Mon, Jan 22, 2001 12:06AM -0600

I won't talk about how my DSL modem died about 24 hours ago, after only being on for about 48 hours. I am just cursed.

I watched Futurama today, and I thought it was a pretty cool episode. First off, it was probably the first time someone had pointed out how absurd it would be actually miniaturize people in order to enter a body (a la "Innerspace" ). Instead what they did was create a bunch of nano-droid replicas and controlled them via VR gear and made the nano-droids get into a nano-spaceship. Second, when they finally did get into the body, it was pretty realistic. Well, as realistic as a cartoon can get. I never thought I'd hear a cartoon character utter the phrase "pelvic splanchnic nerve." They even got their human anatomy right, as they entered through the ear, making a microhole through the tympanic membrane (which quickly sealed up because Fry--the guy they had entered--had been infested with worms that quickly healed all his injuries), and apparently traveling down the Eustachian tube to emerge in the nasopharynx. From there, they went into the nasal cavity, punched through a capillary, and got carried all the way to the heart. They even got the shape of erythrocytes right. By following the circulation, they eventually made it to the stomach, where they get pursued by some worms (Worms!) flying some TIE fighter-like craft. The heroes' nano-spaceship barely makes it through the pyloric sphincter (that's another thing I'd never thought would be uttered in a cartoon), leaving their pursuers to crash. And get this. You know what their objective was? To irritate the pelvic splanchnic nerves enough so that the motility of Fry's bowel would increase, flushing the worms out. (In the Professor's words, "After this bowel movement, he'll be lucky if he has any bones left.") Anyway, I really appreciated the attention to detail, and I keep wondering why histology can't be anything like this, with awesome 3D models and a Doom-like interface. I would be so into that.