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TheBritishInvasion
Joined: 23 Mar 2008
Posts: 1846
Location: The couch
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 Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:10 am Post subject: Random Thought of the Day |
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I was thinking about spiders and beetles, then I thought "My brain is bigger than a hundred of them but I'm still scared of one."
Please tell me I'm not the only one who has these kind of thoughts.
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Britland as dubbed by AsA
Avatar courtesy of Footloose
Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.
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theBSDude
Joined: 09 Jul 2008
Posts: 1800
Location: The boring part of Washington
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 3:52 pm Post subject: |
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What if we turn out to be the super-advanced alien race that enslaves the universe? That'd be kinda trippy.
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...In accordance with the prophesy.
TheBSDude, dubbed 'BS' by Asa and nicknamed 'Thebes.'
Keeper of the Tristam, The Amazing Non-Emo Vampire!(tm) and a Massive List of Webcomics.
"I'm like a ninja with no hopes or dreams." --Wally of Dilbert |
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Nem
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 2112
Location: England
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:07 pm Post subject: |
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Is Squick Squee's evil relative?
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Never forget,
We stroll along the roof of hell
Gazing at flowers.
- Issa |
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spawnofjaws
Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 559
Location: North Carolina! And proud of it...!
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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not to worry, I have lots of thoughts like those....
But that may not be a good thing for you...
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Hoffman icon courtesy of my very good friend, Isaymakebelieve, on LJ, check her out! http://community.livejournal.com/isaymakebelieve/
In my brain, I'm someone famous AND important!
Dubbed 'Egg' by ASA, but also responds to "spegg"...
Keeper of Oliblish and Teh Poodle Stick....
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Tinu.
Joined: 23 Mar 2008
Posts: 3660
Location: The land of dreams
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject: |
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Do bugs think we're serial killers?
no, you're not. XD
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong
"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein |
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theBSDude
Joined: 09 Jul 2008
Posts: 1800
Location: The boring part of Washington
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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Do bugs think?
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...In accordance with the prophesy.
TheBSDude, dubbed 'BS' by Asa and nicknamed 'Thebes.'
Keeper of the Tristam, The Amazing Non-Emo Vampire!(tm) and a Massive List of Webcomics.
"I'm like a ninja with no hopes or dreams." --Wally of Dilbert |
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TheBritishInvasion
Joined: 23 Mar 2008
Posts: 1846
Location: The couch
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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Skin is waterproof.
That's just weird.
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Britland as dubbed by AsA
Avatar courtesy of Footloose
Keeper of Tengu's electricity and Willow's 'what did you just say' eyes.
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Tinalles
Site Admin
Joined: 22 Mar 2008
Posts: 1630
Location: Grand Forks
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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Honey is the only food which won't rot if left alone and untreated. It's got antibiotics in it. Bees are crazy smart.
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Keeper of The Remnant Minuon (cognomen Lucy, the Eaten One) and the Emissary Caeli |
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theBSDude
Joined: 09 Jul 2008
Posts: 1800
Location: The boring part of Washington
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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Maybe bees are just tiny bio-robots, using DNA as code, and each one has the approx. intellect of an ipod shuffle.
The queen is like the big ipod in this metaphor. Or maybe the iStore.
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...In accordance with the prophesy.
TheBSDude, dubbed 'BS' by Asa and nicknamed 'Thebes.'
Keeper of the Tristam, The Amazing Non-Emo Vampire!(tm) and a Massive List of Webcomics.
"I'm like a ninja with no hopes or dreams." --Wally of Dilbert |
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spawnofjaws
Joined: 20 May 2008
Posts: 559
Location: North Carolina! And proud of it...!
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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Does that mean that every time a new queen bee comes into power everybody gets an upgrade...?!
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Hoffman icon courtesy of my very good friend, Isaymakebelieve, on LJ, check her out! http://community.livejournal.com/isaymakebelieve/
In my brain, I'm someone famous AND important!
Dubbed 'Egg' by ASA, but also responds to "spegg"...
Keeper of Oliblish and Teh Poodle Stick....
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Tinu.
Joined: 23 Mar 2008
Posts: 3660
Location: The land of dreams
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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| TheBritishInvasion wrote: | Skin is waterproof.
That's just weird. |
It also acts as a sponge and absorbs so many things that come into contact with it - like ink. I wonder if people could engineer skin so that we could breathe through it like frogs?
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong
"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein |
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Dark Mirf
Joined: 22 Apr 2008
Posts: 297
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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Now thats just plain creepy. I cant help but think that Voldemort have skin like that.
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Keeper of Gwendowlyn's red hair.
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Tinalles
Site Admin
Joined: 22 Mar 2008
Posts: 1630
Location: Grand Forks
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| Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 1:00 am Post subject: |
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| Tinu. wrote: | | I wonder if people could engineer skin so that we could breathe through it like frogs? |
Sure. I bet it'd be tough, but there are lots of clever people out there.
It'd have all kinds of interesting side-effects. Like, a skin-breather would have a really good reason to avoid wearing clothes.
Also, I suspect that the end result would be very different from the skin that we have now. In order to absorb enough oxygen from water to support life in a creature our size, you'd need a LOT more surface area than our skin presently offers. If you look at fish gills (mind the link, it's a bit ucky), you'll see that they fan out in many layered lamellae to maximize the surface area. And I bet you dollars for doughnuts that the same thing holds true at a microscopic level -- thousands, millions of cell branches, all designed to maximize the amount of body-surface in contact with water at any given moment. So the skin would probably wind up kind of furry, and also really fragile, which makes it a poor design. Lose too much skin surface and you die. And of course skin is the single most vulnerable organ your have, because it's constant in contact with the outside world.
If you want a permanent water-dweller in more or less human form, I'm inclined to think that replacing the lungs with gills makes more sense, probably with intake gills on the upper chest and output gills on the sides just below the rib cage. That way, water goes in the front and comes out the sides, so that you don't need to waste energy "exhaling" oxygen poor water. Also has the advantage that you're not "inhaling" water you've already removed oxygen from. Of course, people like that would never sing; but they might well raise dance to greater heights than any previous people, especially since they could dance in three dimensions.
On the other hand, if you're aiming for an amphibian humanoid, the results would be much more similar to us. You could retain the lungs, and just take the skin absorption as an added bonus, to give you longer underwater at one go. Still side-effects, though. I imagine you'd have to keep your skin moist, and that it would be easily irritated by contaminants, dirt, chemicals, and sunlight. Would probably lead to people with nocturnal habits and little or no clothing, except when taking long trips inland, when they'd need wet clothing to protect their skin and keep it moist.
But why would they ever go inland? Perhaps to avoid depredations by full water-breathers, who hunt upriver from the deep sea sometimes and make fearsome opponents in the swift, quiet battles of the aquatic world. Or perhaps to trade with the old-style dry humans, who at least can speak and sing, unlike the silent swimmers who have no lungs to give song with.
In Joan Slonczewski's novels, "Elysium" and a few others, she wrote about the Sharers, who live on (essentially) giant lily pads in an ocean world, and have symbiotic microbes living in their skin that help them absorb oxygen from water. Interesting society. Of course the microbe had the unfortunate side effect of rendering them all bright purple, but hey, if you live on an ocean planet purple skin is a small price to pay for making it really hard to drown.
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CBB
Joined: 12 Apr 2008
Posts: 243
Location: Over there! *points*
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| Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 3:19 am Post subject: |
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A civilization would be unlikely to form completely underwater anyway, due to the ocean's more stable environment and the need for fire in order to progress pass the Stone Age, so amphibian or higher would be the way to go, but only if they had suitably advanced hearts to support the blood needed to fuel cognitive thought.
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I love children...but I could never eat a whole one.
Psychosomatic! That boy needs therapy...
Ya que estamos en el baile, ¡bailemos!
Keeper of Earthsong's Wispy Wooshy Memory Ball
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Tyris
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 873
Location: Beneath a vast mound of curly hair
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| Posted: Sat Jul 19, 2008 4:47 am Post subject: |
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| spawnofjaws wrote: | | Does that mean that every time a new queen bee comes into power everybody gets an upgrade...?! |
"We are Bee Point Two. Upgrading is mandatory. Hostile elements will be deleted."
((Anyone got enough drawing skills and inclination to draw a Cyberbee?))
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You can't look dignified when you're having fun.
Dubbed "Tetris" by Asa... apparently. 
Keeper of Nanashi's ghostly blue visage and Felucca's hypothetical ejecting nose-cone.
"It's a sad thing when a man loses his cookie." - Nem |
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