There! Are! Four! Lights!

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KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

That's right, I'm going for the throat on this one. Who better to start off a discussion on genetic discrimination than the poster-boy himself: Khan Noonien Singh. A relic of the Star Trek universe's "Eugenics Wars" (which took place in the mid-to-late 1990s - heh), he was a man of extraordinary strength, mental capacity, and ambition. That didn't make him a good man, though, as he and his selectively-bred cohort conquered most of the world only to be overthrown by the rebellious populace.

But of course, I have a real world point to make here: Congress is considering a bill to prohibit discrimination by employers and insurers based on the results of genetic tests. If this becomes a law and isn't wrapped up in the standard Congress-crap (ok, who am I kidding - this probably won't get passed with a load of crap attached), it's a really good thing. I know I don't want to be excluded from employment or insurance because I have a genetic disposition towards diabetes (which is likely: both of Grandmothers had it).

What does everyone else think?

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The Spock-etype

Yeah, another post related to Star Trek. It's something that I'm sure has been noted before, and existed before him (see: 1930s/1940s robot stories), but Spock has to be the iconic man on the outside. There's not a Star Trek series without a Spock-figure. It's the crew member who, due to circumstance, doesn't understand humans/humanoids/solids/etc. and gets to be somewhat funny because of it.

• Spock, Star Trek. I know I already mentioned him but come on, he deserves another. This green-blooded (copper-based blood) Vulcan/Human hybrid. Cold, calculating, declarer of irrationality, he was a great foil to McCoy.
• Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation. With even less connection to emotions (except for when he got too much from the emotion chip left to him/forcibly implanted into him by his creator or his brother Lore), his inability to use contractions doesn't make him that much different from a lot of other Science Fiction aliens. Except he's an android, so he's more like a classic robot that way.
• Odo, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He's actually the most human of the bunch, even if he's a) not human and b) not even a naturally solid being. He understands us solids, but that doesn't mean he deals with life like us.
• Emergency Medical Hologram, Star Trek: Voyager. Probably the most consistently written character on Voyager. He also got some of the best episodes. Funny guy.
• Seven of Nine, Star Trek: Voyager. I have to say that by the time she became a fixture on the show, I wasn't really watching that much. Still, in this case, we have a human made inhuman by most of a lifetime as part of the Borg collective.
• T'Pol, Star Trek: Enterprise. Another Vulcan - like Spock - but pure - unlike Spock - she had to learn to deal with humans at time where they weren't fully accepted members of space-faring society.

Yes, that's right, every single Trek series has a Spock-like person aboard, even if they didn't stay that way to the end. Interestingly enough, I can't think of any of the other TV space series that had one. Maybe Andromeda, but I only put that forward because I didn't watch that much. Any others I'm forgetting?

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