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Growing A House From Meat
baosol writes "From the boundary-pushing team of archi-visionaries who brought us the fabulous Fab Tree Hab comes a new (and somewhat disgusting) way to grow a structure — using animal flesh! The In Vitro Meat Habitat is a futuristic concept home composed of meat cells grown in a lab. The creator of the concept, Mitchell Joachim, is a futurist with a twist– he says he is actually developing the concept in a lab."
Heinlein already had this in the "Mrs Hawkins" character.
We need more mineralssssssssssssss.
I misread "house" as "mouse."
mmmmmm Beefy!
I am curious though, how does this do against Bears? Black bears of course because they are best.
Oh come on, Someone had to say it.. Might as well be me.
But does it taste like despair.
Not perfectly related, but whenever I hear about advancements in meat I can't help but think of that episode.
Poor Better off Ted, you will be missed.
I don't even want to write a long intelligent response to this. I just want to say WTF over and over again.
And is swarming with flies.
And I think that link qualifies as spam.
Once I get one, how will I keep from eating my bacon house?
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
from Solient Green!
From TFA:
For fenestration, or openings of windows and doors, he envisions sphincter muscles that can open and close
Nothing like coming home from work to squeeze your way into a clenched asshole.
A house made of meat?
Why?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
First thoughts that come to mind:
1) Newlywed Couples. "First thing I'm doing once we're married is picking you up and carrying you through the sphincter!"
2) Invasions of privacy. "My neighbors are really starting to get nosy. I was standing in the kitchen cooking dinner, and there's my next-door neighbor looking straight into my sphincter!"
3) Medical issues. "Doctor, can you tell me why once a month, my walls start bleeding?"
I doubt that meat will have the structural integrity to hold a whole building up not to mention that it would be a fine meal for most living creatures.
Have we not learned from the errors of the Xel'Naga?
There's no place like Hormel
AT&ROFLMAO
Next step? My own TARDIS!
Prior Art:
Farscape: Moya
Lexx: Lexx
And every Star Wars geek knows a TomTom will do in a pinch. (And you thought they smelt bad on the outside!)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
... and name it Moya!
....just don't eat yourself out of house and home.
Does this mean the house meat eats for nourishment? If so - does it poop?
That's fucking disgusting.
The pictures of these houses are making me hungry. Mmm, tasty flesh.
...looks to be well done.
If this technology becomes widespread, I'll eat my shoe!
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
The tastiest house fire ever!
I think ideally the structure would have a fur coat exterior or some sort of hide. Otherwise the bare meat would get infected. Still you'd have trouble with things like fleas. How would the structure fend off mosquitoes and other parasites? Might prove to be a maintenance nightmare.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
I am both intrigued and disgusted at the same time.
on the windows?
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
somehow it seems really important to know which of my house's orifices my toilet is connected to.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Now we just need to develop the technology to bake a sufficiently large bun, and we finally have a burger large enough for even the American market.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
"They're made out of meat." "Meat?" "Meat. Their houses are made out of meat." "Meat?" http://www.setileague.org/articles/meat.htm
Imagine that trees could walk around, talk, and needed shelter. Suddenly, some Tree Scientist suggests that their houses should be make out of WOOD!!! Ahhhhh!! How disgusting!!!!!
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
. . . skirt steak? (Could be weird depending on who does or does not live there.)
Bacon!
Why does my house keep disappearing on me just before breakfast?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I seem to remember some psychological theory that men, at heart, just want to return to the womb. At the time I thought it was ridiculous. Now I realize that they were onto something and this is what's ridiculous.
IMHO, at some point you just need to accept that a human life costs the lives of many tasty animals, tons of plants, and innumerable microorganisms. Is a tree's life worth more than the grass this structure kills by blocking the sun? How about the detrivores that live on dead plants? Or the unique and ancient rock that was broken up for gravel or cement, and the organisms living on it?
OTOH, many animals find meat to be tasty, and this house should be no different... What happens when you have a bear that has been eating your back door and comes inside looking for more food? Or your house gets gangrene? Or you leave for vacation and found the openings for your door "healed" while you were gone?
. . . the one in NYC was called, "Studio 54".
The need to feed the house would be an ongoing problem.
I am sure there would be issues with disease and odor to deal with as well.
Not to mention that the walls will offer little to no resistence against predatorial animals.
I would also expect costly complications with managing electrical wiring, heat/ac, and plumbing.
lame.
Join my new organization, P.E.T.H. People for the Ethical Treatment of Houses!
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
What happens when nature evolves a new predator to eat this abundance of protein? Maybe aliens gave cavemen this technology just to watch the t-rex's go to town?
Meat is a silly idea for many reasons. The smarter move would be growing an exoskeletal structure. Instead of meat imagine hard plates. I think that kind of bio-engineering will happen one day but it's decades if not centuries off. Once it happens we could see fully recyclable houses that can biodegrade. Instead of cutting down forests they would be grown using a nutrient mixture and could be grown on location. The final structure would be like a cross between a geodesic dome and a large insect. The structure could even be engineered to be flexible so in hurricanes or earthquakes it would flex instead of crumbling.
Soylent House! It's made of people!
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Instead of meat, what about bioengineering trees to grow into more house-like shapes?
At least, if the tree dies, you've still got a solid wood structure.
I guess one can't call it an "Animal House"....wasn't that the name of some movie? :-)
Anyone else thinks that this gets us one step closer to a real Moya?! (any farscape fan here.. ?)
It seems that whenever this 'futurist' gets a brain fart, he thinks the entire world needs to hear it. As his ideas always seem to be of the most out-there, fringe, wing-nutty type, I am left wondering, is he simply incredibly narcissistic or is he attempting to milk some venture capitalists? Either way, if I never hear another brain dead idea from this goofball, it will be too soon. There are plenty of real engineers out there toiling away in obscurity trying to come up with viable sustainable technology, Slashdot, why not do some pieces on them? Oh yes, the eternal flaw of all media: laziness. It's easier to parrot back a huckster's press release than to find the people making real innovations. Meat houses, really? Seriously, if we could grow meat in a lab, we could, oh I don't know, feed people with it or something. This is ludicrous.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I leave it to your imagination to vision the BBQ.
So, instead of becoming infested with mice, it'll become infested with dogs? Well, I guess that's an improvement.
In many other sci-fi series, the idea of living structure has been used already.
The idea is not entirely without merit, however, it does bring a lot of problems as well.
Lexx is probably the coolest example, but Farscape did it very well too.
Heck, even stargate atlantis did it decently.
you at least have something to eat.
...but I've pitched quite a few tents with my meat... ;-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
If it's made of muscle fibre I'm not sure I'd want to be in it when the electrical wiring develops a fault.
...and now I'm waiting for my Shakey's Pizza clone.
Watch it.
Somebody already made the joke in the article's comment section which I will paste here. . .
This is great! Now I can start building that Zerg colony I always wanted! Prepare to get zergling rushed, n00bz!
-FL
Hey, it worked on farscape..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I dare you to live in something that's meat in an environment that still has any predators like bears, wolves, tigers, alligators or crocodiles, lions etc.
You can't handle the truth.
A house can be condemned because it does not meat building code.
...Meat trees. I wonder what's the vegan stance on this...
So we start building our homes and spacechips like the Wraith in Stargate Atlantis.
And then when your stranded in the middle of space, you can just eat your ship
O.o
But this is the future. Space Nuttery is dead. 40 years later there's no giant orbital station and no space tourism. No one cares.
Bio tech is the future.
But what about digestive tract homes?
Edith Keeler Must Die
When I go on vacation, will I have to ask the neighbor to feed the house for me?
And will the house live longer than myself or will I end up living in a stinking house corpse?
...we can now live in housing that resembles a Zerg dwelling?
The dogs.
That is all.
I have nothing to lose but my bindings.
Listen to me people, I've got to tell you, Meat House is JERKY! [ref Heather Smith in Winter issue of Meatpaper, via Harpers, May 2010].
the Zerg Hatchery dream came true. I, for one, welcome our new Zerg Overlords...
Now if only someone could start developing the Protoss tech tree. And we could have a REAL BroodWar!
A comment about "Animal House"....where did it go???? Not happy, it was supposed to ne funny!!! ;-((((
My dog says he would like to place an order for one of these!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Now I want to paste a bitchin' meat car together.
The title and most of the commentaries so far are humorous but I think it fails to acknowledge how much a good idea this is. Obviously, anyone with basic marketing commonsense will not call it a "meat house" but something like "organic house". I don't see the interest of using meat cells, but I would love to GM trees growing to become rooms, hallways, stairs...
That would be far more easy to sell and make accept.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I know people would love to live with their daily steak but this is really going over the edge .. living inside your steak!
Redefines a bbq speciale for sure!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
See the latter part of Schismatrix for interesting and, uh, creative applications of fleshly living quarters....
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.