Retractable adamantium claws and laser eyeballs for starters.
I thought it was UV which caused melanomas, not melanin.
another pair of arms, not necessarily the full range of motion above head though a foot up and down and left/right.
eyes in back of head towards the base of the skull for protection.
Absolutely not! Fingernails are very useful tools, increase your manual dexterity, and protect the very important fingertips. There are very few downsides to having them. You’d know this is you didn’t bite your nails.
Toenails I could live without, except for the protection part.
This is one of the best ideas ever. It would have an enormous impact on quality of life for just about the entire human race.
And it would be particularly great if the person could shut off their fertility without their partner knowing about it. That way women won’t be forced to have children they don’t want.
And I agree with you all about the teeth. Given the importance of dental health to overall health and the fact that almost everybody’s teeth “malfunction” in some way or another, it would be really really helpful if teeth could heal and/or regrow.
First priority is getting rid of menstruation. No more bleeding, no more cramping, no more PMS. Those of you who want to know if you’re pregnant can change colors or something, okay?
Why not just appendages that can reform to whatever you want? A bony club for protection, a hand for social interactions, delicate tentacles for surgery and such.
I personally want feeding-tentacles on my face like Dr. Zoidberg. Retractable so as not to be a freak, but there. And the color-changing skin would be nice, cut down on bigots.
jumping jebus, now i have the mental image of wrestling with the damn thing as it tries to get all the way in to fertilize the egg…
Honey, it got away …
:smack:
I think so much would be avoided if we could control our mensturation cycle and only get pregnant when we really want to.
So another one here for conscious fertility.
I’d also like to be able to eat whatever I want and stay healthy.
But the main thing would probably be snot/allergies. I hate how much my nose runs and runs and runs when I have allergies. Hell, I’d probably kill the whole histamine reaction, or at least tone it down a lot.
One word: sinuses. I have never heard a convincing argument as to what use they are except to become clogged and inflamed, occasionally infected, causing horrible headaches.
Conscious fertility, for males and females, definitely.
Stronger backs. Back pain sucks.
Agreed on teeth replacing themselves every 15 years or so.
Agreed on no more runny noses.
Make the female urethra longer, to make urinary tract infections less likely. They suck.
I want to be able to scratch everywhere on my own back, possibly with my toenails the way my cats do.
I’d like to be able to consciously decide “I’m going to go to sleep now and stay asleep for the next 8 hours”.
Make it so that anxiety can’t cause nausea, diarrhea, or sweating. It really doesn’t help.
Absolutely!
Definitely not. That would make it harder to hide an attraction that you have no intention of ever acting on.
Get rid of appendix, obviously. Regeneration of body parts for sure. When I was young, I imagined birth took place through the navel. I still think that’s a great idea. Who designed birth to take place through a hole in the main support bone for bipedalism. Change the plumbing so that the prostate doesn’t interfere with urination (and prostate surgery doesn’t lead to incontinence). If we were marsupials, abortion would not be an issue. Just keep the little tyke out of the pouch. Better coordination between the conscious and subconscious so that the latter wouldn’t keep telling to have another cupcake or light another cigarette. I like the idea of better circulation in the heart. And better control of plaque (both arterial and dental). And we should be able to make vitamin C like most mammals (but primates lost this ability somewhere).
About the breathing and swallowing tubes crossing. That is a design defect and uniquely human. All other mammals–as well as infants up to a year–have the air pipe high enough to avoid problems. But as we grow, our pipes change and this allows us much greater control for speaking. The real problem is that the eating and speaking apparatus are commingled. That might be a good thing though since it forces everyone to shut up at least occasionally.
Can we have the tube for equalizing ear pressure come out somewhere other than the throat? Somewhere where bacteria are less likely to get into it? Maybe it could come out behind the ear, and have a lid that we could consciously open.
I really like the idea of decoupling the structural support role of the spine from the ‘protect the spinal cord’ role. Building some more redundancy into the neurological system is also a great idea.
Redesigning the reproductive system sounds like the other pressing idea.
Perhaps we should form a learned society to spearhead discussing and implementing these ideas. I’d nominate Der Trihs, except I think he’s opposed to intelligent design.
I would assume that one area of the skin is tanning, it’s because it is reacting to the UV exposure to another area of the skin. That would increase the areas of my body that I’m trying to protect from the sun, and make the entire surface prone to skin cancer. I already spend too much time spreading sun screen on my exposed body parts, I don’t want to have to also constantly slather it on my genitals, anus, bottoms of my feet, etc.
Speaking as a former teenage boy, it is not good to have your body demonstrate your interests against your conscious control. It’s very hard to walk out at the end of class.
The only problem I foresee with these tentacled, shape-shifting, pigment-changing new humans, is that I really am attracted neither to amoebae nor squid. I prefer my humans lady-shaped.
denser bones
more muscle fibers
stronger tendons and/or more/redundant tendons
opposable big toes that don’t impede sprinting
greater lung capacity/oxygen efficiency on par with aquatic mammals
greater agility on land and in water
hearts like a race horse
easy childbirth
smarter, hardier, walking-within-hours-of-birth babies
prehensile tail w/ great genetic variation of fur style and color (you don’t want hairless tails – think rats and possums, and you hairless types are not taking away my beard, damn it!)
better sense of sight, smell, and hearing
stronger more capable digestive system - able to process grasses, hard grains, raw meat/guts, bones, basically any food as defined by animals – with the accompanying lack of taste or appreciation of flavor that these respective animals seem to have
speedy regenerative healing of everything including brain tissue and nerves
Double skull, with shock-absorbing material between the layers. Sort of a built-in hard hat.
If we can make fertility voluntary, why not make fat storage voluntary too?
Could we make food cravings actually work the way some people used to claim they do, where you crave foods because you’re deficient in some nutrient? Or at least make nutrient deficiencies more obvious to the person who has them, so you could know you don’t have enough (say) iron without blood tests?
A mental “snooze button” for pain. Eliminating pain completely would be too dangerous, as would the ability to just turn it off permanently after the initial shock, but being forced to feel a constant debilitating sensation for an ailment you can do nothing about is counterproductive.
Just buzz me every few minutes to remind me to tend to the problem if possible (and give me incentive not to get hurt again), and once I’ve done everything I can to fix it for the moment, let me turn it off and continue unencumbered. Win-win.
ETA: Oh, and get rid of itching. Proper care for every single malady that involves itching comes part and parcel with strict instructions not to scratch, which is precisely what the entire mechanism seems designed to compel us to do. Stupid. Nix it.
Have the ability to produce vitamin c
Get rid of pain and replace it with a series of precision diagnoses
Grow back parts we’ve lost
Spit fire 