Genetic Manipulation

Now this is one for all the fans of a good conspiracy, are you concerned about genetic manipulation?
Genetic manipulation is a skill which humans have been slowly perfecting, believe it or not, for thousands of years. it's what animal breeding is all about. the steak you ate yesterday? bread to be the biggest, meatiest, least fattiest, but still tastiest cow she could be in this or any other life her karmic wheel might provide, by decades of selective breeding.




It's a process that has taken place all around the world since man first learned the phrase "beast of burden",

"You're the beast" he then told the horse, "I'll just be the burden".


Jump forward to today, since we no longer need animals to work the earth, we breed them almost specifically as pets and food, and very occasionally as film stars, (Mr. Ed?).

Now the next trend in the field of genetic manipulation has become ourselves. Since the early 90s scientists have been trying to map the human Genome, clone one life using the stem cells and embryonic catalyst of another, solve world hunger, cure cancer, the flu, heart defects, Parkinson's disease, athletes foot and hernia using genetic manipulation of some form or another, and with every new development or cure comes a new patent formula and holder.
Have you ever donated blood? then theoretically, any scientist who comes across some beneficial enzyme in that blood, has the right to copy write your genetic code in hopes of recreating that and marketing it successfully to a pharmaceutical company, but that's off-topic, it was also a really good episode of Boston Legal.

Genetic manipulation of crops is another issue, using "Monsanto" the American wheat industry as an example, you may understand. All crops rely on the wind to spread seed, pollen, and help germinate crops to produce a harvest. By planting one strain of wheat that has been modified to produce a higher pollen count, which the company own the Genetic patent on, It is possible to completely alter the crops of all those caught in the wind pattern.Since the Genetic patent is held already, the harvest, by law must be sold back to or destroyed by the patent holder.

I'm not saying Genetic manipulation is all bad, Through these achievements we might well make disease, decay and death something that only concerns the extremely aged, or as some of them already like to be called "youth deprived",
i think it'd be really cool if i could get some Pterodactyl-wings so i could fly and gills so i could breath underwater, But realistically speaking that's as brain-dead an idea as someone being able to Claim a genetic-patent anyway.




You can read up on the human genome project Here from people with synapses that actually fire. I strongly recommend their work to my own.

Artificial Limbs, Robotic appendages, and real life cyborgs.

Over the years, i've come across a few bits and pieces of news that have seemed both genuinely troubling and at the same time thoroughly interesting, one of these was the case of the Austrian born Christian Kandlebauer, who having lost both arms in an electrical accident in 2005, was left with almost no hope of a normal life.


In 2009, less than 5 years later Christian had been fitted with a thought operated Prosthetic right arm, and was living a relatively normal life again, dressing himself, feeding himself, and he had even gotten his Driver's license.


Unfortunately, as luck and fate would have it Christian has since passed away from complications that arose from a traffic collision, Thursday 21st Oct 2010. Those of you reading this are probably thinking "hey, that's a couple years a go, get with it"

Well, this is a story that really stuck with me, not just because it's a situation so many of us could be put into any day of the week, but The staggering advances we've made in the last 30 years have brought us from wooden legs, plastic hands and steel hooks, to pose-able, flexible, thought controlled machinery at our fingertips.

Invisibility

Japan once again is at the forefront of all things scifi and awesome, with new breakthroughs in the field of invisibility, though still only in the development stage, we just may have a whole new era of ninja warfare to look forward to
Check out the following video for all of you interested.

Giant Robots (Mecha)

Over the decades, pop culture and science-fiction have given birth to many aspects of modern society, one of these is the personalized battle robot, made famous in the 60's and 70's by Japanese anime such as Gundam, Battle of the Planets, Macross saga, and more recently in the western world with shows like Power Rangers, Transformers, etc.
 The original concept, stems from western science fiction, the earliest mentions of such mechanical monsters coming from H.G. Wells' "war of the worlds", in which alien invaders launch their attack on the populace of earth using fantastical 3 legged mechanical beings.

Despite great leaps forward in computing and engineering capabilities, robotics technology still has some way to go before such technology is widely available for implementation, although japan seems to have already cornered the market on the industry, offering a wide variety of personal "mechs" already, ranging in price from $150, 000, to $1,500,000

such as;

The Children's "walker" Mech.

Created by Sakakibara Kikai,

The Children's walker Mech, has functional arms and upper body mobility, the legs however move by shuffling the feet of the robot, which are infact on wheels, capable of a top speed of about 0.5kmph













 
The Land Walker.

Constructed by Sakakibara Kikai, the Land walker is the second in their range of personal mechs, standing at 11foot tall, the Land walker is equiped with a 4" gattling gun, primed to fire multiple latex projectiles, and one high powered, water balloon firing canon. The land walker is fueled by a 250cc diesel engine, and has an average top speed of 1mph.











































The Kuratas Heavy Mech - Suidobashii Heavy Industries.

And last in the line of today's available giant robots, for the cool price of 1.5million dollars, is the Kuratas Heavy mech. Created by Suidobashi Heavy Industry the Kuratas Heavy mech is a Personal suburban tank. with a top speed of around 10kmph in the city and 15km on open even ground, the Kuratas Heavy Mech weighs just over 2 tonnes, is Equipped with 2 BB firing Gattling guns capable of unleashing upwards of 800 pellets in a minute, and an "eco friendly" rocket launcher that fires water-filled rockets.

The Kuratas is fully compatible with modern phones, computers and has 3 methods of control, the first being an automatic interface, utilising regular automotive control, while utilising this function, the kuratas is essentially in "safety" mode.

The second interface being manual control of the upper-body,via Controlsticks inside of the cockpit, the third method of control allows for the kuratas' On board computer to track your own movements via the cell-phone in your hands using motion sensor software.

Real Science, As strange as fiction

Hey everyone.

I've started this blog as an assignment for my communication course, mostly this little repository of ranting and raving is going to be about science fiction, specifically the real world progress and applications of technologies conceived of by writers or scientist's far ahead of their time, such as;

• Mobile Phones
• Lasers
• Flight
• Robots
• The internet
• Space travel
• Mutation
• Robotic Limbs
• Time Travel
• Genetic Manipulation
• Thought Control
• Stealth Air-Craft
• Nano-technology