Month: June 2012

Immortality Philosophy

Imagine that some sort of “fountain of youth” were discovered, which was not too difficult to reach, and which would grant true immortality to the first 12000 people to reach it.

What sort of people would compete most fiercely to reach that fountain, and what would their motivations be? Which motivations would you judge to be good versus bad, and what would the ratio be? Of the 12000 people who made it to the fountain, how many would you be comfortable with having as immortal?

Downton Abbey

favorite downton abbey moment: hit it and car accelerates from 27 kmh to 35 kmh.
2013-02-28: Some shit early drafts:

As Daisy hands the knife to Mrs. Patmore, Daisy’s hand slips, stabbing Mrs. Patmore 7 times in the neck, chest, and arms. Mrs. Patmore falls to the floor, pulling the roast and pan with her, bleeding profusely, dead, covered in red-bliss potatoes. Daisy, horrified at the accident, backs up and slips on the roast, falling, and hitting her head on the open cast-iron stove door. She, too, is dead.

Enter Mrs. Hughes.

2015-04-23: cute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Zc8dKeDFk?t=2m35s
2019-05-21:

2022-02-08: this is 100% true. Gilded Age is Downton Abbey but in NYC.

HOUSEHOLD SERVANT: I’m still worried about Rich Lady.

OTHER HOUSEHOLD SERVANT: Don’t be! She’s rich, ain’t she?

BUTLER: Didn’t you two talk about this earlier this episode?

OTHER HOUSEHOLD SERVANT: That was last episode.

BUTLER: It blurs together for me. I wish we had some subtext. Instead, we just keep saying the same plot points until whatever it is resolves at the end of the season. Oh, well, would one of you take this turtle soup with shellacked truffles up to the dining room? Do not make eye contact with anyone, including the turtle!

2 ka Silk Road

As early as 1.9 ka BP, the complex of trading networks on sea and land that are known today as the Silk Road ran from Europe, Africa, Arabia, Persia, India, China, Korea, Japan and back again. Traders did local legs of the massive voyage, stopping at market cities to sell their goods which would then be traded again a little further away and so on, until silk from China wound up adorning Roman emperors and Roman gold-flecked glassware jewels ended up the prized possession of a 1.5 ka BP Japanese nobleman.

Precision Medicine

A working model of your body, grounded in your own genome, refreshed continually with measurements from your body’s insides. This information will be collated with readings from millions of other monitored bodies. Software will produce detailed guidance about diet, supplements, exercise, medication, or treatment—guidance based not on the current practice of lumping symptoms together into broad categories of disorders, but on a precise reading of your own body’s peculiarities and its status in real time.

“And at that point you now have, for the first time in history, a scientific basis for medicine.”

turning medicine from craft into science.
2019-02-01:

However, nearly 20 years after the first predictions of dramatic success, we find no impact of the human genome project on the population’s life expectancy or any other public health measure, notwithstanding the vast resources that have been directed at genomics. Exaggerated expectations of how large an impact on disease would be found for genes have been paralleled by unrealistic timelines for success, yet the promotion of precision medicine continues unabated.

The authors of this new paper end by saying that “it is urgent that the biomedical research community reconsider its ongoing obsession with the human genome“, which is strong language. We’ve learned a lot from genomic studies, and we’re still learning more, and it’s not going away. But if by “obsession” they mean trying to apply genomic viewpoints to every problem regardless of suitability, or promising success in some of these programs once we can do just a bit more sequencing – because that’s all they’re lacking – then they have a point. The genome is great, the genome is huge, the genome is important. But it’s not the only great huge important thing out there.