AzurePhoenix

True, but in a better world, those kind of parents wouldn't be allowed breeding licenses.

Actually yes, I was. You're the first person to ever pick up on that.

No one would ever try to stereotype Canada that way. You guys are a special case JK, my favorite people are Canadese

As long as it was furry. A naked rat's tail with those pulsing veins would be plain creepy.

Why a long, long time? We can already "reconfigure" a person's genes to treat hereditary illnesses, and we can engineer pea plants that glow in the dark by utilizing firefly genes

In a world where everyone liked the same things, sure, but people aren't automatons,they're indivuals, with individual likes and dislikes. This couple wants their daughter to look like the Jessica Simpson stereotype, but this one over here wants a nice olive Jessica Alba type, and those freaks over there prefer Angelina Jolie. These guys like smart, slim boys, they like stout and athletic boys. And I imagine parents would want their kids to share their features to some extent. As much as people seem to dislike diveristy, we really do relish our individuality, and prefer to distinguish ourselves from others. Plus, imagine picking your kid up from daycare if they all looked the same. EDIT: Sorry, didn't realize you guys were already discussing this while I was typing a response.

That's the essence of the quote. You can't accurately predict it because, according to chaos, minute interactions between objects as well as particles can cause huge changes in single events, and single events can change history in unimaginable ways. I'm not saying you can't predict a possible future, but that's all it is, a single possible future among an ocean of infinite other possibilities. Example - How might history have changed if Ben Franklin or Abe Lincoln had caught polio or something when they were babies? Or if young Einstein fell out of a tree and broke his neck?

LOL. Growing things is nice to. You do botany? Cuz I'd appreciate it if you tried to breed the perfect raddish. Crisp, red, large and peppery, but not too soft.

Eh, nobody's perfect

Once again, I shall stand behind the words of the great Master Yoda "Always in motion, the future is" and as Ian Malcolm so eloquently put it "There's, another example. See, here I'm now by myself, uh, er, talking to myself. That's, that's chaos theory."

I said yes, but my argument is that our society and tech has placed too much control in our own hands, rather than under "nature's control" where it belongs, and it is gene-engineering's task to sort of make-up for what problems that might cause.

The carapace is only the fused shell of the "back" and head. You can cut a nice window into his "torso" without doing too much direct damage. But as Mokele said, he won't last long, though I had one pull through for over 24 hours.And besides, around here they're invasive pests and a threat to the welfare of Arizona's aquatic life. It's my duty as a State-Loving Arizonan to dispose of the critters. Nothing sadistic about it. Kittens would qualify me for sadistic, not crawdads. I consider it healthy eccentricity coupled with youthful curiosity. Dammit Mokele, now I have to take the time to do your thing.

You said you like biology? Well, you'll love this.... Get a few fat Crawdads (crayfish where you are maybe?) a pair of fine scizzors, and tweezers. The rest should come naturally. What's tough (but really cool) is smoothly removing the carapace without killing it or causing too much organ damage.

Hmmm, back to less disturbing anatomical improvements... would a higher density (X2) of red blood cells cause problems? I know they would increase risk of harm concerning clogged arteries, but would they pose such a risk in a healthy circulatory system? Oh, here you are talking about That, and the first idea that comes into my head is blood flow, typical...

Mark my words, I can be a particularly malicious and sadistic sociopath when the desire arises . True. Okay, Almost no hair below the neck. What about a totally separate trachea and esophagus? I have a tendency to choke on anything, from tacos to Jell-O.

No hair anywhere below the neck. I'm sick of "furry" people.

American term, regarding your "insult" . In this case, it would roughly translate as "very smart of you to rethink your words before you got yourself de-masculinated in a particularly bloody fashion" I don't know, but I'd expect we'd have to deal with getting dust and airborn stuff outa our gills, unlike them fishies. But you're right, getting them wet and "sneezing" off the moisture and whatever sticks to it would probably work. But we'd need a way to keep them wet, or else we could just let them dry out while we're on land? And Dak, I like my *cough* feminine anatomy the way it is. Besides, what if your hormone meddling accidently creates a breed of women in a permanent state of Super-PMS? And do you know how obsessively insecure we are about our looks (especially us pretty ones)? The man who took our sex appeal away from us would find his skin flayed, his flesh carved, and his family jewels lit on fire. In birds, the actual lungs are about half the size of a mammals relative to body size, though the heart is double the size. What makes bird lungs more space-consuming are a series of airsacs, which work in a way that ensures only fresh air is ever in the lungs, rather than "good in, bad out, good in, bad out"

That's what I thought ..... And gills would be nice, but where, the neck, the torso? Ouch, would we need a special gill-comb for cleanliness?

Watch it bub You might hurt my feelings

I know quite a bit about basic cell structure and some of the more specific stuff, but my educational level is restricted to Highschool College-Level Bio, hardly adequate for reinventing a species. True this is, but I could do without the anxiety

Limbo sounds nice, lots of insightful intellectuals to pass the time with. I'm withdrawn and am happily content in my misery anyway. I bet Einstein's there, considering it says all the other scientific and philosophical greats seem to be (what's that say about this particular theology?). I wonder if it's got a library?

I'll bet that in the real Hell, on level nine you'll be condemned to an eternity under the charge of an orgy of furbies.

I understand genetics and natural selection, genetic drift and speciation just fine. What I'm unsure about is how our own actions will affect genetic patterns in domestic animals and our own species in the eons to come. And true, you can't hurt evolution itself, and I agree that under normal, natural circumstances, a species cannot be "weakened" in the way that I speak. And it's inarguable that evolution never stops, and probably can't be stopped. But I think you fail to imagine the full scope of possiblities regarding the future of mankind. Who's to say that thirty-thousand years down the line we're still stuck on this dirt-ball, and some cataclysm reduces us to stone-age levels again. Suddenly, where's all that technological protection? Silk Moth do well in captivity, but can't survive in the wild. Someday, when humans no longer can or need to care for that breed, they'll go extinct. No one can really know whether or not the same applies to us, though certainly less drastically. And really, we've only been influencing our evolution for a short time in the scheme of things. As of yet, we probably haven't made any potentially devasting changes in our genes, but give us a few more millennia in our current state, and who knows what we might do. The point is, we know far less about genetics then we like to give ourselves credit for. We only just discovered gene-sequences can code for more than one protein. For Cheezus's sake, we only just were able to prove that sex is good for evolution!

A good ol' paleontology/archaeology forum would be nice.