We need a pouch like kangaroos! And if we’re gonna go ahead and stay with the two-legged design we should have a long tail for balance. And feet that can grab stuff like hands.
No coccyx please.
Well, you could combine the two ideas… I’m sure someone has carried stuff up there before.
What if we could squeeze real hard and excrete perfectly shaped pellets that don’t require any wiping afterwards? Just think, you’d never be stuck in a stall without paper and have to resort to using your sock or some such. Oh, and the pellets wouldn’t stink, either.
4 legs would be nice. Immagine being able to run around as easily as say–every other friggin animal in the world?
Another pair of arms as well. Or one pair of arms and one pair of tentacles. Tentacles would be very usefull for anyone who has ever had to fix something in an awkward place…arms just aren’t bendy enough. Plus who would want to be able to fgive themselves full massages and backrubs. 
A nice pair of wings. For those annoying situatons where some fundamentalist hooyas decide to crash a plane into the building you are currently occupying, to allow easy escape. Sure, they wouldn’t be usefull for taking off, but not having to ever worry about falling to your death is a nice bonus. Maybe they can fold up compactly when not in use. Going downhill would be just fun and quick.
2 seperate holes for breathing and eating. It’s been said before, but it needs repeating. If anything is evidence of no intelligent design, this is certainly it.
I’d move the brain to somewhere a bit better protected, say the middle of the chest near the heart. All the other improvements do you no good without your brain.
The spine needs to be totally re-done, if’s embarassingly bad. It could probably be replaced with a couple of thick long femur like bones. You’d lose some flexibility, but we mostly only use that flexibility to hunch over when our spines fall apart in old age. Having some sort of bony support in the front would help alot as well.
Eyes that can see into more areas of the spectrum would be good. Infrared vision wold be particularly usefull.
THe electric sense of sharks would also be extremely usefull in today’s increasingly electrified world. Having your visual brain process the sense so that you could see electric feild would be awesome.
OUr internal organs do not produce enough anti-oxidants do keep us from shriveling up and aging. This should also be rectified.
And finally, ( for now) I’ll second the call for a dedicated math section of the brain. The whopping ability to hold seven numbers at once in storage is just not cutting it.
I think a lot of back problems are caused by not excersising it enough. People these days just slouch about watching TV or at their computer, if you were actually used to lifting things (properly) your back would stay strong and you’d be far less likely to pull it, get a slipped disc etc. I used to have a job in a factory and we hand to lift and carry bundles of paper a lot of the time. Had that job for 3 years, my back was in superb condition. Now I have a job on computers and it isnt as strong and sometimes I tweek it.
With teeth, if you brush them twice a day and dont eat too much sugar they should last you, but people these days again give in to chocolate etc, you have to know how to treat your body properly.
It’s all about being sensible with your body. They’re very well designed but they have limits and if you get lazy that’s when problems start.
The Griffin I think you’ll find that ancient human skeletons often show similar signs of back and hip damage that you see in modern Humans. The longer life expectancy of people these days is what makes these problems seem more common nowadays.
There’s no inherent contradiction between living well and dying young. We could have self-destruct mechanisms that would kick in when we reach a certain age. That would be far preferable, in my view, to having our bodies wear out gradually. Thus the way we age constitutes another design flaw, because one could design humans for death by some age without needing to inconvenience them in so many other ways. I mean, seriously, just design people to go through a hormonal change like puberty when they get old enough, except that instead of bringing the subject to sexual maturity, this one produces toxins that kill you by a few years after the change begins. Would that be so hard? If you want something to stop working by a certain point, there are ways to do that other than to design it so shoddily that it breaks down by then.
Eh? You mean a balance between humans and nature? In that case we might not have quite enough flaws – things are becoming so that nature is becoming more subject to the whims of human beings and less so vice versa. A lot of folks would say that’s a good thing. Of course, this doesn’t rule out a state of long-term stability between civilization and the natural world in the long run, and I suppose one could argue that we are meant to achieve a more desirable balance of power than what we have now, with the current state of affairs only an intermediate state. Personally, I see technological progress continuing to the point where nature has very little undesired influence on us, and we are free of many of our current flaws, but I’m not convinced it’s inevitable.
If that’s not what you mean, what did you mean? I suppose one could argue that we wouldn’t know how to live in a perfect world. In that case, one would be justifying biological flaws with psychological ones. Still doesn’t really solve the problem of why we don’t live in a better world – unless the world isn’t designed to be good – but it does move the question into a different arena.
Oh dear. I didn’t realize how old this thread was when I responded to it. Not only did I bump an IMHO thread, but I did so with a reply that would probably, if not for its relation to another post here, be better suited to GD.
Crud. My apologies. :o
I don’t think there are that many flaws. Most disease occurs after the average age of reproduction. There is no “better design”. We don’t have any idea what we want to be, ideally.
I often wonder why we don’t have two hearts and two livers to provide a bit of redundancy. We already have two kidneys, eyes, lungs, and in a way two brains in the left and right hemisphere.
Voluntary muscle control over the uterus (just during menstration) would be good too. It might be worth a fair amount of extra pain to be able to force everything out at once instead of over four days to a week.
Teeth are high on my list too. Wouldn’t it be nice if they healed like broken bones did? If someone found a way to force enamel to regenerate, they’d deserve the nobel prize and then some.
No harm, no foul in my book. This is a cool thread! Since others appear unfazed by its age, guess I’ll add my proposals for redesign as well.
Having just gotten over a cold, I would really appreciate it if my mouth was not situated directly under my nose. (Or at the very least, snot should taste like dark chocolate but contain no calories.)
Additionally, skin ought to be more resilient to drying out. It would be really nice to have a water-tight skin. And should, under no circumstances, be susceptible to paper cuts.
Arm pit hair is completely useless and only serves as a breeding ground for bacteria. Same with pubes.
I see no good reason why I can’t reach the middle of my back. In light of this design, allowing itching back there is cruel and unusual punishment.
Toenails. Why?
Internally, I’d like to know what dumbass thought there’d be any remote possibility that I would want to breed every single friggin’ month? I’m not that desperate! Gee, did I change my mind since last month? Nope.
How about a little more protection for the humerus? Placing that bone to be so easily smacked was not funny at all, for pete’s sake.
Proof to me that our engineer was male: no size limitation on breasts for women even though male breast size seems to have been restricted. You try jogging/running with D cups.
We can’t drink salt water. (Well, we can, but you know what I mean.)
Rotten night vision.
Finger motion is actually pretty limited, compared to the thumbs.
Yep.
Was gonna be my answer right off. I often think there should be some sort of small, extra emergency air tube in the body that would take over during choking.
Living on a planet that is 70% water, it would be cool if we could survive breathing it. We need gills. And flippers that retract.
It’s much worse than that. Making one sex capable of reproduction only once a month and the other capable of reproduction essentially at will with a desire to attempt to do so several times each day is more than just poor design, it’s downright malicious.
Adaptability: It should be much easier to change the hardware when it’s found to be incompatable with the operating system.
Retractable wheels. Just for going downhill.
Regeneration of body parts, including teeth and hair.
Childbirth without pain.
Built-in OnStar.
Hands with customizable, retractable tools.
A third eye on a telescoping, prehensile stalk.
Blood vessel walls coated with teflon.
Gills.
Wings.
More variety in skin/hair/eye colors.
The ability to recycle waste.
A brain that never deteriorates.
A greater ability to communicate with animals.
A warning, when we are about to be injured.
The ability to shut off pain, once it has served its purpose.
The ability to digest, and be nourished by, anything one consumes.
A greater range in all of the senses.
Several genders, each able to both impregnate and bear children (the ability to actually f*ck oneself).
Some sort of built-in cutting implememt would be nice.
In fact the whole lack of offensive/defensive capability is a real let down
if you are actually stuck out in the wild in a survival situation.
Opposable thumbs & smarts are all well & good but a way to catch a decent meal
would be an advantage.
Laser beams that shoot out of your eyes would be a good substitute.
Omigosh! You’re so right. So the engineer was stupid and mean. What a jerk!
Like teeth?
Shock is pretty effective that way, isn’t it? By the time shock sets in, pain would serve no further purpose as you’re already injured beyond belief. It would be nice for it to last through the healing process though (like for severe burns and broken bones and such.
Now, THAT’s cool! Weird, but cool.
I’d like for the ears to be able to shut out noise at will, the way you can shut your eyes.