Version 2.0 Sontaran, at least. In version 1.0, there’s too much of an issue when the head whips back and the port on the neck hits the seat.
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I recall a road safety study in Queensland a few decades ago.
Their conclusion was that the #1 factor in road accidents was not speed, or alcohol, or road design; it was “driver not paying attention”.
It’s an unfortunate fact that people do not drive to a set speed; they drive to a set level of perceived risk. So, if you make car interiors quieter, more padded, less sharp-edged, load them up with airbags and traction control and antilock brakes etc (i.e. what we’ve done to cars over the last few decades), people will drive more dangerously, effectively negating the safety tech improvements.
In response, a columnist in one of the motorcycle magazines wrote a piece arguing that we could reduce the road toll by banning seatbelts and installing a foot-long steel spike in the middle of every steering wheel.
I’m not sure that he was wrong.
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It’s an interesting exercise to depict this, but I would have far more respect for them if they try to actually grow this. More kinds of human is a good idea, and a better use of technology than yet more consumer goods.
Better be careful about “purpose grown” humans though.
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This is the artists prior offering:
I wonder Grahams design features are really that useful? I would plan more around making the brain better suspended, rather than just hardening the skull. Shortening the neck is a good idea, what about dropping the brain right into the chest?
I would look at modifying the suspension of the aorta and heart - aortic shearing with high deceleration being a sudden killer.
I would dispense with the legs - they only get trapped in a crash and if you are evolving into a car carried blob you won’t need them. Likewise shortening the upper limbs would result in less flailing during the crash and amputation.
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On the original site, they have a diagram of Graham’s legs. They put in an extra joint above the ankle to help him “spring out of the path of moving cars”. They also appear to have made him digitigrade like a dog or kangaroo, so that he’s always walking around with stored up energy in his tendons.
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Hey, I was trying to eat breakfast here!
… thanks for the unicorn
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Seriously though, I wonder how many vegans would be okay with eating animal products if the animals were happy with it?
I’m sure they’d be all about how it’s unnatural.
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Vegans of my acquaintance stress the issue of consent. You could eat, say, cowflops and still be vegan even though they’re technically animal products. Similarly, you can eat fruits that have come about via insect pollination because the bees don’t care if you eat them apples or whatever as long as they get their nectar.
ETA: Roadkill and a suicidal cow-pig-thing at the end of the universe likewise.
ETAA: Mother’s milk is vegan too as long as it’s voluntarily provided.
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That’s what I was thinking. Is there a market for vegan, died-of-natural-causes dairy beef and stuff like that? Chickens that stopped laying and eventually succumbed to their decrepitude?
Generally it’s too long of a row to hoe, seeing as there’s not really a lot of pent-up demand for meat among vegans. They’re not looking for some Talmudic workaround. Many of them even disdain fake meat. (That said, if I’m not mistaken, Halakha allows for deviations from kashrut in the event of extreme need, i.e. God won’t be mad at you for eating bacon-wrapped scallops if your other option was starving to death.)
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I’m reminded of a scene from the Ghost in the Shell TV show, where Togusa and Batou are staking out a guy who works at a Buddhist vegan restaurant. Their specialty is fake meat. Everything looks definitely like animal products (eel cutlets, barbecue pork, that kind of thing), and Batou explains that not all the monks came from the monastery. A lot of them converted and wretchedly missed the taste and texture of “real food”.
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“Why do vegetarians spend so much time trying to make vegetables taste like meat? Do monks buy a lot of inflatable sex dolls?”
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Yes. I really don’t ever want to look at that again.
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Date-proof, too.
comparatively palatable, in fact:
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“Assume a spherical human…”
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I think Graham is Rubber Johnny’s cousin:
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