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.-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2012 Remember this? Body_20part_20removalNot the same, but maybe complementary? [Ling, Mar 29 2012] 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?
One could devise these implants so as to provide radiation protection to the bone marrow. I can imagine the dialogue:
"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."-- bungston, Mar 29 2012 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.-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2012 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.-- bungston, Mar 29 2012 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.-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2012 // do the Fight Club thing //
Don't talk about Fight Club ...
// maybe sell soap made from celebrities //
<Obligatory Soylent Green reference>
"Soylent Green is people ... and has a special non-drying formula that's kind to sensitive skin ... !"
</OSGr>-- 8th of 7, Mar 29 2012 /colonic perforation is bad news/
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.-- bungston, Mar 29 2012 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.-- nineteenthly, Mar 30 2012 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.
Let's presume that this, along with other factors, encouraged people to join the internet and get their own pc's.
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.
So, a more or less self-driving cycle of increasing use of silicone.-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 01 2012 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.-- nineteenthly, Apr 01 2012 //teledildonics//
<smacks forehead>-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 01 2012 // //teledildonics//
<smacks forehead> //
<crosses legs>
(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.)-- spidermother, Apr 01 2012 //teledildonics//
<smacks forehead>
Forehead? I think that's generally not the actual area they should be in contact with?-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 01 2012 //
// //teledildonics//
(It's a kind of insult, [...] //
... 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?-- pertinax, Apr 01 2012 Moor or less.-- spidermother, Apr 01 2012 There is no right or wrong when it comes to mathturbation... and that's... ok.
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?
I already need glasses...-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 01 2012 // I already need glasses... //
In your case, just the one glass of hemlock would be just fine ...-- 8th of 7, Apr 01 2012 Ah, but would it still be half full..?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Apr 01 2012 Would that be organic hemlock? <Spots market for ecologically concerned sufferers of despair, wonders what Dr Kervorkian's cut would be>-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 02 2012 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.
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.-- nineteenthly, Apr 02 2012 //hemlock grown using fertiliser and pesticides if you think about it. //
Such short-sightedness, shocking waste of Common Agricultural Policy subsidies..-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 02 2012 It's probably taken care of by set-aside, if that still exists.-- nineteenthly, Apr 02 2012 random, halfbakery