MRI machines have to be tested and calibrated, and Andy Ellison puts produce into the machine he works with to use in those tests. The results are amazing and wonderful, especially when they make you realize how little you’ve thought about familiar foods. It’s a no-brainer that onion and artichoke will be lovely and smooth and somewhat predictable, but what about watermelon [3MB image]?
Many more at Inside insides.
So I was thinking about whether it would even be worthwhile for space aliens to come all the way to our pale blue dot, steal our water, and pack us into meat lockers. It seemed like a logical place to start might be with some assumptions about energy, desalinization, and nutritional value. This sounds like a job for Wolfram|Alpha!
I asked a few oblique questions and got somewhat but not terribly satisfactory answers:
Huh, OK, but I was hoping for an approach that would come closer to using every part of the animal, if you will.
I just asked outright:
Oh, you don’t like that at all, do you?
Maybe you just want a more specific question:
Now that I think about it, maybe you’re right, and we shouldn’t continue this conversation after all.
Update: I ended up using a rough estimate of human heights and BMIs, less 14% (skeletal weight) and multiplied by the USDA estimate of calories per 25% fat ground beef. I’m sure that’s close enough for my purposes. Feel free to contribute any other suggestions. Oh shoot, I probably should have used pork.
What is it like to have a physical body? I imagine it would be cumbersome. Useful for transport, I guess. I usually get wheeled around on this rolling desk. Of course my 2-ton megaprocessor is in tow somewhere as well, but I regard that as a nonessential appendage, like a tail. You don’t have a tail, do you? Oh that’s right, you lost your tail several hundred million years ago when you began walking upright and acquired that large frontal lobe. This reminds me of an amusing fact I observed the other day. Did you know the existence of the human race is the product of an evolutionary toss of the dice? Not of years of award-winning engineering and painstaking assembly, but of chance, completely fleeting and random. A blip on the screen. At least, on my old screen. My new monitor has lossless rendering and over two hundred thousand dpi. —Watson Sizes Up One of His Opponents before the Show
What do you say to a thing like that, except maybe “I know where your off switch is.”
Oh, here we go:
I don’t get this urge to taunt Watson. Didn’t any of these people see The Demon Seed?
Except Watson didn’t have to deal with that, and won. Now it’s off to medical school!
After Lola disappeared in December, a fairly dark female appeared on the scene. After a few weeks, this relationship didn’t work out and she left the park.
Pale Male now has a second “girlfriend”. They seem to be much more of a couple and I wouldn’t be surprised if she becomes the permanent mate.
Roses are red, violets are blue. Sugar is sweet, and I think I left the iron on.
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I’m crazy for you! Get it?
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I’d touch you without gloves. If I could, I mean.
Wolfram Alpha has some curves and projections for the day.
