Matus1976 - Science
Stem Cell Research
and Advocacy
A list of major institutions and organizations dedicated to research
and advocacy. Because I care more about actual research than advocacy,
I tried to find information from these organizations on how the money
you donated is used, surprisingly it was difficult to ascertain that
information, the American Diabetes Association did state it explicitly,
but this information appears difficult to find (read
more)
The Lifeboat Foundation
I am an adamant supporter of the Lifeboat Foundations goals for three
major reasons, The Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, and The Law
of Accelerating Returns. The combination of these three principles
illustrates something terribly jarring; that life throughout the universe
almost always destroys itself through technology. Now, I am not a
luddite and I love technology and all the great things it has brought,
and I hope to see the day when technology has conquered aging, all
disease, and death in general. But I do not embrace the idea that
many strong proponents of technology do; an absolute blind faith in
everything turning out perfectly well. I hope it does, and I think
that it will, but I also think I will get to work safely everyday
yet still wear my seat belt. I dont expect to come down with a life
threatening illness but I have insurance anyway. In our daily lives
we takes steps to mitigate risk to whatever degree is comfortable
with us all the time. Humanity as a whole needs to do the same thing,
we need an insurance policy. That is what the Lifeboat Foundation
seeks to create. . (read more)
The Abdication of Volition
Your body is a physical entity which exists in the real world and your mind is an intangible pattern that can not be weighed or touched. The latter must then have a physical mechanism by which it can interact with the former, and these mechanisms are primarily hormones and drugs. When you identify values important to you, and integrate them fundamentally into your person through habitualization and repetition, your emotions respond in kind. That is what emotions are in a healthy brain. They are automatic responses to stimuli based on your deeply ingrained fundamental values. The response of your emotions is automatic and instinctual, but what they respond to and why is up to you. Your emotions are a complex neurological and biochemical program, but you decide what variables that program focuses on. (read more)
Links on Science
My science links on del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/matus1976/science
Quotes on Science:
""Isn't it beautiful? Isn't it sublime? Isn't it simple?
I have solved the problem. Now I can die happy. But I must live, I
must return to work and build the motor so I can give it to the world.
No more will men be slaves to hard tasks. My motor will set them free,
it will do the work of the world." - Nikola Tesla - Upon
inventing the AC induction motor, February 1882
"A poet once said "The whole universe is
in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense
he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is
true that if we look at a glass closely enough we see the entire universe.
There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates
depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and
our imaginations adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the
Earth's rocks, and in its composition we see the secret of the universe's
age, and the evolution of the stars. What strange array of chemicals
are there in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments,
the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found
the great generalization: all life is fermentation. Nobody can discover
the chemistry of wine without discovering, as did Louis Pasteur, the
cause of much disease. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence
into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some
convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts
- physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember
that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together,
not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more
final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!" - Richard P
Feynman
