My favorite novel.
Quite difficult to read, but if you get through the first fifty pages or so, you will get the hang of it... a story about purpose in life and how life is so often thwarted...
The yellow arrow points to the sun. If you look really carefully, you will see me waving...
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Spectacular lectures
Liberal, optimistic, exhilarating.
www.ted.com
Try these to start
The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/10
The best presentation ever... legendary... your view of the world will change in multiple ways.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
Extremely graphic... it even made me queasy... but you cannot understand the light without knowing the darkness...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/142
www.ted.com
Try these to start
The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/10
The best presentation ever... legendary... your view of the world will change in multiple ways.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92
Extremely graphic... it even made me queasy... but you cannot understand the light without knowing the darkness...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/142
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Law of ACCELERATING Returns
You have probably heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns, which says, for example, if you exercise for half an hour a day, you get most of the health benefits, if you exercise for an hour a day, you get almost all of the health benefits, and exercising for two, three, or four hours a day will give very little added health benefits.
However, there are situations in progress does not slow down (at least for a long while) and actually speeds up over time. People tend to see progress in technology as proceeding in a linear fashion, so they expect the 21st century (barring something truly unfortunate happening) to progress something like the way the 20th century did. But according to Ray Kurzweil, the technical progress in the 21st century will be more like 1,000 times that of the 20th century.
Here is an example. Cost to read the DNA of one person
in 1990: 3 billion dollars
in 2005: 2 million dollars
in 2006: 200,000 dollars
target for 2010-2015: 1,000 dollars
Being able to read your DNA will allow medical treatments to be tailored specifically for you, vastly improving outcomes.
This BBC Horizon program is granted sensational infotainment, but it is probably the most efficient introduction to this topic and to Ray Kurzweil.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3882715179234602208&q=human+v2.0&hl=en
This article is very long, and there may be parts that are difficult to follow, but look over the entire article because it is a map of the world we are already living in, and it shows what is coming up down the road.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
However, there are situations in progress does not slow down (at least for a long while) and actually speeds up over time. People tend to see progress in technology as proceeding in a linear fashion, so they expect the 21st century (barring something truly unfortunate happening) to progress something like the way the 20th century did. But according to Ray Kurzweil, the technical progress in the 21st century will be more like 1,000 times that of the 20th century.
Here is an example. Cost to read the DNA of one person
in 1990: 3 billion dollars
in 2005: 2 million dollars
in 2006: 200,000 dollars
target for 2010-2015: 1,000 dollars
Being able to read your DNA will allow medical treatments to be tailored specifically for you, vastly improving outcomes.
This BBC Horizon program is granted sensational infotainment, but it is probably the most efficient introduction to this topic and to Ray Kurzweil.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3882715179234602208&q=human+v2.0&hl=en
This article is very long, and there may be parts that are difficult to follow, but look over the entire article because it is a map of the world we are already living in, and it shows what is coming up down the road.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Step 1: Slow the Ageing Process
Something that humans have seen only once is about to happen again: functional lifespan will vastly increase.
This happened the first time in the 20th century with improvements in public health, sanitation, nutrition, vaccination, and pharmaceuticals. Someone from the 19th century would not believe how low our risk of death is, how free of disability and pain we are, and how long we live now. Things are hardly perfect, but to all humans who lived before the early 1900s, the world we live in now would be an unbelievable paradise.
In the next leap, we will not only live even longer, but disease and disability will often be delayed by years if not decades. If we can just make it through the next 15 years or so, the interventions will be unbelievable. It is quite possible that many of us, even those in middle age, will live to see the dawn of the 22nd century, looking and feeling like 40. I am not joking.
So, how do we improve our chances of getting there? Doing basic things to take care of your health is obvious, but there are other things that can be done.
We have known for 70 years how to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of the diseases of old age: eat less. Or more exactly, reduce the number of calories while maintaining adequate amounts of protein, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients. The difference is shocking, and it has been shown in animals from ameba to monkeys without exception. Basically, when calories are low, cells turn on genes that fix damage, so you age more slowly.
If you have not seen this New York Times article, look quick because it may not be free for long.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/nutrition/31agin.html?ex=1163480400&en=193a4a4fe169ec69&ei=5070
(If the link won't load or if it doesn't appear to be fully highlighted, the problem is probably that the address is so long that it has broken and an extraneous space has been added at the end of the first line. Copy and paste the two parts into the browser window address line and remove the extraneous space.)
If you can't read the above article, basically it shows two monkeys, both about 25 years old. One ate a normal diet and is old, frail, gray, scruffy, and has the shrunken skull of an old monkey (like a 90 year old human). The other monkey ate a diet with the same nutrients but with about 30 percent fewer calories. The contrast is shocking. The monkey that ate fewer calories still looks young and healthy (like a 60 year old human).
So, step one is avoid excess calories, especially from sugar, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes.
But the amount by which you have to reduce calories is quite difficult for most people to maintain. Is there another way we can turn on the damage repair genes? The answer seems to be yes.
Throughout human evolution, we have always eaten plants that were far from perfect. They were drought stressed, attacked by fungi, and eaten by insects. Ironically, this seems to have been good for us. When plants are attacked or do not receive enough water, they produce huge numbers of chemicals to defend themselves. When there were a lot of these chemicals in plants, animals eating the plants used that as a signal that a potential famine was coming, so their cells turned on the damage control genes to protect what the cells already had. We also did not have steady supplies of food, so whenever we didn't eat for a day, again the damage control genes turned on. In modern life, all the plants we eat are completely protected from fungi and insects and are watered carefully. All the stress response chemicals which they would normally produce are not there. We never go for a day without eating. Therefore, our damage control genes are never turned on, so we age at the maximum rate.
If we consume chemicals that plants make in response to stress, it turns on the damage control genes, and voila, the effect is the same as caloric restriction, although it is unclear what dose is necessary. One chemical that has been shown to turn on damage control genes is resveratrol, which is found in the skin of grapes, especially when the grape plants are stressed by drought or fungus infection, and is found in many other plants as well. Since people who drink red wine made from grapes harvested and processed in the French way seemed to have extremely low levels of heart disease, researchers tried screening red wines from France to find out if there were compounds which produced the effect. Resveratrol is the most potent found so far. When given to laboratory animals, it drastically slows ageing by 20% and even much more, and it decreases risk of cancer by up to 70%. Further evidence comes from numerous studies showing that consumption of 3 glasses of red wine per week is associated with 70% reduction in colon cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and other cancers.
I have been taking resveratrol for two years now, and I think the effects are apparent. When I stopped for 6 months because I ran out, the skin started to look old and wrinkled. Resveratrol is easily destroyed by exposure to air, heat, and light. I take the one from Longevinex at
http://www.longevinex.com
because it seems to be the most biologically active. It costs about a dollar a day, which is much cheaper than a glass of wine, though much less fun, so I do both.
These results are not obscure, but you may not have heard about them unless you read science publications all the time like I do. Do a Google search for any of these topics and you will find thousands of hits.
So, step 1, let's at least do simple basic things to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of serious diseases of old age. You may be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.
This happened the first time in the 20th century with improvements in public health, sanitation, nutrition, vaccination, and pharmaceuticals. Someone from the 19th century would not believe how low our risk of death is, how free of disability and pain we are, and how long we live now. Things are hardly perfect, but to all humans who lived before the early 1900s, the world we live in now would be an unbelievable paradise.
In the next leap, we will not only live even longer, but disease and disability will often be delayed by years if not decades. If we can just make it through the next 15 years or so, the interventions will be unbelievable. It is quite possible that many of us, even those in middle age, will live to see the dawn of the 22nd century, looking and feeling like 40. I am not joking.
So, how do we improve our chances of getting there? Doing basic things to take care of your health is obvious, but there are other things that can be done.
We have known for 70 years how to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of the diseases of old age: eat less. Or more exactly, reduce the number of calories while maintaining adequate amounts of protein, fats, vitamins, and other nutrients. The difference is shocking, and it has been shown in animals from ameba to monkeys without exception. Basically, when calories are low, cells turn on genes that fix damage, so you age more slowly.
If you have not seen this New York Times article, look quick because it may not be free for long.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/nutrition/31agin.html?ex=1163480400&en=193a4a4fe169ec69&ei=5070
(If the link won't load or if it doesn't appear to be fully highlighted, the problem is probably that the address is so long that it has broken and an extraneous space has been added at the end of the first line. Copy and paste the two parts into the browser window address line and remove the extraneous space.)
If you can't read the above article, basically it shows two monkeys, both about 25 years old. One ate a normal diet and is old, frail, gray, scruffy, and has the shrunken skull of an old monkey (like a 90 year old human). The other monkey ate a diet with the same nutrients but with about 30 percent fewer calories. The contrast is shocking. The monkey that ate fewer calories still looks young and healthy (like a 60 year old human).
So, step one is avoid excess calories, especially from sugar, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes.
But the amount by which you have to reduce calories is quite difficult for most people to maintain. Is there another way we can turn on the damage repair genes? The answer seems to be yes.
Throughout human evolution, we have always eaten plants that were far from perfect. They were drought stressed, attacked by fungi, and eaten by insects. Ironically, this seems to have been good for us. When plants are attacked or do not receive enough water, they produce huge numbers of chemicals to defend themselves. When there were a lot of these chemicals in plants, animals eating the plants used that as a signal that a potential famine was coming, so their cells turned on the damage control genes to protect what the cells already had. We also did not have steady supplies of food, so whenever we didn't eat for a day, again the damage control genes turned on. In modern life, all the plants we eat are completely protected from fungi and insects and are watered carefully. All the stress response chemicals which they would normally produce are not there. We never go for a day without eating. Therefore, our damage control genes are never turned on, so we age at the maximum rate.
If we consume chemicals that plants make in response to stress, it turns on the damage control genes, and voila, the effect is the same as caloric restriction, although it is unclear what dose is necessary. One chemical that has been shown to turn on damage control genes is resveratrol, which is found in the skin of grapes, especially when the grape plants are stressed by drought or fungus infection, and is found in many other plants as well. Since people who drink red wine made from grapes harvested and processed in the French way seemed to have extremely low levels of heart disease, researchers tried screening red wines from France to find out if there were compounds which produced the effect. Resveratrol is the most potent found so far. When given to laboratory animals, it drastically slows ageing by 20% and even much more, and it decreases risk of cancer by up to 70%. Further evidence comes from numerous studies showing that consumption of 3 glasses of red wine per week is associated with 70% reduction in colon cancer, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and other cancers.
I have been taking resveratrol for two years now, and I think the effects are apparent. When I stopped for 6 months because I ran out, the skin started to look old and wrinkled. Resveratrol is easily destroyed by exposure to air, heat, and light. I take the one from Longevinex at
http://www.longevinex.com
because it seems to be the most biologically active. It costs about a dollar a day, which is much cheaper than a glass of wine, though much less fun, so I do both.
These results are not obscure, but you may not have heard about them unless you read science publications all the time like I do. Do a Google search for any of these topics and you will find thousands of hits.
So, step 1, let's at least do simple basic things to slow the ageing process and delay the onset of serious diseases of old age. You may be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.
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