Cerebral Stasis

What's really pagan is his grasp of the English language.Almost all religions stem from the same basic root, and that's because they were made to establish certain principles and boundaries for the way a society is allowed to act. For example, which is cheaper - training and hiring an elite police to keep the people at bay, or fooling the people into believing that if they don't do what you want them to do, a higher being will strike them down?

Shadow, I don't know about "carbon-fiber wings", but people already hangglide and parachute here on Earth... remember?And Unicorn, the problem is that space exploration is expensive, and when I say expensive, I mean expensive as in too costly for any single country to manage it. Overcrowding really isn't as big of a problem as you think. True, in places such as Japan or China, people are crammed together like sardines in a can, but in the rural areas, such as where I live, there are hundreds if not thousands of square miles worth of emtpy grazing land, farm land, pastures, prairies, etc. If overcrowding did become such a problem that the human population could not fit on the land, it would be most efficient to move to the seas, since they not only cover the majority of the planet, but the undersea habitats would not be limited to two planes, it would be much cheaper and easier than space flight, there would be abundant food all around these habitats, etc. Space travel is just too expensive to really be useful, save for business.

I could be mistaken, but from what I've read/heard, embryonic stem cell research has made very little progress. I am very much for stem cell research, but if embryonic stem cells don't work, there's no point in pursuing them.On the other hand, if the fetus is already dead, they might as well be used for something.

The problem is that when one would take one's foot off of the "button", the seat would fall down, possibly cracking it, and at least making quite a bit of noise.

I'll certainly give it a try, Inspiron, but as I said, if one wants to quickly and easily access files, such as games, videos, music, text, websites, etc., the current style of desktops (2D) seems a much easier and more efficient way to do it.

This is such garbage, it's not even funny. What else can a person do when one is not rich and each operating system can only be legally installed on a total of 2 computers, and a new copy costs around $150 or so? If one switches to Linux or Mac, one cannot run the programs one have always run, but if one sticks with Windows, one is thwarted at every turn by legal and economical issues that limit what they can do. Where can one turn?

That's what they tried to do with Iraq, and succeeded, but now they are simply standing in political ruins, being hit from all sides by verbal blows about their actions.Maybe it's time we just said "screw it" and let the Middle East deal with it themselves. It'll save American soldiers, and that's all anyone seems to care about (I'm saying this in a very cynical and sarcastic way).

To be honest, I don't see a whole lot of use for this, aside from some games and gesture-shortcuts. Although it would be neat, I doubt that operating systems will ever have a Doom-like enviroment, in which you walk into rooms that contain information, turning your computer's hard drive into a maze. This would be overly complex and unnnecessary. Why spend half a minute walking down a corridor into a room labelled "Desktop" and choose a little pad labeled "phonenumbers.txt" when one could scroll over using one's mouse and double-click, opening the file in a mere fraction of the time required to do it as if it were a game. As I said, except for some detailed 3D games, 3D-based shortcut gestures, and maybe some kinds of desigining software (i.e. 3D modelling), I really don't see that this will be very useful.

Um, stabbing people is bad, M'kay. You shouldn't stab people, because you'll go to jail, M'kay. And now let me tell you something about jail. Uh, jail's bad, M'kay. You don't want to go to jail, because you'll get raped, M'kay. Now let me tell you something about getting raped. Uh, getting raped is bad, M'kay. You don't wanna get raped, because you'll get an STD, M'kay. And let me tell you something about STDs. STDs are bad, M'kay. You don't wanna get an STD, or you'll die, M'kay. And let me tell you something about dyin'. Uh, dyin's bad, M'kay.

Well, of course. In any case, according to what we know, microwaves and lasers are really the only way to "wirelessly" transfer enough electricity to power a device, although, as has been discussed, both have major flaws that will probably prevent them from ever being used worldwide. Besides, if one could pick up electricity anywhere, there would be no way to stop people from using it without paying, and electricity, being the big business and commodity that it is, will never be able to be free under a Free Enterprise system (which is the economic system that works best, compaired to all others, such as Communism).

Time isn't something you can touch and manipulate, it's simply the speed at which we interpret the world around us. For example, if our brains could operate twice as fast as they really do, the world we live in would seem to exist in a state only half as fast as the one we know. In theory, however, one could "master time" by speeding up one's thought processes, allowing one to fit a day's worth of thought into merely an hour, and maybe even move fast enough to make it seem as if the rest of the world had stopped, but then there would be other complications, such as a car normally travelling at 60 miles per hour wouldn't seem to move as fast to us, although the effects of being hit by it would be the same.It's a complicated and uncertain science, being, as you said, merely philosophical and theoretical.

So let me get this straight... You want to convert sunlight into a laser beam, and then shine that laser beam onto a solar cell?The problem is that, unless you use a gigantic mirror system to focus more sunlight than would normally hit the solar cell into the laser beam (for example, cover a field with an intricate mirror system that would focus a few acres-worth of sunlight into a single beam that would hit the solar cell), it would make no difference if you convert the sunlight to laser light before shining it on the solar cell, since it is still using the same amount of energy, and according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so you wouldn't get any extra energy simply from converting the energy, and since the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that any conversion of energy will result in a loss of useable energy in the form of heat, you would end up with less energy being converted from light into electricity through to solar cells after converting the sunlight to laserlight than you would if you would simply shine the sunlight onto the solar panel directly.

Alan, maybe I completely missed what you're trying to say, but if I didn't, I see a few problems with your statements.1) Plants take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen, so there wouldn't be a problem with the CO2 content, although there may not be enough nitrogen in the atmosphere to support plant life.2) Yeah, I'd say that 200K is usually cooler than 250K, unless special circumstances apply.3) Mutations due to radiation aren't as common as science fiction makes them seem. More likely, the plants would simply die from the radiation, not mutate into some form of super-plant, like what happens in the science fiction movies of the '60s.4) The plants wouldn't die of continuous mutations, they would just die of a lack of necessary nutrients and chemicals to keep them alive. The soil of Mars would probably be very high in radiation and low in nitrogen and other necessary nutrients, since, as far as we know, there was never any life on Mars (and as such, no organic material to feed the plant), plus the extreme temperatures would be too much for most kinds of plants.

Thank you, Farseed. I meant energy is transferred through the photos in lasers - I just didn't word it very well.As for the transfer of electricity through the core, it's true that it may be possible, since it is simply a super-hot ball of melted iron, but as I said, electricity flows on the outside of a conductor - not through it, and as such, one would need wiring to go right to the core, which obviously wouldn't work, since any wiring extending that distance would not only be impractical, it would also melt in the high temperatures of the core, thus making the whole endeavor pointless. No, at the moment, power grids are the best way to distribute electricity to homes.As for small appliances, there will probably never be a way to power a handheld device without some kind of solid conductor to transfer the electricity, but there is technology being developed for batteries that are made of metal plates with microfilaments between them, allowing for energy storage compairable to that of a chemical battery, but, obviously, without the chemicals, and they would be able to change within seconds, versus the hours required to charge a chemical battery.

*bump*A review would be very helpful, people. Please let me know what you think.

Because we are in a Cancer-Scare similar to the Red Scare of the 50's. If someone cries "cancer", it could get a perfectly good product perminantly removed from the market. Besides, everyone, if they live long enough, will eventually get some kind of cancer. There's really no way to stop it from happening, unless one develops a treatment or "cure" for it.

I don't see how having the sugar attached to the cup would be any better than having a rack of sugar packets near the coffee (as they do now). It's really not that difficult to grab one, rip it open, and sprinkle some sugar into the coffee, and it's much easier and cheaper than the method you proposed.

Depending on the breed, dogs can be as smart (or smarter) than cats - they just aren't as clean, as you mentioned (I'm a cat person, by the way).The nice thing about teaching a cat to use the toilet is that if said cat is a mother, she will probably teach her kittens to use the bathroom the same way she does, although, as you mentioned, there may be initial problems until the kittens can master their sense of balance.

Okay, there's a few problems here. First of all, the reason one cannot transfer electricity through the Earth is because electricity flows around the outside of a solid object (i.e. a wire), not through it, so the electricity would flow around the entire mantle, instead of directly through the core. This means that the electricity would have to cover a much greater surface area, requring an insane amount of amperage. In other words, it would take many times the total number of power plants there are currently built on Earth working together to produce that kind of current, and even then, it wouldn't be able to be completed in a full circuit, since the mantle would only be able to transfer electricity one direction - not two.As for there being ways to transfer electricity without wires, there is such a way - it's called lasers. Lasers, of course, are made of high-focused energy, and this energy can be focused to transfer power (NASA has thought about using this to power certain spacecraft), but once again, it's not very efficient, and if anything would block the path, that flow of electricity would be immediately cut (not to mention it could seriously injure or kill someone, depending on how powerful the laser would be).And as for using static electricity from the air to power a device, the problem is that there is not enough energy in normal air to power something that would consume that much energy, and once again, there would be no way to complete a circuit, so the energy wouldn't go anywhere.

There's a big difference between making things smell better and dissolving them. Any decomposition process will have either harmful or malodorous gasses as a result, so as you said, this would only be practical for landfills, but even then, the pricess of such an endeavor would be astronomical, not to mention there's a lot of stuff in dumps that isn't biodegradeable.It's much better to just recycle, since that gets most of what you're talking about done on it's own, and as for organic waste, it will decompose on it's own over time, or one could make a compost heap or just throw it into one's garden.

The problem is that Mar's atmosphere allegedly isn't thick enough to hold much heat, so the plants would simply freeze and die.As for taking greenhouse gasses, it's not like we can just pack them in a suitcase. They have to be compressed, stored, hauled, etc. which means lots of fuel and lots of money, plus if we expected to put Earth's atmosphere on Mars to make it more liveable, that would be taking away from the atmosphere we have (obviously), therefore making Earth less habitable.

That's the general idea of any fuel, Amhso.Human presence in space will not come about the way Star Trek depicts it. Humanity is just too stingy to throw away money chasing stars (literally) for an indefinate period of time. Eventually, NASA will dry up (unless something like extraterrestrial life is discovered), since there is little or no profit, and very high expenses. On the other hand, space tourism may become the big thing within the next few decades, with the current concepts of Virgin Galatic to the plans for the Space Hotel. However, the only thing that will encourage Humans to move further from Earth than maybe the moon would be potential profit. For example, a fuel that is very rare on Earth, but is abundant elsewhere in the solar system.

As Amhso said, there's much more to a functioning human than the sum of it's parts. Memories are a combination of chemicals, eletrical impulses, and neural connections that would be so complicated to recreate, the chances of actually doing it would rival the chances of Evolution itself.Also, according to the Quantum Theory (or relevant material), one cannot transport an object from one place to another instantly - one can only duplicate the object. In an experiment, two atoms were placed in seperate containers. Scientists were able to turn Atom A into Atom B, but not because Atom B moved - only the properties of said atom were transferred. So, if one was able to recreate a human using a similar technique, one would have two identical humans (which may or may not function and think exactly the same).No, I'm afraid the only way any kind of teleportation could be done (as far as we now know) would be by sending a person to an alternate dimension in which space is disproportionate to space in this dimension (i.e. an inch in the other dimension would be a mile in this one), and then bring one back into this dimension. Kind of like putting a door through a wall instead of walking around it.Star Trek certainly does make for good entertainment, but very little of it is possible, or even practical.

This is obviously a referral link, which is not allowed, according to the Xisto terms of service.

Sure, it's impractical, but it looks like a nice desk decoration, which it really the point of many things (for example, those little balls hanging from a string that click together, or those electric balls/lava lamps).