Economist: Lifespan extending benefits of caloric restriction passed down to next generation. Seriously.

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The Economist is reporting on how an obscure group of animals, the rotifer, may reveal the secret of elongating life. It's a study into caloric restriction, which is not surprising, but what's particularly fascinating about this study, however, is that the benefits seem to be passed down to the next generation:

Rotifers are unusual in that they often reproduce by parthenogenesis (some species, indeed, can reproduce only in this way). A parthenogenetic population is, by definition, all female and the result, give or take the odd mutation, is that a rotifer’s daughters are genetically identical to her. That makes rotifers convenient subjects for studies of the controversial idea that characteristics acquired during an individual’s life can be passed down the generations in ways that are independent of mutations in the DNA.

Dr Watabe and his colleagues first looked at whether caloric restriction does, indeed, work its magic on rotifers. It does. Without it, as they report in Functional Ecology, their animals lived for an average of 8.8 days. With it they lived for 13.5 days. The intriguing result came when they did the same thing with the rotifers’ offspring. The daughters of those rotifers which had been fed as much as they could eat lived for 9.5 days if treated likewise (not significantly different from their mothers) and 14.4 if put on short commons. Those born of calorie-restricted mothers lived for 12.7 and 16.8 days respectively. Something, then, is being passed on that is having an effect down the generations.

That something seems to be related to an enzyme called catalase. This enzyme degrades hydrogen peroxide, a highly reactive chemical that creates cellular damage of the sort associated with ageing. Dr Watabe found that the offspring of calorie-restricted mothers have more catalase than those of mothers who were fed without restriction.

So, if inherited epigenetic changes are causing daughter rotifers to produce more catalase, it raises the question of whether a similar thing happens in other species and, if so, whether it might be induced artificially so that people won't have to resort to caloric restriction.

Read the entire article.


Hacks to help you stay healthy

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Good advice here. Summarized:

  • Drink tons of water
  • Drink more tea
  • Cut out the corn syrup
  • Enjoy a fattening breakfast
  • Eat slower
  • Put leftovers away before eating
  • Overload on veggies
  • Don't eat and multi-task
  • Instead of snacking, brush your teeth
  • Buy food with cash
  • Make a "veggie section" in your shopping cart
  • Listen to music while you work out
  • Watch less TV
  • Wear comfy clothes
  • Weigh yourself


Bailey: IVF goes from yuck to yippee!

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Ronald Bailey tells us what this year's Nobel Prize for a test tube baby pioneer tells us about the moral endorsement of technology:

At long last, in vitro fertilization pioneer Robert Edwards has been awarded a Nobel Prize. Back in 1978, his research with his colleague Patrick Steptoe led to the birth of the world’s first test tube baby, Louise Joy Brown. The public (and makers of public policy) initially reacted to Edwards’ research with moral horror. However, once he and Steptoe had succeeded in producing a healthy baby girl, revulsion swiftly turned into wide approval and ethical acceptance.

In 2001, when Roberts was given the prestigious Lasker Award for medical research, biochemist Joseph Goldstein quipped, "We know that IVF was a great leap because Edwards and Steptoe were immediately attacked by an unlikely trinity—the press, the pope, and prominent Nobel laureates." Edwards’ scientific career traces out the ethical arc that characterizes reaction to much technological progress during the last century—initial fear and loathing followed by a warm embrace. Yuck followed quickly by yippee.

In 1969, a Harris poll found that a majority of Americans believed that producing test-tube babies was "against God's will." In 1970s, the federal government imposed a moratorium on federal funding of in vitro fertilization research and legislation that would have outlawed IVF was considered by Congress. Yet just one month after the birth of Louise Brown, the Gallup poll reported that 60 percent of Americans approved of in vitro fertilization and more than half would consider using it if they were infertile.

Advances in biomedicine—especially those that touch most closely on birth and death—have been the most ethically fraught. A lot of moral struggles have centered on control over reproduction. Let’s set aside the long fight over abortion and look chiefly at a couple of the other moral struggles over fertility control, contraception and artificial insemination, as examples of this process of progressive moral endorsement.

Read the entire article.


Gilese 581 discovered for the first time….again

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I'm finding it very strange that everyone's all a tizzy about the discovery of a potentially habitable planet, Gilese 581. This planet was discovered over three years ago. I remember this because it was an important consideration in the Fermi talk I delivered in Chicago the same year. Its discovery also motivated me to write about the Rare Earth Delusion. I'm not sure I understand all the sudden attention.

** ADDENDUM: 2010.10.05: Okay, everything is now illuminated: As my reader Richard Leis, Jr. points out, "The discovery of Gliese 581 c was announced in 2007. Last week's announcement was Gliese 581 g. C was initially considered a good candidate for potential life, but later calculations suggested it was actually outside the star's habitable zone. G is considered a better candidate because calculations place it more firmly within the habitable zone." **

Well, whatever. What's important to note is that (1) it reaffirms the notion that we (likely) live in a biophilic Universe and (2) its presence deepens the disturbing nature of the Fermi Paradox. As a potential data point that works to increase the value of n in the Drake Equation, it serves to reinforce the suggestion that, while we find ourselves in a Universe that is likely teeming with life, it's not one that's teeming in space-faring civilizations. Consequently, its discovery is not exactly good news.

Here's what I wrote back in April of 2007 when Gilese 581 was first discovered:

Wow, the blogosphere has been absolutely gushing these past few days over the news that an Earth-like planet may have been discovered in the 'hood. This planet may boast a moderate climate that could conceivably support life and is only 20 light years away.

Not surprisingly, this news has caused a number of pundits to fantasize about jumping into their rocketships and bidding adiós to our polluted, war-torn and diseased planet.

But not so fast, amigos. While many have misguidedly jumped on the bandwagon to the stars, a number of bloggers have gotten it right.

In his article, "'Don't Pack Your Bags Just Yet", Jamais Cascio notes that, "By the time we have the technology that would make a 20 light year trip even remotely plausible (the fastest space craft yet made would still take thousands of years to get there), we probably won't be all that interested in living in a watery gravity hole anyway. Nope -- give us some nice, massive gas giants to convert to computronium!"

Michael Anissimov points out that we have a human hospitable planet right here that we’ve barely even begun to use. He also argues that "even if we did need to leave the Earth, there is a tremendous amount of raw materials for space colonies right next door in the form of carbonaceous asteroids, which make up about 75% of known asteroids." Moreover, warns Anissimov, "we should think carefully before sending off colonists to far-away places without ensuring that they’re capable of protecting the fundamental freedoms of their citizens." Specifically, he worries that a blight may come back to haunt us (which also reminds me of the Honored Matres of the Dune series).

And as Tyler Cowen noted, "Are earth-like planets so common? That probably means lots more civilization-supporting planets than I had expected. But where are the alien visitors? As suggested by the Fermi paradox, we must revise our priors along several margins, one of which is the expected duration of an intelligent civilization."

Indeed, Cowen is on the right track. A primary argument used to reconcile the Fermi Paradox is the Rare Earth Hypothesis. This line of reasoning suggests that we haven't been visited by ETI's because life is far too rare in the cosmos.

But if we have discovered an Earth-like planet as little as 20 light years away, it's not unreasonable to suggest that our Galaxy must be absolutely teeming with life. This would seem to be a heavy blow to the REH.

So why is this bad news? It's bad news because our biophilic universe should be saturated with advanced intelligence by now...but it's not. The Fermi Paradox is very much in effect as a profound and disturbing unsolved mystery in astrosociobiology, philosophy and futurism.

Are all civilizations doomed before getting to the Singularity? Or is there something else at work here?


Dedication to healthy foods considered an eating disorder

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It almost sounds like the headline from an Onion article.

But back in August of 2009 the Guardian published a piece about how a fixation with healthy eating can be a sign of a serious psychological disorder. Called orthorexia nervosa, this so-called 'condition' was first diagnosed by Californian Steven Bratmanin in 1997 and is described as a "fixation on righteous eating." According to Bratmanin,

Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.

This obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished, claim the researchers, but at the same time be overweight or look normal. They are solely concerned with the quality of the food they put in their bodies, refining and restricting their diets according to their personal understanding of which foods are truly 'pure'.

The most susceptible are middle-class, well-educated people who regularly read about food "scares" and have the time and money to source what they believe to be purer alternatives.

I could go on but I'm going to stop right there; you get the picture.

Wow, I'm flabbergasted by this. While I admit it possible that a very small minority of health conscious people may actually be starving themselves on account of food paranoia, I have to think it's exceptionally rare. But according to this article and the researchers cited, orthorexia nervosa is a pervasive problem. In fact, there is a quote in the article from Deanne Jade, founder of the National Centre for Eating Disorders, who said, "There is a fine line between people who think they are taking care of themselves by manipulating their diet and those who have orthorexia. I see people around me who have no idea they have this disorder. I see it in my practice and I see it among my friends and colleagues."

Okay, so there's an abundance of well-educated, informed, middle-class health nuts.

And their dedication to eating healthily is now considered an eating disorder.

Specifically, those people who have eliminated such things as sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods from their diets—not to mention pesticides, herbicides, and artificial additives.

These people have an eating disorder?

I hardly think so. These people are my heros for goodness sake. While I can understand why some people might consider them obsessives, I think of them as focused and disciplined. Eliminating those particular foods along with those extraneous toxins should be considered a good thing.

But therein lies the problem. These researchers, some of whom should know better (particularly the dietitians), are much like society in general: completely ignorant of what constitutes a healthy diet. By consequence, any deviation from the status quo—in this case an apparent radically restrictive diet—is considered not just deviant behavior, but something that's actually pathological in nature.

Truth is, the vast majority of "food" out there is stuff we shouldn't be eating in the first place; the core of the modern grocery store is a nothing more than a crap dispenser. By consequence, the world's eating habits are insane. But some people are getting wise to it, adopting such diets as Paleo, Zone, and others. Yes, these diets can be quite restrictive in the types and quantities of foods involved, but that's the reality of healthy (and dare I say ethical) eating.

As a result, for those unaccustomed or unfamiliar with what a truly healthy diet looks like, it may look rather spartan. If not completely bonkers.

The food industry is partly to blame. Hyper-processed and fast foods laden in sugar and salt are a staple of many diets. Ad campaigns fool consumers into thinking they're eating healthily. Parents are regularly deceived into thinking that a bowl of super-sweetened cereal is an integral part of their children's well-balanced diet—and just because it has a bit of fibre in it.

The government is also partly responsible with their ridiculously inaccurate food pyramid. This is a particularly nefarious and longstanding turd of misinformation (or deliberate disinformation?) that informs the food industry and a myriad of other institutions about what and how much they're supposed to prepare and serve to the public.

Lastly, the general population is also to blame. Like the cigarette smoker, most people knowingly engage in habits that are bad for them, while many others insist on remaining ignorant.

So, here in the developed world where there are pandemics of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and many, many other lifestyle related diseases, we are now being told that a dedication to prevention is a psychological disorder. What foolishness. This is irresponsible to the point of negligence.

The phrase 'my body is a temple' comes to mind. For many of us, our ongoing efforts to keep our minds and bodies healthy is an integral part of our daily lives. We know that proper habits will impact on our health both in the short and long term. By making careful food choices now and having the discipline to avoid unhealthy eating, we stand a much better chance of extending our healthy life-span and quality of life. There is nothing wrong with that.

In fact, if only more people had this so-called 'orthorexia nervosa' we'd all be in a much better place.


Interviewed by The Mark

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I was recently interviewed by The Mark for a show about the future of humans. You can listen to the broadcast here. Episode description:

The first axiom of the Transhumanist Declaration is that: “Humanity stands to be profoundly affected by science and technology in the future. We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering, and our confinement to planet Earth.” The declaration is a missive that attempts to lay the social, political, and philosophical groundwork for the inevitable incorporation of technology into human biology.

If you think this sounds far-fetched, just consider the exponential scientific advances we've seen in the last 50 years. Travelling to the moon? Neil Armstrong did that in 1969. Cloning? Dolly the Sheep made headlines for it in 1996. Mapping the human genome? No problem, we finished in 2003. Science fiction is now science fact. You can read about it on the smartphone in your pocket that taps into that collection of humanity's knowledge called the internet.

So what's next for humans in this brave new world? Is this the next leap in human evolution? Or will adding technology cause us to lose a piece of our humanity?

This week on the show, host Chris Mitchell talks with three experts who speculate on what's coming next, and what we can do to prepare for it.

First up, a conversation with transhumanist George Dvorsky on what developments we can expect to see in the coming decades.

Next, Ian Kerr explains how medical technology could eventually erase human limitations.

Finally, Christopher Dewdney on why Michael Jackson was a pioneer of transhumanism.


Toth-Fejel: The politics and ethics of the weather machine

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A tiny portion of a Hall Weather Machine
at 90,000 ft. This density may be
able to ameliorate global warming/cooling,
but would not be able to control weather.

A number of years ago, nanotechnology theorist J. Storrs Hall concieved of what is now called the Hall Weather Machine. It's exactly what it sounds like, an advanced system for controlling the weather:

The Hall Weather Machine is a thin global cloud consisting of small transparent balloons that can be thought of as a programmable and reversible greenhouse gas because it shades or reflects the amount of sunlight that hits the upper stratosphere. These balloons are each between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter, made of a few-nanometer thick diamondoid membrane. Each balloon is filled with hydrogen to enable it to float at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, high above the clouds. It is bisected by an adjustable sheet, and also includes solar cells, a small computer, a GPS receiver to keep track of its location, and an actuator to occasionally (and relatively slowly) move the bisecting membrane between vertical and horizontal orientations. Just like with a regular high-altitude balloon, the heavier control and energy storage systems would be on the bottom of the balloon to automatically set the vertical axis without requiring any energy. The balloon would also have a water vapor/hydrogen generator system for altitude control, giving it the same directional navigation properties that an ordinary hot-air balloon has when it changes altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes.

What's particularly impressive about the weather machine is that controlling a tenth of one percent of solar radiation is enough to force global climate in any direction we want. One percent is enough to change regional climate, and ten percent is enough for serious weather control.

The implications to remedial ecology, geoengineering, and technogaianism in general are profound, to say the least.

But as research engineer, and friend to the transhumanists, Tihamer Toth-Fejel notes in his article, "The Politics and Ethics of the Hall Weather Machine," managing the social and environmental implications of such a control system could prove to be tricky, if not completely untenable.

The weather machine could prove to be a disaster, either through misuse, abuse, or just plain ignorance.

For example, the global coordination of the reflective weather machine would allow for the bouncing of concentrated solar energy around the globe, making it possible to set cities on fire—the type of fire caused by dropping a nuclear bomb per second for as long as desired. As Toth-Fejel notes, "the potential for abuse is rather large." The temptation to weaponize such a device may be overwhelming. The whole project could start various arms races, including efforts to bring the entire system down.

In the article, Toth-Fejel considers a number of other scenarios and possible implications, both good and bad. Having a weather machine in place introduces a slew of fascinating implications, ranging from the environmental to the political. Toth-Fejel offers no easy answers or trite solutions, and instead uses the article the raise awareness about this important possibility.

Read more.


Notaro: Why do we believe what we believe?

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I love the intersection of psychology, rationality and memetics: "Why do we believe what we believe" by the IEET's Kris Notaro:

One can make the argument that people accept certain memes over others mainly because of what they are taught they will get out of believing them. If we apply instrumental conditioning (similar to classical conditioning) where we replace behavior with belief, the consequence would be, for example, that belief in god leads to eternal life in heaven. Or we can make the claim that “god experiences” lead to a warm feeling in the “heart and minds” of those who believe God is there for them. Therefore, they believe and act accordingly to what the meme’s reward is: eternal life and/or a good feeling.

In a conversation I had recently with a professor of psychology, we both agreed that a modification of the Critical Period concept is probably the primary reason why people in today’s culture believe in God. This would entail that the critical period for people to take on a belief in God would extend to adolescents and young adults. I personally started to question the existence of God in middle school where Prof. A. started to question her faith during high school. We are both agnostic/atheist primarily because of these experiences early in our brain development. We both accept modern paradigms of science over religion.

Neuroscience has shown that specific brain regions, synoptic bonds, and neurotransmitters influence people to believe one concept over another. Philosophy , sociology, and psychology demonstrate how people can take on certain beliefs because of critical periods of learning, choice (Doxastic Voluntarism), cooperation, and instrumental conditioning. Each of these pressures on the brain can lead to the propagation of concepts/memes. There are no definitive schemes which explain why be believe what we believe as a society, culture, and world. However I would argue that in the healthy brain that all these reasons are interconnected, from brain regions, to simplistic mythical stories.

More.


Eucrio set to launch on October 1

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Via Accelerating Future:

Eucrio will officially launch on Friday, October 1st.
From the website:
The Company
EUCRIO is an organization that specializes in providing state-of-the-art standby, stabilization, and transport procedures for cryonicists in the European Union. EUCRIO is pleased to assist members of the three main cryonics storage provider organizations.
The People
EUCRIO employs a wide variety of professionals: including physicians, perfusionists, emergency medical technicians, engineers and scientists, throughout the European Union. EUCRIO has staff members ready to intervene across the European Union and all are ready to respond to clients at all times (24 hours a day, 7 days per week).


Stuxnet worm allows hackers to control industrial machinery

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Well, it finally happened: A worm has been developed that can break into computers which control machinery at the heart of industry. Such a security breach could allow attackers to assume control of critical systems like pumps, motors, alarms and valves in an industrial plant. Worse, safety systems could be switched off at a nuclear power plant; fresh water contaminated with effluent at a sewage treatment plant, or the valves in an oil pipeline opened, contaminating the land or sea.

The worm is called Stuxnet and it's about 600-kilobytes in size. It was professionally written, an indication that a nation-state or organized crime outfit is likely behind it.

This worm will prove particularly problematic for legacy systems, but it's also a wake-up call for new distributed systems such as smart grids. Security will have to be embedded in the architecture right from the start to avoid such vulnerabilities.

Source.


Mazlan Othman: United Nations ambassador to extraterrestrials

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ADDENDUM: This story is bullshit. Dammit, I had I feeling....

Breaking news in the fast-paced world of exopolitics: The United Nations has appointed an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman, to act as Earth's primary-point-of-contact for visiting extraterrestrials. Othman will head the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa).

The recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of alien life more likely than ever before; the UN feels that it must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any first contact. During a recent talk, Othman noted, "The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials. When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination."

Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, noted that Othman is now the nearest thing we have to a 'take me to your leader' person.

In my opinion, the first order of business for Othman should be a screening of Mars Attacks to learn what not to do during first contact:


Source.


Boyden: Helping brains and machines work together

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Credit: Technology Review

Neuroscientist Edward Boyden, in his article, "Brain Coprocessors," says we need to develop operating systems to help brains and machines work together.

Boyden notes that over the past 20 years there has been a slew of technologies that have enabled the observation or perturbation of information in the brain.

Take functional MRI, for example, which measures blood flow changes associated with brain activity. FMRI technology is being explored for purposes as diverse as lie detection, prediction of human decision making, and assessment of language recovery after stroke.

And implanted electrical stimulators, which enable control of neural circuit activity, are borne by hundreds of thousands of people to treat conditions such as deafness, Parkinson's disease, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In addition, new methods, such as the use of light to activate or silence specific neurons in the brain, are being widely utilized by researchers to reveal insights into how to control neural circuits to achieve therapeutically useful changes in brain dynamics. "We are entering a neurotechnology renaissance," says Boyden, "in which the toolbox for understanding the brain and engineering its functions is expanding in both scope and power at an unprecedented rate."

He continues:

This toolbox has grown to the point where the strategic utilization of multiple neurotechnologies in conjunction with one another, as a system, may yield fundamental new capabilities, both scientific and clinical, beyond what they can offer alone. For example, consider a system that reads out activity from a brain circuit, computes a strategy for controlling the circuit so it enters a desired state or performs a specific computation, and then delivers information into the brain to achieve this control strategy. Such a system would enable brain computations to be guided by predefined goals set by the patient or clinician, or adaptively steered in response to the circumstances of the patient's environment or the instantaneous state of the patient's brain.

Some examples of this kind of "brain coprocessor" technology are under active development, such as systems that perturb the epileptic brain when a seizure is electrically observed, and prosthetics for amputees that record nerves to control artificial limbs and stimulate nerves to provide sensory feedback. Looking down the line, such system architectures might be capable of very advanced functions--providing just-in-time information to the brain of a patient with dementia to augment cognition, or sculpting the risk-taking profile of an addiction patient in the presence of stimuli that prompt cravings.

Looking ahead to the future, Boyden admits that we'll need to be careful:

Of course, giving machines the authority to serve as proactive human coprocessors, and allowing them to capture our attention with their computed priorities, has to be considered carefully, as anyone who has lost hours due to interruption by a slew of social-network updates or search-engine alerts can attest. How can we give the human brain access to increasingly proactive coprocessing technologies without losing sight of our overarching goals? One idea is to develop and deploy metrics that allow us to evaluate the IQ of a human plus a coprocessor, working together--evaluating the performance of collaborating natural and artificial intelligences in a broad battery of problem-solving contexts. After all, humans with Internet-based brain coprocessors (e.g., laptops running Web browsers) may be more distractible if the goals include long, focused writing tasks, but they may be better at synthesizing data broadly from disparate sources; a given brain coprocessor configuration may be good for some problems but bad for others. Thinking of emerging computational technologies as brain coprocessors forces us to think about them in terms of the impacts they have on the brain, positive and negative, and importantly provides a framework for thoughtfully engineering their direct, as well as their emergent, effects.

More.


Searching for Kardashev III civilizations

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Fascinating article by Paul Gilster over at Centauri Dreams: Interstellar Archaeology on the Galactic Scale. In the article, Gilster, discusses the work of Richard Carrigan of Fermilab and his recent paper, "Starry Messages: Searching for Signatures of Interstellar Archaeology."

Carrigan argues that we should broaden SETI's scope to include the archeological remnants of Kardashev III civilizations, namely those civilizations who successfully tapped into their Galaxy's entire energy output. At first blush, one would assume that a K3 galaxy would be immediately obvious, with every one if its stars enclosed in a Dysonian structure of some sort. But Carrigan makes the case that this might not be the case:

…what would happen for a civilization on its way to becoming a type III civilization, a type II.5 civilization so to say? If it was busily turning stars into Dyson spheres the civilization could create a “Fermi bubble” or void in the visible light from a patch of the galaxy with a corresponding upturn in the emission of infrared light. This bubble would grow following the lines of a suggestion attributed to Fermi… that patient space travelers moving at 1/1000 to 1/100 of the speed of light could span a galaxy in one to ten million years. Here “Fermi bubble” is used rather than “Fermi void”, in part because the latter is also a term in solid state physics and also because such a region would only be a visible light void, not a matter void.

As Gilster notes, this is long-term thinking in the richest sense; a patient, long-lived civilization could envelop a galaxy on a time-scale comparable to or shorter than the rotation period of the galaxy (considerably >~250 million years).

Civs who are busy turning stars into Dyson spheres should leave vast Fermi 'bubbles' whose infrared signature would flag their existence. But as Carrigon notes, detection might still elude us.

For example, we see M51, the Whirlpool galaxy, face-on at a distance of 30 million light years. We can say with some confidence that we see no unexplained voids larger than about five percent of M51's area, but any void features below this level would be hard to identify because of spiral galaxy structure. Elliptical galaxies might be better places to look for Fermi bubbles, because they display little structure, and potential voids should be far more pronounced.

And then there's the difficulty in separating artificial structure from natural phenomena where the tendency is to defer to the latter.

Gilster concludes:

I come back around to the premise behind interstellar archaeology, that unlike conventional SETI it does not require a civilization to have any intention of contacting us. There are numerous ways to proceed, involving the kind of Dyson sphere search Carrigan has himself conducted within our own galaxy, or looking at planetary atmospheres in hopes of finding not only biosignatures but the markers of an advanced industrial or post-industrial culture. As we continue the SETI hunt, keeping in mind how planetary change or deliberate decisions to expand into the galaxy could leave visible traces allows us to hunt for things advanced intelligence might do.

How many civilizations in our galaxy, for example, have already faced the end of their main sequence star’s lifetime? If the number is high, it may be that we can find evidence of their response in the form of planetary or stellar engineering, making stars of this description interesting targets for future searches. In any case, our model of SETI is changing as not only our technologies but our assumptions become more sophisticated, leaving us to ponder a universe in which the need for expansion or simple survival may have left its own detectable history.

More.


Ahmadinejad should be arrested for crimes against humanity

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Apropos of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's deranged speech today to the United Nations General Assembly, I reiterate my conviction that this man should be arrested for crimes against humanity. I made the same claim back in 2007:

While you're at it, read this, too:


Creatine improves working memory and general intelligence

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This study goes back to 2003, but it's good to know, particularly if you're vegetarian or vegan:

Research undertaken by scientists at the University of Sydney and Macquarie University in Australia has shown that taking creatine, a compound found in muscle tissue, as a dietary supplement can give a significant boost to both working memory and general intelligence. The work, to be published in a forthcoming Proceedings B, a learned journal published by the Royal Society, monitored the effect of creatine supplementation on 45 young adult vegetarian subjects in a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment.


Blackmore: I no longer believe religion is a virus of the mind

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Susan Blackmore, after attending an "Explaining Religion" conference, now believes that the idea of religious belief as a virus has had its day:

...[R]eligious memes are adaptive rather than viral from the point of view of human genes, but could they still be viral from our individual or societal point of view? Apparently not, given data suggesting that religious people are happier and possibly even healthier than secularists. And at the conference, Ryan McKay presented experimental data showing that religious people can be more generous, cheat less and co-operate more in games such as the prisoner's dilemma, and that priming with religious concepts and belief in a "supernatural watcher" increase the effects.

So it seems I was wrong and the idea of religions as "viruses of the mind" may have had its day. Religions still provide a superb example of memeplexes at work, with different religions using their horrible threats, promises and tricks to out-compete other religions, and popular versions of religions outperforming the more subtle teachings of the mystical traditions. But unless we twist the concept of a "virus" to include something helpful and adaptive to its host as well as something harmful, it simply does not apply. Bacteria can be helpful as well as harmful; they can be symbiotic as well as parasitic, but somehow the phrase "bacterium of the mind" or "symbiont of the mind" doesn't have quite the same ring.

Hmmm, not sure how I feel about this. I don't understand Blackmore's insistence on having to associate viruses with exclusively negative impacts on the host. Viruses don't care what impact it has on the host so long as it has created the conditions for successful transmission and replication. Sure, viruses are nasty most of the time, but sometimes they can be neutral and even helpful; viruses have become quite useful in gene therepy, for example, allowing researchers to insert and remove genetic material from eukaryotic cells much easier (and with a higher degree of success) than ever before.

Now, all this said, I'm completely open to new ways of describing and analogizing the replicative strategies of memes. I would have no problem talking about the "bacterial" spread of memes; if the analogy accurately describes what's happening, then we should feel free to use it. I don't find this awkward, I find it exciting!

Oh, and full props to Blackmore for having the courage to claim she was wrong about something. While I don't necessarily believe she was wrong, I have great respect for her decision to come out and publicly challenge her own views.