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X-Blade
Member
Gender: Male
Location: United States |
kind of scary if you think what might evolve from that in 10 years, lol
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Dec 27th, 2004 03:35 PM |
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X-Blade
Member
Gender: Male
Location: United States |
X2 Mutants: Closer Than You Think?
Monday, May 05, 2003
By Marla Lehner
NEW YORK — While you won't be able to read people's minds like X2's Dr. Jean Grey, you might change the color of your skin to lime green — at least according to some experts who have studied the plausibility of the science fiction blockbuster's "mutant" premise.
"Getting superpowers through mutation is essentially impossible, but it's likely humans will begin to acquire superpowers over the next century," said Josh Calder, who runs futuristmovies.com. "We are likely to enhance ourselves in various ways that to people in the past would seem like superpowers."
While no one's going to be able to manipulate fire like Pyro or have retractable knives attached to their skeleton like Hugh Jackman's Wolverine (search), some people may be able to enhance their sense of smell like the comic book-turned-movie character.
"Animals have superpowers. They can generate electric currents or have echolocation or sonar," said Calder. "Any ability that occurs encoded in the genome is available to genetic engineers."
But genetics professor Mark Johnston is more skeptical.
"That's a little over the top," he said from his St. Louis office. "It's unlikely that you could locate a sonar gene in say, dolphins and isolate it — that's probably due to many, many genes. And it seems unlikely that by putting genes in humans, you'd have sonar. We're not set up for that."
But Johnston said Calder isn't completely off base.
"At some point, we will have the ability to enhance ourselves. Gene therapy is a big thing now. We're not doing it yet, but it will eventually work," he said. "You could ID a gene that would make a person have longer endurance. You wouldn't be Superman, but you could enhance strength or speed."
Both experts said these imagined breakthroughs don't address ethics, but would be highly controversial. To Calder, that's part of what makes X2 (search) realistic. In the film, mutants battle humans who, in some cases, want to destroy them.
"I think the movie is kind of plausible in that it suggests some of the controversy that will arise around human enhancement," he said. "We're already really upset by cloning .... People who choose to enhance themselves could be met by suspicion or even banning."
Most fans agree X-Men's draw is the idea that mutants are a group who are ostracized because they're different.
"People can relate to those characters and the analogy to puberty and all that," said Anthony C. Ferrante, editor and chief of the Web site cinescape. "It's about prejudice. There's what separates these movies from, 'Hey look, I've been bitten by a radioactive spider.'"
Paul Garder, who runs chezcomics.com, agreed that most everyone could relate to feeling like an outsider.
"I have to say that the popularity of mutants can be put down to the genetically proven fact that we are all mutants," he said in an e-mail. "Who hasn't got a mutant gene floating around in their DNA somewhere?"
Marvel Comics' illustrator Sean Chen, who used to pen Wolverine, said he's not surprised by the fanciful idea that humans could eventually mutate.
"It sounds like hokey sci-fi but there's enough science behind it that makes it intriguing," he said. "The idea is that we are constantly evolving. Every once in a while evolution takes a great leap forward."
And Chen said he could think of at least one mutation that he personally could benefit from.
"Being a New Yorker constantly under deadline, balancing work and social life, I'd like to be able to do five things at once," he said. "It would probably be a big help to grow a couple more arms."
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Dec 29th, 2004 07:41 PM |
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X-Blade
Member
Gender: Male
Location: United States |
Spider-Goats?
Part one:
I never would have believed it unless I had read it myself. Scientists have successfully genetically altered a goats embryo with the DNA of a spider. These genetically altered goats produced (mutated) in a laboratory are presently producing milk that is being used to make bullet-proof vests. The fibers contained in the spider goat's milk are twice as strong as Kevlar!!! Can you imagine?
Though it may seem like a noble invention to save people's lives, the implications of such monstrosities is greatly disturbing. What else can scientists create? Let your imagination run wild and you'll be convinced as I am that the end of the world cannot be far away. If you are wondering if scientists are tampering with human embryos, the answer is horrifyingly "yes." Mankind is savage! Do you think that AIDS just happened, never having existed before until the 1980's? Think again! AIDS is the creation of the U.S. military. A weapon designed to curb the earth's population. If I'm scaring you...GOOD! We need to be scared, scared enough to fall on our knees and beg God to bring revival to churches across America.
What else are scientist's messing with? Will we see people with six legs like an insect? Will we see people that can climb trees like a cat? Will we see men with armor-plated skin like the armadillo? Will we see people that glow in the dark like fireflies? Don't laugh, the frightening possibilities are endless. What genetic monstrosities will the military try to develop? I saw a movie called "The Island of Dr. Moreau" when I was a child about a mad scientist who lived on an abandoned island and had successfully produced multitudes of mutated half animal/half human creatures. I never thought I'd live to see the day when that would become a frightening reality.
part 2:
Biotechnology blunders in the age of cloning
by Amy Bowler - Published on Monday, February 11, 2002
Biotechnology—good or evil? Recently, a friend told me of a story featured on the CBS Evening News about goats being bred with spiders to create bulletproof vests. Obviously, he was mildly intoxicated at the time and I didn't believe him right off—the physics of it just didn't work for me. That would have to be one big spider or one tiny goat.
Later, I checked it out on CBS.com and what do you know, he was right. Spider-goats—the latest in biotechnology. Granted, some lucky little spider and goat didn't "breed" exactly, but my friend had the basics down.
A company called Nexia has managed to put a spider gene into goats. The "spider-goats" (honest to God, that's what CBS called them) produce milk with a silk protein that is so strong and lightweight that the U.S. Army wants to make bullet proof vests out of it.
Now, I believe in technology and bettering the world we live in, but there's something missing from this happy little feature story that bothers me tremendously: All this spider gene does is make a silk protein in the goat's milk? Are we sure there are no other side effects? All I can picture are tiny eight-legged goats spinning spider webs. And with this I have a problem.
As our nation debates the rights and wrongs of human cloning, perhaps we should broaden our views to include animal rights as well. I've never been a particularly vocal animal rights advocate, but this is getting out of hand. Do you think Dolly the cloned sheep doesn't have some identity issues? I bet she does. And these spider-goats are even worse off... Am I goat? Am I a sheep? What the hell am I?
And we all know this won't be the end of it. Great, we can make super-strong silk. Fine. But what about when some comedian scientist decides to make giraffe-aardvarks or something. Zoos and circuses around the world will be hiring bioengineering companies to make freak-show animals and cart them around for people to laugh at.
Regulations must be set before these things happen. The government must look ahead, consider the possibilities, find out what scientists are considering and set regulations on how far they are allowed to go.
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Dec 29th, 2004 07:53 PM |
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X-Blade
Member
Gender: Male
Location: United States |
The REAL X-Men
They have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men or women. But unlike the characters of the comic book, these extraordinary people were quite real.
The movie version of X-Men was the hottest film in the theaters when it was released. Based on the enormously popular comic book, X-Men features a collection of human mutants - both good and evil - who were born with extraordinary and sometimes bizarre powers. With such names as Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Magneto and Mystique, they bound around making blades spring from their knuckles, conjuring hurricanes from the sky or manipulating their environment through telekinesis. These characters, creations of legendary comic book author and illustrator Stan Lee, live only in the imagination, on paper and now on film.
Would you believe there are real X-Men? They may not be genetic mutants, in the strictest sense, and they may not be able to threaten or save the world with their strange and fantastic powers of the body and mind, but they are extraordinary... not at all like you and me. Here's our own gallery of real-life super-powered characters.
Lightning Man
When storm clouds gather, courageous Lightning Man stands in defiance of nature to draw deadly bolts of electricity from the heavens.
Roy Cleveland Sullivan was a Forest Ranger in Virginia who had an incredible attraction to lightning... or rather it had an attraction to him. Over his 36-year career as a ranger, Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times - and survived each jolt, but not unscathed. When struck for the first time in 1942, he suffered the loss of a nail on his big toe. Twenty-seven years passed before he was struck again, this time by a bolt that singed his eyebrows off. The next year, in 1970, another strike burned Sullivan's left shoulder. Now it looked as though lightning had it out for poor Roy, and people were starting to call him The Human Lightning Rod. He didn't disappoint them. Lightning zapped him again in 1972, setting his hair on fire and convincing him to keep a container of water in his car, just in case. The water came in handy in 1973 when, seemly just to taunt Sullivan, a low-hanging cloud shot a bolt of lightning at his head, blasting him out of his car, setting his hair on fire and knocking off a shoe. The sixth strike in 1976 injured his ankle, and the seventh strike in 1977, got him when he was fishing, and put him in the hospital for treatment of chest and stomach burns. Lightning may not have been able to kill Roy Sullivan, but perhaps the threat of it did. He took his own life in 1983. Two of his lightning-singed ranger hats are on display at Guinness World Exhibit Halls.
BeastMaster
With just the power of his mind, he can command animals to do his bidding.
Vladimir Durov was no ordinary animal trainer. As a veteran performer in a Russian circus, he claimed to use a remarkable method for communicating with his canine coworkers - through telepathy. Professor W. Bechterev, head of the institute for the Investigation of the Brain in St. Petersburg, decided to test Durov's claim. Bechterev created a list of tasks that he wanted one of Durov's dogs to perform in a specific order, without any time for training. After hearing or reading the list of tasks, Durov went to his fox terrier, Pikki, took his head in his hands and stared straight into the little dog's eyes - psychicly transferring his thoughts directly into Pikki's brain. Durov released the dog and it immediately went about performing the assigned tasks. Thinking that perhaps Durov was giving the dog subtle clues with his eyes, the test was repeated with a new set of tasks, but this time with Durov blindfolded. Pikki still responded to his psychic commands.
The Electromagneto Team
Charged like superconducting human batteries, they roam the countryside thrilling all they meet with the electrifying power at their fingertips.
There have been several documented cases of people who apparently possess inexplicable electromagnetic properties:
*For just a 10-week period in 1846, 14-year-old French girl Angelique Cottin's mere presence made the needles of compasses spin wildly; objects as heavy as furniture would slide away from her if she tried to touch them; objects near her would vibrate unnaturally.
*Jennie Morgan of Sedalia, Missouri could emit highly-charged sparks from her fingertips that were strong enough to knock people unconscious. Animals would shun her.
*After an 18-month undiagnosed illness, Canadian teenager Caroline Clare became so magnetized that metal objects, like forks and knives, stuck to her skin. The force was so powerful that another person was required to pull them off.
*Inga Gaiduchenko, a 14-year-old Soviet student was also highly magnetic. Before members of the Moscow Technological Institute, she showed how spoons and pens stuck to her hands. Even non-metallic objects such as china plates and books were affected.
The Amazing Kinetitron
With her thoughts alone, a steely glance or a subtle gesture, she can move inanimate objects at will.
Nina Kulagina became one of the most famous psychics in the Soviet Union in the 1960s because of her amazing feats of telekinesis or psychokinesis. In films smuggled out of the country, Kulagina was shown to be able to move small objects placed before her on a table. Under close scientific observation, Kulagina would hold her hands a few inches above the objects, and in a few moments they would being to slide across the table top. Wooden matches, small boxes, cigarettes and Plexiglas would all react to her intense concentration. At times, objects would continue to move even when she took her hands away. In the early 1970s, Kulagina was even recruited by the Soviet government to see if she could somehow help a sick Nikita Khrushchev.
Medictron, the Healer
With the unknown force emanating from his miraculous hands, Medictron has the power to heal all forms of injuries and maladies.
John D. Reese of Youngstown, Ohio never studied medicine. In fact, it wasn't until he was about 30 years old that Reese discovered his remarkable if latent power to heal. One day in 1887, an acquaintance of Mr. Reese had fallen from a ladder and seriously injured his spine - a "severe spinal strain" his physician called it. Reese, for some reason, ran his fingers up and down the man's back, immediately after which the man announced that his pain had ceased entirely. He got up and went back to work. Reese likewise healed Hans Wagner, a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had been carried from the field with a back injury; he also instantly cured a politician whose hand and wrist became useless to him from so much handshaking. Doctors had told him he needed weeks and weeks of rest. After his encounter with Reese, he has perfectly fine.
How do we explain the abilities of these astounding individuals? Are they conduits for some unimaginable interdimensional power? Are they mere tricksters and hoaxers? Or are they genetic mutants who, like the X-Men, might be forerunners of the future of the human race?
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Last edited by X-Blade on Dec 29th, 2004 at 08:35 PM
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Dec 29th, 2004 08:33 PM |
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PrettyLilMe!!
Ican look at myself naked
 Gender: Female
Location: Behind you... |
I know is sounds vierd but i vas looking on zis vebsite and saw zat
you vere vondering if mutants are real vell zey are. I am one,i didnt vant to say it but i just couldnt help it.I hope you guys dont think im a freak zat im a mutant.
savannah
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Jan 8th, 2005 10:42 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
 Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
not at all dear child....I can feel your massive mutant power from my location as I type you this message. your Night crawler accent is very good by the way.
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:39 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
doood...
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:45 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
I think it'd be cool to be a mutant..just as long as I looked human and could control mah powers.
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:48 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
my sarcasm meter almost exploded that time...
but yeah, it'd be cool...
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:50 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
I'd want to be like Cable minus the techno organic virus.
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:51 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
lol...
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:53 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
......
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:54 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
too many powers to choose from...
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:56 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
just be Rogue and steal'em all!!!!!
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Jan 10th, 2005 04:58 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
naw... i'd be cyclops or colossus
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:00 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
Why not fuse and be them both. A big metal guy with an optic blast.
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:03 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
naw, that'd be greedy... i'd probably choose cyclops (assuming id' have a visor and shades)
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:07 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
You'd only be able to see the color red. I heard a rumor that Scott and Gambit were half brothers. They may have the same dad. Gambit was adopted you know.
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:08 PM |
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-Pr-
Hey Yo!
Gender: Male
Location: Ireland. Moderator |
it'd suit me i think... my personality's practically the same...
that was supposed to be true, but the writer never confimred it...
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:11 PM |
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Mainstream
lighting the way
Gender: Male
Location: somewhere looking for trouble |
What about Havok? YOU think he should make a 20 to 30 second cameo in X3?
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Jan 10th, 2005 05:18 PM |
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