeah, you can't do dinosaur level genomes. We might talk
about some other efforts that have tried to do more recent organisms in a bit,
but yeah, let's get back to the clip. So Mr. DNA, this really great design
character. Don't use it for anything. You should have borrowed it. So it sort of
implies that it's 3 billion bases for the dinosaur, because you said 3 billion
bases in the immediately short dinosaur picture, but I think they mean a human.
So this idea is based in some element of fact at the time. The fact that you
would have a mosquito that draws blood and it would be trapped in sap, that does
happen. And you could extract something viable out of it. So I don't think,
yeah, so that's a viable thing of it. There are obviously a lot of problems with
extracting DNA from material like this. I love how the scientist is happily
doing this without any eye protection, but whatever, because there'd be a stupid
amount of dust being kicked up. It's like, there's so much of the film where you
just go, that's just not realistic, but then it wouldn't look good on film. So
what are you going to do? I mean, I can't imagine Jeff Goldblum as the
mathematician, like Vox, my mathematician, what's that about? Why do they have a
mathematician on this trip? Yeah. Is this like chaos theory? I don't know why.
Let's talk about, let's touch on that. So he's a chaostician. His field of
research is chaos theory. So that's why he's there. It's like- It doesn't make
sense. To be honest, when you go and when I'm like, so you don't get a scene
with, it's the name of Ian Malcolm, Dr. Malcolm, where like Jeff Goldblum's
character, you don't get a scene where they explain why he's there. He's just
there. He seems to have been the lawyer's pick, the blood-sucking lawyer's pick,
as far as the script's concerned, of someone to bring along. I don't know why.
It's not really explained, but then the pretense for everybody is really, really
shaky when you think about it. So the grandchildren are there for pulling at the
heartstrings, I suppose. I don't know. I don't know why you'd invite the
grandchildren on something like this. You need people in peril, you know? Yeah.
No, it all makes sense if you go, I want to, if you look at, so when I watched
it and you look at the film, you say, okay, I want this to be a horror film
where the park goes wrong, science goes wrong, and you've got this sort of
Frankenstein that wants to think of these dinosaurs stomping around and causing
havoc.  terrorizing people and eating them. Like, okay, great. And you want to
get to that as quickly as possible. So the plot is very, very light in trying to
build the contrived circumstance to put these people on this island. And we can
talk about some of those contrivances in a couple of scenes as we go through it.
But like, so why are the grandchildren there? Obviously, the grandchildren are
there because it makes the plot stronger. That's more interesting with the kids
there. But then there's like no real reason why they're there. There's no, if
you look at Malcolm, there's no reason why he's actually there. There's no
reason, I mean, the lawyer makes sense. Even the lawyer doesn't make that much
sense because it's like, why, you know, no, why are they going to invest in this
park if they have no idea what's going on? Wouldn't have a zoo expert there, you
know, like someone who actually knows about real living animals. There's a
safari guy. There's a veterinarian who seemed to be outshone by the Dr. Sadler,
by Laura Dern's character. Like when they've seen the triceratops, like she
comes and sort of takes over that whole thing, like, okay. Oh yeah, yeah. You
paused the video here on, it's like a backdrop of just DNA sequences and
nucleotide sequences with the character in front. And I'm just actually trying
to look at it now and see, do they make any sense whatsoever? And I wonder what
happens if you Google them or put them into NCBI and blast them, you know, it is
just random, you know, ACGs and Ts or are they actually something that they've
taken and broken up? They do seem to be quite random. So it probably I'd imagine
is from a real sequence. What do you think? That would be fun to try out. It
would actually back-translate the hidden DNA sequences from Jurassic Park. It's
probably going to be like something like E. coli or Lambda or something like
that. They would, I mean, we're talking about 93, so I guess you would have got
GenBank on a floppy disk. Or in a printed book. Oh, okay. In a printed book.
Yeah, they did print books. Yeah. I wonder up until what year. The printed books
though, I thought were the protein sequences, was the DNA ever part of it? It's
an interesting question though. Can you, well, can you find someone, one of
these, I'm sure there's some old guy, you know, with one of these books of
GenBank, all of GenBank printed out. Margaret Dayhoff? Margaret Dayhoff, yeah.
Anyway, let's continue the video. Yeah, let's continue the video. They just
explain this thing that the genome is full of holes and then they backfill it
with, I love this. So they've got the geneticist looking at the genetic code
using virtual reality. Yeah. I mean, that's still, I don't think that's happened
yet as much as people. I didn't notice that there's a, there's a 3d model and
the guy has like a VR glove. Was that? Yeah, he has a VR glove. So he's, yeah,
he's got a DNA like chain and then he's rotating it with VR glove. And it looks
like he has like a blast proof visor on as well for working with like, I don't
know, liquid nitrogen? No, it's the guy from, who was doing the extraction
before. So he's decided to put the visor on now for the computer screen, for the
screen glare, I suppose, but forget wearing it when you're drilling into the
amber. He has PPE for the computer. I mean, I don't know, computer screen
radiation is pretty dangerous, right? So I don't know. But why are
bioinformaticians doing their work in a wet lab? I have no idea. That's a good
point. Well, it looks like a white boiler suit, not a white coat. I have
absolutely no idea. I have no idea what these big ropes around his shoulders are
either complete. I think it's just, yeah. We need some sci-fi, shove it in.
We'll move on. The freezers and fridges seem to be, seem to have clear glass in
them. Yep. Which is unusual. Have you seen clear glass fridges in labs, Lee? I
don't think it would look really boring. If they did. It looks like a fridge
you'd use for like soda cans, basically. Yeah. Somewhere. Usually in the lab,
you'll have like a, like the door is like a blast shield. You don't have glass
on it. It's like, it's closed off. You can't see through it. Yeah. But I don't
know. But I mean, you're trying to make the shot visually appealing. So what are
you going to do? And also there's nothing precariously stacked, you know, that
no one knows what it actually is for the past 20 years. Everything has labels.
Yeah. Or kind of a little bit of masking tape, you know, with a handwritten, you
know, illegible letters on it. One thing that's really nice though, in the clip
with the Mr DNA as he's explaining it is, I think they say the thing, oh, if you
read the code for X every second for whatever, some period of time, it would,
you know, it'd take you forever to read through it. It's nice to point that out.
Like the amount of genetic material, like information encoded in your DNA is
huge. So during the human genome project, the Sanger Institute had this kind of
ticker tape tracker showing all the bases that were being sequenced live in real
time. And they very quickly gave that up because the sequencing technology was
capillary, just kept getting better and better and better. And it was just, you
know, zooming past. Um, they do get a few of those things right in the film,
which is nice. And I think for a lot of people, this was like the first
introduction to genetics and, and a lot of this biology. So, you know, inspired
people to, to think of this more as cat. Well, we'll carry on with the clip. We
use the complete DNA of a frog to fill in the holes and complete the hole. And
now we can make a baby dinosaur. So they're just backfilling with frog. Okay,
great. Is frog even in taxonomy for dinosaurs? I have no idea. No, like a bird
to be better, you know, like a sparrow. Yeah. It's, it's sort of odd because
even in the film, it doesn't make sense because at the beginning, Sam Neill's
character really stresses the fact that dinosaurs are more closely related to
bird, which I think was like a kind of like a new idea that had come out and,
you know, people were still on the fence about it. And so I think when he's
describing the velociraptor, oh, look at the morphology of the skeleton, it
shows that it's more like a bird. And the kid says something like, oh, it's just
a six foot turkey. I don't know if this child or anybody has looked at large
birds like a cassowary from Australia. And I don't think you would call that
thing a turkey. You would, you would be pretty frightened if that thing came up
behind you. Just if you're listening at home, Google a picture of a cassowary,
Australian cassowary, and just look at that and go like, oh, yeah, I can, you
can see the family resemblance. So it's got the it's the eyes that just do it
for me. Oh, yeah. I've never seen it before. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think
and they're huge, these these creatures. So, you know, but at the time, it was
this thing of birds being birds, modern birds being more closely related to
dinosaurs versus other species. And so they make that point in the beginning of
the film. And yet in here, they're spicing it back with frog DNA for some
reason. Obviously, that makes sense for the flaw of why they change sex later,
which we might see in a bit. Yeah, actually, I mean, I might I might be getting
ahead of ourselves, but like, these are scientists who seem to know what they're
doing because they can grow up ancient beasts. And they don't seem to know that
frogs can change their genders. They said it's a fail safe. And I just find that
as a huge intellectual flaw. Like it was meant to be. I mean, there's so much of
that's contrived because it's like you have to you're trying to do something
fairly hard sci fi. And there's not you know, you have to bend, you know, the
truth a bit for the story to work. Otherwise, the thing will this won't happen.
This actually can't happen. What what what happens in the film? It can't. None
of it can happen. Yeah. Not only the thing is like you can't get you can't get
the DNA from the amber. You probably couldn't splice the genomes of a frog and
the dinosaur and make it viable. You couldn't implant the embryo into the
implant into ostrich eggs. I think that's what they show. I think they say they
voice over and say, oh, we installed an ostrich eggs when they're doing the
tour. That's, you know, that probably wouldn't work. The geneticist wouldn't be
so stupid. No one would have Dennis Nedry as the primary like developer for this
thing. And you wouldn't just like have any sort of fail safe. It doesn't make
any sense. But if you but then there's no movie. Yeah. And it's a good movie. So
it's like, OK, fine, I'm going to suspend my disbelief because I want this movie
to happen. Well, just something to mention there a second ago, I think, was that
they had gene sequencers, not genome sequencers. So were they doing a gene by
gene? Yeah, they were. Yeah, I think they would have probably sang a sequencing
back cloning of the genes and then walking along. And then when they can't walk
anymore, they would have put in the frog stuff. I guess that's the process.
Yeah, I mean, back back then, I think before 1995 or seven, like there wasn't
even the concept of people doing shotgun sequencing. It was it was walking.
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, but that could have been done. So John Hammond is
complaining about the background track for some reason. But now we cross to this
very this does happen.  I guess if you go to a zoo, like they do have these
stupid exhibits and then you can peek in and see the people actually working on
stuff. Yeah, I'd hate to be sad to sit there. I love the lawyer who starts the
film being really antagonistic and then immediately sees that they're... Stuff
it there, right? Yeah. He asks, are these characters auto-erotic? Yeah, auto-
erotic? Yeah, that was weird. I think it's a flub. I think he means animatronic.
Yeah, that would make more sense. Auto-erotic is a different thing. That's a
Michael Hutchence thing, isn't it? You see, I heard the word, I heard him say it
and I was like, did he say that? And then I just saw it on the subtitles there
and yeah, he absolutely did. No, he absolutely says auto-erotic. He says, are
the people auto-erotic? It's like, what? Now we've got to look it up on the
Urban Dictionary to see actually what it is. Okay, on Reddit, on the Jurassic
Park subreddit, someone says, why did he say auto-erotic? I've watched this
movie, blah, blah, blah. And then people answered, it was meant to express his
lack of knowledge and terminology. Another person said, I have always left that
line to mean that Genaro is woefully ill-informed and attempts to sound smart,
but uses the wrong word. Okay. Right. So, the whole thing of it is probably not
safe for work. This is overwhelming, John. Are these characters auto-erotic? No,
no, no, no. We have no animatronic theatre. Okay. Well, deliberate factual error
by the filmmakers. How do you interrupt the cellular mitosis? I have no idea
what that means. That's Shan-Leo's characters. Maybe a proper biologist can
explain it, but I'm like, what are they even trying to refer to at that point?
Yeah. Yeah. Now, at this point, the tour sort of derails and everyone just
breaks out and decides we're going to tromp through the lab. It takes three of
them to push that bar up, and then the old guy just gets up right away.
Superhuman strength, I think. So, on the screen that they're looking at, it
pans. So, as they get off the ride and they switch the lab, there's a shot where
they pan over and if you screen, it's there for a second, but they've got
this... I don't know what OS that reminds you of. It looks like Windows 3.1 kind
of thing. I don't know if there's... It looks more like a really old Apple
interface. Okay. That's actually a point I want to make. I keep seeing Apples,
like OS 9 through the whole movie. And then later on, I know you're going to
make this point, but she says it's a Unix system. No, but it is a... Oh, okay.
The sysadmin stuff is a Unix system. No. Oh, yeah. The UI is like Apple, but
yeah, that doesn't make sense. And you see the logo on the very bottom of the
screen, can you work out from that what it actually is? I have no idea. I think
they've just put a random something on it. Can't tell. That's really nice from
the props that they've actually put some sort of weird logo on the screen. Yeah.
There's so many bases on the screen, you can see ACGT if you really scrunch up
your eyes. So you've got a 3D model, the computer model of the DNA structure on
the right side, and then you've got the sequence on the left. I mean, that's
great. That's a protein structure, isn't it? Is it? I can't actually see the
base. So you've got like the ribbons and the barrel structures. Yeah. Oh, the
picture. Yeah. Yeah. It's a protein structure. And it's DNA on the left side.
Okay. I mean, it's there for a second. Nice visual thing. A couple of seconds.
Let me pan over it. And now everyone's wandering into the lab without any kit. I
mean, I guess this seems, because they have the eggs, so this is like the
hatchery. So I guess that's okay. Yeah. But then why are they all wearing gloves
and full boiler suits and everything? It's as if they want to be clean, but then
at the same time, people wander around in their shorts. And why is someone doing
the protein sequence stuff in this room, if this is where... I don't know. Oh my
gosh, yeah. But you've got to fill the set with something. So whatever. Yeah.
With ancient DNA, you have to have a totally clean room. Yeah. But then you
wouldn't have the eggs here. Yeah. Because we're looking at these ostrich,
presumably ostrich eggs, implanted with the embryo. Also do you notice how short
the robotic arm is? It can only reach the first one or two eggs. Oh, I never
noticed. Oh, it's Mitsubishi arm as well. You can see the barcode on it, but it
can't reach the rest of them, so it can only turn one or two. So the dinosaur is
imprinting on Hammond now. The animatronics of it still holds up for me. It's a
bit cartoony, but it's like, I don't know, it's okay. Yeah. It's amazing. If
they'd done it with all, what they do these days, all CGI stuff, it would look
terrible. Well I guess they did a lot of CGI in this, it was one of the first
big movies for CGI. It still holds up when they do the dinosaur scenes, it's
sort of, you know, when you see the brachiosaurus or whatever, you're like. So
no one not tries breeding because they're all female frogs. That kills me. I
mean, yeah. Okay. I mean, that would work, but this is the problem. Like did
they explain that with the frog DNA and that amphibians can switch? I think they
actually say that later. They make a point of that. I think that's the reason
why it's frog DNA versus birds. Because that's at odds with the plot, with the
movie's own logic, it's sort of at odds with that. Why are you using frog DNA?
Yeah. So one thing about that lab is it's not organized in a very sensible
fashion, kind of benches are randomly at random angles within it, and it's a
very clean one. There's no stuff, you know, in every space possible. So we'll
cut back to Malcolm's line, because he then. John, the kind of control you're
attempting is, it's not possible. Listen, if there's one thing the history of
evolution has taught us, it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free,
expands to new territories, and it crashes through barriers painfully, maybe
even dangerously, but, oh, there it is. Life will not be contained. He doesn't
say, does he say life, like, you know, at some point he says life finds a way,
but he says this throughout the film, he keeps trying to make this point, like,
yes, but no. I mean, I think he's a bit too alarmist in his position, but when
we see the lunch scene, it's like, sort of more obvious. He's more like a
philosopher than a mathematician, really. I mean, he's called a rock star. I
think he might be more of a, these days, like a science communicator, he
probably just writes a bunch of books or something. A mathematician would have a
podcast. You would have a podcast, like, yeah. Yeah. Mathematicians that I've
met are pretty philosophical too, though. Yeah, but I don't know, do they look
as cool? All of my friends who are mathematicians are good looking. Yes. Oh,
wow. Okay. Well, that, well, I guess we can say that's realistic, right? I'm
disappointed they didn't use any dinosaur. No, it's sea bass, apparently,
according, earlier on he said, oh, we're having sea bass for lunch. Yeah. He
keeps saying he spared no expense. He spends, yeah, he keeps saying it. I spent
no expense, but then I cheap out on the IT part, which is like, yeah, okay.
Yeah. So now the lawyer is like really pro this. He's seeing the dollar signs in
his eyes of what all the money this is going to make. And then the scientists
are like, this is a horrible idea. But I don't think the arguments make a lot of
sense. So he says you're using, I think he says you're using genetics, which is
the most powerful force on the planet, kind of, that's what Malcolm is saying.
And you wield it like a kid who's found his father's gun. We've been, I think, I
mean, not me, not us, probably, but our lab-based colleagues have been wielding
this godlike power for like decades without any real issue, you know,
fundamental thing in molecular biology. It's like, yeah, all of this stuff is
like, people are cloning things all the time and bad things don't happen. Yeah,
people do silly things, you know, and clone pets and things like that instead of
actually doing any harm, it seems. But yeah, well, I mean, the techniques here
aren't particularly dangerous. Obviously, trying to do it for dinosaurs is, the
other, the issue is, you know, making this dinosaur thing, but the science isn't
particularly unique or dangerous or abnormal. I wonder if we were to do it, how
would you go about cloning dinosaurs? Would you start with, say, a bird and then
try and kind of mutate it backwards towards, you know, the most recent common
ancestors? So you take a group of birds or a group of animals and then try and
get up the phylogenetic tree by trying to infer what is there and make some
changes.  I don't know if I'd be able to do it. Even like thinking about it,
like on the operon level, like if I'm missing a gene, do I include a gene of the
most recent ancestor or the most, or the closest ancestor or what? Like, I
don't, I would, I would definitely fail at this. Well, I guess people are doing
with mice, you know, humanized mice, putting human variants into mice to then
test. Yeah, but you're not going to turn that mouse into a person. Even if you
keep like, you can, you can make one, you can do one mutant, one gene, one, two,
I think at a certain point, just trying to cross in that many genes, it's just
not going to work. The genome, the, the biology of the organism is going to just
push back on you and say, no, I don't want to do this. Yeah. It'd be so many to
change. Cause like, if you think about like, what's even closest to us on the
phylogeny, like it's a 1% genome change. Like, are you going to be able to fill
in the gaps of 1% of the genome? Or can you do it, can you do it like reasonably
with microbes? Just, just like anything, you know, I mean, it's just a huge to,
to do that. So that that's mind boggling. So the film is asking us to suspend a
lot of disbelief to say that this is even remotely possible. And then like,
there were a bunch of experiments like with Craig Venter, Ventner. Yeah, Venter
did. Yeah. And I think after he like published like a, a totally in silico or,
or it was a synthetic virus. I think that the journals banned it afterwards, but
I can't remember what the fine print is. But what did the virus do? Because, you
know, most things out there don't go and kill you. I remember when he, when he
made a synthetic bacterium, like it had like his initials in it. So I guess it
carried his name and that was his function. I don't know. But I think Malcolm's
position is pretty alarmist though, saying that, oh, you can do all this thing.
I mean, sure. Yeah. I love how they all start ganging up on, on Hammond on this.
And he's, he doesn't expect it. Yeah. He gets really worried. There's cost
projections in the back end of attendance on the screens behind them, which is
interesting because no one's paying attention. The danger inherent in what
you're doing here. Genetic powers, the most awesome possible power, servosleep.
Okay. Sure. If I may, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that
you're, that you're using here. It didn't require any discipline to attain it.
You know, you read what others had done and you, and you took the next step. You
didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves. So you don't take any responsibility.
For it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses, uh, to accomplish something as
fast as you could. And before you even knew what you had, you, you patented it
and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox. And now you're selling it.
You want to sell it. Of course I should. Didn't require any discipline to attain
it. You read others what had done and you took the next step. That is literally
science. That is literally any innovation is to take what other people have done
and like do it. And you take this, but you do take responsibility for it. They
mentioned there, um, about bringing extinct species back, like condors and stuff
like that, that, that seems reasonable. You know, like we've got things like
blue rhinos, whatever, and dodo's and, you know, should we bring those back?
Maybe a step that's easier. Yeah. I mean, they make that point. Um, I think here
is the thing, the crux of it is that you've taken the science and you've now
commercialized it. And that is like, yeah, okay. That's probably too far, but
then yeah. And that's where we're having retorts saying back, like our
scientists have done things nobody's ever done. It's such a good line. Whether
they could, they were so preoccupied whether they could, and they don't think of
whether they should, and then having retorts saying, well, condors are going to
extinction. And then, you know, you wouldn't have a problem with that. And then
I think it is a good point. I think saying like natural select, like the
dinosaurs were selected against because of a meteor is a bit of much, I mean,
that's not very fair. I don't think I can ever evolve to the capacity that I
could avoid a meteor hitting the earth. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was a funny
line to me, to us. But I mean, there is something, a seed in the, in the logic,
but it's like, yeah, okay, whatever. It's funny to me too. The guy whispers to
him that his kids just, his kids just arrived. He's just been alarmed by all the
scientists and his kids just arrived on this island and he should be alarmed.
And now he's excited that the kids are there, probably going to be in danger.
Yeah. The kids, this is the best point. The point that for me actually makes the
most sense is that this Laura Jones character, Dr. Sattler's pointing out, not
only have they done dinosaurs, it seems they've put in plants from somewhere.
They put in like, they've made a fake ecosystem of plants. I guess it's not, I
don't think they're like ancient plants, they're from elsewhere, but it's like,
yeah, you've made this fake ecosystem. And she says like, one of them is
poisonous and you picked it because it looks pretty. And it's like, yeah, I
mean, that is, that is a thing. Like, yeah, there is. It's interesting because
not only, you know, obviously you've got the plants, which are not native to the
dinosaurs, whatever, you have all the microbes that those dinosaurs should have
had, all those bacteria, you know, in their gut and then all over them, helping
them and they aren't present because they've gone off and evolved for millions
and millions of years. So I wonder how that would impact the poor dinosaurs, you
know, do they all have digestive problems? And the dinosaurs probably, the
dinosaurs would probably not have any reasonable defense against modern
pathogens. We see that sick Triceratops later and it's like, I don't think we
ever find out what's wrong with it. It's just sort of sick. And we look at it,
it hadn't eaten the poisonous plant. I thought that they found out like it might
have, but yeah, they never fully resolved it. Like it was probably the poisonous
plant, but they didn't resolve that. No, she said she looks in the poop and
says, it's not the poisonous plant. So if we take her thing, because she's the
genius, you know, she's the main character. So if you take her thing as gospel,
then okay, it's not the plant. So what, what is it? I mean, we're never actually
told this is sort of left. We forget about this because the T-Rex shows up and
people start dying. Like whatever. I think in the book, they make some, this
scene happens in the book and they explain, they have some rationale as to why
this happens. Something, I think it's some, I can't remember. It's something to
do with, they don't have the teeth to chew the plants properly. They can't chew
the plants properly. So she's like sick. She can't, she's like malnourished. She
can't like eat the plants. So all the dinosaurs are kind of full-size dinosaurs,
more or less, with probably decades of growth. And how did they magically become
full-size adults overnight? Because the park is only going for five years, or
they only decided to do it five years prior. So what happened? Well, the park is
five years, but they seem to be shipping, and we know this from the second film,
but they seem to be shipping the dinosaurs from somewhere else. And we know in
the second film, because they go there, it's like the other island, what's it is
a sauna or something. And I think they clarify that later that this has been
going on longer. So the park is five years, but the dinosaurs have been
incubated and grown somewhere else for longer, but that's not explained in the
film. So if all you're looking at the film, this makes no sense. And no one
noticed the brontosauruses for the 20 years prior? They have the flying ones.
It's like, what? I think, I don't know. I think they retconned this with the
subsequent films, kind of plug all these holes and whatever. I mean, whatever.
Yeah. T-Rex. T-Rex is there. Come on. The flying dinosaur. The pterosaurs are
not dinosaurs, actually. That's a different part of taxonomy. I wonder if that's
ever addressed. I don't remember the other films. I don't remember. I only saw
the first two and half of the third one, and then I switched off. I can't
remember. Have you not seen all the modern ones? They're very good. Even less
science in them. I don't know if I can stand Chris Pratt being involved in all
this. Oh, maybe later. I think less science, the better. I mean, the science
here is fairly, you know, fairly thin anyway. But let's press on. So now we have
Sam Neill makes his point. Man and dinosaur haven't ever coexisted. The 65
million years between them, we have no idea what's going to happen. I. OK, sure.
I mean, yeah. I think the dinosaurs are in more peril than we are. I think we'd
be OK. Because I feel like we're in worlds where the invaders, you know, are
susceptible to all the bacteria. Yeah, exactly. I mean, the thing I mean, we
don't. Are we really affected by evolution? We can change our environment. We
can do whatever we want. How much of it how much of that really applies here?
Should we talk about the computer stuff? Yes. Let's talk about the computer
stuff. I'll give it to you now. So take everyone take that like. That's.  odd
what door security systems are shutting down this is in the computer lab it's
amazing that he's got he's performing all the lines and he's just got the
cigarette in his mouth and it's like if you've ever tried to do that it's a bit
tricky yeah but like he's wearing a white coat doing his computer uh programming
as you all do you know yeah fair enough but the whole cigarette thing that that
is so like the offices were like when i did an internship you know 30 years ago
people were you know smoking away you know while they're typing away in a
computer so okay so maldon and sat go off to look for the kids or net go looking
for the kids so we can actually see the code that dennis wrote set command set
comment request d task what changes would you make or set error status if error
equals zero evaluate some ridiculous uh regex well i mean four contains the
branch or group four contains the branch if comment checkout comment project
active request a comment before oh it's just for the code it's just for the um
it's just sv it's for the code versioning and it's like it's got numbers uh what
is it numbers followed by one or more number then you've got a to z so followed
by a letter followed by well uh i know it's just um yeah it's like a commit code
with the branch at the end and then it's basically codes it's just yeah it's
like yeah it's realish code is basically request it just does what the comment
above it says request a comment before we check the file out yeah that's what it
does it just says make sure you've commented your your commits uh it is still
possible that the checkout will fail because the latest type of their lastest
should be latest revision on the trunk is already checked out for modification
by someone else yeah okay fair enough i mean that's a legitimate thing you'd
want to check and this screen that we're looking at before we were looking at
mac os 9 within the lab do you think that this is more unix like this is the
it's a unique system like this is literally the computer that uh the the child
goes through later and says this is a unique system so you don't think it
actually your os is not unix at all it's a mac looking thing to you right in the
introduction to cyber the another podcast i listened to from vice they um they
use that line it's a unix system i know this and i i'd heard it so many times
because i listen to that podcast all the time but i never knew where it came
from and it's only rewatching drastic park is like ah that's where it's from
yeah i mean it's a great ui that i i mean it's not clear to me how much dennis
wrote so it's like dennis wrote 2 million lines of code it's like okay but then
they would have had uh you know they would have had other bits like like samuel
l jackson's characters like you know there are other parts to this so what what
i mean we can i guess i can say like how do they fix the problem right so dennis
netty injects this horrible program that mucks up all the security systems yeah
that he runs so the solution from samuel and jackson is like we need to
basically do a code reversion back to a version that dennis hasn't touched sort
of like a factory reset and then jumpstart all of the systems for the park again
that's the solution so this is actually the correct code for the correct thing
in the script i guess i don't think they do that at this point they come back to
it later that's how but that's how like the the i think his name is arnold um
samuel jackson character like fixes it but the thing is that implies that the
bulk of the code base was not written by dennis every by wayne knight's
character right because what would you revert back to so it means that most of
it was written by other people and maybe dennis just wrote the security system
stuff i mean if he wrote it on his own because it's implied he just did it
himself um what are they reverting back to i think it's also implied that that
dennis got corrupted like recently so like maybe he had legit code before his
motivations are interesting so in the book the book is fundamentally different
with the motivations because it points uh john hammond the park developer as
like a bad guy who's only in it for profit and and not and he's not this
whimsical richard attenborough character he's like oh i didn't realize how bad
this could be um he's like deliberately like looking for profit and so he stiffs
nedry on on the money as you would as people do for it projects the it project
like blows out of proportion and um i don't think that then the nedry character
in the book like knows exactly what's going on um and gets you know so and
doesn't get paid properly and so that sort of encourages him to take to to do
the theft of the mbos and whatever uh but in this it's like dennis is implied
that he is been paid well and been played appropriately but he somehow
squandered the money given and he's just been greedy and wants more and then
john hammond's characters like which you know the john hammond character says no
i don't want i'm not going to pay you more money if you've lost your money
that's your problem we don't know how he's lost his money and that turns into
taking it's like i think it's like a million dollars or something it works out
to 1.5 million i got 700 i think the guy the the the competitor says i'll pay
you half the money up front 700 000 and then some amount per mbo that you bring
back for a total of 1.5 million so dennis has given this big sack of money at
the beginning as a down payment to do this uh theft but it doesn't really make
sense why he's doing it in this case like it's i mean presumably he's got debts
and he's pushed into it but he doesn't seem that he just seems like greedy he's
just doing it and this sort of runs at odds at malcolm's point which is like
life finds a way he's like no life didn't find a way like if if the dennis nedry
character hadn't sabotaged the park nothing would have happened everything would
have been fine so life evolution or life or whatever it's not like life run amok
it's like a human actor has abused the system so i don't know but whatever it's
a film and there's a t-rex that eats people so you know whatever fine we'll just
go back to that but and but i love the big execute button which we click here
execute oh it's macintosh it says macintosh hd it does say that it does yeah
yeah freeze it's got a trash but all the old osx trash icon and everything so
they're running a max it's not a unix system it's not no it is a system okay it
is a unix like system yeah yeah os9 was not based on unix was it better check
that out lee oh no you're right it's modern versions are based in unix yeah yeah
oh wow oh that's a revelation it's not a unix system so yeah this is just like
based on whatever steve steve wozniak made and everything well there we go yeah
so background desktop wallpaper is definitely not safe for work yeah it puts it
in the base so he's got a one minute timer to so everyone is on the tour at the
same time so this is how the plot the story really kicks off because it's
coordinated with this so he says at the beginning like the dennis character says
he needs 15 minutes 15 to 20 minutes to do this theft so um this probably would
have worked out fine so what is his plan he's like going to shut down the
security system for 15 to 20 minutes uh take the embryos drive to the dock drop
them off and come back uh the storm that happens because this whole thing is
happening while there's a big tropical storm happening was not expected actually
that did happen in real life that there was a tropical storm and so a lot of the
scenes they recorded of the storm are from a real hurricane well that's why it
looks so realistic so now the samuel jackson character again smoking realizes
that the locks have been like everything's unlocked dennis is saying that he's
doing some sort of weird rebooting of systems so things will turn on and off
don't worry about it turning everything off as well which is a bit silly really
i don't see any reason why you'd need to do that but whatever oh one thing it's
sort of covered in the lab scene but we didn't hear it um is why is there no one
else on the park i thought that they were evacuating with the storm like they
kept talking about no they they you hear it in the when they go into the lab
they are told and it's before that sort of signal from before um that everyone
has actually got scheduled sort of shore leave for that weekend and so they're
all going to the dock prior and then they find out that the tropical storm is
coming later so it just is a coincidence that the storm happened at the same
time but basically everyone was going to go on shore leave for that weekend  And
that's why there's nobody there. There's the, the point of the park is that it's
all so automated that you actually don't really need, you know, you can control
the whole park from that little room for three days. So it's like yeah whatever,
this is apparently a thing that happens so it's like yeah okay fine everyone
goes home for a couple of days. I don't know why you'd have only like what four,
five employees for the entire park, even if that was the case. For this massive
operation it costs millions. I know. But yeah, it's not they don't evacuate,
it's because of the, they are scheduled shortly for the rest of the staff.
Incredible. It's, it's like a couple of ADR, like couple of voiceover lines that
that do it, and I only caught it because I was listening, watching this back
otherwise you just have no idea. But yeah, so everyone's away. And this, this
Nedry's thing was going to happen. He probably would have gotten away with it
because it's like 15 minutes, drop the stuff off the dock, come back, say yeah I
got lost on my way to the vending machines, and everyone's like well the systems
are on and off, I'll fix it, I'll press a button and it's back, you know,
classic sysadmin kind of thing to do. Get a coffee. Okay, keep going. Oh, and
that's a Mac again yeah. Yeah. You can see the hurricane. Oh and you can see the
Mac logo on the, on the box. Oh yeah there's a Mac on the, on the box on the
tower. And you can see they've got very nice weather forecasting with the
tropical storm information on the other screen. Great. I mean it's a lot of
gooey. I don't know if anyone will bother with that much gooey. I don't think
even now I'd bother with that much. So, some reason the embryos are in this. I
mean it looks fantastic. This sort of. It looks like a liquid. Yeah, no gloves,
and it would be very very cold. And it's just picked them up by hand. Those are
frozen to a minus 230 degrees, whatever. P minus 80s, right, this is the minus
80. That'd be fine. If it's liquid nitrogen it's like liquid nitrogen. Yeah. So,
so the big freezers that we have in the lab are like minus 80 but then liquid
nitrogen would be like minus two, if it's 230 then yeah that sounds about right.
It's like very cold you don't touch it with your hands. Okay. Wouldn't it be,
what couldn't just be like a dry ice. So this to explain this, I mean I don't
know. That's for minus 80 kind of temperature. I don't, I don't feel like this
is a realistic like holding device but it's a cool one. The cylinder. Yeah, I've
never seen this like in the lab or anything, and it wouldn't, you'd want to like
maximize how many test tubes you can hold in there and everything. Well that's
quality not quantity you know, you just need a few. Yeah, and it's, and it's not
like it's like labeled on the test to cool and then it has like velociraptor.
It's not even like, you know, it's not a scientific name it's not like it would
be the sample ID or whatever. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, like clone name is not on
here or anything like that it's just velociraptor, but maybe, maybe, maybe one
on there is is the sample name I don't know. Fine, we have we it's for the
audience right. Yeah, I have one more comment on the refrigerator scene. Yeah.
My wife and I had this debate because she is a microbiologist and Dennis has the
barbershop can. And there's a refrigeration unit and he's putting all the tubes
in it right. How long do you think that refrigeration can last, like even if
it's at minus 80 and not minus 230 like, is that a realistic device. So in the
film, the guy who gives it to him at the beginning says this last for 36 hours.
I feel like, I feel like this is a film. We just spend our, our like realistic
expectations and just believe them I think here, like how can you I guess if
you, if you want to keep a frozen, and it just has to be below zero maybe that
might be enough. I'm willing to suspend my knowledge here and just like allow
this little can to to keep the can only has to last 20 minutes right because
it's got to go with Dennis to the dock, and onto the boat, and you could say the
boat, people on the boat have proper storage on the ship. So, you know, maybe
you can get away with it. I mean, of all the nitpicks I mean whatever. We can
move on. We're on the desk. So you've got for some, well obviously for this,
it's a nice solution you got Robert Oppenheimer on the picture of him on on
Nedry's computer to the side. That's the chap on the left. And it's a jolt cola
on top. Jolt cola on top. There's a bottle of jolt. Oh great. Wow. Nedry hasn't
turned up so it's not all the systems are off all the security. So the doors are
opening but not everything. So they're sort of wondering why that is, because
the Raptor enclosures are typing in the command line. Yep, typing in the command
line. So for you mean you got all this gooey stuff and then all of a sudden you
just got this text thing saying like locked. So the Raptors are still enclosed I
think that's just for the pacing of the story because you don't want the Raptors
out yet. You've watched like now as an adult watching the film there's so much
of it that's just sort of trying to just put the plot in the right place, so
that with just these one lines to kind of like anchor it properly. I guess that
is a difficulty with translating from a book into a movie. I think so, because I
think in the book there's more explanation of everything and it sort of makes a
bit more sense. And here you're just like nope you got to keep going. It's just
a fine it works really well. So Robert, yeah. Access security grid. I mean,
okay. Access main security grid, I mean he doesn't know the command to get
access. It's like those old text based programs where we have to explicitly type
the, you know, the phrase of what you want to do, or otherwise it'll just bomb
out. Yeah. Go east. Pick up, pick up child. Oh I miss those. And now you get the
classic. Ah, you didn't say the magic word, which is, which is Wayne Knight's
face on an Elvis cartoon, shaking his finger. Classic. It's sort of. I mean from
if he's just written a part of the system we assuming like there are other
analysts and other developers on this, it doesn't make sense that this would be
like a problem, especially if you've got this version control code you just go
oh yeah screw it I'll just roll it back and take you like five minutes. Right.
Samuel Jackson comes up with like ages later, but that's how we're going to
solve this but whatever. So, I've just put up the next clip here I don't know if
you can see it. That's the Unix system. Yep. We got a reboot system. So, they've
skipped ahead. Yeah. And they can can operate doors. I mean, yep. We get a
glimpse of it. So the thing that she that she uses to navigate the file system
is like a thing. It's a prototype thing, it's not like a production thing that
anyone really used ever. Right. It's a unique system and I know this. You can
get emulations of this, like you can get it for yourself. But the floor of it is
the thing that you see in the film it takes freaking forever to just navigate
the file system. Yeah. Yeah. That's how we do Unix navigation you know we wait
for it to move around and the graph. So, the Unix is the directory is slash user
slash USR. That's nice. So slash user slash park slash, you know, zoology slash
something that's where she's the part so far. Visitor Center, and then somehow
you just reboot that part of it, the file. I don't know. And then you're back,
you're back to the Mac OS interface that's showing you all the doors are locked.
Yeah. Everything works. Everything works. Can I do one tangent. Yep. This is
from another podcast I listened to. I'm going to get to this part where Goldblum
is lying down over here. Let me see if I can get this picture of him. So while
Goldblum is lying down on the table is actually a tattoo that he has. Right. And
the actor doesn't have a tattoo in your life. And there's no tattoo mentioned in
the book. And I listened to this whole podcast about how they investigated how
he got the tattoo. They basically came to the conclusion that Jeff Goldblum went
rogue and had a tattoo for some of the filming and no one caught it. And so it's
just like, it's just can and he has a tattoo. Okay, brilliant.  have to do that
for any subsequent things for continuity right yeah yeah okay fair enough so we
went we went through a bunch of reactions that we had there were so many more
that we didn't even get a chance to get to but we wanted to spare you all on the
length of this thing we think this is a fantastic movie we enjoy it a lot what
do you all think tweet at us email us whatever um let us know we had a fun time
watching this it's awesome thank you so much thank you so much for listening to
the micro benfi podcast what do you think about our experiment tweet at us or
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