Why do you want to be a NA'Vi on Pandora?

[Crickett]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I absolutely wouldn't get bored if I didn't have to suffer the loss of all modern Earth technology and knowledge in general

or









The only thing I would truly miss is indoor plumbing. And certain foods. One thing I learned when I used to go on vacation prior to the existence of smartphones (back when they were just cellphones), you miss the internet for a few days, until you realize how much you're enjoying yourself without it.

[Theorist]

You had to pick a corolla, that's gotta be one of the most boring cars! Sure aren't making Earth look very good.

No, but besides family/friends obviously, and toilet paper (unless they have something similar) driving cars might be the only thing I'd miss. But I wouldn't miss a corolla, that's for sure

[Crickett]

Originally Posted by Theorist

You had to pick a corolla, that's gotta be one of the most boring cars! Sure aren't making Earth look very good.

No, but besides family/friends obviously, and toilet paper (unless they have something similar) driving cars might be the only thing I'd miss. But I wouldn't miss a corolla, that's for sure

Well, I was originally going to go with a Lamborghini, but how many people actually have those? So I thought of what is a common car, and I went with a Toyota Corolla. As for the other pictures, I looked up "apartment building" on google images and went with the most stereotypical looking "apartment building" looking apartment building. It's supposedly an apartment building from Greenwich Village, meaning you're looking at probably $2,500-5 large per month for one of those apartments.

[Moco Loco]

Originally Posted by Crickett

One thing I learned when I used to go on vacation prior to the existence of smartphones (back when they were just cellphones), you miss the internet for a few days, until you realize how much you're enjoying yourself without it.

I didn't say I'd miss the internet or smartphones, I said I would miss the advancement of technology and knowledge in general as a whole, and how accessible they were.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by Crickett

One thing I learned when I used to go on vacation prior to the existence of smartphones (back when they were just cellphones), you miss the internet for a few days, until you realize how much you're enjoying yourself without it.

This is why I need internet access. One summer I was two months or so without internet, and it was extremely annoying. Even after a few days I started to feel pretty awful, when I realized that my main source of sanity was unavailable.

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

I didn't say I'd miss the internet or smartphones, I said I would miss the advancement of technology and knowledge in general as a whole, and how accessible they were.

While I have a somewhat similar attitude towards information and knowledge, what good is knowledge alone if you can't apply it to anything? If life would be easy and pleasant enough without technology, then why would one need to advance it? Then again all of this is simply impossibility on my part, seeing how dependant I am of machinery of all kinds.

[Moco Loco]

How would I not be able to apply it to anything? What about applying it to a new world around me? IMO having all that taken away would be like hitting a reset button on hundreds of years of human progress from my perspective. I can only imagine feeling very depressed about it.

[EywaBlessMe]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

As for flush toilets, those are probably the stupidest thing we've ever invented.

You are crazy!
This is the BEST thing we've invented.
Fecal matter is fetid waste. It stinks, and is full of bacteria. Treating it and getting rid of it makes people healthy. Diseases like cholera come from untreated and undisposed human waste. Ever notice how backwards countries have lifespans 2/3 to 1/2 what developed nations have? These nations usually have open pit latrines, and even a cat knows to bury its waste.
As for 'waste of water', toilets without water have been tried, with little success, or great expense. And besides, where I live, we get about 39 inches of rain a year, or about 1+1/3 meters. We have to worry more about getting rid of the excess water than conserving.
As for my earlier points, you may consider 'creature comforts' unnecessary, but why live without them when you don't have to? Life is safer.

[Aquaplant]

Originally Posted by EywaBlessMe

You are crazy! This is the BEST thing we've invented.

"Convenient" perhaps, but also utterly stupid. Like it's "convenient" to shoot rabbits with a bazooka, but it doesn't make much sense though.

Fecal matter is fetid waste. It stinks, and is full of bacteria. Treating it and getting rid of it makes people healthy. Diseases like cholera come from untreated and undisposed human waste. Ever notice how backwards countries have lifespans 2/3 to 1/2 what developed nations have? These nations usually have open pit latrines, and even a cat knows to bury its waste.

Makes for a good fertilizer, and of course the excess needs to be disposed in some manner, like buried in the ground for example. But as I'm not an engineer, I can't go through all the possible options how else it could be done, but suffice to say we took the easy way out with flush toilets.

As for 'waste of water', toilets without water have been tried, with little success, or great expense. And besides, where I live, we get about 39 inches of rain a year, or about 1+1/3 meters. We have to worry more about getting rid of the excess water than conserving.

It's not just about using the water, but as you also so helpfully pointed out, we contaminate said water by using it to flush toilets and then we have to clean it again. How does that make any sense?

As for my earlier points, you may consider 'creature comforts' unnecessary, but why live without them when you don't have to? Life is safer.

It appears you do not quite know who you are talking to, because I for one am possibly the most dependant when it comes to creature comforts and the like, but I also know to differentiate between the ones that are more wasteful than they are useful. I prefer safety, but I also prefer to have my environment in working condition that it doesn't go and die on me, because that's when you loose all safety, like when you loose clean water for example.

[Clarke]

Originally Posted by Aquaplant

It's not just about using the water, but as you also so helpfully pointed out, we contaminate said water by using it to flush toilets and then we have to clean it again. How does that make any sense?

Because we want to get rid of the biochemical hazard as quickly as possible? It's essentially a generator of disease, after all.

[Aquaplant]

Isn't almost everything a generator for disease, that is everything that can be used as a nutrition and a habitat for bacteria and alike?

The irony to talk about this subject while being ill, but that's winter for you.

[EywaBlessMe]

You will never convince me that flush toilets are a bad idea.

First, human waste is NOT fertilizer. It needs processing before it can be used as fertilizer. Human poo is not like cow or horse poo, and will actually make farming worse.

Second, if you don't want to use water, how would you get rid of it? Anything mechanical would then require electricity or gasoline, and be more costly or troublesome than gravity. And as you said, you want to keep the water sanitary, what is better than running all the sewage to a wastewater treatment plant to first clean it?

Thirdly, while a septic system (which use water and gravity) or composter is acceptable for a single family, or remote farm house, a city of over 1 million, with apartments, simply could not compost that much poo daily.

There is no better option.

[Human No More]

Up to 30% of the mass of faeces is bacteria. Animals such as cows have an entirely different digestive process. There are dozens of diseases that are primarily or solely transmitted through the associated contamination of soil, food or water. It is possible to handle it without processing, but this is NOT viable for large populations, or even a small town.

[Niri Te]

Humans are overpopulating themselves right out of existence. The problem IS, that they will drag most of the rest of the flora and fauna right down the drain WITH them.
Niri Te

[Human No More]

You underestimate life's resilience. Even in the worst-case scenario short of actual planetary destruction or the removal of all biological material, life will persist even if conditions (and by necessity, species) change. The state of life has never been held in a constant state, and artificial human attempts to do so can still change the status of others even if successful.

[apache_blanca]

birth control: the best European commercial