Stray Lizard

Nat found our cat Merlin attacking a small lizard in the front hall a while ago. She went through great panes to make sure the lizard made it outside without further molestation by the feline. He is the consummate predator. The little lizard was missing a leg. If he lives long enough he might grow another. Some lizards do that and some don't.

I keep hearing about people being able to regrow lost body parts. It is always along the lines "There is no reason we shouldn't be able to grow lost body parts. We just can't right now." Now there is a story making the rounds of the internet about n implant in the brain that can communicate with a camera on a pare of glasses and allow the blind to see. The best I can tell, it is in the very early stages, but may be a viable solution in ten or twenty years. I really how that one of the solutions out there pans out. It would be wonderful to eliminate the majority of blindness.

So many of the thing that we claim as out ideas come directly from nature. Cameras, engines, lights, flight, wheel ... We just take what we find in nature, copy it, bend it to our needs, and call it an invention. Quantum comes to mind as one thing totally
new. You cannot observe quantum without changing the outcome. That little fact makes it more of wishful-physics.

I wonder what the next big thing will be? I don't mean the iPod or the like. I'm mean fire, wheel, flight, wireless (as in communicating via radio waves) kind of invention.

• Communicating thoughts. Not sure I like this one. I know many people who use words to obfuscate their ignorance on a daily basis.
• Backing up the human mind and restoring to a clone.
• Anti gravity
• Time travel.
• Instantaneously travel. Teleportation.
  
• Learning via download directly to the brain. I like this one. I want that.
• Earthly Immortality. Not a good idea. It will mean the end of human kind. People who live forever are not human in my book.
• Contact with aliens. I mean the real thing. I'm hoping for Star Trek over Hitchhiker's guide aliens.
• Contact God, death, soles, you get the idea. What would they have to say to us? Contacting God would make less people believe in God I bet. What's the point in believing in something that exists?
  
• Cheap, endless batteries that last for lifetimes and never need recharging. There is a legion of people buried under stadiums and bridge pilings who invented forever-batteries.
• Cats that don't stink.

What do you think?