Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 11512

My new story for The Daily Dot. Also, cool future tech to help the nonreligious get the message out:

Of the thousands of protesters at the Republican and Democratic conventions, one of the most noticeable groups were the born-again Christians. But this year—perhaps for the first time at national conventions—they were met with resistance from organized atheist and transhumanist protesters clashing against them.

With approximately a dozen atheists and transhumanists, my group of supporters engaged the Christians and campaigned in front of them. Sometimes wearing Transhumanist Party t-shirts and holding posters, we argued with them, blocked press from getting good pictures of them, and generally promoted to the public the power of reason over faith.

Other protesters, often fans of Bernie Sanders, joined our cause and helped protest against them. One of my favorites was an LGBT supporter holding up a sign with a penis drawing on it and the words “I love sinning” emblazoned just below it.

Continue reading “What it’s like to counter-protest Christians as an atheist demonstrator at both political conventions” | >

National Geographic’s scripted/unscripted hybrid series Mars gives viewers both a real and dramatized quest to colonize the planet. The combination present-day documentary and scripted look at the future is what director Everard Gout described as a process in which “one hand fits in the other in terms of the knowledge and in terms of the emotion.” “It’s electrical” he added, “because you have that level of truthfulness on the documentary side but you also have an equal amount of beauty and truthfulness on the scripted side. It’s a very visceral experience.”

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My new OpEd article for the San Francisco Chronicle on chip implants and transhumanism: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Chip-en…694149.php They also did a 2-minute video of my presidential campaign: http://bit.ly/2aERJxc

The implant can do all sorts of things, like unlock my electronic house door, act as my password on my computer, and even send a text message when people with the right phone and app come near me. Keys, credit cards, ID cards, medical records and passwords — these are all things that can be replaced by a tiny chip in the hand. If having technology in your bodies sounds wacky, consider the millions of people around the world who have artificial hips or dentures, or deaf people who use cochlear implants to hear sounds. […] former Vice President Dick Cheney famously asked to have the Wi-Fi on his heart valve turned off, just in case terrorists tried to hack it. A company in Sylmar (Los Angeles County) called Second Sight already has FDA approval for bionic eyes.

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A new Methuselah Foundation podcast with Dr. Haroldo Silva and David Halvorsen from SENS Research about their work with ALT Cancer!

Hi everyone! Check out this new Methuselah Foundation podcast with Dr. Haroldo Silva and David Halvorsen from SENS Research Foundation. Have a listen and find out why finding Cures for ALT Cancer is so important.

www.mfoundation.org/blog/interviews/episode-007-control-alt-delete-cancer/

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New Gene research.

Look closely at the raw materials that make up any group of cells and you’ll notice some “noise,” a term scientists use to describe natural variations in cellular composition.

A little noise is normal. If a cell produces slightly above-average amounts of a particular protein, common processes like reproduction can continue to operate smoothly. But when things get too noisy, our cells’ machinery starts to misfire. These malfunctioning cells frequently produce mutant offspring that may die off immediately or contribute to the long-term growth of certain forms of cancer.

Continue reading “Scientists’ search for ‘noise-canceling’ gene networks supported” | >

Education and socioeconomic status have been linked with cancer outcomes, but a new study now links higher education with the development of certain types of cancer.

The large observational study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, reports that a high level of education is associated with an increased risk of brain tumors. The study is based on data from 4.3 million Swedish adults who were monitored between 1993 and 2010. Overall, 5,735 men and 7,101 women developed a brain tumor during the observation period.

Men with at least three years of university-level education had a 19% greater risk of developing gliomas than men with only a compulsory level of education (nine years). Women with the same level of education had a 23% increased risk of gliomas and a 16% increased risk of meningiomas. Marital status and amount of disposable income only slightly affected the risk among men but not among women. Single men had a lower risk of glioma but a higher risk of meningiomas. Occupation also influenced brain tumor risks among men and women: men in professional and management roles had a 20% increased risk of gliomas and a 50% increased risk of acoustic neuromas; women in these roles had a 26% increased risk of gliomas and a 14% increased risk of meningiomas.

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Microsoft’s amazing HoloLens is the world’s first stand-alone headset that lets users see virtual objects and environments as if they existed in the real world. This device’s entertainment potential is practically unlimited, but as a Hackathon team recently demonstrated, it can also be used to rewire a malfunctioning brain.

A Microsoft employee suffering from myoclonus-dystonia —a condition where the misfiring of the brain causes uncontrollable muscle spasms—discovered that she could regain control during a spasm by looking at her partner’s feet rather than her own. And that’s how she got her great idea: Why not use the HoloLens to retrain the brain and get it to act differently? To that end, she recruited the Microsoft Hackathon team to put the idea to the test.

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