Posted on 09/23/2007 7:46:56 AM PDT by paulat
Unexploded Rocket-Propelled Grenade Impales Army Private in Afghanistan By RUTH REISS
[snip]
One RPG skidded past Lt. Mariani's vehicle. All of the vehicles had to quickly get out of the "kill zone." But before they could get to safety, two rockets hit Pvt. Moss' Humvee.
Staff Sgt. Eric Wynn, 33, the soldier in the front passenger seat, felt one slice through his face. Moss remembers the truck practically lift up. He was thrown up against the Humvee and then moved to return fire.
"I smelled something smoking and I looked down ... and I was smoking," he said.
Wynn turned to tell Moss where to fire and saw the tail fins of the RPG sticking out of Moss' side.
Roughly the length of a baseball bat, an RPG travels at the speed of a bullet. At the front end is the warhead -- a large grenade. The detonator and fuel are contained in the shaft. On the back are its fins, pieces of metal that stick out like legs on a camera tripod. The RPG is the weapon of choice for many of the world's guerillas.
Luckily for Moss, the company medic Spc. Jared Angell, 23, who the soldiers call "Doc," was in his Humvee
[snip]
A Human Bomb The RPG that had plowed into Moss' lower abdomen stretched from one hip to the other. If the RPG went off, it would kill everyone within 30 feet of him. Yet Angell stayed close, bandaging his wounds and stabilizing the weapon so that movement wouldn't cause it to explode.
Moss was still fully conscious, so Angell ordered him to not look down at the injury. He didn't want Moss to panic.
[snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Vey slow.
Night Bear.
:-)
And almost completely lost to history was a more distant relative, Wilhelm the Krankerer, who was too sick to achieve anything of note.
It is slow loading. Good night.
Yep. It’s tooo slow for me. I can hear my hair turn white, waiting for it to load.
Testing.
Internet testing.
Stand by.
Too late for me. The beard's pretty much done that.
A blessing, really. Red beards that go grey are not pretty.
And to think, when I went to work for this outfit my beard was red.
Pinging the Algore? He's responsible for this, doncha know.
I wonder what hair fashion is going to be ‘in fashion’ in ten thousand years?
Ten thousand years is not a long time genetically, unless a species begins to control its own genetics.
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that by that time hair will be a thing of the past. What will replace it?
Subcutaneous LED patterns, under conscious control. Forget mood rings, you’ll be able to tell at a glance what’s on someone’s mind.
Eventually, it may even form a new language system, with the possibility of high-speed thought transference.
William the Concurrer just got to initial stuff.
I don’t think the Bastard was closely related to the Saxon kings. The Normans at that time were only a few generations removed from their founders, the Norwegians, and weren’t mixing with the Germans. They mixed later, after the Norman Conquest of England-and-a-bunch-of-other-places.
If you can fix hair, Bob, you’ll rule the universe!
I could be wrong. It may be that hair on the head will continue to be viewed as decorative and useful, but hair elsewhere on the body will likely be de-emphasized as it has been for the last century.
It seems obvious that neoteny will advance also. That may be in keeping with a generalized extension of youth, and human maturity in the overall population.
Head size will grow, to contain more brain power. This could spell trouble for the birth process, unless the mechanisms which control brain growth are better understood.
I would expect that despite our dependence on memory aids such as Personal Digital Assistants, our innate ability to remember and compare information about our world will grow. It is one of the most obvious indicators of intelligence, so parents will select for it preferentially.
We are going to change. We will grow younger in appearance, wiser in some measures, healthier and more handsome.
Some will view the changes as “unmanly”, or “unnatural”, but they will be hard to resist. What parent would willingly deprive his child?
Societally, we will grow more independent of each other. We have seen this happening also. In many families, the children are effectively emancipated at ten or twelve. I hope this will not become a bad thing. I like the idea of extended childhood, but I shudder at the possibility of extended vulnerability.
Work will continue to evolve and change. Our needs will be met almost automatically, while our wants will grow exponentially. There will always be a stimulus to earn more in order to acquire and enjoy more. Most of our “work” will involve providing services of some nature to each other.
What we now do as hobbies will become paid professions. Lego Artists will earn multi-figure salaries. Weird things like that.
Sorry, I'm not into that.
.
Oh! You meant in the population generally. Okay.
Yeah, that will probably come about. I don't know if we'll all have conscious control of our hair color and such. Mechanically, that's a difficult call.
But we could easily get rid of "male pattern baldness" and premature hair loss, and other such nuisances.
The question is, after we gain the ability to control our hair appearance, what will we choose? That I can't predict, and I know you know what I mean!
Part of the problem is that no one can say what will be the sexual attractant characteristics in the future. Currently, it is allegedly the ability to earn a living for the male, and the ability to bear healthy children for the female.
We are already seeing changes to this, and no one can say what direction they may ultimately take. We (I) can guess, but we can't be certain.
What’s Male Pattern Baldness compared to what I have to deal with? Bald is cool - haven’t you seen Dick Cheney and Avery Brooks?
It’s a (forgive the expression) growing trend.
But I don’t think it has a universal appeal. A good head of hair goes a long way toward making up for a young man’s perceived deficiencies.
Who has thought about how indecorous a continuum of bald heads might be? Besides me, I mean?
In general, humans like to decorate themselves. Hair is one of the ways we do it. Doing away with hair would mean something would have to take its place.
Scarves, turbans, Frank Sinatra fedoras ...
I think you're making a more complex point, though, because hair is not something one purchases (except the extremely well-off), and so it makes a distinction that hats and scarves and whatall don't make.
Humans have to make distinctions, somehow.
I think women will tend to stay very much as they are.
Erm, only more so. They already know what men like to see in a woman. In the future, that ideal will be less unobtainable. Better tools for body sculpting will become available.
Men will face a different dilemma. Their target appearance may be less clearly apparent.
Some already complain that somewhat effeminate men are getting a lot of attention. That could change, but I suspect that it may continue. The age when a man needed to protect his mate through sheer physicality has not entirely faded, but its role is obviously reduced in today’s world.
In the future, that is likely to be even more of a factor.
So, prettier women, and just possibly, prettier men as well.
Smarter, we can certainly hope. And healthier.
Longer lived, and less emotional. It sounds boring, like me.
There are other possibilities. Somehow they don’t appeal to me. I would prefer the Eloi.
Good morning. I’m up early to make signs for the festival. It’s not raining.
My catz were frolicking early ...
"My catz were frolicking early ..."
I guess ...
Don't you have a neighbor you dislike that you could give them to?
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