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Zombie Day At The Mall T-Shirt

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Sideshow’s 1:4 Scale Blackbeard

“These findings reinforce the notion that there may be physiological reasons that longevity runs in families and that centenarian offspring are more likely to age in better cardiovascular health and with a lower mortality than their peers,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

. . .

Over the next four years, Adams and her colleagues found, children of centenarians were 81 percent less likely to die and significantly less likely to develop cardiovascular problems or diabetes.

Only 0.7 percent suffered a heart attack during the study period, compared with 3.5 percent of the comparison group. Similarly, 1 percent of the centenarian group had a stroke, versus 6 percent of their peers.

Meanwhile, diabetes was newly diagnosed in just over 5 percent of the comparison group, but only 0.8 percent of the centenarian group.

People in my family tend to live very long (my great grandmother lived to 100) except for the folks who do themselves in with poor diet, lack of exercise, tobacco use, etc., so I’m hopeful I’ve inherited whatever genes helped them there.

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Study of Children of Centenarians Suggest Genetic Link to Long Lifespans

Dozens of tiny, single serving sites provide a venue for pop culture references, inside jokes, art displays, collective action, bids for peer approval, humor, and advice. Collectively they offer a perspective on the web as a platform for a unique brand of storytelling.

. . .

Having presented these data, the most interesting and difficult question remains unanswered: why? As a whole, the SSS movement may be a commentary on the hyper-specialization of sites. Although the most trafficked sites on the Internet remain those with broad functionality, the recent history of the Internet has been one of increasing specialization. YouTube is the site for video, Flickr for pictures, Delicious for collecting bookmarks, MegaUpload and others for swapping files, and so on. With the proliferation of specialized sites increases, SSS have extended this concept to its logical extreme: sites dedicated to performing a single, ultra-specialized function, or none at all. Clearly some market conditions contributed to the environment where SSS could thrive. In 1999, domain name remained a monopoly, and registering a .com domain with Network Solutions cost $35 for a year. Now customers can register domains with a variety of providers at prices that range from free to $10 a year. The amount people will pay to make a joke or participate in a trend obviously varies, but it seems likely that there is some threshold for many between $35 and $5 that makes dedicated domain names more tenable.

. . .

One factor that clearly motivates SSS creation is the ability to participate in a loosely connected network of creativity. Media that predate the Internet offer some manner of interaction: magazines and newspapers accept letters to the editor, people can discuss material in local communities, and talk radio allows listeners to call in. The democratized nature of publishing on the Internet allows consumers to become producers on a dramatically larger scale.  . . .  Single serving sites allow people to showcase their sense of humor or make a joke on the world stage. Even if only a select group of people actually do navigate to a site, the fact that millions of people could see the site changes the nature of the creation in ways that we are only beginning to understand.

Well worth reading the whole thing.

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Paper on Single Serving Sites

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Green Lantern Mini-Neon Sign

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Clichés — Avoid Them Like the Plague

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Bandai’s Endless Periperi ‘Toy’

Grabbed the photo of the full diorama set up at Toy Fair 2008 from Dave’s Cool Toys. The dimensions on this monster are 95 inches long x 76 inches wide x 33 inches high. Holy crap.

But the price point is probably going to be a bigger barrier to this than the size. The diorama is built from 7 separate pieces that cost, in total, $24,570 . . . plus shipping!

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JUN Planning’s Enormous Nightmare Before Christmas Diorama

The Center for Inquiry, a think tank headquartered in Amherst, New York that supports research on bioethical questions, deplores the Vatican’s pronouncement. The Vatican’s position has no justification other than religious doctrine, according to the Center for Inquiry, and may have a serious adverse effect on scientific research and the development of medical therapies.

“I regret the renewed effort by the Vatican to censor—indeed prohibit—research in reproductive science,” said Paul Kurtz, chairman and founder of the Center for Inquiry. “Do we have to wage the Galileo battle again? The Vatican claims that their objections are “moral,” but they are based on a theological doctrine that a formless fertilized egg is a full human being, a position which most scientists reject.” Kurtz says there is a need to defend freedom of scientific research and the positive good that can ensue for countless numbers of infertile couples. “The effort to curtail stem cell research is especially disturbing in the view of the possible beneficent results for improving human health,” he said.

The Vatican has focused on commonplace scientific technologies used in the United States and elsewhere, which the Church believes demean human “dignity,” and bring humans perilously close to “playing God.” The Church continues to hold steadfast to its key theological proclamation that “life begins at conception,” thereby rendering as “illicit” the use of embryos or fertilized eggs in research or otherwise, including IVF for married Catholic couples wishing to conceive.

Dr. Ronald A. Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry (and author of the book Future Bioethics: Overcoming Taboos, Myths, and Dogmas) said that “the Vatican has once again manifested its regrettable preference for religious doctrine over science. Until roughly fourteen days after conception, one cannot even meaningfully refer to the embryo as an individual, let alone the equivalent of an adult human, since both twinning and fusion are possible until that point.” Lindsay added that the Vatican’s rejection of IVF on the ground that it results in the discarding of embryos is especially ironic since from 60 to 80 percent of embryos conceived “naturally” are spontaneously aborted. “If the Vatican wants to prevent embryos from ‘dying,’ then they will have to instruct couples to avoid sex completely.

Dignitas Personae is interesting both for the technologies it deplores and the “logic” it bases those judgments upon.

For example, consider intracytoplasmic sperm injection — a procedure whereby a single sperm is injected into an egg to fertilize it. ICSI has a number of purposes, including being used in to overcome male infertility. Dignitas Personae objects to ICSI because it separates procreation from the sexual act,

Just as in general with in vitro fertilization, of which it is a variety, ICSI is intrinsically illicit:  it causes a complete separation between procreation and the conjugal act. Indeed ICSI takes place “outside the bodies of the couple through actions of third parties whose competence and technical activity determine the success of the procedure. Such fertilization entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children. Conception in vitro is the result of the technical action which presides over fertilization. Such fertilization is neither in fact achieved nor positively willed as the expression and fruit of a specific act of the conjugal union”.

Similarly, the objection to genetic engineering comes down to vague and poorly defined concerns,

27. The question of using genetic engineering for purposes other than medical treatment also calls for consideration. Some have imagined the possibility of using techniques of genetic engineering to introduce alterations with the presumed aim of improving and strengthening the gene pool. Some of these proposals exhibit a certain dissatisfaction or even rejection of the value of the human being as a finite creature and person. Apart from technical difficulties and the real and potential risks involved, such manipulation would promote a eugenic mentality and would lead to indirect social stigma with regard to people who lack certain qualities, while privileging qualities that happen to be appreciated by a certain culture or society; such qualities do not constitute what is specifically human. This would be in contrast with the fundamental truth of the equality of all human beings which is expressed in the principle of justice, the violation of which, in the long run, would harm peaceful coexistence among individuals. Furthermore, one wonders who would be able to establish which modifications were to be held as positive and which not, or what limits should be placed on individual requests for improvement since it would be materially impossible to fulfil the wishes of every single person. Any conceivable response to these questions would, however, derive from arbitrary and questionable criteria. All of this leads to the conclusion that the prospect of such an intervention would end sooner or later by harming the common good, by favouring the will of some over the freedom of others. Finally it must also be noted that in the attempt to create a new type of human being one can recognize an ideological element in which man tries to take the place of his Creator.

In stating the ethical negativity of these kinds of interventions which imply an unjust domination of man over man, the Church also recalls the need to return to an attitude of care for people and of education in accepting human life in its concrete historical finite nature.

Leaving for the moment the absurdity of the Catholic Church being suddenly concerned about the “unjust domination of man over man”, the concern about “man trying to take the place of the Creator” is telling.

Of course human beings wouldn’t have to take that route if the Creator hadn’t done such a piss poor job of it in the first place. The Church’s position is that we should simply accept our numerous defects — such as the ridiculously short lifespan — as “God given” and simply not attempt to improve our arbitrary genetic heritage.

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The Vatican’s ‘Dignitas Personae’

Mattel’s been seeding this using the online 20Q Star Trek site with the help of Star Trek fans and fanatics. The Endless Innovation blog had an interesting post about the method here of essentially having people (including future customers) do all the development work for you,

Toy manufacturer Mattel is tapping into this powerful idea of “spare cycles” with the introduction of an online casual game called Star Trek 20 Questions. You pick a character from Star Trek, and the computer then asks you 20 questions, trying to guess who the character is. As more Internet users play the game, the computer becomes smarter, learning from its previous mistakes. On the surface, the game is just an amusing online diversion. On a deeper level, though, learning how consumers interact with the game is helping Mattel build an online artificial intelligence engine that will provide the basis for a future video game product. Internet users, essentially, are doing the “heavy lifting” at no additional cost to Mattel. In other words, the company is converting the “spare cycles” of tens of thousands Internet users around the world into future innovation.

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20Q Star Trek Edition