We Like 'Em

jwz

06:42 pm - I, for one, welcome our new negligibly-senescent mouse overlords.

Caloric Restriction Comes in a Pill

Scientists have provided the strongest evidence yet that the anti-aging benefits of calorically restricted diets can be duplicated -- minus the near-starvation -- by a pill.

In a study published today in Cell Metabolism, mice given resveratrol -- the first of an eagerly-anticipated class of longevity drugs -- enjoyed dramatically improved health, even when they started taking the drug late in life.

Resveratrol didn't extend the lives of normal mice, but it did protect them from the ravages of time. The rodents had stronger hearts, clearer eyes, more limber muscles and firmer bones. Closer analysis revealed the same cell-level changes produced by caloric restriction, an extreme form of dieting that consistently lengthens the lives of lab animals but is impractical, if not dangerous, for people.

"For the first time, we can mimic caloric restriction in an otherwise healthy animal," said study co-author David Sinclair, a Harvard University biologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. "That's been the goal of the field for decades. We didn't know it was possible to let an animal eat whatever it wants, but still get the benefits. We now have evidence."

Regardless of mouse weight and diet, resveratrol worked wonders. At two years of age, or the mouse equivalent of senescence, the mice were more coordinated than their non-dosed counterparts. Their bones were thicker and stronger, their eyes free of cataracts, their hearts beating strong. At the cellular level, tissues displayed gene-level changes almost identical to those produced by caloric restriction.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals has already started clinical trials of resveratrol and a more-refined sirtuin activator. In June they were purchased for $720 million by Glaxo Smith Kline, signaling the seriousness with which academics and the pharmaceutical industry views the field.

"You've got to take aging research seriously if a company is willing to put down three-quarters of a billion dollars on it," said Sinclair.

jwz

02:48 pm - Spore Cthulhu

The function of Spore appears to be the generation of ridiculous Youtube clips like this. After having watched the demo videos of the game itself, though, I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would play it. But then, The Sims baffled me too, with all of its SimKafka tedium.

jwz

02:30 pm - Wolverine? Or merely Baron Ünderbheit?

Metal Layering Technique Leads to Fine Tuned Implants

A laser heats the powdered metal in the exact places that need to be firm. "It's like baking a cake," says Andreas Burblies, spokesman for the Fraunhofer Numerical Simulation of Products, Processes Alliance. Any remaining loose powder is subsequently removed. "The end product is an open-pored element," explains Burblies. "Each point possesses exactly the right density and thus also a certain stability." The method allows the engineers to produce particularly lightweight components that are also extremely robust.

geographile

mactavish

01:40 pm

I hate to promote something that was twitterspammed at me, but . . . um, I like it:
http://placespotting.com/solve.php
Kinda fun. :)

In other news, I'm less computerated than usual, and can't be posty. Feel free to fill in gaps.

jwz

03:45 pm - Metropolis returns

Key scenes from the famous movie rediscovered.

The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, including scenes believed lost for almost 80 years.

Fritz Lang presented the original version of Metropolis in Berlin in January 1927. At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike. Representatives of the American firm Paramount considerably shortened and re-edited the film. They oversimplified the plot, even cutting key scenes. The original version could only be seen in Berlin until May 1927 - from then on it was considered to have been lost forever. Those recently viewing a restored version of the film first read the following insert: "More than a quarter of the film is believed to be lost forever."

I find Metropolis a hard movie to watch, because just about every frame of it has been imitated so many times that there's nothing left that isn't a cliché today. As history, it's amazing; as a movie, hard to sit through. But, years ago I got to see The Clubfoot Orchestra playing along with it live, and that was amazing. Live music made it a lot more compelling.

The anime remake of Metropolis is surprisingly good, by the way.

jwz

03:19 pm - dnalounge update

DNA Lounge update, wherein we are burned into a zillion shiny metal discs.

jwz

02:04 pm - unleash the cenobites

There are a lot of other amazing things on this guy's site too, like the electroshock helmet and whatever the hell this is.

graydon

12:06 pm - the wheels of doom

elysesewell

03:22 pm - video casting for commercial

I had to read this script today:

"Some said...feed the skin by the whitening nutrients would give radians skin from inside. That is so true. :)" [sic]

elysesewell

07:42 pm - hovel is as hovel does

Completist collectors of elysesewell idiotica will be pleased to know that I failed to confirm the date of my Chinese visa expiration, only bothering to look in my passport to check on it after I was already in the country illegally. I had to evacuate Shenzhen quicklike, as in late at night, with my head still lacquered in the day's swathe of makeup and Hairstyle. Fortunately, I didn't get fined or searched or imprisoned; the immigration officer just made me trundle my enormous suitcase off to a little back office and spend twenty minutes in a sweat of uncertainty while he produced a written warning.

So I arrived in Hong Kong a few days early, and the little hovel my agency had prepared for me was not yet ready. I had to spend a few days in the agency's model quarters, a weird place indeed: a half-floor of a huge industrial building, a warehouse retrofitted into a giant apartment. All the bedrooms were bricked-in, windowless chambers with portable dehumidifiers chugging away 24/7 lest they explode with mildew. Every model from the agency lived there- a lot of girls, but no one knew exactly how many because some emerged from their concrete mausolea so infrequently.

After a few days there and a few enjoyable moments of chewing the fat with my Zadie Smith-reading chambermate, my hovel had been vacated (I asked the previous occupants to set aside any unwanted stuff they'd accumulated during their stay so that I could use it instead of the maid just throwing it away, and what did I get? A couple of bent-ass wire hangers, some margarine and half a jar of Skippy) and I was able to move in.

The new hovel is not swanky: it's the smallest apartment I've ever lived in, and in a less-than-ideal neighborhood, but it was the best anyone could rustle up during the summer of the Ohhellnolympics. This is how I summarized it (via email) to my quondam cellmate (the 'Bay and the Wanch being two neighborhoods of HK):

I had a feeling, had a hunch:
it ain't in the 'Bay, it's in the Wanch.
Many hallmates pitter patter.
Crappy aircon rattle clatter.
Narrow slot for model's butt
Like Gulliver in Lilliput.
But I dassn't bitch and daren't moan,
For here I lay my head alone.













Far right: hanging laundry sack.


My friend in Seoul would make a beeline for the bottles of squid ink sold in every Korean grocery store and roll one around in his hands, moaning, "I want to buy this SO BAD but I have no idea what to do with it." Mike, unless you've decided to take my advice and chug it straight from the bottle, may I offer you this sinister inky spaghetti and squidballs? Just be sure to make frequent mirror-checks: it turns your teeth black.


Finally, Jumpshot 101: raise the ISO or there will be blurred.

thomb

02:36 pm - being/doing, becoming/accomplishing

There's a gap between being and doing, which is, I think, at the root of much of our struggles as a church, and perhaps as individuals.

Our being precedes our doing; who we are produces in large measure what we do. And we have heard those who try to change what they do, in the hopes that will change who they are, only to be frustrated. Indeed, they may succesfully change what they do, but this is not enough, in itself, to change who they are. So the standard advice is to get straight on who we are--and to work to change that, if change we should, which will ineluctably produce changes in what we do.

This is the root of cognitive behavioral therapy and rational emotive therapy; it's at the root of a more Christian and theological approach to self improvement as well. Having realized that changing what we do does not change who we are, we concentrate on changing who we are so that we change what we do. Whether we change our emotional responses, cognitive understandings, or relationship with God, the basic picture is the same.

And underlying this is something else. We want to accomplish. And accomplishing is connected to doing. We really want to change what we do. If we focus only on what we do, that doesn't work, because who we are still is there, producing our actions. So we change who we are, in order to produce different doings, in order to accomplish.

So the entire dynamic of this struggle is a struggle to accomplish. We can try to change externals, which often as not doesn't work, and then we can change internals, which is more successful.

So if I'm right, our struggles, whether as individuals or as communities, are struggles to accomplish. I've heard clergy describe their reasons for thinking it's time to move to another congregation, and say something like, "I've done what I can do here." That is, they are able to accomplish certain things, they've accomplished them, and now they can't accomplish anything else there.

What would happen if we laid aside this focus on accomplishing? I think that a look at becoming would be a suitable replacement for accomplishing. Just as it was a good move to shift from a look at doing alone to a look at the being that produces the doing, I think that we have only partially completed the job if we still do in order to accomplish.

Becoming is a present-tense thing. It's like looking at the first derivative of a function rather than it's value at x+5. Accomplishing is looking forward, becoming is about the change which is happening now, instantaneously now. It is about here. And notice how this shift alters some thinking.

No longer is it possible to say, "I've accomplished what I came here to do." Instead, if we put that in "becoming" language, we get something different. "I've become what I came here to become"? No, for all existence is becoming; if I stop needing to continue to become, I am dead. Accomplishments can be finished, but becoming cannot be until being itself is gone. "This congregation has become all it can be"? No, for the same reasons. As long as we live, there is more becoming to become, even at a time when all accomplishments shall cease.

Being and becoming, then, are so tied together that they cannot be separated.

Now this might seem like more accomplishment advice. "If you want to accomplish more, focus on becoming." No. The reorientation here is about the relinquishment of accomplishment as a measure of life or happiness. The accomplishment of goals will not, and cannot, make us happy. There is no accomplishment we can achieve which will bring happiness. But there is such a thing as becoming happy. This we can do.

jwz

03:05 am - mixtape 037

Please enjoy jwz mixtape 037.

Time to get your goth on!

03:25 pm

( +5 )

geographile

mactavish

01:12 am

Via micheinnz
The amazing beauty of the circumhorizontal arc.

geographile

bilyana

12:00 pm

Just thought I'd share these two interesting finds (via Modern Mechanix, a blog that collects articles from old science & tech magazines).

( Electronic backpack won’t let you get lost (1970) )

( North Sea Drainage Project to Increase Area of Europe (1930) )

jwz

02:38 am - Teeth!

geographile

mactavish

03:20 pm

( helping out a kid's map picture! )

geographile

mactavish

12:58 pm

Science Daily says:

> — A research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of explosive volcanic eruptions deep beneath the ice-covered surface of the Arctic Ocean. Such violent eruptions of splintered, fragmented rock--known as pyroclastic deposits -- were not thought possible at great ocean depths because of the intense weight and pressure of water and because of the composition of seafloor magma and rock.
[snip]
"These are the first pyroclastic deposits we've ever found in such deep water, at oppressive pressures that inhibit the formation of steam, and many people thought this was not possible," said WHOI geophysicist Rob Reves-Sohn, lead author and chief scientist for the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition (AGAVE) of July 2007. "This means that a tremendous blast of CO₂ was released into the water column during the explosive eruption."

geographile

mactavish

11:13 pm - florida everglades restoration deal

Holy cow: The dream of a restored Everglades, with water flowing from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay, has moved a giant step closer to reality after the largest sugar cane producer in the United States agreed to sell all of its assets to Florida and go out of business..

(Might become a little more brackish over time, of course.)

geographile

mactavish

08:46 pm - California: Still on fire.

2008 Summer Vacation to California
Originally uploaded by andrew_dolph.

• Arnold says don't be stupid.


• What it looks like in San Francisco right now


• Jeff Masters says in his weather blog that "at least 33 fires burning over a total of 190,000 acres are active." That includes complexes, I think, like the fires around Redding that are all under one name/label, but are separate. There are more than 1000 fires right now, if you count the scattered 20 and 50 and 75 acre ones to go with the 1000+ acre fires.


• Current fire info from Calfire. Page is sometimes slow, it's being hit harder these days.