Star Trek Into Darkness

[Caya]

What "famous historical villain"? That was in another timeline.

 

That part is supposedly intact, according to Memory Alpha. Khan also mentions

just prior to revealing his name, and the way he does reveal it makes it seem like he's waiting for a reaction from Kirk, that Kirk *should* have heard of him. So the Eugenic Wars probably did happen; they were long before Nero showed up, anyway.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Oh, right, from the Eugenics Wars.  (Duh!  I was thinking "Space Seed" -- obviously!)

 

Unfortunately, I don't think there's (currently) any way to alter an adult's skin or eye color.  I can imagine they might eventually develop some systemic method of doing that, but surgically?  Well maybe eye color, but skin I very much doubt.

 

[Caya]

Eye color, the're apparently working on it, as long as you're pining for blue eyes (don't think anything else is possible so far, but Julia Mae can probably tell you more). Skin color, well, there's Michael Jackson, but he had vitiligo afaik. So there's not much change possible at the moment, but in the 23rd century, who knows.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Cumberbatch has hazel eyes, I do. The eye color changes according to mood, the color of clothing, the amount of sunlight or lack off. My color ranges from black, to grey, and from sapphire blue to an almost white with a dark blue rim. He has strong brown and green points.

 

Also forensic science tells us color is literally only skin deep. After a person dies, when the skin starts to slough off, all pigment is lost. Every one eventually becomes the same dead pale white. The melanin that  makes the skin dark in climates with lots of sun like India, the Mediterranean, Africa and such other places is lost in colder climates. We all know what happens in the summer when skin gets a good dose of sun. But the tan fades once it gets cold again. Could this account for Khan's paleness after being frozen for 3 hundred years?  Having no exposure to sun light and the body being exposed to extreme cold the melanin would not be needed and so the skin would not produce it.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Eye color, the're apparently working on it, as long as you're pining for blue eyes (don't think anything else is possible so far, but Julia Mae can probably tell you more). Skin color, well, there's Michael Jackson, but he had vitiligo afaik. So there's not much change possible at the moment, but in the 23rd century, who knows.

 

Yup, that Stroma technique is surgical, all righty, even though the "scalpel" is a laser beam.  I hope anyone considering that procedure is very, very sure, because there's no going back.  If Alex ever decided to have his beautiful amber eye color destroyed, I'd be appalled!

 

Right, as far as I've heard, Jackson's dramatic change in skin tone resulted from either disease or a treatment for it.  And I've also heard of bleaching creme, and of course all types of "tanning."  So it's possible to change one's skin tone (usually temporarily), but my hangup was mostly on the word "surgical," and those techniques are systemic rather than surgical.

 

I suppose that an all-over tattoo (*ouch*) might be considered surgical, but doubt that it could lighten the skin.

 

 

Cumberbatch has hazel eyes, I do. The eye color changes according to mood, the color of clothing, the amount of sunlight or lack off.

Does everyone have hazel eyes? I'm starting to wonder! It seems that eyes are categorized as either "blue" or "brown" except for very unusual cases (or Hollywood hype). I thought of my eyes as "blue" simply because they aren't "brown" -- even though they're sometimes taken for brown. But about ten years ago, I finally became dissatisfied with "blue," seeing as how my eyes are actually more of a dark blue-gray-green with brown flecks, so I started putting "hazel" on forms (even though the dictionary's idea of hazel has no blue component). Then a few months ago, my mother's ophthalmologist described her eyes as a "blue-hazel mix," and I thought Aha! (I haven't needed to fill out any forms lately, but when I do ....)

 

 

We all know what happens in the summer when skin gets a good dose of sun. But the tan fades once it gets cold again. Could this account for Khan's paleness after being frozen for 3 hundred years?  Having no exposure to sun light and the body being exposed to extreme cold the melanin would not be needed and so the skin would not produce it.

Fox, you're a genius! Even if Khan started out with a typical Middle-Eastern skin tone, 300 years with no sun would take his skin right down to its base tone, and even his body's ability to produce melanin might decrease (at least temporarily) over time (lots of time!). (Would be interesting to have some actual data on that -- does a person gradually lose the ability to produce melanin if they're not exposed to any UV at all for extended periods?)

 

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

It has happened in the genetics test. As far as they can tell all DNA goes back to a basic group in Africa. A normal dark skinned people for the area. A small tribe of these people still exist.

 

As people migrated north into cooler climes the skin tones became lighter because there was less sunlight to trigger the production of the melanin.  Three hundred years is the equivalent of 15 generations. Not long in the big picture but maybe enough to at least suppress the melanin production.

 

There are pages on the web where people ask how to lighten dark skin. The answers:1) Stay out of the sun.

 

2) Exfoliate. As the dead skin sloughs off the new skin will be lighter.

 

So after 15 generations that a lot of sloughed skin as we lose dead cells every day.

[Caya]

Just fyi, Carol and Fox, there is a word for your eye colour, well, a neologism anyway. You (and Benedict Cumberbatch) have glasz eyes .

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

Glasz....never heard that term before now. Thank you,Caya.

[bborchar]

Just fyi, Carol and Fox, there is a word for your eye colour, well, a neologism anyway. You (and Benedict Cumberbatch) have glasz eyes .

 

I believe BC also has a heterochromatic eye - there's a spot of brown in the right eye.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

There was a blog not sure it was actually done by BC but one was something like "I never know what my eye color is going to be when I get up in the morning" and it had close ups of his eyes. There was definitely a brown spot but I couldn't tell in which eye it was.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Just fyi, Carol and Fox, there is a word for your eye colour, well, a neologism anyway. You (and Benedict Cumberbatch) have glasz eyes .

 

But how does one pronounce "glasz" without making people think one has a glass eye?  (Think I'll just stick with "hazel" or "blue-hazel"!)

 

Added: After Googling the word, I see that (according to this article) it's originally French, with a long history of use in art.  You can even buy wall paint in that color (Benjamin Moore "Silver Marlin" #2139-50).

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

As far as they can tell all DNA goes back to a basic group in Africa. A normal dark skinned people for the area. ... As people migrated north into cooler climes the skin tones became lighter because there was less sunlight to trigger the production of the melanin.  Three hundred years is the equivalent of 15 generations. Not long in the big picture but maybe enough to at least suppress the melanin production.

 

I've been thinking more about this, and unfortunately I believe that such a change doesn't take place over time so much as over generations.  There would have been a certain amount of individual variation among the original dark-skinned humans.  As they moved north where there was less sunlight, the individuals whose skin was a shade lighter would be a bit better adapted, so they'd be a bit healthier, and therefore statistically more likely to live long enough to pass on their genes.  Over multiple generations, there would be an additive effect.

 

This additive effect doesn't occur with a single long-lived person.  And if he's frozen, all his bodily functions will slow down to a crawl, so there won't be much turnover in his skin cells, ergo few dead cells to exfoliate.

 

It's possible that he could still fade over 300 years, though.  There could be other mechanisms that I'm not aware of.  In fact, maybe no one is yet aware of certain mechanisms that would arise only during cryogenic suspension.

 

[Caya]

 But how does one pronounce "glasz" without making people think one has a glass eye?  (Think I'll just stick with "hazel" or "blue-hazel"!)

 

Added: After Googling the word, I see that (according to this article) it's originally French, with a long history of use in art.  You can even buy wall paint in that color (Benjamin Moore "Silver Marlin" #2139-50).

 

 

Wow, learn something new every day. So you two not only share eye colour with our favourite detective, it's a magical, changing colour with a long tradition in the fine arts to boot? Colour me and my dull blue eyes impressed (and jealous) .

 

As for how to pronounce it, I'll leave that one to the native speakers. Maybe in a French accent .

[wildwoodflower]

Cumberbatch has hazel eyes, I do. The eye color changes according to mood, the color of clothing, the amount of sunlight or lack off. My color ranges from black, to grey, and from sapphire blue to an almost white with a dark blue rim. He has strong brown and green points.

 

Also forensic science tells us color is literally only skin deep. After a person dies, when the skin starts to slough off, all pigment is lost. Every one eventually becomes the same dead pale white. The melanin that  makes the skin dark in climates with lots of sun like India, the Mediterranean, Africa and such other places is lost in colder climates. We all know what happens in the summer when skin gets a good dose of sun. But the tan fades once it gets cold again. Could this account for Khan's paleness after being frozen for 3 hundred years?  Having no exposure to sun light and the body being exposed to extreme cold the melanin would not be needed and so the skin would not produce it.

 

 Hazel eyes changing color according to mood? I have hazel eyes and I am given to many diverse moods (aka moodiness, so I'm told:-) and no one has ever mentioned my eyes appear to be a different color according to whether I'm pissed off or ... more pissed off.  What I'm wearing, yes, Lighting, my state of health, all those affect the way the color appears, but actaully changing color according to mood?  No.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

I was playing hide and go seek with some neighborhood kids. We were in her family's barn. I ran through a door way to find her standing there with a pitch fork in her hand. I was able to stop myself from running into it but man was I pissed. We were staring at each other and she started backing up. She gulped, hard and said " Your eyes just went black" and she turned an ran.

[Bakerstreet Irregular]

There is still a lot of debate about where skin color is actually genetically based. Some scientists believe they are closing in on the answer but there are those who have proved that skin color can be changed simply by making changes  in every day things such as diet, or staying out of the sun. And ones skin color can be drastically changed in less then a year. One researcher didn't like her natural olive skin so she went about trying different ways of lightening it. She now has ivory skin and it is permanent.

 

The cryo-genetic methods used today has actually killed the cells of all those frozen heads that people paid big bucks to have preserved. The ice crystals forming in the skin cells has cut them to pieces. They have experienced frost bite.......or in those cases....severe freezer burn. If this damage is also present in the brain, there isn't anything left to resussitate.

 

The deep cold might be useful in putting the body into a deep sleep but it cannot be allowed to actually freeze the body. There has to be some sort of anti-freeze introduced. Blood still has to flow. Oxygen still has to be uniformly and continuously provided. Cells have to remain pliant. This means some kind of growth has to be present. Cell death and sloughing off is a natural process. It may be slowed but it cannot be allowed to stop. 15 generations is a enough time for a total turn over to occur.

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Even if a man is 300 years old, he's still the same individual.  Even though 300 years is typically enough time for many generations, he doesn't become his own greatⁿ-grandson.  So generational mechanisms such as natural selection do not come into play.  But yes, 300 years is long enough for lots of things to happen to that individual.

 

I assume you're conjecturing that the cold pods (or whatever they called them) were equipped to do routine maintenance such as feeding through a gastric tube, collecting and recycling urine and feces, cleaning the skin, trimming the hair and nails (or else inhibiting their growth), etc.  Biological processes would continue, but at a much slower pace, such that a 300-year-old individual would appear to have aged only perhaps five or ten years.  In that case, most changes would have to be due to, as you say, diet and/or medication, rather than time as such.  But they say that all of our cells are replaced in just seven years or less, so (even though that's probably an oversimplification) five or ten years is enough time for people to change significantly (like your example of the olive-skinned woman).  Skin can turn orange within months due to large amounts of beta-carotene in the diet.

 

 

I was playing hide and go seek with some neighborhood kids. We were in her family's barn. I ran through a door way to find her standing there with a pitch fork in her hand. I was able to stop myself from running into it but man was I pissed. We were staring at each other and she started backing up. She gulped, hard and said " Your eyes just went black" and she turned an ran.

 

Our cats' eyes do that when they're angry, but I think it's because their pupils dilate, rather than the iris changing color. Sounds like your neighbor assessed your mood quite accurately!

Like wildwoodflower, I am skeptical of the idea that irises actually change color like some sort of biological mood ring. I suspect that it's more a matter of color contrast. For example, suppose that you have a shirt that's some sort of red-orange color. If you wear it under a red cardigan, it'll look orange, whereas if you wear it under an orange cardigan, it'll look red. Or alternatively, a small patch of color (such as the iris) often becomes more noticeable if there's a larger patch of a similar color nearby -- thus the expression that a certain garment will "bring out the color" of one's eyes.
 

[Carol the Dabbler]

So you two not only share eye colour with our favourite detective, it's a magical, changing colour with a long tradition in the fine arts to boot? Colour me and my dull blue eyes impressed (and jealous) .

My eyes don't really look anything like Mr. Cumberbatch's. His are lighter and brighter, with a much more obvious blue component. If mine are to be compared with anyone's from Sherlock, it'd probably be Martin Freeman's (which is fine with me).  His are dark enough that if I hadn't caught a blue glint in a few scenes, I might assume they were brown.

 

Actually, I really like blue eyes (and brown eyes, hazel eyes, whatever).  I'm into color in general, so eye colors fascinate me.

 

[Caya]

Like wildwoodflower, I am skeptical of the idea that irises actually change color like some sort of biological mood ring. I suspect that it's more a matter of color contrast. For example, suppose that you have a shirt that's some sort of red-orange color. If you wear it under a red cardigan, it'll look orange, whereas if you wear it under an orange cardigan, it'll look red. Or alternatively, a small patch of color (such as the iris) often becomes more noticeable if there's a larger patch of a similar color nearby -- thus the expression that a certain garment will "bring out the color" of one's eyes.

 

 

But eyes can change colour. My best friend when we both were in our teens had (well, still has) glasz eyes (since she did some acting, there's a photo of her as a teen here, though it doesn't do her eyes justice), and they changed when she was very happy, sad or angry - they don't seem to do that so much these days, but teenage emotions tend to run higher than an adult's. I think it has to do with blood vessels dilating or constricting and therefore changing the overall colour, just as they do in our skin. Glasz eyes are just so bright that the effect is more noticeable than with other colours, just as a pale person's blushing is more prominent.

 

And having eyes comparable to Mr. Freeman's sounds wonderful as well . His are of a most amazing warm colour.

[bborchar]

 

Like wildwoodflower, I am skeptical of the idea that irises actually change color like some sort of biological mood ring. I suspect that it's more a matter of color contrast. For example, suppose that you have a shirt that's some sort of red-orange color. If you wear it under a red cardigan, it'll look orange, whereas if you wear it under an orange cardigan, it'll look red. Or alternatively, a small patch of color (such as the iris) often becomes more noticeable if there's a larger patch of a similar color nearby -- thus the expression that a certain garment will "bring out the color" of one's eyes.

 

 

But eyes can change colour. My best friend when we both were in our teens had (well, still has) glasz eyes (since she did some acting, there's a photo of her as a teen here, though it doesn't do her eyes justice), and they changed when she was very happy, sad or angry - they don't seem to do that so much these days, but teenage emotions tend to run higher than an adult's. I think it has to do with blood vessels dilating or constricting and therefore changing the overall colour, just as they do in our skin. Glasz eyes are just so bright that the effect is more noticeable than with other colours, just as a pale person's blushing is more prominent.

 

And having eyes comparable to Mr. Freeman's sounds wonderful as well . His are of a most amazing warm colour.

 

 

Eye color changes very much hair color.  Babies are often born with only a fraction of the pigment they will have when they are older, which is why babies with grey eyes and blonde hair usually don't stay that way as they age.  And when you're older, the opposite happens- you lose pigment in your eyes and hair (and skin, too). 

 

Of course, it's not always that pattern.  My son was born with black hair- it fell out, and grew back in blonde.

 

At 2 weeks: 

 

(

 

At 1 year:

 

 

(Yep, same kid)

 

My daughter was born with dark hair and it's still dark, although it's not as black as it used to be.

[bborchar]

There was a blog not sure it was actually done by BC but one was something like "I never know what my eye color is going to be when I get up in the morning" and it had close ups of his eyes. There was definitely a brown spot but I couldn't tell in which eye it was.

 

The right eye:

 

 

I kept noticing that sometimes his eye would have a cat-like appearance, and when I saw this shot of him, I realized why.

[Carol the Dabbler]

But eyes can change colour. My best friend when we both were in our teens had (well, still has) glasz eyes ... and they changed when she was very happy, sad or angry.... I think it has to do with blood vessels dilating or constricting and therefore changing the overall colour, just as they do in our skin. Glasz eyes are just so bright that the effect is more noticeable than with other colours, just as a pale person's blushing is more prominent.

OK, if you've seen it happen, I certainly won't argue! And you may be right about the blood vessels, but in that case, it may be more a matter of dark eyes versus pale eyes, regardless of the color.

 

 

Babies are often born with only a fraction of the pigment they will have when they are older, which is why babies with grey eyes and blonde hair usually don't stay that way as they age.  And when you're older, the opposite happens- you lose pigment in your eyes and hair (and skin, too). 

 

Of course, it's not always that pattern.  My son was born with black hair- it fell out, and grew back in blonde.

Right, eye and hair color can easily change over a matter of months or years. And I don't think your son's hair is unusual. I was born with darkish hair (light brown or dark blond) which then turned very pale. I was a "towhead" for a number of years, and then my hair started gradually turning darker until it was once more dark blond. (And now it's getting blonder again!)

 

I've heard it said that children are often born with the color of hair they'll have as an adult, even though it turns lighter during their childhood. I suspect it's a matter of hormones. A newborn baby has just been exposed to Mom's high hormone level for nine months, but as that wears off, their hair turns to its childhood color. Then when they start making their own hormones, it darkens again.

[bborchar]

 

Right, eye and hair color can easily change over a matter of months or years. And I don't think your son's hair is unusual. I was born with darkish hair (light brown or dark blond) which then turned very pale. I was a "towhead" for a number of years, and then my hair started gradually turning darker until it was once more dark blond. (And now it's getting blonder again!)

 

I've heard it said that children are often born with the color of hair they'll have as an adult, even though it turns lighter during their childhood. I suspect it's a matter of hormones. A newborn baby has just been exposed to Mom's high hormone level for nine months, but as that wears off, their hair turns to its childhood color. Then when they start making their own hormones, it darkens again.

 

 

My daughter fits that pattern for hair color:

 

 

 

But i'm not really sure what my son will end up with.  His father has dark brown hair, and I have blonde hair.  It wouldn't surprise me if my son's hair stayed blonde or turned dark, lol.  I would be shocked if either of my children ended up with anything other than blue eyes (both sides have blue eyes).  My daughter was upset the other day because she thought she had green eyes (she does have a lot of green in them) but was reassured when I said she definitely had blue, lol.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Does your daughter think it's a bad thing to have green eyes?  An old roommate of mine had (and presumably still has) clear green eyes which I thought were really beautiful.

 

[bborchar]

Does your daughter think it's a bad thing to have green eyes?  An old roommate of mine had (and presumably still has) clear green eyes which I thought were really beautiful.

 

Ha ha, no- she was just freaking out because everyone else in our family has blue eyes, and she didn't want to be different .  She's only 4, so she doesn't really understand this stuff yet, lol.  I think green eyes are absolutely gorgeous.  My husband's aunt has jade green eyes and dark hair- she's just absolutely beautiful.  But she's the only one.