Convenience prioritized over health
Posted 10:14 AM

Infant formula is given free to new mothers. In my opinion, it should only be able to be purchased by prescription.

1. In a study published in the May 8, 2002, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers found that infants breastfed for seven to nine months had higher IQs as adults than those breastfed less than seven months. Reference

2. A joint study between the United States and Canada on neuroblastoma, a common childhood cancer, revealed a doubled risk for children who did not receive breast milk for more than one year. This study is consistent with several other childhood cancer studies in other nations, with results ranging from 1.45 to 4 times the risk for developing various common childhood cancers for formula-fed babies. Reference

3. Long-term breastfeeding may reduce a woman's risk of developing breast cancer by as much as 50%, according to a study recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. Reference

As a transhumanist, the fact that someone would deliberately try and give me a product that would have lowered my son's IQ, and increased the possiblity of cancer in my family, is horrifying. More than ever, I am certain that the WTA's mission, and my mission as a boardmember, is to foster a grassroots groundswell of interest and demand for the science of meaningful health, longevity and cognitive enhancement.

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Built a better WHOIS.exe
Posted 9:47 PM

Sick of the crappy do-it-yourself alternatives and web gui's, I built a nice multifunctional WHOIS tool that does recursive lookups and automatically gets the correct international server based on the TLD. It also looks up IP address ownership.

For a Windows binary click here. For Linux click here.

Full source code is here. Feel free to modify the code, and/or email any changes/suggestions.

Labels: programming, windows

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Voting Article
Posted 11:14 AM

An article I wrote on voting got published in a local magazine. Basically, it points out the classic flaws of an electoral vote, and how voting fraud is quietly rampant in the U.S. and how much a plurality vote should be modified to an Approval voting system.

I forgot to mention that the electoral system no longer serves the original purpose of protecting states rights, and doesn't protect the U.S. ruling classes from "the masses" anymore.

I'm voting early with an absentee ballot. These ballots are less prone to manipulation than voting machines, since there's a paper trail.

I cross-posted the voting story to Kuro5hin.
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Possible Solution for Space Station Garbage
Posted 1:27 PM

I was reading the story about how the International Space Station was filling up with garbage, since the U.S. can no longer send shuttles. They can't just throw stuff out because it would become high-speed space debris. A solution might be to send up small, cheap rockets attached to plastic boxes. Astronauts could load the garbage into the boxes, discard the garbage, and fire the rockets so that the garbage descends into the atmosphere and quickly burns up.
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Yet another close "election"
Posted 9:28 AM

From now on, I will refer to the aristocratic squablings of our post-democratic U.S. as an "election" - with intentional scare-quotes. The Electoral Vote website is a lot of fun, and it shows exactly which states are going to which candidates. As you can see, politicos have managed to generate a lot of attention and fuss for themselves. Surely, this will suck up more donated cash for this year's Republicrat buffoonery.
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Stem Cells and Hasidic Wedding
Posted 7:51 AM

So we were walking down the street in Willimasburg when two Hasidic men in a van started arguing loudly. The lady in front of us said, "Did that man just say 'f**k, f**k f**king f**k?'". Her friend replied, "I don't think so. I think it just sounded like that."

Later in the day we were suddenly overwhelmed with a mob of men dressed in black hats and coats rushing down the street. A 4x4 grid of city blocks were blocked off by police to make room for the 50,000 guests expected to be attending the wedding of Roza Bilma Teitelbaum and Yoel Glantz. That's definitely the biggest wedding I've ever even heard of - let alone witnessed.

Finally, it looks like the stem cell debate may be over. A company called TriStem may have developed a method to de-differentiate stem cells so that embryonic stem cells are not needed. They have already cured four people of aplastic anaemia - a fatal blood disorder. Sadly, it looks like Christopher Reeves may have died a couple of months too soon. The de-differentiated stem cells produced by CR3/43 could be injected into a spinal injury site directly following an epidurolysis and during consistent applied ultrasound to prevent immediate reformation of scar tissue.

Another fun development is BrainGate, a microchip that allows someone to use the computer without a keyboard or mouse. The microchip is implanted in the motor cortex of the brain. After some training (about as hard as learning how to touch-type), a user can then play games and check email using pure thought. So far the chip has only been implanted in people who are paralyzed and cannot use conventional computer interfaces.


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The End of Technological Innovation
Posted 11:08 AM

Throughout history, there existed island civilizations. Over time, they would become dominated by one culture, and one government. Universally, these cultures experienced an end of technological innovation. People living under the emperor of Japan were encouraged to become experts within their areas, and to know their place in society. Movement within society was all but impossible. Architects of new technologies were demonized. This is similar to what happened in Hawaii, and is even similar to what occurred in North America with Native Americans.

Universally, tradition was viewed as more important than new ideas, and ritual more important than creativity.

The frightening thing about the current global political situation is that we have a single dominant world power - the USA. Just like the emperor of Japan, we will allow other countries to maintain sovereignty - but we will not allow them to violate their own borders (wage war upon each other). Just like the Native Americans, the United States will begin exalt ritual and tradition and suppress innovation and creativity.

Is there any way out of this political and social box?

Transhumanism is the answer. Even in island cultures, personal excellence and personal growth were encouraged. Transhumanism allows for personal growth beyond the confines of our current physical form.

I suspect that there is a race going on. If the technologies that enable transhumanism take hold before technological innovation calcifies, it will allow the human race to continue to mature without the end of innovation. If not, then we may see a very large and ritualized society under the control of conservative regimes that use social and political manipulation to remain "on top" - of an unchanging and stagnating planet.

Labels: hawaii, politics

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