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I am not posting this because it's likely to promote health. I'm posting
it because it's interesting. I am entirely at peace with the possibility of
it leading to an early death.
With that in mind:
When women with silicone breast implants get old, the result is
disturbing. I'm sure you've
seen the pictures circulating on the
internet. It seems to me that a more radical approach to silicone
implants would bring something which might at a stretch be seen as
benefits.
Some adipose tissue is essential to health although there are a few
people born with none, who have serious problems as a result. This
minimum healthy quantity should be left. However, the breasts
(female or male), greater and lesser omenta, buttocks and the layers
lining the kidneys, limbs and face are not completely vital as a source
of energy for the body. The other functions of fat include insulation
and mechanical protection.
I therefore suggest the removal of these areas of fat, which amount to
an average of something like a fifth of the body weight in both sexes,
and their replacement by ideally sized and shaped silicone implants.
These would in fact make the body slightly heavier but this would not
be observable. I further suggest that these implants contain a device
which can heat them to body temperature by induction, containing a
thermostat which cuts out at a healthy body temperature.
This body modification would have several results. It would
dramatically reduce the requirement for energy from food while
creating the facility to warm the body electrically more efficiently than
at present - less need to heat buildings. It would make it easier to
avoid weight gain as there would be fewer places to put the fat. The
body's response to insulin would change - at first, my impression was
that this would increase the risk of diabetes but there is some
evidence that removing the canine greater omentum improves
responsiveness to insulin. There would be a rapid and convenient
treatment for hypothermia. There would also be almost inevitably
cardiomyopathy and fatty liver disease. However, since you would die
young, you wouldn't reach the stage where everything but the
implants would go saggy and make it look awful, so that's OK.
Also, you could do the Fight Club thing and maybe sell soap made
from celebrities or achieve a long period of self-sufficiency in the
bathroom, and you could extract the glycerol from that and live off it
for a while too. Since your life would be quite a bit shorter, this would
be of a greater relative advantage than if you just left the fat inside
languishing rather than using it for other purposes.
Remember this?
Body_20part_20removal Not the same, but maybe complementary? [Ling, Mar 29 2012]
[link]
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Like a lot of edgy but not totally outrageous, I see this scheme as best suited for "color" in an outworld scifi; one among many things done by the outworlders to get along in a hostile environment. Maybe a remake of Outland? |
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One could devise these implants so as to provide radiation protection to the bone marrow. I can imagine the dialogue: |
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"We don't need a bunch of nancys out here. Folks that worry they might get sunburn never sign on for a trip to the Kuiper." He looked away, sizing up the balloon spittoon drifting idly in his direction. "Problem is, if our folks liked being told what to do, they'd go Navy. So you got a crowd who don't worry much and don't listen much. They shuck their gear when no-one's watching. Feels good! Then you lose em to AML 3 years into their contract, which is a big waste." He turned slightly and a stream of brown spittle coursed through the air and directly into the receptacle of the floating spittoon, which tumbled away and caromed off a shelf. "So we worked out the Bigass treatment." He patted his own bulky posterior. "Ain't pretty but it works, and in point-four the extra mass don't matter." |
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That's some pretty impressive off-the-cuff creative writing talent
you've got there, [bungston]. I have to admit the thought of low-
gravity environments did occur to me with this one as well for
some reason. It definitely seems bakeable but whereas
presumably there are such things as silicone butt implants, the
market for omentum replacement has surely got to be pretty
small. |
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I have pondered the function of the omentum. I think it must be protective. Maybe to help seal off gut infections? In any case, augmenting the omentum would help protect anything behind it, which includes most everything downstairs. |
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It's mechanically protective and acts as a fat store but any
gastric, duodenal or colonic perforation is bad news. One thing
that's not clear to me is what results from perforation of the
ileum or jejunum, and in fact a certain well-known search engine
is about to be visited to that end. |
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// do the Fight Club thing // |
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Don't talk about Fight Club ... |
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// maybe sell soap made from celebrities // |
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<Obligatory Soylent Green reference> |
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"Soylent Green is people ... and has a special non-drying formula that's kind to sensitive skin ... !" |
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/colonic perforation is bad news/ |
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Agreed. But adhesions clearly form after any sort of gut problem, probably to scar in and augment troubled gut. Maybe the omentum provides a handy substrate to adhere too. I wonder how often survivable gut problems (eg survivable appendicitis) producing adhesions happened to our ancestors or to third worlders in similar circumstances now. I am thinking about times when there were a lot more intestinal parasites. |
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I think it might be more a case of many tissues having the ability
to scar wherever they happen to be, but admittedly this is pure
speculation. Bearing in mind that women's peritonea are
"external", it may not be as bad as it seems. |
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I was always struck by the silicone cycle. The first real money-spinner on the internet was the "ladies obviously in a very hot place as they seem to be wearing very little" photography biz. |
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Let's presume that this, along with other factors, encouraged people to join the internet and get their own pc's. |
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This then boosted the increase in number of pc's which contain silicon chips. Returning the (ahem) artistic photography business, it might be that some of those ladies also contained a high level of sililcon themselves, in the upper thorax area. |
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So, a more or less self-driving cycle of increasing use of silicone. |
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So maybe in some mysterious way, increasing the silicone content of a wider variety of humans would lead to androids in a sort of convergence: humans become more artificial through augmentation with synthetic compounds and computers become more intelligent in order to access information relating to them, notably through (possibly homosexual or sexually asexual) teledildonics, VR, video and so forth, until eventually they become one with the machines. |
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(It's a kind of insult, you see. I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be terribly effective.) |
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Forehead? I think that's generally not the actual area they should be in contact with? |
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(It's a kind of insult, [...]
// |
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... Surely it's a kind of dance, but I can't work out what the next step should be. Might it involve white pyjamas and sticks with bells on? |
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There is no right or wrong when it comes to mathturbation... and that's... ok. |
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Are these wrinkles on my forehead considered fore-skin? If I was a Jewish mathturbater would I need to be circumscribed? If I perpend my dicular does it mean I'm bisectual? |
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I already need glasses... |
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// I already need glasses... // |
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In your case, just the one glass of hemlock would be just fine ... |
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Ah, but would it still be half full..? |
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Would that be organic hemlock? <Spots market for ecologically concerned sufferers of despair, wonders what Dr Kervorkian's cut would be> |
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I can of course furnish you with organic hemlock if that's what
you really want. In fact, there's probably a lot more organic
hemlock than hemlock grown using fertiliser and pesticides if
you think about it. The market for it is minute. |
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While i'm here, i may as well mention an extra bit of this idea:
replace some of the blood with that bicyclic fluorine compound
which has a similar affinity for oxygen and carbon dioxide to
haemoglobin. |
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//hemlock grown using fertiliser and pesticides if you think about it. // |
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Such short-sightedness, shocking waste of Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.. |
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It's probably taken care of by set-aside, if that still exists. |
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