Reads: Longevity Gap, Reading Struggle & More
[A wrap up of some of the interesting reads from across the Web.]
The longevity gap - Aeon Magazine
Latest research in the science of life extension has struck gold. A class of enzymes called Sirtuins have now been confirmed to increase longevity in mammals, and new studies have shown how potential drugs can stimulate the secretion of these enzymes in mice, extending their life-span and improving their health. Daumone, a hormone secreted by nematod worms, when fed to elderly mice drastically reduced their chances of death by as as much as 48% across five months. It's indeed great what science can do, but what does it mean to live on this planet for say 120 years or even more when the resources available to us are already beginning to dry up. How affordable would these treatments be? Will it accessible only to the elite, ultra-rich people, thus wedging an even wider rich-poor gap? Could it be possible that the wealthy live(d) twice as long while the poor die(d) even younger than their parents do(id)? All this reminds me of the movie Elysium!
As novel compounds slow or even reverse ageing, the longevity divide could become a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon. The wealthy will experience an accelerated increase in life expectancy and health, and everyone else will go in the opposite direction, says S Jay Olshansky, a longevity researcher and professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. ‘And as the technology advances, the gap will only grow.’
Being poor, in of itself, is stressful because it circumscribes every aspect of one’s life. Scraping to come up with routine living expenses – food, shelter, medical care, transportation – can cause chronic insomnia and anxiety, which boosts levels of cortisol, the stress hormone in the blood. This already makes the poor more vulnerable to a cascade of debilitating, life-threatening ills, from diabetes to high blood pressure and heart disease. ‘Poverty is a thief,’ Michael Reisch, a professor of social justice at the University of Maryland, recently told a US Senate panel. ‘Poverty not only diminishes a person’s life chances, it steals years from one’s life.’ >>
Removing the battery: can a doctor decide how a patient should die? - The Guardian
Being a doctor is no easy thing. He or she has to establish an emotional connect with the patient he is supposed to treat in addition to guiding him through the right steps to recovery. In this illuminating article about the blurring lines of medicine and ethics, Ranjana Srivastava writes about a patient suffering from lung cancer who is also at risk from a cardiac arrest if her defibrillator battery is not replaced, and about whether doctors are well-equipped to make the right decision.
Cardiac arrest or lung cancer. Should we attempt to replace the battery? My heart sinks. I find myself unequal to the monumental task of helping my patient navigate the most difficult decision of her life. I think back wistfully to my ethics fellowship, where a team of doctors, ethicists and philosophers would have illuminated the various complexities and provided the treating clinician with guidance. The weightiest decisions in medicine are not about which tests to order, or what drugs to prescribe; they actually take place at the sharp intersection of medicine and ethics... Who has the final say in turning off a cancer patient’s ventilator support? Who should grapple with the patient who sees nothing wrong with purchasing an illegally harvested kidney? Who ultimately decides whether to disable the pacemaker of a quadriplegic elderly man? >>
The CIA's cute first tweet can't cover its bloody tracks - The Guardian
When America's premier intelligence agency made its Twitter debut recently, it sent tweeples into a frenzy with its amusing tweet "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet". Cute even, for a secretive organisation like CIA. But what isn't cute is its catastrophic meddling in other nations' affairs, writes Owen Jones in this comment piece. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Brazil, Venezuela, and the list is endless.
The CIA might try and LOL away its record, but given the world is still dealing with the consequences of its many disastrous postwar interventions, it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. "Terrorism" is normally used when referring to acts of violence committed by non-white people hostile to the west. But if we're understanding the term to mean acts of terror committed for political ends, then the CIA is surely the greatest terrorist organisation on earth... It's in the CIA's interests to craft a cuddly new image: as a team of glamorous, James Bond-style spooks who can take a joke. Given the abject failure of much of the western media to scrutinise its actions – at least until it's too late – it may believe it can get away with it. But its record of torture, murder and subverting democratic governments speaks for itself. However savvy its Twitter campaign, that must not be forgotten. >>
Reading: The Struggle - The New York Review of Books
Is serious reading on the wane? In this distraction-filled world of smartphones, tablets and countless other things that constantly demand our attention, reading by large has become a casualty. For it requires you to expend "more energy" and "immerse" in it, taking in the atmosphere and the characters that inhabit the narrative. This would mean concentration, focus, solitude and silence, which are all hard to come by these days. And you would need more of all of them especially if the book you choose to read is something long and complex (I'm planning on reading Donna Tartt's 784-pages long The Goldfinch by the way.) Would that then explain why we prefer a 50 Shades of Grey over The Lumineers or The Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the fact that contemporary writers themselves are steering away from literary fiction? Because even writing a "novel of elegant, highly distinct prose, of conceptual delicacy and syntactical complexity" requires a great deal of all the above virtues.
We all know this. Some have greater resistance, some less. Only yesterday a smart young Ph.D. student told me his supreme goal was to keep himself from checking his email more than once an hour, though he doubted he would achieve such iron discipline in the near future. At present it was more like every five to ten minutes. So when we read there are more breaks, ever more frequent stops and restarts, more input from elsewhere, fewer refuges where the mind can settle. It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption. Hence more and more energy is required to stay in contact with a book, particularly something long and complex. >>
The history of Android - Ars Technica
Google's mobile operating system has come a long way in the last six years since it officially launched the first Android smartphone HTC Dream on October 22, 2008. New features were quickly added in successive updates, and the user interface has gone from worse to bad to good to better to the best with its latest overarching design paradigm called the Material Design. Google's "continual onslaught" of industry leading features made for rapid strides in mobile hardware, triggering a smartphone race unlike anything the tech industry had seen before. Now with Android breathing life to your watches, car infotainment systems, televisions and glasses, here's taking a look at its history in 40,000 words.
What started out as a curious BlackBerry clone from a search engine company became the most popular OS in the world from one of the biggest titans in the tech industry. Android has become Google's de-facto consumer operating system, and it powers phones, tablets, Google Glass, Google TV, and more. Parts of it are even used in the Chromecast. In the future, Google will be bringing Android to watches and wearables with Android Wear, and the Open Automotive Alliance will be bringing Android to cars. Google will be making a renewed commitment to the living room soon, too, with Android TV... What was once the ugly duckling of the mobile industry has transformed so much it now wins design awards for its user interface. >>
The Nightmare on Connected Home Street - Wired
The Internet of Things is really the next big thing. Google, Apple and Samsung are all gearing up for smart internet-connected devices that will enable us to share and connect much much more, making our lives more easier (and automated, if I may add) along the way. But this blessing can also be a curse. Imagine you are living in one such smart home in the near future. And it's crippled by a virus. Wired's Mat Honan envisions the nightmarish scenario about living in a connected home.
I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don’t know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again. Technically it’s malware. But there’s no patch yet, and pretty much everyone’s got it. Homes up and down the block are lit up, even at this early hour. Thankfully this one is fairly benign. It sets off the alarm with music I blacklisted decades ago on Pandora. It takes a picture of me as I get out of the shower every morning and uploads it to Facebook. No big deal. >>
The Town Named After a Sex Toy - Priceonomics
The situation calls for some levity after all. Yes, there's indeed a place named after a sex toy. And it's called Dildo. But what attracted me to this piece is the writing. For an article about Dildo, there's sure plenty of scope for playing around with words. Had so much pun (read: fun) reading it!
While the exact origins of Dildo’s name are shrouded in mystery, the word was widely used in the 18th century to describe anything cylindrical (test tubes, corks, etc.). But the term’s etymology dates as far back as the 1590s, when it was used as a bastardized form of Italian diletto ("delight"). Some scholars suggest the word was enlisted to describe sex toys as early as the Renaissance, though others, like Dildo resident Stella Wright, surmise that the town has existed “a lot longer than artificial penises have been around.” Whatever Captain Cook’s intentions may have been, the name is unmistakably penetrating.
An hour west of Newfoundland’s provincial capital, Dildo is a quiet, meandering harbor town with a population of 1,200. At one time, it flourished on the back of a burgeoning whaling and fishing industry; today, its name is that only thing that keeps people coming. >>
The longevity gap - Aeon Magazine
Latest research in the science of life extension has struck gold. A class of enzymes called Sirtuins have now been confirmed to increase longevity in mammals, and new studies have shown how potential drugs can stimulate the secretion of these enzymes in mice, extending their life-span and improving their health. Daumone, a hormone secreted by nematod worms, when fed to elderly mice drastically reduced their chances of death by as as much as 48% across five months. It's indeed great what science can do, but what does it mean to live on this planet for say 120 years or even more when the resources available to us are already beginning to dry up. How affordable would these treatments be? Will it accessible only to the elite, ultra-rich people, thus wedging an even wider rich-poor gap? Could it be possible that the wealthy live(d) twice as long while the poor die(d) even younger than their parents do(id)? All this reminds me of the movie Elysium!
As novel compounds slow or even reverse ageing, the longevity divide could become a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon. The wealthy will experience an accelerated increase in life expectancy and health, and everyone else will go in the opposite direction, says S Jay Olshansky, a longevity researcher and professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. ‘And as the technology advances, the gap will only grow.’
Being poor, in of itself, is stressful because it circumscribes every aspect of one’s life. Scraping to come up with routine living expenses – food, shelter, medical care, transportation – can cause chronic insomnia and anxiety, which boosts levels of cortisol, the stress hormone in the blood. This already makes the poor more vulnerable to a cascade of debilitating, life-threatening ills, from diabetes to high blood pressure and heart disease. ‘Poverty is a thief,’ Michael Reisch, a professor of social justice at the University of Maryland, recently told a US Senate panel. ‘Poverty not only diminishes a person’s life chances, it steals years from one’s life.’ >>
Removing the battery: can a doctor decide how a patient should die? - The Guardian
Being a doctor is no easy thing. He or she has to establish an emotional connect with the patient he is supposed to treat in addition to guiding him through the right steps to recovery. In this illuminating article about the blurring lines of medicine and ethics, Ranjana Srivastava writes about a patient suffering from lung cancer who is also at risk from a cardiac arrest if her defibrillator battery is not replaced, and about whether doctors are well-equipped to make the right decision.
Cardiac arrest or lung cancer. Should we attempt to replace the battery? My heart sinks. I find myself unequal to the monumental task of helping my patient navigate the most difficult decision of her life. I think back wistfully to my ethics fellowship, where a team of doctors, ethicists and philosophers would have illuminated the various complexities and provided the treating clinician with guidance. The weightiest decisions in medicine are not about which tests to order, or what drugs to prescribe; they actually take place at the sharp intersection of medicine and ethics... Who has the final say in turning off a cancer patient’s ventilator support? Who should grapple with the patient who sees nothing wrong with purchasing an illegally harvested kidney? Who ultimately decides whether to disable the pacemaker of a quadriplegic elderly man? >>
The CIA's cute first tweet can't cover its bloody tracks - The Guardian
When America's premier intelligence agency made its Twitter debut recently, it sent tweeples into a frenzy with its amusing tweet "We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet". Cute even, for a secretive organisation like CIA. But what isn't cute is its catastrophic meddling in other nations' affairs, writes Owen Jones in this comment piece. Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Brazil, Venezuela, and the list is endless.
The CIA might try and LOL away its record, but given the world is still dealing with the consequences of its many disastrous postwar interventions, it shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. "Terrorism" is normally used when referring to acts of violence committed by non-white people hostile to the west. But if we're understanding the term to mean acts of terror committed for political ends, then the CIA is surely the greatest terrorist organisation on earth... It's in the CIA's interests to craft a cuddly new image: as a team of glamorous, James Bond-style spooks who can take a joke. Given the abject failure of much of the western media to scrutinise its actions – at least until it's too late – it may believe it can get away with it. But its record of torture, murder and subverting democratic governments speaks for itself. However savvy its Twitter campaign, that must not be forgotten. >>
Reading: The Struggle - The New York Review of Books
Is serious reading on the wane? In this distraction-filled world of smartphones, tablets and countless other things that constantly demand our attention, reading by large has become a casualty. For it requires you to expend "more energy" and "immerse" in it, taking in the atmosphere and the characters that inhabit the narrative. This would mean concentration, focus, solitude and silence, which are all hard to come by these days. And you would need more of all of them especially if the book you choose to read is something long and complex (I'm planning on reading Donna Tartt's 784-pages long The Goldfinch by the way.) Would that then explain why we prefer a 50 Shades of Grey over The Lumineers or The Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the fact that contemporary writers themselves are steering away from literary fiction? Because even writing a "novel of elegant, highly distinct prose, of conceptual delicacy and syntactical complexity" requires a great deal of all the above virtues.
We all know this. Some have greater resistance, some less. Only yesterday a smart young Ph.D. student told me his supreme goal was to keep himself from checking his email more than once an hour, though he doubted he would achieve such iron discipline in the near future. At present it was more like every five to ten minutes. So when we read there are more breaks, ever more frequent stops and restarts, more input from elsewhere, fewer refuges where the mind can settle. It is not simply that one is interrupted; it is that one is actually inclined to interruption. Hence more and more energy is required to stay in contact with a book, particularly something long and complex. >>
The history of Android - Ars Technica
Google's mobile operating system has come a long way in the last six years since it officially launched the first Android smartphone HTC Dream on October 22, 2008. New features were quickly added in successive updates, and the user interface has gone from worse to bad to good to better to the best with its latest overarching design paradigm called the Material Design. Google's "continual onslaught" of industry leading features made for rapid strides in mobile hardware, triggering a smartphone race unlike anything the tech industry had seen before. Now with Android breathing life to your watches, car infotainment systems, televisions and glasses, here's taking a look at its history in 40,000 words.
What started out as a curious BlackBerry clone from a search engine company became the most popular OS in the world from one of the biggest titans in the tech industry. Android has become Google's de-facto consumer operating system, and it powers phones, tablets, Google Glass, Google TV, and more. Parts of it are even used in the Chromecast. In the future, Google will be bringing Android to watches and wearables with Android Wear, and the Open Automotive Alliance will be bringing Android to cars. Google will be making a renewed commitment to the living room soon, too, with Android TV... What was once the ugly duckling of the mobile industry has transformed so much it now wins design awards for its user interface. >>
The Nightmare on Connected Home Street - Wired
The Internet of Things is really the next big thing. Google, Apple and Samsung are all gearing up for smart internet-connected devices that will enable us to share and connect much much more, making our lives more easier (and automated, if I may add) along the way. But this blessing can also be a curse. Imagine you are living in one such smart home in the near future. And it's crippled by a virus. Wired's Mat Honan envisions the nightmarish scenario about living in a connected home.
I wake up at four to some old-timey dubstep spewing from my pillows. The lights are flashing. My alarm clock is blasting Skrillex or Deadmau5 or something, I don’t know. I never listened to dubstep, and in fact the entire genre is on my banned list. You see, my house has a virus again. Technically it’s malware. But there’s no patch yet, and pretty much everyone’s got it. Homes up and down the block are lit up, even at this early hour. Thankfully this one is fairly benign. It sets off the alarm with music I blacklisted decades ago on Pandora. It takes a picture of me as I get out of the shower every morning and uploads it to Facebook. No big deal. >>
The Town Named After a Sex Toy - Priceonomics
The situation calls for some levity after all. Yes, there's indeed a place named after a sex toy. And it's called Dildo. But what attracted me to this piece is the writing. For an article about Dildo, there's sure plenty of scope for playing around with words. Had so much pun (read: fun) reading it!
While the exact origins of Dildo’s name are shrouded in mystery, the word was widely used in the 18th century to describe anything cylindrical (test tubes, corks, etc.). But the term’s etymology dates as far back as the 1590s, when it was used as a bastardized form of Italian diletto ("delight"). Some scholars suggest the word was enlisted to describe sex toys as early as the Renaissance, though others, like Dildo resident Stella Wright, surmise that the town has existed “a lot longer than artificial penises have been around.” Whatever Captain Cook’s intentions may have been, the name is unmistakably penetrating.
An hour west of Newfoundland’s provincial capital, Dildo is a quiet, meandering harbor town with a population of 1,200. At one time, it flourished on the back of a burgeoning whaling and fishing industry; today, its name is that only thing that keeps people coming. >>
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