Printable People Parts

Fairly Amazing video courtesy of Shapeways and Shelley Noble, who is a star.

I experienced something of a watershed recently (wtf is a watershed?)…

… I grind my teeth. I grind my teeth a lot – it’s other people. It’s the way they dress, their taste in music etc… but anyway, although I don’t look that outwardly weird, my teeth are a fair bit shorter than they should be. See… here’s a picture of me, holding a baby, looking fat, mad, older than I thought I was and generally a bit rowdy and scruffy. I’m an uncle.

So they’re not that bad – the teeth I mean… not bad enough to file down to little pegs and put caps on them, but enough to annoy me.

So I’ve been waiting for technology to improve to the point where they can be “adjusted” without any intrusive operating… and apparently, that technology is now here. NZ dentists don’t “cap” teeth any more – they glue/paint enameled bits wherever the repairs need to happen. No drilling or hammering etc.

Took about 15 years – for me to wait etc. And so long as we don’t blow up the planet, poison, or just generally wank ourselves to death, I think we’re going to find ourselves in a phase of “waiting for technology to be invented” for health/life or death situations.

Was it Aubrey De Grey or someone going on about this on TED a while back? (goes off, looks)

Yes.

If Aubrey De Grey gets his way and lives to be a thousand years old, his beard will stretch from here to Swannage.

I don’t know about TED actually – it seems like people get up and say all sorts of inspiring things and they get standing ovations (and I hate standing ovations) and such, then they go away and fuck-all happens. I mean I know it’s only been a year since I started watching this stuff, but still. C’mon. Where’s the fucking future? Hmmm?

It’s like there’s this highly refined and ephemeral branch of science-fiction which is to do with near-now predictions… vapourware turned into a type of performance art. I can remember when comedy was the New Rock and Roll. Now it seems to be a utopian branch of liberal futurism.

Still, never mind. There will always be an England