I should have said *potential* "ally..."

And yeah I get the reference - it was a trite play on words then too.

which makes them an "ally of opportunity" - you both benefit if you synchronize your attacks on a shared prey, but you'd be wise to assume they may turn on you at any moment as well.

It's not just the furries who'd be up for animal-like body modification, I'd *love* to have a prehensile tail. How many times have you wished for an extra hand? And we've got the genetic blueprints from numerous relatively close relatives to guide us on how to add them gracefully - we may even carry many/most of the necessary genes already. Sure, it's not as dextrous as prehensile feet, but it can be used while walking. And besides I already have two hands, a third grasping appendage with a different set of strengths and weaknesses would add more options.

Symbiote, please. Have you ever seen a liver try to acquire and ingest food? Not a pretty picture.

Alternately, survival of the fittest is about *genes*, not individuals - and given mortal organisms, their reproduction usually correlates very closely to the survival of their genes.

Interestingly, in many hive organisms this correlation fails in favor of the super-organism. Among honeybees for example the workers (female) are fertile, but share far more genes with their siblings than they would with their own children, and so survival of the fittest (genes) leads them to promote the health and reproduction of the queen rather than themselves - it's a better investment for their genes.

A cheap and easy way to modify genes directly would the death of eugenics? Really? Unless you're restricting your definition to animal husbandry applied to humans I'd have to disagree:

notice that it says especially by, not exclusively by. And I dare say that that's because until recently that was the only viable way to do such a thing.

> probably because we could be more entertaining and interesting to women with big brains

Hell, if you actually focus on it big brains can help you attract pretty much anyone that doesn't actively prefer stupidity - and that's pretty rare. Give up math, science, comics, etc, etc, etc and instead focus all that brainpower on actually observing and analyzing the behavior of people around you, and experimentally modifying your own behavior to test your hypotheses on social interaction in a rigorous manner - and I can virtually guarantee you that your social appeal will improve. That so many intelligent people end up somewhat isolated is, I think, a testament to the wonder of the other fields an intellect puts within reach, as well as the appeal of immediate intellectual gratification: Every little step you take when climbing towards the shoulders of giants reveals new expanses of understanding, whereas social skills are a far less readily transferable kind of knowledge, thrusting you into experimental science from step one.

I suppose a big brain is like a peacocks tail in more ways than one - carelessly harnessed (from an evolutionary perspective) it can become a serious disadvantage to your genetic survival (reproductive fitness in this case)

The free market has nothing to do with it - any society which institutes non-free policies to preserve life has to face the fact that the things you can do to reduce non-age related deaths greatly outstrip your ability to fund them. Faced with that fact you really have no option but to assign a dollar value to a life if you want to make rational policy decisions.

From your level of reading comprehension I'd say you've had plenty already. *Excessive* drinking increases your risk of imminent death. Meanwhile most of the health benefits have been associated with consumption in the ~1 drink per day range. I think traumatic injury/surgery recovery is the only situation where I've heard of high levels of intoxication being potentially helpful.

Of *course* the drug lords have lobbyists in DC, they just don't announce themselves. Move the stuff off the black market and profits fall through the floor. Even with all the attempts at restricting production the price of pot in Colorado and other (semi)-legalized states is falling.

Given the fact that prohibition doesn't actually work and never has (we can't even keep drugs out of *prisons*, how could we possibly keep them out of a free society?), there are only two rational reasons to attempt it:
(1) Police empowerment - nothing like a mandate to fight an unwinnable war on an ill-defined subset of the general population to provide an excuse for ever-increasing funding and the erosion of civil rights.
(2) Bolstering the black market. And as a bonus since they're operating outside the law in an extremely lucrative market, the merchants have incentive to resort to violence among themselves and with the authorities, further bolstering (1).

Take your pick. Historically both outcomes are the only major results of any prohibition attempt in a free society.

Three words: Automotive commuter trains.

They already have them along some routes on the East coast. I'd love to see a "car ferry" car or two be common on all passenger trains - after all pound-for-pound nothing comes close to the efficiency of rail for transporting loads. And if you're trying to drive cross-country without significant stops then you're not going to be stopping at tourist traps long the way, and would probably be happier off spending the time in the lounge car than sitting behind the wheel for 12 hours

>supplying the energy isn't trivial.

Sure it is - you put a bunch of batteries in the basement of your fueling station and charge them as fast as the grid can supply. They can then dump their power into your car when you plug in. You don't even need a terribly thick charging cable if you design the system to run at high voltage. Or you could use slot-car inspired charging pads on the undercarriage which use thick metal bars to transfer power with minimal flexing or human involvement.

Many have - there've even been a few abortive attempts to implement it. It's just a matter of designing the batteries to be easily replaced.

1) becomes irrelevant, the fueling station recharges the battery at it's leisure, and puts it in the queue for the next person once charged.

2) One word: robots. They could pick up your entire car and hurl it across several city blocks to hit a bug on the sidewalk a fraction of a second later if there was a reason to build such a thing.

3) You wouldn't. Virtually all of these sort of systems rest on the assumption that you don't even own the battery, you just borrow/lease it from the people you buy the power from.

Hell, you can even pump several megawatts over standard extension cord wiring with minimal losses, provided you keep the current under 15 amps or so and instead pump the voltage up to hundreds of kilovolts. Of course with that kind of voltage you're going to want some serious insulation, and probably an active system to detect when a firm connection has been made to the load before applying full voltage to prevent massive arcing.