Cognitive Labs

While the longevity guru Aubrey DeGrey (who looks a bit like the prognosticator Nostradamus) preaches caloric restriction to a svelter, longer-living you - Alec Holden poses an alternative theory - daily consumption of copious amounts of porridge. Mr. Holden, aged 100, wagered a friend 100 pounds that he would live 10 more years, attaining centenarian status, on a diet of porridge. Holden therefore is not only 100, he's also 25,000 pounds richer.

Labels: caloric_restriction, degrey, holden, nostramdamus

I'm just back from a meeting at Stanford (I walked, of course) - I still have 2 oak tree (tussock ) caterpillars on my shoulder - and find this exciting news...

Astronomers find first potentially habitable planet, orbiting around Gliese 581, a star 20.5 light years away in the Constellation Libra.

Wow. Even though the star is a red dwarf, scientists believe the average temperature is between 32 F and 104 F - well within the range that human life can exist. One caveat is that gravity is approximately 1.6X 2.25X that of Earth.

Now, the problem is how to get there - and also, keep your mind exercised with something more than Sudoku. I tend to believe that an algorithm will be discovered which unlocks the secret to near-light speed travel or FTL travel, though there are a lot of problems in doing so. The solution will probably be something elegantly simple like e = mc(2). 6:38 PST - Speculation already abounds on the web (and IM) that the planet (if inhabited, which is a big if) could feature (a) short, squat or (b) tall, thin types of people - or that, assuming people from earth made the voyage, what their descendants would look like - certainly speculative.

Labels: brain, e=mc, FTLtravel, gliese581, libra, lightspeed, relativity

Here's some interesting stats as of 9:51 PST.

Average time spent on the site per visit - 19.92 minutes (today)
Average time spend on the site per visit - 18.82 minutes (this month)
Unique visitors this month - 100,002 (apr. 24)
page views 2006 3.72 million
page views 2007 3.85 million (april 24)

Time spent on site is considered to be an important measure, as many actions are not accounted for (actions inside Flash, for example). This varies depending on the site.
So, time spent on site is becoming more important.

Labels: pageviews, stats, time_on_site, uniques