Ulysse Sabbagh

The Mediterranean diet that participants in the new study were told to follow differs in some respects from the advice people generally get about healthy eating. It allows people to eat as many nuts and eggs and even as much chocolate as they want, as long as it is chocolate with more than 50 percent cocoa. It permits unlimited consumption of fish, seafood, whole-grain cereals and low-fat cheese.

The Mediterranean lifestyle promises a healthy diet with pleasurable food. What is there not to like? 

The Mediterranean diet that participants in the new study were told to follow differs in some respects from the advice people generally get about healthy eating. It allows people to eat as many nuts and eggs and even as much chocolate as they want, as long as it is chocolate with more than 50 percent cocoa. It permits unlimited consumption of fish, seafood, whole-grain cereals and low-fat cheese.

The Mediterranean lifestyle promises a healthy diet with pleasurable food. What is there not to like? 

Scotty

www.galarina.eu/scotty/

Wirelessly transfers iPad, iPhone and iPod touch photos and videos to your Mac or to another iOS device.

Nifty little app. 

MYO is a piece of wearable computing which straps to your arm and lets you control your computer, a video games console and even a small drone. 

With rumors of the iWatch (an Apple made watch), Google Glass and this, the next thing is indeed wearable computing. Be prepared. 

www.youtube.com/watch

MYO is a piece of wearable computing which straps to your arm and lets you control your computer, a video games console and even a small drone. 

With rumors of the iWatch (an Apple made watch), Google Glass and this, the next thing is indeed wearable computing. Be prepared. 

A new study led by the United States’ Defense Department found that pilots of unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, experienced PTSD, depression and anxiety as much as pilots who are actually “over there”. 

“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.

Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.

Interesting. 

A new study led by the United States’ Defense Department found that pilots of unmanned aerial vehicles, drones, experienced PTSD, depression and anxiety as much as pilots who are actually “over there”. 

“Remotely piloted aircraft pilots may stare at the same piece of ground for days,” said Jean Lin Otto, an epidemiologist who was a co-author of the study. “They witness the carnage. Manned aircraft pilots don’t do that. They get out of there as soon as possible.”

Dr. Otto said she had begun the study expecting that drone pilots would actually have a higher rate of mental health problems because of the unique pressures of their job.

Since 2008, the number of pilots of remotely piloted aircraft — the Air Force’s preferred term for drones — has grown fourfold, to nearly 1,300. The Air Force is now training more pilots for its drones than for its fighter jets and bombers combined. And by 2015, it expects to have more drone pilots than bomber pilots, although fighter pilots will remain a larger group.

Interesting. 

Performance enhancing drugs for writers.

Writing by hand is laborious, and that is why typewriters were invented. But I believe that the labor has virtue, because of its very physicality. For one thing it involves flesh, blood and the thingness of pen and paper, those anchors that remind us that, however thoroughly we lose ourselves in the vortex of our invention, we inhabit a corporeal world.

Mary Gordon on the joy of paper notebooks and writing by hand as a creative catalyst (via explore-blog)

Writing by hand is laborious, and that is why typewriters were invented. But I believe that the labor has virtue, because of its very physicality. For one thing it involves flesh, blood and the thingness of pen and paper, those anchors that remind us that, however thoroughly we lose ourselves in the vortex of our invention, we inhabit a corporeal world.

We’re not talking 21/12/12 there or natural disasters, but human extinction coming from human themselves. Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford University shares his views with the Atlantic:

Atlantic: In the short term you don’t seem especially worried about existential risks that originate in nature like asteroid strikes, supervolcanoes and so forth. Instead you have argued that the majority of future existential risks to humanity are anthropogenic, meaning that they arise from human activity. Nuclear war springs to mind as an obvious example of this kind of risk, but that’s been with us for some time now. What are some of the more futuristic or counterintuitive ways that we might bring about our own extinction?

Bostrom: I think the biggest existential risks relate to certain future technological capabilities that we might develop, perhaps later this century. For example, machine intelligence or advanced molecular nanotechnology could lead to the development of certain kinds of weapons systems. You could also have risks associated with certain advancements in synthetic biology.

Of course there are also existential risks that are not extinction risks. The concept of an existential risk certainly includes extinction, but it also includes risks that could permanently destroy our potential for desirable human development. One could imagine certain scenarios where there might be a permanent global totalitarian dystopia. Once again that’s related to the possibility of the development of technologies that could make it a lot easier for oppressive regimes to weed out dissidents or to perform surveillance on their populations, so that you could have a permanently stable tyranny, rather than the ones we have seen throughout history, which have eventually been overthrown.

We’re not talking 21/12/12 there or natural disasters, but human extinction coming from human themselves. Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford University shares his views with the Atlantic:

Atlantic: In the short term you don’t seem especially worried about existential risks that originate in nature like asteroid strikes, supervolcanoes and so forth. Instead you have argued that the majority of future existential risks to humanity are anthropogenic, meaning that they arise from human activity. Nuclear war springs to mind as an obvious example of this kind of risk, but that’s been with us for some time now. What are some of the more futuristic or counterintuitive ways that we might bring about our own extinction?

Bostrom: I think the biggest existential risks relate to certain future technological capabilities that we might develop, perhaps later this century. For example, machine intelligence or advanced molecular nanotechnology could lead to the development of certain kinds of weapons systems. You could also have risks associated with certain advancements in synthetic biology.

Of course there are also existential risks that are not extinction risks. The concept of an existential risk certainly includes extinction, but it also includes risks that could permanently destroy our potential for desirable human development. One could imagine certain scenarios where there might be a permanent global totalitarian dystopia. Once again that’s related to the possibility of the development of technologies that could make it a lot easier for oppressive regimes to weed out dissidents or to perform surveillance on their populations, so that you could have a permanently stable tyranny, rather than the ones we have seen throughout history, which have eventually been overthrown.

Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, shows off how to mix a perfect dry martini. 

Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, shows off how to mix a perfect dry martini. 

For example: Let’s assume the sole information I have about a gentleman is that he is 40 years old, and I want to predict how long he will live. I can look at actuarial tables and find his age-adjusted life expectancy as used by insurance companies. The table will predict he has an extra 44 years to go; next year, when he turns 41, he will have a little more than 43 years to go. For a perishable human, every year that elapses reduces his life expectancy by a little less than a year. The opposite applies to non-perishables like technology and information. If a book has been in print for 40 years, I can expect it to be in print for at least another 40 years. But – and this is the main difference – if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another 50 years.

Technology “ages” backwards, from Nassim Taleb’s new book “Antifragile”. An interesting perspective.

For example: Let’s assume the sole information I have about a gentleman is that he is 40 years old, and I want to predict how long he will live. I can look at actuarial tables and find his age-adjusted life expectancy as used by insurance companies. The table will predict he has an extra 44 years to go; next year, when he turns 41, he will have a little more than 43 years to go. For a perishable human, every year that elapses reduces his life expectancy by a little less than a year. The opposite applies to non-perishables like technology and information. If a book has been in print for 40 years, I can expect it to be in print for at least another 40 years. But – and this is the main difference – if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another 50 years.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany said progress in lengthening the duration of living and lowering the odds of death at all ages has been so swift that life expectancy rose faster than it did in the last 200 millennia, since we evolved from apes. 

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, looked at Swedish and Japanese men – two countries with the longest life expectancies today. It concluded that their counterparts in 1800 would have had lifespans that were closer to those of the earliest hunter-gatherer humans than they would to adult men in both countries today.

Those primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72. Scientists who worked on the study said it was unclear what the possible upper limit for life expectancy would be. “How much longer can we extend life?” said Oskar Burger, lead researcher on the study. “We just don’t know.”

Politically this poses a problem for leftists who do not support the elongating of work. Here is the general argument: the trend is that we live longer. This means we have to work additional years.

Is that so? Perhaps this relatively gained time should be used for leisure — but someone needs to pay and here lies the problem. 

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany said progress in lengthening the duration of living and lowering the odds of death at all ages has been so swift that life expectancy rose faster than it did in the last 200 millennia, since we evolved from apes. 

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, looked at Swedish and Japanese men – two countries with the longest life expectancies today. It concluded that their counterparts in 1800 would have had lifespans that were closer to those of the earliest hunter-gatherer humans than they would to adult men in both countries today.

Those primitive hunter gatherers, at age 30, had the same odds of dying as a modern Swedish or Japanese man would face at 72. Scientists who worked on the study said it was unclear what the possible upper limit for life expectancy would be. “How much longer can we extend life?” said Oskar Burger, lead researcher on the study. “We just don’t know.”

Politically this poses a problem for leftists who do not support the elongating of work. Here is the general argument: the trend is that we live longer. This means we have to work additional years.

Is that so? Perhaps this relatively gained time should be used for leisure — but someone needs to pay and here lies the problem.