This is a repository for my thoughts on justice, spirituality, art, youth, science and progress, expressed through proxy, compiled and arranged as a tribute to transcendentalism in the 21st century.
Taisuke | Emptyblueprints v3.5
Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici
❝ I must study politics and war, that our sons may
have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Our sons ought to study mathematics and
philosophy, geography, natural history and naval
architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture
in order to give their children a right
to study painting, poetry, music, architecture,
statuary, tapestry and porcelain. ❞
— John Adams (1735-1735), American Founding Father, statesman, diplomat,
Enlightenment political theorist, and second president of the United States
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow.
But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Irish novelist, poet, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian
Children Today Are Unraveling Under Pressure
Big Think | By Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd | February 9, 2013
As a psychologist, Madeline Levine has seen firsthand how children today are unraveling under pressure. In order to “succeed,” children take stimulants to study or cheat regularly to maintain their grades. They also resort to unhealthy ways of coping with anxiety such as substance abuse or self-mutilation. What the heck are we doing to our kids?
“We need to embrace a healthier and radically different way of thinking about success,” Levine argues in her book, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success. We celebrate what is obvious and measurable over everything else. This is debilitating to children in precisely the same way that it is debilitating to parents. It is debilitating to everyone.
Levine argues for a different approach which she calls “courageous parenting.” If your child hasn’t learned to read in kindergarten, don’t freak out. Development is a process, and it is doesn’t happen at the same pace for everyone. Have the courage to let your child experiment and play. We overload our children with homework, even though we know that about one hour is really the right amount.
Evangelical Homeschoolers Embrace Evolution
The Atlantic Magazine | By March 8, 2013
For homeschooling parents who want to teach their children that the earth is only a few thousand years old, the theory of evolution is a lie, and dinosaurs coexisted with humans, there is no shortage of materials. Kids can start with the Answers in Genesis curriculum, which features books such as Dinosaurs of Eden, written by Creation Museum founder Ken Ham. As the publisher’s description states, “This exciting book for the entire family uses the Bible as a ‘time machine’ to journey through the events of the past and future.”
It’s no secret that the majority of homeschooled children in America belong to evangelical Christian families. What’s less known is that a growing number of their parents are dismayed by these textbooks.
Take Erinn Cameron Warton, an evangelical Christian who homeschools her children. Warton, a scientist, says she was horrified when she opened a homeschool science textbook and found a picture of Adam and Eve putting a saddle on a dinosaur. “I nearly choked,” says the mother of three. “When researching homeschooling curricula, I found that the majority of Christian homeschool textbooks are written from this ridiculous perspective. Once I saw this, I vowed never to use them.”
❝ Death is not necessarily what gives meaning to life.
Life gives meaning to life, and what we do
with life which is to create knowledge like music,
art, and science. To this end, I believe intelligent life
might be evolution’s secret weapon: the ultimate hack
that might help us transcend entropy. ❞
— Jason Silva (born 1982), Venezuelan-American television personality, filmmaker, and philosopher.
Above: Inhibitor by vmulligan
New Study Validates Anti-Aging Pathway
Science Daily | By David Cameron | March 7, 2013
A new study demonstrates what researchers consider conclusive evidence that the red wine compound resveratrol directly activates a protein that promotes health and longevity in animal models. What’s more, the researchers have uncovered the molecular mechanism for this interaction, and show that a class of more potent drugs currently in clinical trials act in a similar fashion. Pharmaceutical compounds similar to resveratrol may potentially treat and prevent diseases related to aging in people, the authors contend.
…
For the last decade, the science of aging has increasingly focused on sirtuins, a group of genes that are believed to protect many organisms, including mammals, against diseases of aging. Mounting evidence has demonstrated that resveratrol, a compound found in the skin of grapes as well as in peanuts and berries, increases the activity of a specific sirtuin,SIRT1, that protects the body from diseases by revving up the mitochondria, a kind of cellular battery that slowly runs down as we age. By recharging the batteries, SIRT1 can have profound effects on health.
Mice on resveratrol have twice the endurance and are relatively immune from effects of obesity and aging. In experiments with yeast, nematodes, bees, flies and mice, lifespan has been extended.
“In the history of pharmaceuticals, there has never been a drug that binds to a protein to make it run faster in the way that resveratrol activates SIRT1,” said David Sinclair, Harvard Medical School professor of genetics and senior author on the paper. “Almost all drugs either slow or block them.”
Electronic chips self-heal after laser blast
Futurity | By Kimm Fesenmaier | March 12, 2013
It might sound like the stuff of science fiction, but a team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), for the first time ever, has developed just such self-healing integrated chips.
The team demonstrated this self-healing capability in tiny power amplifiers. The amplifiers are so small that 76 of the chips—including everything they need to self-heal—could fit on a single penny.
In perhaps the most dramatic of their experiments, the team destroyed various parts of their chips by zapping them multiple times with a high-power laser, and then observed as the chips automatically developed a work-around in less than a second.
“It was incredible the first time the system kicked in and healed itself. It felt like we were witnessing the next step in the evolution of integrated circuits,” says Ali Hajimiri, professor of electrical engineering. “We had literally just blasted half the amplifier and vaporized many of its components, such as transistors, and it was able to recover to nearly its ideal performance.”
Microchip gives sight to the blind
Digital Trends | By Jeffrey Van Camp | May 3, 2012
It looks like Geordi LaForge’s vision visor is already outdated. A tiny 3mm microchip has given vision back to the blind. Scientists and doctors in Oxford implanted a new “bionic eye” microchip in the eyes of two blind individuals last month during a grueling eight-hour operation. The chips were placed in the back of the eyes and connected with electrodes. Weeks later, both individuals — Chris James and Robin Millar — have regained ‘useful vision’ and are well on their way to recognizing faces and seeing once again, reports Sky News.
