Cerebral Stasis

I'm sure that they'll find some way to make it visible even if it's right before one's eyes. It's a good point, though.

It's useless because health and fatigue cannot be summarized as a percentage and if one cannot figure out the consequences of their actions without an HUD, they should not be allowed to mingle with society.

Do you mean that all scientists searching for a cure for a specific illness/disease using the same treatment should collaborate? In which case, I agree with you, but as far as scientists trying to cure a disease in general, not all scientists have the same ideas about how to attack a certain virus, thus is why they work apart. I'm against abortion, myself, but if a fetus is already aborted, why not donate it to science? Making stem cell research illegal won't keep the many fetuses that are aborted by irresponsible parents, so I don't see why one shoud not use those (already dead) fetuses for science, since they wouldn't feel anything anyway and could in no way be saved. I love eating meat. Beef, chicken, some fish, etc. It tastes good (which, since we can taste it, is proof that we are meant to eat it), it's good for you, and there's no reason not to eat it. Well, depending on the person...i guess one could help maintain good health , but eventually the HIV virus, will come and well..get you. Perhaps, but animals can't talk. They aren't self-aware, and thus are no more worth saving than an insect. Just today, I was trying to get out my old bicycle to go for a ride. While opening the shed, I didn't notice the wasp nest on the inside of the door. After I turned around to try to get something, I was attacked by wasps and one stung me on the left temple. I didn't hesitate to kill every one of them and destroy their nest. Why? Because wasps need not infest human dwellings, since they can live in places in the wild where we cannot. I felt no remorse for killing them, and they felt no pain or fear for being killed. The majority of animals (that are tested upon, anyway) have no real intelligence. They live their lives completely by instinct and never really realize what's going on. If a rat had an ear growing on it's face, it wouldn't realize it any more than if you were told that your left hand was actually a graft. To them it's just another body part. They don't care about mating (and lab rats are bred so they cannot, anyway) and have no real purpose to live save to be experimented upon. Lab rats are bred specifically for this purpose and if the purpose did not exist, neither would lab rats. They are primarily all albinos and rather small and as such could not survive in the wild, so either they live being fed and cared for by humans until they are needed to have a test performed, or not exist at all. Would you rather live until 21 and then, after perhaps five days of annoying boils over you body, die, or would you rather have not existed at all? According to this article, HIV and AIDS are essentially the same virus, but the difference is simply what one's CD4 T count is and what diseases the infected person is exhibiting.

I was never "bagging" on the iPod, I was just explaining why I considered it to be overrated and why I didn't see why they should be preferred over any other brand simply because of their popularity.

I didn't forget it, I just didn't reply concerning it.

First, antimatter does not occur naturally and thus would have to be produced in quantities that would nearly equal the mass of the Earth in order to destroy it. According to this article, one would need 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter 2,500,000,000,000 tons of antimatter and 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules of energy, which is about what the sun produces in a week. Unless one discovers a dimension (as the article suggests) in which one can transport matter to instantly convert it to antimatter, such production would take quite a few centuries (and assuming that it would all be collected for an Earth-destroying bomb is silly - no leader is foolish enough to consider destroying an entire planet [and no, nuking enemies is not the same as destroying the planet]). It's not exactly an impending doom. 500 years is a long time. Second, it doesn't matter how many people are drinking the water, it's still coming back. Ocean water will evaporate and rain as freshwater, be consumed, and then evaporate again from the body or feces/urine of creatures and return to the cycle of fresh water. Besides, saltwater can be filtered. It's difficult and expensive, but it's possible.

The universes may not exist in the same place as we see it, but in the same place yet on different universal frequency ranges, so to speak, perhaps. That doesn't mean that if our earth would disappear all the other earths in all the other universes would as well - the atoms are not shared interdimentionally, but there may be identical earths in different dimensions that exist in the same physical place that ours does. Perhaps the atoms even are shared between universes, as this article states: If the atoms do not technically exist in more than one place in once, they may seem to, as is the case with .

First, one cannot "blow up" a planet. Even if one had the resources required, it would take an enormous amount of energy to accomplish such a task, and even then Earth's gravity would pull it back together again (see here and here). As for Earth running out of water, Earth's water isn't going anywhere. We have the same amount of water now that we had a million years ago (assuming no comets brought some extra since then). Water recycles itself and does not disappear from a planet. Even if enormous amounts were split or converted into different substances, there would always be more water being made through chemical reactions to make up for the loss. No, water may not be where we want it when we want it, but it will always be around. A more likely demise of Earth would be the aging of the sun (which is inevitable), which would push Earth's temperature outside the life-supporting margins, either leaving Earth frozen or burned, but not short on water.

I wouldn't go that far. Remember, Futurama has been confirmed for at least 13 new episodes.

Yeah... Anyway, Jasper, the reason that all scientists don't group together to research cures is because not all of the ideas work and not all the scientists are needed. Having a hundred scientists working on a project that could be done by five will not make cell cultures grow any faster or results be any more accurate. It's all a time issue, not a personnel one. As for lab testing on lab rats, not all vaccine ideas work, thus the need for so many test animals. The tests must be performed on some living creature similar to humans, though, or else no vaccines would be created and millions more humans would die than would have to. During World War II, the Nazis got quick results from experiments by avoiding the animal testing and other experimental/developmental stages and operating directly on humans (in that case, Jews). Many died, but they got fast results and no animals were killed. Would you prefer that? Someone or something has to be tested to see if vaccines work, and animals are the best choice. They're quick to breed/grow, they are not self-conscious (sentient), and they are lower on the food chain. Are you a vegetarian as well? If so, I'd just like to point out that animals eat other animals as well, and we are animals, albet more intelligent ones (in some cases, anyway). Besides, the testing animals aren't treated like dirt. They are given as good a life as they could hope for. They are given good food and are kept clean and healthy. They return the favor by allowing themselves to be tested upon (which, in the case that something goes wrong, they would be put down and out of their misery), since they don't really offer any other purpose (they're not pets, after all). It's a better life than most wild animals could dream of. As for stem cell research, I don't see what the problem is as long as the testing is done on pre-aborted fetuses (meaning babies that were aborted anyway - you might as well use what's left for the good of humanity while you can).

It depends on how one interprets "more than one universe." If one considers it to mean that there is another cluster of galaxies outside our own, I would definately say yes, while if one is referring to a multiverse, or series of similar universes existing on the same physical plane but in different phases, then the answer is less certain, although Quantum Mechanics suggests "yes."

Chances are that the Congo would be mostly rainforest which, I'm sorry to say, is a bit difficult for orbiting satellites to penetrate.

By destroy the country, you mean society in said country, correct? No matter what happens, there will always be some who survive and work to rebuild society.

The cupholder idea is clever, but unfortunately a bit impractical. In any case, the best sensor would be a weak IR sensor that would be able to see only half an inch above said sensor or so, detecting if an object (such as a cup) was set in place, then the tubing would be inflated snugly around the cup (but not so tight that one could not lift the cup), and then when one began to lift the cup (1/2 inch), the IR sensor would no longer detect the cup and would deflate the tubing.A more practical (and currently implemented) design would be/is a robot-like gripper that snaps to different sizes (not automatically, mind you) in order to hold most any size of cup.

The Bible does mention dragons, but then again it mentions giants and boats that hold two of every species of animal that ever existed as well.And dragons didn't necessarily exist because a lot of cultures wrote about it, it may just be a commonly-imagined mythical creature (like dwarves and elves).

If I'm not mistaken, there is a chemical that, when exposed to air, ignites. This could be a possible way that said dragon would breathe fire (in theory). Of course in reality, I wouldn't count on it. If a creature spouted fire, there would always be the chance of a hiccup in which it would breathe fire literally and sear it's lungs, killing it. Not exactly an evolutionary leap forward (probably why they're extinct, if they ever existed). Then, if these dragons were, as fairytales tell us, about the size of a large dinosaur, one would wonder how they would possibly get enough food without wiping out every other species around them, not to mention flying. For a creature the size of an Apatosaurus to fly would, in my mind, require wings so gigantic that they could not possibly be supported by such a small body in comparison (meaning that each wing would have to be perhaps half a dozen or more times the creature's size in order to actually come close to having a large enough span to create lift), and then such a gigantic wingspan would require an enormously powerful muscle group to move it, which would burn energy so fast that the creature would probably fly just so it could eat, and if it ever stopped eating, it would starve (meaning that, if it flew a lot, it maybe couldn't survive two days without food). As you can see in this Wikipedia article, many cultures have imagined a species of dragons, but there is absolutely no proof to go with any of them. I would think that there would be at least one dragon fossil or some evidence thereof, but seeing there is none, I'm willing to bet that dragons never did actually exist.

Touchy. Hey, I'm all for science fiction, but as I said, this is an ideas thread, not a science fiction thread, and I enjoy attempting to keep things a bit more level-headed around here (like with an old topic in which a guy suggested a real HUD that can tell you how much life you have left and what the consequences of your actions are).

That Zune opening flash disgusts me. Literally."We're all friends here"? Sounds like a scheming way to get some email addresses to sell to spam lists.

The topic is on having a television in your eye or brain, not a computer.

Dragons do, in fact, exist.

I have similar personal feelings, Ink, but I don't base my opinions off of what I want it to be like, only what has been proven and/or what is most likely what really happens.There's nothing wrong with the concept of a neverending, thoughtless sleep upon dying. It would be a peaceful and restful (naturally) end to one's live (however long or short it may be).As Ink said, if one was able to live for an eternity and do anything, at a certain point, one would have done everything (literally) that there was to do many times over and would know everything (literally) that there was to know. At that point, what purpose would there be in existing? Life (or, more accurately, existance) would be without any goals or anything to look forward to. When that time would come, it would be best just to cease to exist (possibly thus is why humanity will never reach a point at which they know and have explored/done everything because if that point would come, the race as a whole would no longer have a reason to exist [save to spread like parasites, which we already do]). In order to avoid this outcome, humanity builds up to a certain point of understanding, then destroys themselves and forgets what they have learned (in other words, they reboot, so to speak). This keeps them from losing purpose and keeps them in check (at least until we are finally exterminated as a race, be it from the sun exploding, an asteroid, or some other unforeseen circumstance).

Some claim that they can prove the soul exists by showing it has weight through an experiment measuring the weight of a body right before and right after death. However, this test seems to be rather inconclusive.

Well, it would be best if people did not, as a majority, consider life to be a video game. If they do, they may try some very odd things and blame the "Great Gamer" for forcing them to do said deeds.I think I smell a religion.

Well I can see the advantage of being able to plug a small device into one's USB port and then transfer music quickly and directly, but who the manufacturer is and what the device looks like doesn't matter to me - it's all about whether or not it works well.

I'm not sure how truely useful it is, but it's very well-made. The template is clean, simple, and nicely colored. Overall, I like it. Congratulations.