• Capture the most captivating of materials, content, articles and more.
• Find the most fascinating facts, images, and information available.
• Integrate with self and website the most profound wisdom and stories I can.

Captivating materials and articles should read like poetry, delectable, fluent, smooth, accessible. Fascinating information should be transformative or enlightening. Images should be beautiful or awe-inspiring. Meta-integration-worthy wisdom must be capable or proven to have stood the passage of time and reach across cultures. All new content should be exemplary (from nature, humanity, science, art, literature) or illustrative (of important trends, patterns, cycles, etc.).

FYI, here are some of the places I generally like to look…

Quotes collections and websites – BrainyQuotes, Thinkexist, and Wisdom Quotes.

Social news aggregators and engines – Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Slashdot.

In books I read, the majority being sci-fi novels (and I’d argue that I generally pick very good ones). Sci-fi favorites from recent years: Foundation Trilogy/Series, Ender’s Game(Series), The Algebraist, Pushing Ice, House of Suns, Accelerando, and The Wind-Up Girl. Non-fiction favorites from recent years: What Technology Wants, The Next 100 Years, The Narcissism Epidemic, and The Evolving Self.

And of course I must mention TED.

I plan to pursue growth and thrival-fuel through these means. Please share your thoughts with me on other great sources of news and other fascinating or captivating information…

This is how I plan to…

differentiate & integrate,

explore & reflect,

discover & synthesize,

and widgetize & optimize ; )

A WARNING TO SELF AND READER ALIKE

Do not forget that all this hunting for paths through which to expand the mind, improve the intellect, evolve the self, (the same goes for entertaining yourself), that too much time spent on transistasis (change/evolution) equates to problems with homeostasis (the renewal, detox, and settling of physical and psychological selves).

As a rule, you must stand up and move your body around every hour if you are on the computer for more than two hours per day, and who isn’t these days, right? This is very important; you must train your body as you hone your mind — they go hand in hand. If you sit for too long reading or surfing the internet, your immune system and your cardiovascular system go into hibernation and blood vessels and muscles (as well as general well-being) atrophy. Watch out for the whole, holistic self. Meditation, whether sitting-emptying-the-mind style or walking-around-reflecting-on-things, is also to be considered essential, as is being with friends and family, which is very hard to do indeed when plugged in…

“The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.”
— Buddha

Important Points

• Geriatrics works on treating pathology – cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease – but much too late in the game to extend lifespan.
• Gerontology attempts to prevent aging by adjusting a very complex system, the metabolism (see picture below). This can have many unwanted side effects. Thus, progress in this field is very difficult.


Simplified Metabolic Diagram

• Maintenance and rejuvenation extend lifespan by repairing damage, a process which can be repeated and, itself, improved upon in a parallel process to overall technological progress. All this without altering or disrupting the metabolism.
• Longevity Escape Velocity (L.E.V.): Even marginal rates of advancement in treatment efficacy can exponentially increase life span when considered over periods in which patients receive rejuvenations every 20 years; each treatment removes greater amounts of damage, more comprehensively.
• Key Claim of L.E.V.: Eventually our ability to maintain health will hit a threshold at which our medical technology will effectively increase average life span by one year each year (or more). This will eliminate any diminishing returns in damage repair efforts; we will be able to repair more damage in one year than can actually be accumulated during that year. This is what de Grey refers to as “the Methuselarity”.

A new study from UC Davis is showing that meditation can, over-time, help to increase your telomerase, a vital rejuvenating enzyme that extends the life of cells and helps to repair damage. The key is in meditation’s ability to reduce stress levels. Stronger psychologically; stronger physiologically. Clifford Saron, a researcher who contributed to the study, had this to say:

“The take-home message from this work is not that meditation directly increases telomerase activity and therefore a person’s health and longevity, rather, meditation may improve a person’s psychological well-being and in turn these changes are related to telomerase activity in immune cells, which has the potential to promote longevity in those cells. Activities that increase a person’s sense of well-being may have a profound effect on the most fundamental aspects of their physiology.”

The participants in the experimental group underwent intensive training during a three-month retreat, and, compared to the control group, generally showed greater ability to avoid neuroticism/negative emotionality, in addition to feeling more in control of their lives and aware of themselves by the end of the study. I personally find this a very encouraging link between mind and body. I used to meditate more often and connected this with the Buddhist philosophical mindset that I had created for myself. While I no longer would link as much of my purpose in life to such Buddhist ideals as infinite compassion and the complete elimination of suffering, I still enjoy a contemplative kind of meditation every once in a while, where I merely try to watch my thoughts float on through my head.

The aim in a large part of the various meditation methods is to ‘observe without judgment’ and become aware of your own mind and how it works. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a sitting-down, lotus-position, focused-breathing type task, but some structure seems to be helpful if we look at the volunteers in the UC Davis study, who practiced in a group setting for two hours a day, and in solitude for an average of about six hours a day. This is an intensive dedication to structure which is surely unrealistic to any normal working person, unless of course you are a ‘paid meditator’. But I digress…

You may not have 8 hours a day to train your mind and sharpen your awareness, but as little as 10 minutes I find often helps me regain my emotional footing during turbulent times. Here are a few different techniques for you to try out… And may they fuel your telomerase production through improved mental health!

• Impermanence Meditation: Think on happy and unhappy events/times in your life. Think back and notice how all these things change and nothing is permanent. As you recall an experience, say to yourself “This is also impermanent.” or “This too will pass.” This I have often tried as I am falling asleep, my head full of fantasies and worries for the coming day. It calms me down to think of the transient nature of everything like this. You may find it useful, too.
• Watching the Dust Cloud: The mind is constantly churning with thoughts. Trying to stop yourself from thinking anything is generally futile, like trying to clear the motes of dust floating in a sunbeam by throwing spears at individual specks; every time you throw a spear, the whole cloud just gets kicked up again. Wait and the dust settles. Here, the idea is to compassionately note to yourself, “Thinking, good buddy…” and choose a focus point — your breath going out, the look of the back inner side of your eyelids, the sounds you are hearing, whatever you want. Choose a focus point and notice yourself thinking. Let the quiet enter naturally and you should finish feeling quite refreshed — but I will warn you that I have spent up to 45 minutes working towards this clear-mind-feeling, although it was worth it in the end. The realization that you are having no thoughts fill your head is singular and also quite exciting.
• A Healing Light: Good for relaxing the body. In this exercise, the practitioner images a brilliant source of healing light wandering slowly and meticulously over every section of the body. As it does it’s healing work in your mind, you feel the sensation in your toes, then the bottoms, then the tops of your feet, and working slowly up the legs and torso, out onto the arms, and up the neck to the face and head, the light sets your body tingling… Even without an imaginary light source, “feeling” your toes, feet, legs, torso, arms and head one-by-one is a revitalizing mental massage.
• Tonglen Meditation: This one I get from Pema Chodron. It is meant to provide illumination in dark and hopeless times. You start with the assumption and, well, fact — that despite the level of your woes, there are those out in the world who are worse-off, those who live with great suffering: Hunger, disease, poverty, chronic stress, intense anger, resentment, jealousy, deep-seated negativity, and more. To awaken the Buddha inside of you — or perhaps Inner Light for those not so keen on Inner-Buddha — one must continue to develop empathetic skills. In Tonglen Meditation, one breathes in (symbolically) the black, poison smoke of suffering, lightening the burdens of fellow human beings, and then breathes out peace, love, wisdom, hope, and happiness, in a clear, cleansing breathe of light. Taking in suffering, breathing out release from suffering. The target may be an individual as well, a mourning mother, a drug-addicted father, a lonely child, a relative who is ill, anyone you choose. To cleanse others awakens the Inner-light, the Inner-Buddha, who can more easily see the transient, unjust, and cyclic side of things. This helps to develop compassion and empathy, and put things in one’s own life in perspective.

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I was amazed to hear of the newly possible DNA-based logic gates presented in this article at PopSci (world’s first DNA based logic gates could lead to injectable bio-computers). My mind is abuzz with extropic potential. Here’s my short version…

Summary:

Researchers at Hebrew University recently produced a set of self-maintaining XOR logic gates built entirely out of DNA. These gates are designed to indicate the presence of specific physiological conditions and then produce an output, most likely a biochemical signal which can feed into other systems and even (eventually) trigger the release of needed chemicals, hormones, or medicines, like aspirin, for example, if a heart attack is detected.

The article states that these gates “can be wired in series, each one creating a new output that serves as the input for the next gate, the basis for complex calculations.” You certainly can’t get much more extropic than that. I was quite impressed and decided to leave my thoughts as follows on the PopSci site:

Like any new tech there are huge potential risks and benefits… I just figure it will get worked out over the years and tested thoroughly before becoming publicly available.

Imagine though, say it could detect the impact from a car crash and release some hydrogen sulfide into your blood at the same time, preserving you for the doctors to treat in the ER. Or say, make your skin turn purple if there’s too much carbon monoxide in the air, or supplement your body’s naturally-declining nightly release of melatonin to help you sleep soundly. Etc, etc.

Privacy and undetectable-assassination risks notwithstanding, in theory you get a greatly enhanced ‘portable’ healthcare package that might just grant you a few extra lives.

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Magnets Guide Stem Cells towards Damaged Heart

Stem cells have great potential in medicine as they can be coaxed into becoming any type of cell. But for all their dynamism, researchers have had a tough time getting them to stay put.

At Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, where a team lead by Dr. Eduardo Marbán first isolated and grew stem cells to replace damaged human heart tissue, it was discovered that only 10% of cells on average stay where they are meant to do their miraculous healing. Other cells placed near the heart are swept away by the blood stream or squeezed out by the heart muscles themselves.

The most promising solution to this has been to load up the cells with micro-sized iron particles so they can be guided with magnets. At Cedars-Sinai they placed a magnet right above the damaged tissue of a rat’s heart and found that more than triple the normal amount of stem cells were retained, leading to much more effective healing. (See the study: here)

Trials are moving forward and if all goes well this strategy will be combined with the institute’s already innovative heart stem-cell procedures.

That’s the kind of extropy hack that will keep us all fit and strong. Just imagine similar stem cells being guided up and coaxed into healthy brain tissue to help fight Alzheimer’s!

Pluripotent Stem Cells

The seven aging mechanisms that run down our bodies are:

1. Loss and atrophy of cells
2. Accumulation of unnecessary cells
3. Chromosomal mutation
4. Mitochondrial mutation
5. Intracellular junk
6. Extracellular junk
7. Cross-links in extracellular proteins

Before gerontology comes to the rescue, you’ll have to take care of your own cells in the following ways:

1. Exercise – Preferably up to 1 hour a day, the more the better. Weights, walking, swimming, yoga, you name it. Personally, I love weights, the stationary bike, and soccer.
2. Sleep – 7+ Z’s per night will do you good.
3. Proper nutrition: In addition to fruits and vegetables, try throwing in some reservatrol (wine) and melatonin (use the supplement, or darken your sleeping area) to combat free-radicals, and perhaps lower your calorie intake (caloric restriction).
4. Lower your stress and blood pressure levels: Meditation, exercise, laughing, walking, talking with friends, creativity, making art and music — these are all good things.
5. Keep your mind in gear: Try to learn some synonyms, or read some great free books!
6. Stay social to stay happy: Again, this will help with lowering your stress and blood-pressure.
7. Keep up to date on important health research: try the Methuselah Foundation.

Read more about negligible senescence and what you can do to stay young and healthy.