fastortoise

I wish I had the willpower to go to school during the summer... it would cut my completion of my degree down a whole year. But I need my summers to work and bask in the sun :mrgreen:

Today I turn 20, and my post count reflects this awesome achievement 8-)

nobody loves me and neither do i - them crooked vultures :thumbsup:

"it's their fault for bringing children into a war" "yep" WOW.... really? Made me :wall: so hard

You cant say that and expect people not to ask what happened. (This is your cue.) I don't really know, it's just been weird. The only thing I can really explain is that I fell asleep (because I've been really tired today for some reason) and then I woke up and I had absolutely no idea who I was, where I was, or why I was there (I was in my house). I'm not talking about where you wake up and you're really confused for a minute, I'm talking I was dazed and I have no clue what I did until I fell asleep again somewhere else and then woke back up. I also sort of remember thinking I didn't have legs. But I got up and walked around. I honestly have no clue what was going on. Yeah, I'm coming down with the flu and my ears are clogging up, and my balance is screwed up from that. I take my time going up and down stairs and my parents chuckle as I make my way cautiously upstairs, because if I would walk normally I'd skip a step and land on my shins.

Please, do go on... foam party, haven't been to one? :s Yup, ended up at a foam party. Great laugh. I didn't like the one I went to last year. Can't dance & drink at the same time... you get foam all up in your drank. Maybe if you're drunk before going... yeah that'd be alright.

If you're not too busy from all the studying and going to parties or the campus pub to play pokemon, then you aren't cool.

Since it was 23 degrees out today, I spent most of the day outside. I think the high temperature so early in the year caused some awesome hormonal change in the ladies, cause they were all over my bod (okay, I exaggerated that second part). But seriously, wow. I felt like a highschool kid watching all the girls walk around in their skin tight yoga pant type things. I don't care if those pants amplify their farts by like 10 times, they drive me nuts.

I've learned that even morons can operate a computer, that they are widespread throughout the world, and that intelligent people who can't even articulate properly over the internet annoy me even more than the morons.

Misa <3: The one and only girl I would ever consider stalking

You wear a school uniform? :thumbsup:

I went to work out in the morning today - terrible idea. I was exhausted for the rest of the day <_< . Incline, decline and horizontal bench after a 20 minute run. The only upside - my biceps were so engulfed after my workout that I had a nice pillow to sleep on. I fell asleep on my arm in the library and had a dream where I tripped/fell and woke up instantly, knocking my books all the way on the other side of the super long table. I wanted to get out of there ASAP and even ignored the pretty girl blushing at me - I was too embarrassed to start hitting on anyone.

9-10 weeks won't get you far. IF you truly want to change your lifestyle like you said, why do you have a deadline? Are you going to die in 9-10 weeks? If you're planning on going back to your old fat lifestyle after your deadline then don't bother improving in the first place. Specifics to get you started: Cut the sugar (no more candy, son) and eat more vegetables. Yes, your parents are right when they say to eat more veggies. Exercise 30 minutes a day, and make sure to work up a sweat. Change the exercises you do so that you don't work the same muscles two days in a row (run one day, situps and pushups the next, alternate, ect.) Eat fruit to give you energy boosts and drink twice the amount of water you're drinking now.

Well why do you think we should use genetics to improve our lives? If you ask me, the problems that humans face aren't genetic ones, they are problems of society, ones that can't be fixed by genetics. Very true. But I'm talking more about sustainability problems, like trying to keep the atmospheric content constant, the earth nice and nutrient filled for our plants to grow, make enough energy for future generations which will undoubtedly consume a lot, ect. And all this would have to be done by genetically engineering other lifeforms, not us. Here's my train of thought: Humans noticed that caves were an ideal place to live & reproduce, but not caves are not widespread. So they took rocks out of their natural habitats and constructed houses. Then, humans noticed that mammals living in cold climates had a thick fur coat. So they killed wholly mammoths and other big mammals and made their own fur. Soon after, they noticed a pattern in flower production in different parts of their region. So they wandered the place, and every time they stopped they had a nice field of food ready to be eaten if they calculated their timing properly. This soon led to farming. Now, we are starting to understand the intricacies of nature and how it's nature's diversity that leads to more "natural services" and thus wealth. We now know things like phytoplankton have the same nitrogen:carbon:phosphorus ratios as deep sea rocks, and largely contribute to our atmospheric content. What I imagine our next step to be is to use to ocean's large surface area to introduce a lot of phytoplankton, happily converting CO2 to O2. But they won't be able to live in every climate found across the ocean, so we will have to genetically engineer their "software" in order to maximize their numbers.

Yes I've read Brave New World. I'm just not as interested in human genetics as you guys are - I prefer thinking about how we could mold and use Nature's successful organisms for our own well being. I don't think the ethical people would ever let us engineer human embryo genomes, even though we could.

The point is to imagine how our world would be like in the future if we were given a pass to mold life using genome engineering. A lot of people came up with what could go wrong, and I find the post about engineering humans to have a hidden disease, easily activated by whoever made them, really interesting. We can already do this at the organism level (viruses do it all the time), so its very plausible to do it at the embryo level, too. I was thinking less about humans and more about amplifying cool animals/plant traits, and in what way they'd be practical.

I always try making threads where people actually feel the need to reply, so I avoid creating opinionated, news, or any sort of controversial threads that go nowhere. After a long period of avoiding making a new thread, I've finally found something worth thinking and discussing on here. Obviously this first post is too long, I will trim it down as time goes along. Scientists. Even though I'm surrounded by them on a daily basis, I usually avoid them. When I look at them I see empty bodies and brains, working on a research project even though they already know it's outcome - they are just pleasing their grant donators. Unless a scientists is extremely well established in his or her institution, there is no way they will do any groundbreaking paradigm shifting research. This frustrates me to no end - but thats really the only way science and the government work hand in hand. Even though you may think scientists as extremely creative minds, they are always confined to the thin restrictions imposed on them by people who have their own agendas. Most fields of science are like this. If you're a biologist, you can go out and observe primate activity and establish a conclusion on how their society works. If you're a scientist who does science for the pure curiosity of knowledge, you are content. If you're like me and want to mess around with the basis of all life, regular science is a bore. That's why genetics is so appealing to me - we have discovered Nature's toolbox that created every single living organism on the Earth, past and present. We now have the knowledge to use this toolbox for our own good: we can screen human embryos for common diseases and only implant the healthy ones, we can duplicate entire grape plant genomes in order to make giant grapes, we can clone sheep, dogs and humans if they let us, we can engineer plants to mine out toxic substances from the soil and deposit them safely, we can synthesize an entire genome, insert it into a bacterial cell stripped of its DNA, and it just picks it up and chugs along happily. These are things we can already do, only decades after genetics/biochemistry was established. My question is, what could we do? I'm not interested in what we should do - I've been in enough boring university lectures on ethics to understand the general population's opinion about genetic matters. I want you to let your mind work, think about what potential uses our knowledge of genetics can help our everyday lives. Don't be afraid if you think your ideas are too radical - given enough time, I honestly believe we can mold life however we please. Thinking about these things is truly the only thing keeping me in the field of science, and I'm sure many of you also get excited when they think about the future. Humans living indefinitely? Bacterial factories converting carbon dioxide into oxygen? Super cows with extra delicious and tender meat? The point here is to post creative well thought out ideas, so save your sarcastic "WOOO POKEMON" or "BUTLER DRAGONS" posts for another thread.

You... don't see anything wrong about going to school naked? It's all about being presentable. It's the reason why most public schools don't want their students to wear revealing, offensive, or overly stupid looking clothing. It makes the school look bad. You can't let society tell you how to live your life, man. Today I got my canuk fix of road hockey, now its time to write up another 3 thousand word lab report <_<

Starting up running again. I ran home from the train for the first time yesterday as it finally warmed up - my 10 pound bag destroyed my back,,, I'll have to stop carrying so many books around :rolleyes: .

Well that depends what is interesting to you. and what kind of article, like an academic one? Well I'm guessing you don't have access to any online article databases... If you're looking for an online article, find one with an interesting abstract using Google Scholar and send me the url, I get free access to all sorts scientific magazine sites. If you're looking for an article about anything... regular Google.

Wait... it was at an internet cafe. If they thought he was wall hacking, couldn't they just walk over to his computer and see? You know, instead of stabbing the guy in the head.

anyone have a friend code for this old fart? :mrgreen:

Awesome St-Patties day: Woke up at 7 to go drink with friends until 11am (they all work afternoons), which was when I hopped the train and headed to university. A one hour lecture later, I'm talking with the pretty girl in my organic class which my friend refused to introduce me to her - I took matters into my own hands. After 2 hours of hanging with her, I head off to my bio class. It's just a small class taught by a TA, and halfway through people started getting restless and wanted to go drinking. The TA proposes we go drink at the campus bar (WHAT? A BAR ON CAMPUS!?!?), and everyone agrees. I'm already pretty blitzed and try lagging behind the group, which was when a group of girls asked me if I was coming: "I'm already drunk". They laugh and ask me how I managed to answer all the questions the TA asked in class, so I told them I had the answer sheet (I didn't, my classmates are pretty dense when it comes to biology) and hinted that they were quite hot. Next thing I know I'm drinking with them and the TA at the (EXTREMELY NEARBY, I CAN'T BELIEVE IT) campus pub. Took the last train home, and when I get here, my friend tells me his mom died. So I guess the reason why I wrote this long story is because it was a great day, and I wish it could go down in the history books of fun school days, but I know I will always remember it as the day I failed at giving my friend and his family my condolences because I was still in an arrogant party mood. :oops:

You guys are absolutely 100% correct that he shouldn't be in the left lane if he's just gonna sit there and have a picnic, but you still should never pass on the right. It's less dangerous to ride up his [wagon] than to pass him on with the right lane - give his car a little kiss with yours if he still doesn't move. Seriously, passing from the right is the #1 cause of accidents on the highway in my eyes.

I enjoy saying ridonkadonk. For example: if something ridiculous just happened, I like exclaiming "that was ridonkadonkabonkalonk" Or, in the only other case I use it, when a girl with a large booty wooty walks past I like exclaiming "shes got a lot of junkalunk in her trunkabonkalonkalonk" HAPPY SAINT PATRICKS DAY!