Clipmarks | wildcat's 'life' clips

Mark Shuttleworth: life on Mars, Ubuntu in emerging markets

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:07:39 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: A great visionary, a shrewd business-human

He also shared his views about the future of the space program and the importance of reaching for the stars. Although he believes that manned research efforts in space are too costly and less efficient than more automated approaches, he contends that humanity's experience in space will be essential for shaping a future in which society extends beyond earth's sphere.

"A majority of our space research should be unmanned," he remarked. "But fundamentally, [experience in space] is our life boat—that's what the dinosaurs didn't have, so it's essential research."

Shuttleworth is particularly emphatic about the need to conduct more extensive research on Mars, and the potential for Mars to sustain life—a possibility that he regards as "profound" in significance.

After returning from his trip into space, he decided that he wanted to turn his attention to efforts that could have a broader positive impact.

I wanted to be sure that anything I devoted time to would potentially have a global impact

Tags: mark shuttleworth, mars, ubuntu, emerging markets

11 Ways to Build an Extraordinary Life

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:16:30 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Have a vision for your future...

Clip Source: www.steve-olson.com

How can you build the life you want? The answer to that question is different for each of us. But it’s critical that you answer it, because in the answer you will find purpose and meaning. Many of us look for happiness in things, but happiness doesn’t come from things, it comes from how we relate to ourselves and our world.

Be True to Yourself

Have a Vision for Your Future

Avoid Debt

Save

Continue Your Education

Take Responsibility for Change

Learn from Mistakes -

Build Quality Relationships/Discard Destructive Ones

Love: Look for a partner who is on a similar journey as yours, who has similar goals and values, and build on your relationship by giving your love and encouragement

Friendship: Look for people with similar values, who give as much as they take, with which you can share interests and hobbies.

Do the Right Thing Even When it is Unpopular

Honor Your Commitments - Do not make commitments lightly

Be Charitable

Tags: life, extraordinary

A Lake That Looks Like Mars

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:11:28 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

To see what extraterrestrial life might be like, scientists are busy studying freshwater coral reef–like structures in a Canadian lake

There's only so much you can do searching for extraterrestrial life when you're Earthbound. One approach is to locate and study the best terrestrial examples of what might resemble conditions that could support life on another planet.

View Slide Show Exploration of the Lake

That is exactly why astrobiologists are getting so excited about Pavilion Lake in British Columbia, Canada. Pavilion's lake floor is scattered with living coral reef–like structures called microbialites that result from microbes and minerals interacting over thousands of years. Although Pavilion's microbialites are believed to date back 11,000 years, they uncannily resemble structures that flourished on Earth some 540 million years ago.

Freshwater microbialites can be found in a handful of other places on Earth, but the diversity of structures at Pavilion is what sets it apart.

Tags: lake, extraterrestrial, life, canadian

Fantastic Voyage Q&A

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:08:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.fantastic-voyage.net

What’s the key message?

We make the scientific case that immortality is within our grasp. We explain how to slow down aging and disease processes to such a degree that you can remain in good health until the more radical life-extending and life-enhancing technologies – now in the research and testing pipeline – become available.

What sort of life-extending technology are you referring to?

Fantastic Voyage is a guide for aggressively applying today’s knowledge – we call it Bridge One – to enable you to live long enough to take advantage of the full development of the biotechnology revolution – Bridge Two.

What are some examples of this?

Biotechnology is providing the means to actually change your genes: not just designer babies but designer baby boomers. We’ll also be able to rejuvenate all of your body’s tissues and organs by transforming your skin cells into youthful versions of every other cell type

The biotechnology revolution is already in its early stages

Tags: longevity, kurzweil

What Makes Earth Special Compared to Other Planets

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:10:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "The most impressive attribute of the Earth is the existence and amount of liquid water on its surface,"

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Earth is one special planet.

It has liquid water, plate tectonics, and an atmosphere that shelters it from the worst of the sun's rays. But many scientists agree our planet's most special feature might just be us.

"It's the only planet we know of that has life," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.

Though other bodies in our solar system, such as Saturn's moon Titan, seem like they could have once been hospitable to some form of life, and scientists still have hope of eventually digging up microbes beneath the surface of Mars, Earth is still the only world known to support life.

"So far, we haven't found it anywhere else," said Alex Wolszczan of Pennsylvania State University, who co-discovered the first planets beyond our solar system. He agreed that life was Earth's single most impressive characteristic.

Tags: earth, us, water

Live Longer: The One Anti-Aging Trick That Works

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:28:07 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Calorie restriction

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

While the quest for the proverbial Fountain of Youth is endless and typically fruitless, one method known to extend the human lifespan by up to five years has quietly become accepted among leading researchers.

The formula is simple: Eat less. It could add years to your life, several experts now say. And done in moderation, it could at least help you live a more healthy life.

The only question is: Will the average person do it?

While little short of a nip-and-tuck will make you look younger, calorie restriction, as it is called, is as close to a real Fountain of Youth as any known technique comes. Even scientists who are cautious about anti-aging hype say it works, both by cutting risks for some diseases and by allowing all body cells, somehow, to hang in there longer.

The numbers

Here's a rough rule of thumb that many experts generally agree on now: Eat 15 percent less starting at age 25 and you might add 4.5 years to your life

Tags: calorie restriction, diet, longevity

Build a synthetic lifeform

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:14:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: io9.com

Mad Science Contest: Build a Lifeform and We'll Send You to Hong Kong or Give You $1000

io9 wants to encourage mad scientists in every field, but especially in the area of synthetic biology. That's because synthetic biologists are the people who are going to build new life forms, like ligers and unicorns and people with claws and glowing eyes. OK, they might build bacteria that can clean up oil spills and repair damaged kidneys too. The point is, building new lifeforms is the science of the future and therefore you can never have too many garage laboratories and mad scientists devoted to it. That's why io9 is sponsoring a contest to find two of the best synthetic life forms you can design for us. The winners in our two categories will get either an all-expenses-paid trip to the kickass Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong this October, or $1000 and a chance to have their creature drawn by a cool comic book artist. Find out more below.

Tags: science, building, life, synthetic

“What is Life?” Evolution of Robots is Causing Scientists to Question

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:04:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: “Robots are not human, but humans aren’t the only things that have emotions,” she said. “The question for robots is not, Will they ever have human emotions? Dogs don’t have human emotions, either, but we all agree they have genuine emotions. The question is, what are the emotions that are genuine for the robot?”

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

There is ongoing debate about what constitutes life. Synthetic bacteria for example, are created by man and yet also alive. Some go so far as to say that robot “emotions” may already have occurred—that current robots have not only displayed emotions, but in some ways have experienced them.

“We’re all machines,” says Rodney Brooks author of “Flesh and Machines,” and former director of M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, “Robots are made of different sorts of components than we are — we are made of biomaterials; they are silicon and steel — but in principle, even human emotions are mechanistic.” A robot’s level of a feeling like sadness could be set as a number in computer code, he said. But isn’t a human’s level of sadness basically a number, too, just a number of the amounts of various neurochemicals circulating in the brain? Why should a robot’s numbers be any less authentic than a human’s?

Tags: robotics, intelligence, life

Life on Mars: What's The Truth?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:48:31 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.efluxmedia.com

A Tufts University chemist who heads the team interpreting data gathered by the Phoenix lander's wet-chemistry lab alleges that the Martian soil in the area where NASA's contraption landed "seems very friendly" to simple forms of life.

Scientists are almost sure there is ice underneath the Red Planet's surface, and they say they found a lot of minerals which are the building blocks of organic life. However, the high concentration of minerals is not good news.

Back in February, NASA announced that it is very less likely that life on the fourth planet of the Sun was ever possible. Scientists said at the time that the high concentration of minerals constitutes a harsh environment even for the toughest microbes. The conclusion regarding the possibility of life on Mars in an extremely salty environment came after scientists conducted a series of experiments by simulating the Martian conditions.

Tags: mars, life, colony

Is Ice a Catalyst for Life Throughout the Universe?

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:48:28 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

The unusual properties of frozen water may have been the ticket that made life possible. Over the decades, several notable scientists have began to suspect that life on Earth did not evolve in a warm primordial soup, but in ice—at temperatures that few living things can now tolerate. The very laws of chemistry may have actually favored ice, says Jeffrey Bada, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. “We’ve been arguing for a long time,” he says, “that cold conditions make much more sense, chemically, than warm conditions.”

If Bada and others are correct, it would not only answer how life arose on our planet, but would dramatically change how we search for life in the Solar System and beyond. At that point, our chances of finding life elsewhere may be better than previously understood.

Tags: life, ice, water

Charles Stross Comes To Extropia!

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:31:43 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: to all those that read and enjoyed "accelerando" (available online- see article)

Clip Source: core.extropiacore.net

Award-winning novelist Charles Stross will be our guest at Sophrosyne's Special Salon, Saturday, June 21, from 1-2:30 pm SLT, in the Salon Room, Central Nexus at Extropia Core, Second Life (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Extropia%20Core/128/124/22).

(New to Second Life? With the Second Life client installed, and an account set up, click on the link above to teleport to the lobby of our conference facilities)

Charlie will discuss the Singluarity in fiction, cutting-edge technologies, his Hugo-Award finalist novel Halting State, about virtual worlds and augmented reality, and his upcoming novel Saturn's Children.

Tags: charles stross, second life

Books That Changed My Life

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 09:12:54 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: What's your list of Books That Changed Your Life?

Clip Source: www.kk.org

Books still have the power to change lives. Which ones have changed yours?

I don't mean merely great books, or memorable ones, or favorite ones. I mean books that altered your behavior, changed your mind, redirected the course of your life. Books as levers.

Childhood's End -- For a kid growing up without TV in the boring enclaves of suburbia in the 50s and early 60s, science fiction opened up my universe. I devoured any and all science fiction our public library contained. Arthur C. Clarke's stories in particular birthed a life-long interest in science, and a deep respect for the power of imagination. This story of a singularity always stuck with me as something to prepare for. (Available from Amazon)

Whole Earth Catalog --

The Fountainhead -

Leaves of Grass --

My Experiments with Truth

The Bible --

Godel, Escher, Bach

The Ultimate Resource -

Finite and Infinite GamesÂ

What's your list of Books That Changed Your Life?

Tags: books, life changing

The Galactic Internet

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:24:32 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: superconcepts.blogspot.com

We all know how the internet has changed our lives. It's not souly because of the information it can fill our minds with, but because of the applications that it brings us. We can go shopping, check flights, make money, network with people, form movements, archive entertainment, connect businesses, and lots more.

There's no knowing where the internet will take us in the next 10-20 years. What if, we were to look far further into the future?

This century we are closer than we have ever been to discovering alien life. If it exists, we may well discover it in the next few decades. Far more significant however, will be the discovery of intelligent life. The implications of discovering an extra terrestrial concious life form are immense. It will shake the entire foundations of our society. It will give us new perspectives on both the problems and pleasures of human life.

Tags: internet, alien, life, intelligent

Put a Little Science in Your Life

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:56:10 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Allow me a moment to explain.

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

As a practicing scientist, I know this from my own work and study. But I also know that you don’t have to be a scientist for science to be transformative. I’ve seen children’s eyes light up as I’ve told them about black holes and the Big Bang

Tags: science, way of life

FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE

Mon, 26 May 2008 21:16:10 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life)

Mihaly Csiksczentmihalyi

Clip Source: web.ionsys.com

One must particularly achieve control over instinctive drives to achieve a healthy independence of society, for as long as we respond predictably to what feels good and what feels bad, it is easy for others to exploit our preferences for their own ends.

The knowledge - or wisdom - one needs for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative. It is not a cognitive skill and as well as intelligence requires commitment of emotions and will. It is not enough to know how to do it, one must do it consistently and it is a painfully slow process to modify our own habits and desires.

Eight Components of Enjoyment

Confronting tasks that we have a chance of completing.

2. Concentration.

Concentration is possible because the task has clear goals.

4. Task provides immediate feedback.

A deep, effortless involvement removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life.

Enjoyable experiences allow one to exercise a sense of control over one’s actions.

Tags: life, quality, steps