Science And Society

Anti-Aging As Spinoff?

There’s an interesting discussion over at Fighting Aging, on the efficacy of the current institutional and philosophical approaches to life extension:

I think I take the opposite side of the argument from Linksvayer above: in my opinion it matters greatly as to the banner you raise funding beneath. The problem we face today is not a lack of funding for medical research per se – rather, it is a culture disinterested in tackling aging head-on. It doesn’t matter how much money is flowing into the study of aging or treating age-related disease if the defeat of aging is not a primary, agreed-upon, widely supported goal. There has never been any trouble in raising funding for new methods of tackling specific age-related disease, but look at the rate of progress today in extending healthy life span in the old; it’s faster than zero, but if healthy life extension continues to be incidental and inefficient, we will all still age, suffer and die – and not significantly later than we would have done if medical science stood still. In this context here, I rate “not significantly” as a couple of decades – sounds good, but it is enormously worse than what is possible if we get our act together.

It doesn’t have to be that way, however – we have a chance to change things quickly enough to matter. The change we need to enact is at the level of infrastructure, understanding and intent. When the expected cost of development and commercialization of new technology runs into the hundreds of billions, it doesn’t happen by accident. At that scale, the only change and progress to come about is that enacted deliberately and with intent, in an atmosphere of sufficient support and understanding to make ongoing fundraising and collaboration possible.

In other words, if you’re not working on A, don’t expect to achieve A.

For someone my age, there could be a big (as in fatal) difference between ten years and twenty, though it’s obviously much more critical for those more advanced in age than me. “Spin-off” is often used as a (flawed) argument in favor of NASA spending. It’s not flawed just because many of the things claimed for it (teflon, Tang, microchips) are patently false, but because the argument can always be made that if one wants better microchips or breakfast beverages, efforts spent directly toward those ends will be more effective. I think that “Reason” is making the same argument here, and he’s right.

I wasn’t sure how to categorize this post. This kind of research, and breakthroughs, are going to require a combination of science (figuring out how stuff works) and technology (figuring out how to make it work better).

Political Commentary

This Seems Like A Good Reason

…to revisit his sentencing:

The House committee report said Berger was never given a polygraph test despite having agreed to it as part of his plea bargain with the Justice Department in 2005.

This seems like a weird case where a House committee did a better job of investigating than the Justice Department. Of course, I suspect that the Justice Department still has a lot of Clinton apparatchiks in it, despite six years of a Republican White House. That doesn’t explain the Attorney General’s behavior, though.

War Commentary

Israel Without Apology

An oldie (from 2003–Edward Said has died since) but a goodie, but one I’d never noticed or linked to before; a long but fascinating read from a former Berkeley leftist, and why he turned his back on his once comrades, over Israel:

On my last day, I was able to drive across the entire Golan Heights, past the partly destroyed Israeli post at Kfar Nafakh and then on to the farthest point of the Israeli counterattack. I passed the charred wrecks of dozens of Syrian and Israeli tanks, and the smell of burning flesh still hung in the air. I only came to a stop at an Israeli military police roadblock at the western edge of the Golan Heights. There was a tourist observation deck nearby, outfitted with telescopes. Peering through one, I could see Damascus clearly on the horizon.

After the initial Syrian successes of the battle

Media Criticism

A Tale Of Two Security Violations

Joel Mowbray talks about the apparent double standard at play, in the Justice Department and the media, about Sandy Berger:

The mainstream media’s palpable disinterest in the Berger case is hardly justified. Many questions remain unanswered. Of the few explanations Berger and his defenders have actually provided, none passes the laugh test.

Berger claimed in court last year that smuggling classified documents out of the National Archives was about “personal convenience,” but the inspector general report states that he walked out of the building and down the street, found a construction site, looked to see if the coast was clear, then slid behind a fence and hid the documents under a trailer.

Which part of that elaborate procedure was “convenient”?

According to the New York Times story last April following Berger’s guilty plea, “Associates attributed the episode to fatigue and poor judgment.” While lying to authorities is poor judgment, it is also illegal. And how exactly did fatigue drive Berger to use his scissors to shred three versions of the top-secret document?

I think we know how this would have been covered if it had been a former Republican National Security Advisor. One of many reasons to not allow the Democrats near the White House at war time.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!