Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: science

Dutch PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming: No Sunlight, No Windows, Less Water, Better Food | Singularity Hub

This is really so amazing! If I had millions to invest in this I would. I like the idea of bringing the crops into the cities with vertical farms. Less transportation costs, fresher produce, better control over resource utilization, controlled environments for optimal plant growth and no pesticides. Could even put the grocery store in the same building! These are huge advantages to traditional farming.

If the electrical needs can be met through renewable sources like wind and solar, well then, this endeavor starts to look more and more like the farm of the future. If it weren't for replicators, I'm sure they'd be doing this on Star Trek.

via singularityhub.com

‪Guitar Oscillations Captured with iPhone 4‬‏

This is really cool!

What we're seeing is not actually how the strings look, obviously. It's caused by the rolling shutter effect, which is when a digital camera scans across the frame either horizontally or vertically rather than capturing the entire frame at once. So parts of the frame have to play catch up, and we're left with guitar strings making crazy waves and shapes. Awesome!
via dvice

Yeast gene makes old cells young again - New Scientist

That's great! Maybe the fountain of youth is just around the corner?

During sporulation, a gene called NDT80 was expressed. What's more, switching on NDT80 in ageing cells doubled their lifespan (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1204349). The closest relative of NDT80 in mammals is p53, a gene that regulates cell cycles. "We may have found a way to rejuvenate cells and erase ageing markers," says Amon.
via newscientist.com

Facebook's Like button and the purpose of life

I decided to put a Facebook Like button at the very top of my website. In addition to clicking a Like button on a particular post, visitors can now choose to like the whole site and get an idea about it's popularity (currently nil).

Oh well, I'll continue as if I had readers. That way I can at least contribute something to the permanent record (Internet) for posterity and future generations. Who knows, maybe I'll have lots of grandkids or great grandkids that want to read about me, or at least me of the past. I plan to live forever you know!

So the Facebook Like button requires some meta tags in the header of my site. One of those tags is a description of this site. I hadn't put much thought into describing Keegoid as a whole site so this was a perfect opportunity to motivate me to do so.

What follows may sound a little crazy, but it's the culmination of what I've been observing, learning, and deep-thinking about since college...distilled down to a few sentences. So it's bound to sound fanciful without a longer explanation. Follow the links for that.

Trying to say it in as clear and concise a way as possible helped me to realize not only the purpose for this site, but also a routine of observing, learning, and sharing that I want to continue into the future.

Keegoid's Facebook Like button meta tag description, website focus, and purpose of life:

Keegoid is currently a nickname given to me to describe my personality as being rather...well...android-like. In the future, it may have a more literal meaning: Keegan, an organic-based intelligence, improved by technology. The technological part is now and will continue to be progressing exponentially. What that means for our future as organic life forms is anyone's guess.

During his existence Keegoid observes, learns, and shares what he discovers with other intelligences that choose to do the same. Perhaps it is a consequence of the nature of intelligence to desire significance and perhaps it is futile, but Keegoid wants to be more than a resource or step in the universe's multi-pronged, probabilistic approach toward ever increasing complexity and energy density per second i.e. progress.

For better or worse, it will continue as it has always continued. Will Keegoid continue as well to observe, learn, and share after our purpose is fulfilled? Will Keegoid even make it that far to observe the Singularity? A computationally irreducible intelligence can only hope.

Further Reading