Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Veganism
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Gentlemanly Apology
I truly wish I never had to apologize, but we’re men after all. Ok, I shouldn’t be so cynical, we're human, and we all make mistakes, right? Thank goodness for mercy, compassion, understanding, and tolerance. To err is to be human, and to forgive is, well, to be wonderful. But before we can reach forgiveness, we need to master the art of the apology. And a true gentleman, in his noble and decorous way, is very good at this.
Apologizing can make you feel better, but more importantly, if you mean it, it should make you contemplate the wrong that was done, intentionally, consciously, or not. And then, it should make the other person feel better, too.
What wrongs do we do? We screw up at work. Break a promise to a friend. Forget an important date, like an anniversary. We tell a lie to a friend or lover. We all at some point have let those who are counting on us down. Whether we intended the harm or not, it’s important to understand the wrong that has been done in order to deliver the appropriate apology, and thus receive the atonement a delivery of I’m sorry seeks.
In some cases, such as a slip-up in an intimate relationship, a visit and a personally delivered apology is best.
Flowers can be a nice follow-up, but you shouldn’t rely on buying your way out of a wrongdoing. And if you send flowers after a more personal means of apology, make sure the size of the bouquet reflects the magnitude of the offense.
In other cases, such as a minor screw up at work, an email or phone call with a sincerely delivered “I’m sorry” will be greatly appreciated.
For life’s biggest blunders, a carefully hand written a note on a special piece of paper. And then, perhaps, a little of all of the above.
Most important to any apology, however, is the act of engaging your conscience. Contemplate the other person’s feelings. Truly strive to understand what was wrong and why. And then take responsibility. If you’re delivering your apology in person, by email, or by handwriting, prior thought and saying it like you mean it will do you a world of good. This shows your boss, or your girlfriend, or your angry neighbor, that you’re thinking, you’re aware, you’re committed, and you’re not going to make this mistake again.
A gentleman puts his best foot forward and tries not to make mistakes in the first place, but it happens to the best. To understand that trust is the cornerstone of all good relationships, and to travel whatever distance necessary to restore lost trust is the mark of refinement. Getting good people into your life was a feat in the first place, now engage your honor to keep them there.
Apologizing can make you feel better, but more importantly, if you mean it, it should make you contemplate the wrong that was done, intentionally, consciously, or not. And then, it should make the other person feel better, too.
What wrongs do we do? We screw up at work. Break a promise to a friend. Forget an important date, like an anniversary. We tell a lie to a friend or lover. We all at some point have let those who are counting on us down. Whether we intended the harm or not, it’s important to understand the wrong that has been done in order to deliver the appropriate apology, and thus receive the atonement a delivery of I’m sorry seeks.
In some cases, such as a slip-up in an intimate relationship, a visit and a personally delivered apology is best.
Flowers can be a nice follow-up, but you shouldn’t rely on buying your way out of a wrongdoing. And if you send flowers after a more personal means of apology, make sure the size of the bouquet reflects the magnitude of the offense.
In other cases, such as a minor screw up at work, an email or phone call with a sincerely delivered “I’m sorry” will be greatly appreciated.
For life’s biggest blunders, a carefully hand written a note on a special piece of paper. And then, perhaps, a little of all of the above.
Most important to any apology, however, is the act of engaging your conscience. Contemplate the other person’s feelings. Truly strive to understand what was wrong and why. And then take responsibility. If you’re delivering your apology in person, by email, or by handwriting, prior thought and saying it like you mean it will do you a world of good. This shows your boss, or your girlfriend, or your angry neighbor, that you’re thinking, you’re aware, you’re committed, and you’re not going to make this mistake again.
A gentleman puts his best foot forward and tries not to make mistakes in the first place, but it happens to the best. To understand that trust is the cornerstone of all good relationships, and to travel whatever distance necessary to restore lost trust is the mark of refinement. Getting good people into your life was a feat in the first place, now engage your honor to keep them there.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
New Camaro Convertible
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Why we have to change of Living Paradigm
If Aubrey de Grey’s predictions are right, the first person who will live to see their 150th birthday has already been born. And the first person to live for 1,000 years could be less than 20 years younger.
A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to “cure” aging — banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.
“I’d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I’d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so,” de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain’s Royal Institution academy of science.
“And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.”
De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular “maintenance,” which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.
De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.
He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.
“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” he explained.
CHALLENGE
Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.
To date, the world’s longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.
Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.
De Grey’s ideas may seem far-fetched, but $20,000 offered in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review journal for any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey’s SENS theory was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate” was never won.
The judges on that panel were prompted into action by an angry put-down of de Grey from a group of nine leading scientists who dismissed his work as “pseudo science.”
They concluded that this label was not fair, arguing instead that SENS “exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt.”
CELL THERAPY
For some, the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, either, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope.
But de Grey says that’s not what he’s working for. Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus.
“This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health,” he told Reuters. “This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health.”
De Grey divides the damage caused by aging into seven main categories for which repair techniques need to be developed if his prediction for continual maintenance is to come true.
He notes that while for some categories, the science is still in its earliest stages, there are others where it’s already almost there.
"Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It’s designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it’s already in clinical trials (in humans),” he said.
Stem cell therapies are currently being trialed in people with spinal cord injuries, and de Grey and others say they may one day be used to find ways to repair disease-damaged brains and hearts.
NO AGE LIMIT
Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s biggest age-related killers and de Grey says there is a long way to go on these though researchers have figured out the path to follow.
Heart diseases that cause heart failure, heart attacks and strokes are brought about by the accumulation of certain types of what de Grey calls “molecular garbage” — byproducts of the body’s metabolic processes — which our bodies are not able to break down or excrete.
“The garbage accumulates inside the cell, and eventually it gets in the way of the cell’s workings,” he said.
De Grey is working with colleagues in the United States to identify enzymes in other species that can break down the garbage and clean out the cells — and the aim then is to devise genetic therapies to give this capability to humans.
“If we could do that in the case of certain modified forms of cholesterol which accumulate in cells of the artery wall, then we simply would not get cardiovascular disease,” he said.
De Grey is reluctant to make firm predictions about how long people will be able to live in future, but he does say that with each major advance in longevity, scientists will buy more time to make yet more scientific progress.
In his view, this means that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150.
“I call it longevity escape velocity — where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on,” he said.
“What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents,” he said.
“But there really shouldn’t be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely.”
A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to “cure” aging — banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.
“I’d say we have a 50/50 chance of bringing aging under what I’d call a decisive level of medical control within the next 25 years or so,” de Grey said in an interview before delivering a lecture at Britain’s Royal Institution academy of science.
“And what I mean by decisive is the same sort of medical control that we have over most infectious diseases today.”
De Grey sees a time when people will go to their doctors for regular “maintenance,” which by then will include gene therapies, stem cell therapies, immune stimulation and a range of other advanced medical techniques to keep them in good shape.
De Grey lives near Cambridge University where he won his doctorate in 2000 and is chief scientific officer of the non-profit California-based SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) Foundation, which he co-founded in 2009.
He describes aging as the lifelong accumulation of various types of molecular and cellular damage throughout the body.
“The idea is to engage in what you might call preventative geriatrics, where you go in to periodically repair that molecular and cellular damage before it gets to the level of abundance that is pathogenic,” he explained.
CHALLENGE
Exactly how far and how fast life expectancy will increase in the future is a subject of some debate, but the trend is clear. An average of three months is being added to life expectancy every year at the moment and experts estimate there could be a million centenarians across the world by 2030.
To date, the world’s longest-living person on record lived to 122 and in Japan alone there were more than 44,000 centenarians in 2010.
Some researchers say, however, that the trend toward longer lifespan may falter due to an epidemic of obesity now spilling over from rich nations into the developing world.
De Grey’s ideas may seem far-fetched, but $20,000 offered in 2005 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Technology Review journal for any molecular biologist who showed that de Grey’s SENS theory was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate” was never won.
The judges on that panel were prompted into action by an angry put-down of de Grey from a group of nine leading scientists who dismissed his work as “pseudo science.”
They concluded that this label was not fair, arguing instead that SENS “exists in a middle ground of yet-to-be-tested ideas that some people may find intriguing but which others are free to doubt.”
CELL THERAPY
For some, the prospect of living for hundreds of years is not particularly attractive, either, as it conjures up an image of generations of sick, weak old people and societies increasingly less able to cope.
But de Grey says that’s not what he’s working for. Keeping the killer diseases of old age at bay is the primary focus.
“This is absolutely not a matter of keeping people alive in a bad state of health,” he told Reuters. “This is about preventing people from getting sick as a result of old age. The particular therapies that we are working on will only deliver long life as a side effect of delivering better health.”
De Grey divides the damage caused by aging into seven main categories for which repair techniques need to be developed if his prediction for continual maintenance is to come true.
He notes that while for some categories, the science is still in its earliest stages, there are others where it’s already almost there.
"Stem cell therapy is a big part of this. It’s designed to reverse one type of damage, namely the loss of cells when cells die and are not automatically replaced, and it’s already in clinical trials (in humans),” he said.
Stem cell therapies are currently being trialed in people with spinal cord injuries, and de Grey and others say they may one day be used to find ways to repair disease-damaged brains and hearts.
NO AGE LIMIT
Cardiovascular diseases are the world’s biggest age-related killers and de Grey says there is a long way to go on these though researchers have figured out the path to follow.
Heart diseases that cause heart failure, heart attacks and strokes are brought about by the accumulation of certain types of what de Grey calls “molecular garbage” — byproducts of the body’s metabolic processes — which our bodies are not able to break down or excrete.
“The garbage accumulates inside the cell, and eventually it gets in the way of the cell’s workings,” he said.
De Grey is working with colleagues in the United States to identify enzymes in other species that can break down the garbage and clean out the cells — and the aim then is to devise genetic therapies to give this capability to humans.
“If we could do that in the case of certain modified forms of cholesterol which accumulate in cells of the artery wall, then we simply would not get cardiovascular disease,” he said.
De Grey is reluctant to make firm predictions about how long people will be able to live in future, but he does say that with each major advance in longevity, scientists will buy more time to make yet more scientific progress.
In his view, this means that the first person who will live to 1,000 is likely to be born less than 20 years after the first person to reach 150.
“I call it longevity escape velocity — where we have a sufficiently comprehensive panel of therapies to enable us to push back the ill health of old age faster than time is passing. And that way, we buy ourselves enough time to develop more therapies further as time goes on,” he said.
“What we can actually predict in terms of how long people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by the risk of death from other causes like accidents,” he said.
“But there really shouldn’t be any limit imposed by how long ago you were born. The whole point of maintenance is that it works indefinitely.”
Friday, July 22, 2011
The Code of a Gentleman
"Without a strict observance of the fundamental Code of Honor, no man, no matter how `polished,' can be considered a gentleman. The honor of a gentleman demands the inviolability of his word, and the incorruptibility of his principles. He is the descendant of the knight, the crusader; he is the defender of the defenseless and the champion of justice . . . or he is not a Gentleman.
A Gentleman . . .
Does not discuss his family affairs in public or with acquaintances.
Does not speak more than casually about his girl friend.
Does not go to a lady's house if he is affected by alcohol. He is temperate in the use of alcohol.
Does not lose his temper; nor exhibit anger, fear, hate, embarrassment, ardor or hilarity in public.
Does not hail a lady from a club window.
A gentleman never discusses the merits or demerits of a lady.
Does not mention names exactly as he avoids the mention of what things cost.
Does not borrow money from a friend, except in dire need. Money borrowed is a debt of honor, and must be repaid as promptly as possible. Debts incurred by a deceased parent, brother, sister or grown child are assumed by honorable men as a debt of honor.
Does not display his wealth, money or possessions.
Does not put his manners on and off, whether in the club or in a ballroom. He treats people with courtesy, no matter what their social position may be.
Does not slap strangers on the back nor so much as lay a finger on a lady.
Does not `lick the boots of those above' nor `kick the face of those below him on the social ladder.'
Does not take advantage of another's helplessness or ignorance and assumes that no gentleman will take advantage of him.
A Gentleman respects the reserves of others, but demands that others respect those which are his.
A Gentleman can become what he wills to be. . ."
A Gentleman . . .
Does not discuss his family affairs in public or with acquaintances.
Does not speak more than casually about his girl friend.
Does not go to a lady's house if he is affected by alcohol. He is temperate in the use of alcohol.
Does not lose his temper; nor exhibit anger, fear, hate, embarrassment, ardor or hilarity in public.
Does not hail a lady from a club window.
A gentleman never discusses the merits or demerits of a lady.
Does not mention names exactly as he avoids the mention of what things cost.
Does not borrow money from a friend, except in dire need. Money borrowed is a debt of honor, and must be repaid as promptly as possible. Debts incurred by a deceased parent, brother, sister or grown child are assumed by honorable men as a debt of honor.
Does not display his wealth, money or possessions.
Does not put his manners on and off, whether in the club or in a ballroom. He treats people with courtesy, no matter what their social position may be.
Does not slap strangers on the back nor so much as lay a finger on a lady.
Does not `lick the boots of those above' nor `kick the face of those below him on the social ladder.'
Does not take advantage of another's helplessness or ignorance and assumes that no gentleman will take advantage of him.
A Gentleman respects the reserves of others, but demands that others respect those which are his.
A Gentleman can become what he wills to be. . ."
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Casual Dress
Dress Casual – Dress Sharp – 4 Style Tips Dressing casually does not mean dressing like a slob.
Yet that’s what many of us do, ever single evening and weekend
Even men who wear suits on a daily basis find that their weekend/evening clothing is severely lacking. T-shirt and jeans is the de-facto uniform of the off duty man – and if we’re really casual, we find a way to wear our old sweat shirts and sweatpants with no intention of breaking a sweat.
Now dressing this casually isn’t a bad thing when we’re watching TV on a Saturday morning or working on the house.
But to wear clothing this casual to your daughters recital? Or to meet your wife’s coworkers at a weekend picnic? Or what about a Sunday trip to the movie theater?
The fact is there is a lot of confusion as to how to dress casually yet professionally. Hopefully this video on stepping up your casual style helps!
Here I argue you need to step up your casual clothing – a man often represents his family and he always represent himself, and he should dress accordingly.
Although you may not be the center of attention, you are forming impressions. You can’t control everything; you can however ensure your personal presentation is solid and sends a positive message.
Why? Because you never know where a relationship may go. That other parent you start a conversation with might be your next client; that “coworker” you jest with at the serving table just might be the owner of your wife’s company.
In seconds people decide if they like you or not – and nothing has as powerful an effect on a light association as the way you present yourself.
Dress right – and set yourself up for success. Dress like a buffoon, and well, you might have been better not showing up at all.
Here are four tips to dressing sharp when dressing casual – 3 are very general and the last is a bit more specific but one of the easiest and quickest ways to elevate your game.
1.Pay attention to the fit of your clothing.
2.Ensure the clothing you wear is made of good fabric and constructed properly.
3.Aim for styles that are classic and that compliment your body type.
4.Wear quality footwear – leave the sandals for the beach and running shoes for running.
Take the steps necessary to elevate your casual style – the reward is worth it.
Yet that’s what many of us do, ever single evening and weekend
Even men who wear suits on a daily basis find that their weekend/evening clothing is severely lacking. T-shirt and jeans is the de-facto uniform of the off duty man – and if we’re really casual, we find a way to wear our old sweat shirts and sweatpants with no intention of breaking a sweat.
Now dressing this casually isn’t a bad thing when we’re watching TV on a Saturday morning or working on the house.
But to wear clothing this casual to your daughters recital? Or to meet your wife’s coworkers at a weekend picnic? Or what about a Sunday trip to the movie theater?
The fact is there is a lot of confusion as to how to dress casually yet professionally. Hopefully this video on stepping up your casual style helps!
Here I argue you need to step up your casual clothing – a man often represents his family and he always represent himself, and he should dress accordingly.
Although you may not be the center of attention, you are forming impressions. You can’t control everything; you can however ensure your personal presentation is solid and sends a positive message.
Why? Because you never know where a relationship may go. That other parent you start a conversation with might be your next client; that “coworker” you jest with at the serving table just might be the owner of your wife’s company.
In seconds people decide if they like you or not – and nothing has as powerful an effect on a light association as the way you present yourself.
Dress right – and set yourself up for success. Dress like a buffoon, and well, you might have been better not showing up at all.
Here are four tips to dressing sharp when dressing casual – 3 are very general and the last is a bit more specific but one of the easiest and quickest ways to elevate your game.
1.Pay attention to the fit of your clothing.
2.Ensure the clothing you wear is made of good fabric and constructed properly.
3.Aim for styles that are classic and that compliment your body type.
4.Wear quality footwear – leave the sandals for the beach and running shoes for running.
Take the steps necessary to elevate your casual style – the reward is worth it.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Dodge Viper SRT 10 -Another American Super Car
Dodge Viper SRT-10 Convertible is a 2-seat, 2-door drop-head coupe (cabriolet, convertible) that has rear wheel drive (RWD). This model has been introduced in 2007. The dimensions of the automobile are as follows: width – 1910.00 mm, length – 4460.00 mm, height – 1209.00 mm. In addition, the length of the front track of this model is 1565.00 mm, its rear track is 1547.00 mm and its wheelbase is 2510.00 mm. 130.00 mm is this vehicle’s ground clearance. 1560 kg is the curb weight. Dodge Viper SRT-10 Convertible has an 8382 cc, naturally-aspirated, 1-cylinder engine with 2 valves per cylinder and overhead valve (OHV). It is located in the front of the vehicle and has a longitudinal alignment. Its cylinders are V-arranged. The piston stroke length is 100.60 mm and the cylinder diameter is 103.00 mm. The compression ratio of the pistons is 10.20:1. The maximum torque and maximum power delivered by the engine are 759 Nm at 5000 rpm and 447 kW / 608 ps at 6100 rpm respectively. The fuel system of this model is multi-point fuel injection (MPFI). A wet sump oiling system of the engine is used for lubricating its parts. This model has a drag area of 0.7160 m2, its frontal area is 1.7900 m2 and the drag coefficient is 0.4. The Dodge Viper SRT-10 Convertible has a 6-speed manual transmission. 0.50:1 is the top gear ratio. Its final drive ratio is 3.07:1. The fuel tank has a volume of 70.0 l. The steering mechanism of the vehicle is power assisted rack and pinion type. The number of lock-to-lock wheel turns is 2.4. The rear suspension includes anti-roll bar, coil springs, independent, upper and lower wishbones and the front suspension – anti-roll bar, coil springs, independent, upper and lower wishbones. The front wheels size is 10 x 18. The size of the rear wheels is 13 x 19. The front tyres are Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 P275/35 ZR 18. The tyres in the rear are Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 P345/30 ZR 19. The front brake system includes ventilated disks. The rear brakes are equipped with ventilated disks, servo assistance, anti-lock braking system (ABS). The front brakes diameter is 355.00 mm and the rear brakes one is 355.00 mm.
Performance upgrades make the car a 200 mph plus car
Acceleration HPE Claimed
0-60 mph: 2.72 s
0-100 mph: 3.51 s
0-150 mph: 6.0 s
0-200 mph: 10.6 s
Top Speed: 255 mph (410 km/h)HPE Claimed
LIFELONG SCHOLAR
“ I HAVE NEVER LET MY SCHOOLING INTERFERE WITH MY
EDUCATION. ” – MARK TWAIN
Every man should cultivate within himself a love of knowledge. He
should be both an autodidact (self- educator) and a teacher of others.
In the pages of history, we find many examples of great men whose
significance and influence were largely due to their love of learning.
Theodore Roosevelt, one of the busiest men in history, still succeeded in
devoting a large portion of his time to reading. Even while he was President
of the United States, this amazing man found time to read at least five books
per week! Because he was a lifelong scholar, Theodore Roosevelt was able
to havea large and effective influence in his world because he could converse
intelligently on a wide variety of important subjects.
Although you may not be able to read as many books as Roosevelt, you
can still learn much by devoting whatever spare time you do have to
reading, memorization, and study.
“Every man should cultivate within himself a love for knowledge.”
EDUCATION. ” – MARK TWAIN
Every man should cultivate within himself a love of knowledge. He
should be both an autodidact (self- educator) and a teacher of others.
In the pages of history, we find many examples of great men whose
significance and influence were largely due to their love of learning.
Theodore Roosevelt, one of the busiest men in history, still succeeded in
devoting a large portion of his time to reading. Even while he was President
of the United States, this amazing man found time to read at least five books
per week! Because he was a lifelong scholar, Theodore Roosevelt was able
to havea large and effective influence in his world because he could converse
intelligently on a wide variety of important subjects.
Although you may not be able to read as many books as Roosevelt, you
can still learn much by devoting whatever spare time you do have to
reading, memorization, and study.
“Every man should cultivate within himself a love for knowledge.”
Friday, July 15, 2011
100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything
Author:Sonia Arrison
Humanity is on the cusp of an exciting longevity revolution. The first person to live to 150 years has probably already been born.
What will your life look like when you live to be over 100? Will you be healthy? Will your marriage need a sunset clause? How long will you have to work? Will you finish one career at sixty-five only to go back to school to learn a new one? And then, will you be happily working for another sixty years? Maybe you’ll be a parent to a newborn and a grandparent at the same time. Will the world become overpopulated? And how will living longer affect your finances, your family life, and your views on religion and the afterlife?
In 100 Plus, futurist Sonia Arrison takes us on an eye-opening journey to the future at our doorsteps, where science and technology are beginning to radically change life as we know it. She introduces us to the people transforming our lives: the brilliant scientists and genius inventors and the billionaires who fund their work. The astonishing advances to extend our lives — and good health — are almost here. In the very near future fresh organs for transplants will be grown in laboratories, cloned stem cells will bring previously unstoppable diseases to their knees, and living past 100 will be the rule, not the exception.
Sonia Arrison brings over a decade of experience researching and writing about cutting-edge advances in science and technology to 100 Plus, painting a vivid picture of a future that only recently seemed like science fiction, but now is very real. 100 Plus is the first book to give readers a comprehensive understanding of how life-extending discoveries will change our social and economic worlds. This illuminating and indispensable text will help us navigate the thrilling journey of life beyond 100 years.
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Humanity is on the cusp of an exciting longevity revolution. The first person to live to 150 years has probably already been born.
What will your life look like when you live to be over 100? Will you be healthy? Will your marriage need a sunset clause? How long will you have to work? Will you finish one career at sixty-five only to go back to school to learn a new one? And then, will you be happily working for another sixty years? Maybe you’ll be a parent to a newborn and a grandparent at the same time. Will the world become overpopulated? And how will living longer affect your finances, your family life, and your views on religion and the afterlife?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Longevity Science Needs Documentation
By: Reason Published: July 13, 2011
We all express the symptoms of a fatal, inherited degenerative condition called aging-or so the joke goes. It’s a dark joke, but there’s truth to be found in it, as is often the case in black humor. Unfortunately, all too few people think of themselves as patients suffering aging, and fewer still would call themselves patient advocates, agitating for research leading towards therapies and cures for aging. This is a sorry state of affairs: given that our time is limited and ticking away, the tasks upon the table should always include some consideration of aging. What can we do about it? How can we engineer a research community, funding and support to make real progress within our lifetimes? If you don’t spend at least some of your time on this issue, then you’re fiddling while Rome burns. Time is the most precious thing we have, and we live on the cusp of technologies that will allow us to gain more of it-but those advances in medicine won’t happen soon enough unless we work at it.
Working on progress in longevity science doesn’t have to mean working in a laboratory. Much of what I have done to help matters along takes the form of written advocacy at Fight Aging! and elsewhere: sharing events, passing on news, putting scientific publications in context, explaining where we stand in research and development, encouraging fundraising, and so on. In effect this is a sort of loose documentation of the existence of the community of people interested in engineered longevity, and a way to provide direction and grounding to newcomers: how to become involved, how to benefit from becoming involved, and how to help advance the science of human longevity.
My latest effort, the volunteer initiative Open Cures, is more explicitly a documentation project in its early stages: an effort to clearly and extensively document the range of longevity-enhancing biotechnologies demonstrated in the laboratory over the past decade. A body of documentation is a necessary foundation for later phases of the Open Cures roadmap, but will also help broaden the community of people who are both aware of this work and understand what it might be used to achieve.
Not everyone agrees that this is useful, however. One of the challenging attitudes I’ve encountered of late is the idea that documentation of longevity science in this manner is largely worthless-that time and funds spent trying to make science clear to developers and laypeople should go towards other, more direct activities like further research. This sort of criticism is, I think, symptomatic of a failure to understand the necessary role of documentation in the broader scope of technological progress. This article, then, is an answer of sorts: what is the role of documentation, and why is it important enough to need dedicated organizations that do it well?
The Challenge of Complex Ideas
Most important topics relating to the future of advanced technological development are very complex: engineered human longevity, strong artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing, and so forth. Even the general concepts (such as “why is this important?”, “why is this plausible?”, or “why should I support it?”) are made up of many moving parts and conditional arguments that the broader public generally hasn’t heard or thought about yet. Thus we advocates can’t just jump in and start persuading people that life extension is a great idea: instead, when it comes time to try to explain why this goal is important-and how best to proceed with research and development-we must first walk through a whole squadron of supporting concepts that are unfamiliar to the audience. Each must be explained, and only then can they be assembled into the final persuasive conclusion.
In the area of healthy life extension and biotechnologies to repair aging, an array of foundational ideas might include the following:
•This is a time of radical progress in biotechnology, far more so than even just a decade ago
•Scientists can extend life in a score of different ways in laboratory animals
•But you don’t see the results of this work in the clinic because the FDA is needlessly obstructive
•Aging is just damage, and that damage is well enough understood for work on practical repair biotechnologies to proceed
•A large-scale research program could plausibly produce decades of life extension by 2040
•Any effective longevity therapy will give people more time of life and health to wait for even better new therapies
•Overpopulation is a myth, and longer lives won’t greatly increase population in any case
•Ethical objections to engineered longevity are all weak in comparison to the massive and ongoing harm caused by aging
Each of these is no small thing in and of itself, and worthy of longer treatment. So presenting all of the concepts that lead up to thinking about rejuvenation biotechnologies is time-consuming, hard to do well, and requires a willing and interested audience. Unfortunately few people in the broader public are in fact willing put in the effort to follow you, me, or anyone else with a complicated idea all the way from square one to the end point. That takes time and attention-both of which are precious commodities, hard to obtain at the best of times. Thus the ideas that do gain traction in our culture are those that can be successfully communicated in a short period of time, because they build directly upon what is already known.
The Example of Hotmail
The recent past provides many good examples of ideas that could be quickly communicated to the public at large, and as a result rapidly gained interest and support. Hotmail is one such example: when the company was founded in 1996, it was the first service to offer email over the web. The founders were petrified that they would be beaten to the punch because the idea was absolutely obvious in hindsight: take email, take websites, and merge the two. Anyone in the internet-using world could easily grasp that concept, and the service took off like wildfire when it launched.
But let’s stop to think about that for a moment. Both email and the way in which most people experience the web are in and of themselves very complicated concepts. Imagine that some visionary fellow gave you the task of explaining to the public an email service used via a web site in 1970: you would be right back to having to explain many foundational, unfamiliar concepts to an audience unwilling to give you sufficient time and attention. What is a network? How do ordinary people connect to or even use a network? What is a web browser? How does an ecosystem of websites and hosting services arise? Why would I need email, or some sort of patchwork visual information service? And so forth.
Nonetheless, in 1996 Hotmail was an idea that could be conveyed and understood in a single sentence. “Email via a website.” When we consider this and other similar examples, we see that there must be an ongoing process by which complex, unfamiliar, and challenging ideas become simple, familiar, and easily communicated ideas.
Layers of Knowledge, Attention, and Expertise
You might envisage the broad field of longevity science as a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle is made up of a small number of people who pay a great deal of attention to the field, and who possess the most knowledge and expertise: researchers who work on cutting edge science, for example. The outermost circle consists of a large number of people who pay just a little attention to the field, and who possess the least knowledge and expertise-such as casual advocates and interested members of the public. The progression of circles from innermost to outermost reflects an increasing number of people, but lesser expertise and attention. I’d loosely categorize the circles from inner to outer as follows:
•Cutting edge researchers
•Other researchers, postgraduates, and scientists in related fields
•Dedicated patient advocates
•Medical technology developers, funding sources
•Physicians, clinicians and medical technicians
•Interested members of the public
In this model of human endeavor, knowledge flows outward while funds and newly participating members of the community flow inward-or at least, that is the ideal. In practice, managing this flow of knowledge is a big and thorny problem: many of the most important movements in technology over the last few decades have focused on how to best move knowledge from inner circles to outer circles. Consider the open science movements, fights over closed journal business models, and the many efforts to try to adopt open source practices in the scientific community, to consider but a few examples.
Let me advance a definition for the purposes of this article: documentation is the name given to explanations and tutorials produced by the members of one circle that are intended for the next outermost circle. For example, review papers written by scientists present an overview of progress in one area of research rather than new data or results. These review papers are a form of documentation for the next outermost circle of researchers-scientists in other fields, or postgraduates, or other academics with less experience in the topic at hand.
To take another example, what I do at Fight Aging! is a form of documentation by this definition: ongoing efforts to explain the ins and outs of longevity science to people who are less familiar with the field, and who have less time to devote to understanding the work of researchers. Academic publicity services at the major universities also perform a similar task, producing explanations for the outer circles of doctors, interested members of the public, and the like.
Documentation thus moves raggedly and through many hands, as each circle learns from the inward circles and then in turn explains its knowledge, understanding, and work to the outer circles. That there are so many layers involved goes a long way towards explaining how science so often becomes garbled and misinterpreted on the way from researchers to the interested public. The process works over time, however, as the example of Hotmail well illustrates. The level of knowledge in the outer circles does increase, and the efforts of people involved in producing documentation make it easier for new ideas to gain traction.
Researchers, Like Most Communities, Document Poorly and Reluctantly
Anyone who spends time working in a technical field eventually forms a cynical attitude towards documentation: it is never what it might be, and the next innermost circle never does a good enough job of explaining themselves. This is simply the way of the world: most people in a given circle spend the majority of their time and effort in communicating with each other, not with the members of the next outermost circle. In the sciences, researchers write papers for one another as a part of the business of research, and this publishing of results is not intended to educate anyone other than peers at a similar level of expertise in the same field.
The process of producing documentation for outer circles is nonetheless very important, despite being undertaken by only a minority in any field. It is only through documentation that there can exist a roadway of information to connect researchers who produce new science with developers who build clinical applications of that science. If documentation is lacking, then so is the pace of development: developers work on what they know, what can be understood, and what can be sold to their investors. Ultimately, that knowledge must come from efforts made by researchers to explain their work.
Across the years I’ve spent following work on longevity-related research as an interested observer, I’ve seen a score of techniques demonstrated to significantly extend healthy life in mice, or reverse a narrowly specific manifestation of the damage of aging. Many of these results are languishing undeveloped, as the FDA forbids clinical application of biotechnologies for the treatment of aging. There is little writing on these research results, and no good sources other than the original papers-most of which are behind journal paywalls. What hope is there for the proper transmission of knowledge to the circle of clinical developers when the researchers have no incentive to explain their work, due to the FDA roadblock, and no other group seems to be picking up the slack? Potentially viable medical technologies are lying fallow, buried in the output of the scientific community, and left unexplained for the rest of us.
The Solution: Produce Documentation to Take up the Slack
Addressing the challenges of documentation and transmission of knowledge is an area in where a volunteer organization like Open Cures can make a real difference to the future of longevity science-and for a comparatively small amount of effort and money.
The flow of knowledge from the research community is vital, but as described above there exists a clearly identifiable gap in that process: science that might lead to therapies for aging exists in many different forms, but there is little to no documentation of it. Thus there is little in the way of a roadway to systematically bring this knowledge out to the circles of life science students, entrepreneurs, clinical developers, and other interested parties. Those groups, in turn, have nothing to work with when it comes to educating the medical community and public at large. This, in a nutshell, is the problem. The US may be closed to development of longevity-enhancing biotechnologies by regulatory fiat, but much of the rest of the developed world remains open for business in this field-if the developers in those countries knew more about the work that has taken place and presently lies largely buried.
The irony of the situation is that documentation isn’t expensive in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not in comparison to scientific research or clinical development. It doesn’t require more than a few weeks of part-time work for a life scientist, a graphic artist, and an editor to produce a long document that explains exactly how to replicate a demonstrated research result in longevity science-a way to extend life in mice, for example. That document will explain the research in plain English, at length, and in a way clearly comprehensible to people who are not cutting edge scientists: exactly what is needed open the door to a far wider audience for that research.
So in conclusion, documentation is important: it’s not just words, but rather a vital structural flow of information from one part of the larger community to another, necessary to sustain progress in any complex field. We would all do well to remember this-and to see that building this documentation is an activity in which we can all pitch in to help
We all express the symptoms of a fatal, inherited degenerative condition called aging-or so the joke goes. It’s a dark joke, but there’s truth to be found in it, as is often the case in black humor. Unfortunately, all too few people think of themselves as patients suffering aging, and fewer still would call themselves patient advocates, agitating for research leading towards therapies and cures for aging. This is a sorry state of affairs: given that our time is limited and ticking away, the tasks upon the table should always include some consideration of aging. What can we do about it? How can we engineer a research community, funding and support to make real progress within our lifetimes? If you don’t spend at least some of your time on this issue, then you’re fiddling while Rome burns. Time is the most precious thing we have, and we live on the cusp of technologies that will allow us to gain more of it-but those advances in medicine won’t happen soon enough unless we work at it.
Working on progress in longevity science doesn’t have to mean working in a laboratory. Much of what I have done to help matters along takes the form of written advocacy at Fight Aging! and elsewhere: sharing events, passing on news, putting scientific publications in context, explaining where we stand in research and development, encouraging fundraising, and so on. In effect this is a sort of loose documentation of the existence of the community of people interested in engineered longevity, and a way to provide direction and grounding to newcomers: how to become involved, how to benefit from becoming involved, and how to help advance the science of human longevity.
My latest effort, the volunteer initiative Open Cures, is more explicitly a documentation project in its early stages: an effort to clearly and extensively document the range of longevity-enhancing biotechnologies demonstrated in the laboratory over the past decade. A body of documentation is a necessary foundation for later phases of the Open Cures roadmap, but will also help broaden the community of people who are both aware of this work and understand what it might be used to achieve.
Not everyone agrees that this is useful, however. One of the challenging attitudes I’ve encountered of late is the idea that documentation of longevity science in this manner is largely worthless-that time and funds spent trying to make science clear to developers and laypeople should go towards other, more direct activities like further research. This sort of criticism is, I think, symptomatic of a failure to understand the necessary role of documentation in the broader scope of technological progress. This article, then, is an answer of sorts: what is the role of documentation, and why is it important enough to need dedicated organizations that do it well?
The Challenge of Complex Ideas
Most important topics relating to the future of advanced technological development are very complex: engineered human longevity, strong artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing, and so forth. Even the general concepts (such as “why is this important?”, “why is this plausible?”, or “why should I support it?”) are made up of many moving parts and conditional arguments that the broader public generally hasn’t heard or thought about yet. Thus we advocates can’t just jump in and start persuading people that life extension is a great idea: instead, when it comes time to try to explain why this goal is important-and how best to proceed with research and development-we must first walk through a whole squadron of supporting concepts that are unfamiliar to the audience. Each must be explained, and only then can they be assembled into the final persuasive conclusion.
In the area of healthy life extension and biotechnologies to repair aging, an array of foundational ideas might include the following:
•This is a time of radical progress in biotechnology, far more so than even just a decade ago
•Scientists can extend life in a score of different ways in laboratory animals
•But you don’t see the results of this work in the clinic because the FDA is needlessly obstructive
•Aging is just damage, and that damage is well enough understood for work on practical repair biotechnologies to proceed
•A large-scale research program could plausibly produce decades of life extension by 2040
•Any effective longevity therapy will give people more time of life and health to wait for even better new therapies
•Overpopulation is a myth, and longer lives won’t greatly increase population in any case
•Ethical objections to engineered longevity are all weak in comparison to the massive and ongoing harm caused by aging
Each of these is no small thing in and of itself, and worthy of longer treatment. So presenting all of the concepts that lead up to thinking about rejuvenation biotechnologies is time-consuming, hard to do well, and requires a willing and interested audience. Unfortunately few people in the broader public are in fact willing put in the effort to follow you, me, or anyone else with a complicated idea all the way from square one to the end point. That takes time and attention-both of which are precious commodities, hard to obtain at the best of times. Thus the ideas that do gain traction in our culture are those that can be successfully communicated in a short period of time, because they build directly upon what is already known.
The Example of Hotmail
The recent past provides many good examples of ideas that could be quickly communicated to the public at large, and as a result rapidly gained interest and support. Hotmail is one such example: when the company was founded in 1996, it was the first service to offer email over the web. The founders were petrified that they would be beaten to the punch because the idea was absolutely obvious in hindsight: take email, take websites, and merge the two. Anyone in the internet-using world could easily grasp that concept, and the service took off like wildfire when it launched.
But let’s stop to think about that for a moment. Both email and the way in which most people experience the web are in and of themselves very complicated concepts. Imagine that some visionary fellow gave you the task of explaining to the public an email service used via a web site in 1970: you would be right back to having to explain many foundational, unfamiliar concepts to an audience unwilling to give you sufficient time and attention. What is a network? How do ordinary people connect to or even use a network? What is a web browser? How does an ecosystem of websites and hosting services arise? Why would I need email, or some sort of patchwork visual information service? And so forth.
Nonetheless, in 1996 Hotmail was an idea that could be conveyed and understood in a single sentence. “Email via a website.” When we consider this and other similar examples, we see that there must be an ongoing process by which complex, unfamiliar, and challenging ideas become simple, familiar, and easily communicated ideas.
Layers of Knowledge, Attention, and Expertise
You might envisage the broad field of longevity science as a series of concentric circles. The innermost circle is made up of a small number of people who pay a great deal of attention to the field, and who possess the most knowledge and expertise: researchers who work on cutting edge science, for example. The outermost circle consists of a large number of people who pay just a little attention to the field, and who possess the least knowledge and expertise-such as casual advocates and interested members of the public. The progression of circles from innermost to outermost reflects an increasing number of people, but lesser expertise and attention. I’d loosely categorize the circles from inner to outer as follows:
•Cutting edge researchers
•Other researchers, postgraduates, and scientists in related fields
•Dedicated patient advocates
•Medical technology developers, funding sources
•Physicians, clinicians and medical technicians
•Interested members of the public
In this model of human endeavor, knowledge flows outward while funds and newly participating members of the community flow inward-or at least, that is the ideal. In practice, managing this flow of knowledge is a big and thorny problem: many of the most important movements in technology over the last few decades have focused on how to best move knowledge from inner circles to outer circles. Consider the open science movements, fights over closed journal business models, and the many efforts to try to adopt open source practices in the scientific community, to consider but a few examples.
Let me advance a definition for the purposes of this article: documentation is the name given to explanations and tutorials produced by the members of one circle that are intended for the next outermost circle. For example, review papers written by scientists present an overview of progress in one area of research rather than new data or results. These review papers are a form of documentation for the next outermost circle of researchers-scientists in other fields, or postgraduates, or other academics with less experience in the topic at hand.
To take another example, what I do at Fight Aging! is a form of documentation by this definition: ongoing efforts to explain the ins and outs of longevity science to people who are less familiar with the field, and who have less time to devote to understanding the work of researchers. Academic publicity services at the major universities also perform a similar task, producing explanations for the outer circles of doctors, interested members of the public, and the like.
Documentation thus moves raggedly and through many hands, as each circle learns from the inward circles and then in turn explains its knowledge, understanding, and work to the outer circles. That there are so many layers involved goes a long way towards explaining how science so often becomes garbled and misinterpreted on the way from researchers to the interested public. The process works over time, however, as the example of Hotmail well illustrates. The level of knowledge in the outer circles does increase, and the efforts of people involved in producing documentation make it easier for new ideas to gain traction.
Researchers, Like Most Communities, Document Poorly and Reluctantly
Anyone who spends time working in a technical field eventually forms a cynical attitude towards documentation: it is never what it might be, and the next innermost circle never does a good enough job of explaining themselves. This is simply the way of the world: most people in a given circle spend the majority of their time and effort in communicating with each other, not with the members of the next outermost circle. In the sciences, researchers write papers for one another as a part of the business of research, and this publishing of results is not intended to educate anyone other than peers at a similar level of expertise in the same field.
The process of producing documentation for outer circles is nonetheless very important, despite being undertaken by only a minority in any field. It is only through documentation that there can exist a roadway of information to connect researchers who produce new science with developers who build clinical applications of that science. If documentation is lacking, then so is the pace of development: developers work on what they know, what can be understood, and what can be sold to their investors. Ultimately, that knowledge must come from efforts made by researchers to explain their work.
Across the years I’ve spent following work on longevity-related research as an interested observer, I’ve seen a score of techniques demonstrated to significantly extend healthy life in mice, or reverse a narrowly specific manifestation of the damage of aging. Many of these results are languishing undeveloped, as the FDA forbids clinical application of biotechnologies for the treatment of aging. There is little writing on these research results, and no good sources other than the original papers-most of which are behind journal paywalls. What hope is there for the proper transmission of knowledge to the circle of clinical developers when the researchers have no incentive to explain their work, due to the FDA roadblock, and no other group seems to be picking up the slack? Potentially viable medical technologies are lying fallow, buried in the output of the scientific community, and left unexplained for the rest of us.
The Solution: Produce Documentation to Take up the Slack
Addressing the challenges of documentation and transmission of knowledge is an area in where a volunteer organization like Open Cures can make a real difference to the future of longevity science-and for a comparatively small amount of effort and money.
The flow of knowledge from the research community is vital, but as described above there exists a clearly identifiable gap in that process: science that might lead to therapies for aging exists in many different forms, but there is little to no documentation of it. Thus there is little in the way of a roadway to systematically bring this knowledge out to the circles of life science students, entrepreneurs, clinical developers, and other interested parties. Those groups, in turn, have nothing to work with when it comes to educating the medical community and public at large. This, in a nutshell, is the problem. The US may be closed to development of longevity-enhancing biotechnologies by regulatory fiat, but much of the rest of the developed world remains open for business in this field-if the developers in those countries knew more about the work that has taken place and presently lies largely buried.
The irony of the situation is that documentation isn’t expensive in the grand scheme of things, and certainly not in comparison to scientific research or clinical development. It doesn’t require more than a few weeks of part-time work for a life scientist, a graphic artist, and an editor to produce a long document that explains exactly how to replicate a demonstrated research result in longevity science-a way to extend life in mice, for example. That document will explain the research in plain English, at length, and in a way clearly comprehensible to people who are not cutting edge scientists: exactly what is needed open the door to a far wider audience for that research.
So in conclusion, documentation is important: it’s not just words, but rather a vital structural flow of information from one part of the larger community to another, necessary to sustain progress in any complex field. We would all do well to remember this-and to see that building this documentation is an activity in which we can all pitch in to help
From the Positive Futurist - Why it's great to be alive now!
Biotech will spur decade-long medical revolution 2010 to 2020
"If you live 20 more years, you may never die”. Much decorated entrepreneur and technologist Ray Kurzweil sums up how new technologies might play out between now and 2025 in this simple futuristic claim. Most of the progress Kurzweil refers to will happen from 2010 to 2020, resulting from new biotech innovations in stem cell research and genetic engineering.
Nearly all diseases will become curable during this period; replacing aging and worn body parts will become common practice. By 2020, barring accidents, most adults will look forward to a radically increased lifespan with near-perfect health.
Our 21st Century future: the possibilities are mind-blowing by Dick Pelletier
What can we expect over the next nine decades? Of course, no one can predict the future this far in advance with 100% accuracy, but if we multi-track expected breakthroughs in nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive sciences; we can create a plausible scenario of how the future could unfold.
The following timeline reveals achievements and events that experts predict could become reality as we trek through this 21st Century journey:
2010s – More people become techno-savvy in a fully-wired world. Smart phones, the Internet, global trade, and automatic language translators give birth to a humanity focused on improving healthcare and raising living standards. Stem cell and genetic engineering breakthroughs emerge almost daily.
2020s – Nanotech, computers, robots make life easier. Medical nanotech improves healthcare, ending many causes of death; quantum computers unravel the mysteries of consciousness, lowering crime rates worldwide; and household robots surpass cars as the most indispensable family purchase.
2030s – Improved transportation, longer lifespan, stronger security systems make the world safer, more enjoyable. Driverless collision-proof cars have reduced auto deaths to near zero; hyperjets fly to anywhere on Earth in an hour or less; and except for violence and accidents, most people now enjoy an indefinite lifespan. Children born in the 2030s are predicted to live well into the next millennium.
Pessimistic views of the future portray a world filled with terrorism and violence. However, this picture was proven wrong. By late 2030s, most military and police forces employ nano-sprays developed by the U.S. DOD that temporarily disrupts minds without killing. Although this system is seen by some as invading personal rights, it reduces crime and violence and has become the weapon of choice for wars.
2040-2060 – Human-machine merges become reality, bringing us closer to conquering death. Physicist Paul Davies, in his book The Eerie Silence writes that humanity's future lies in transitioning into non-biological beings. "Biological life is transitory," he says, "It is only a fleeting phase of evolution."
Futurist Ray Kurzweil agrees. In his recent book The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil says that merging with machines is the only logical outcome of future technologies. He predicts that by the 2040s, artificial intelligence will outthink humans and continue to improve exponentially. At this time, researchers will develop creative ways to interface with these smart machines allowing us to share their vast knowledge.
By 2050, a few bold pioneers begin replacing their biology with stronger non-biological muscles, bones, organs, and brains. By 2060, overwhelming advantages of living in non-biological bodies has convinced most people to swap their biology for these powerful new bodies. Non-bio bodies auto-repair themselves when damaged; and in fatal accidents, consciousness and memories can be transferred into a new body.
Instead of dying, victims of fatal accidents or acts of violence simply continue life in their new body. Death is now considered no more disruptive than a brief mental lapse. Most patients are not even aware that they had died.
Economically built with nanotech machines, non-bio body parts are affordable and available worldwide. By 2100, nearly all 10 billion humans on Earth, Mars, and Moon live in powerful non-biological bodies.
2060-2075 – After developing new energy systems, humanity heads for the stars. In searching for energy, forward thinkers see fusion-power, zero-point energy, and anti-gravity schemes as essential for our future. Interest in desktop fusion sky-rocketed after a 60-Minutes interview of SRI scientist Michael McKubre, who predicted fusion cells would one day power cars for four years between charges. Other ideas include zero-point energy, and devices that defy gravity and propel rockets without using any fuel.
Influenced by successful Moon and Mars forays, a new era in world peace and prosperity has been achieved as countries begin collaborative efforts to develop the high frontier. By mid-century, humanity has embarked on a mass exodus to space.
By 2060, terraforming efforts began to provide pleasant atmospheres on offworld communities with breathable air and Earth-like gravity. By 2075, Moon population had reached 10,000, Mars 50,000. By 2100, projected growth will rise to 2 million, Moon; 10 million, Mars.
2075-2100 – Create faster-than-light travel via new drive systems, develop ways to control wormholes, locate other universes and learn how to communicate with them. Recognizing that the vast distances in space must become more manageable; scientists selected fusion-power and zero-point energy as the most probable technologies that could enable space ships to break the light speed barrier.
For example, a 2070s hyper-drive vessel or 2080s warp-speed ship might reach Alpha Centauri, 4-light-years away in just 30 days, or make the 6-month trip to Mars in only 3-hours. Officials at NASA's Glenn Research Center have been searching for other options to travel faster than light-speeds and believe that in a distant future, humans could indeed harness wormholes for instant access to faraway stars.
Travel through wormholes is the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have suggested that the quantum mechanics of something called the 'Casimer effect' could be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time. Theoretically, this could one day lead to stabilizing wormholes, which would allow matter to be sent through its passageways.
This would enable future space travelers to step into a Star Trek-like transport system, and instantly appear at a selected destination site billions of light years away.
How quick might we become a space-faring civilization? NASA Glenn's Geoffrey Landis believes that by 2100, we will break the light-speed barrier and soon after, begin scattering our populations to the stars.
Finally, we'll close this glance into the future with the following mind-blowing scenario: studies at the Swiss Large Hadron Collider revealed that other universes exist. Experts say the next step in exploring these universes will be to send and receive messages. This begs the question, could future technologies help us locate our alternate selves in a parallel world and interact with that world? Welcome, to the future.
http://www.positivefuturist.com/;
"If you live 20 more years, you may never die”. Much decorated entrepreneur and technologist Ray Kurzweil sums up how new technologies might play out between now and 2025 in this simple futuristic claim. Most of the progress Kurzweil refers to will happen from 2010 to 2020, resulting from new biotech innovations in stem cell research and genetic engineering.
Nearly all diseases will become curable during this period; replacing aging and worn body parts will become common practice. By 2020, barring accidents, most adults will look forward to a radically increased lifespan with near-perfect health.
Our 21st Century future: the possibilities are mind-blowing by Dick Pelletier
What can we expect over the next nine decades? Of course, no one can predict the future this far in advance with 100% accuracy, but if we multi-track expected breakthroughs in nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive sciences; we can create a plausible scenario of how the future could unfold.
The following timeline reveals achievements and events that experts predict could become reality as we trek through this 21st Century journey:
2010s – More people become techno-savvy in a fully-wired world. Smart phones, the Internet, global trade, and automatic language translators give birth to a humanity focused on improving healthcare and raising living standards. Stem cell and genetic engineering breakthroughs emerge almost daily.
2020s – Nanotech, computers, robots make life easier. Medical nanotech improves healthcare, ending many causes of death; quantum computers unravel the mysteries of consciousness, lowering crime rates worldwide; and household robots surpass cars as the most indispensable family purchase.
2030s – Improved transportation, longer lifespan, stronger security systems make the world safer, more enjoyable. Driverless collision-proof cars have reduced auto deaths to near zero; hyperjets fly to anywhere on Earth in an hour or less; and except for violence and accidents, most people now enjoy an indefinite lifespan. Children born in the 2030s are predicted to live well into the next millennium.
Pessimistic views of the future portray a world filled with terrorism and violence. However, this picture was proven wrong. By late 2030s, most military and police forces employ nano-sprays developed by the U.S. DOD that temporarily disrupts minds without killing. Although this system is seen by some as invading personal rights, it reduces crime and violence and has become the weapon of choice for wars.
2040-2060 – Human-machine merges become reality, bringing us closer to conquering death. Physicist Paul Davies, in his book The Eerie Silence writes that humanity's future lies in transitioning into non-biological beings. "Biological life is transitory," he says, "It is only a fleeting phase of evolution."
Futurist Ray Kurzweil agrees. In his recent book The Singularity is Near, Kurzweil says that merging with machines is the only logical outcome of future technologies. He predicts that by the 2040s, artificial intelligence will outthink humans and continue to improve exponentially. At this time, researchers will develop creative ways to interface with these smart machines allowing us to share their vast knowledge.
By 2050, a few bold pioneers begin replacing their biology with stronger non-biological muscles, bones, organs, and brains. By 2060, overwhelming advantages of living in non-biological bodies has convinced most people to swap their biology for these powerful new bodies. Non-bio bodies auto-repair themselves when damaged; and in fatal accidents, consciousness and memories can be transferred into a new body.
Instead of dying, victims of fatal accidents or acts of violence simply continue life in their new body. Death is now considered no more disruptive than a brief mental lapse. Most patients are not even aware that they had died.
Economically built with nanotech machines, non-bio body parts are affordable and available worldwide. By 2100, nearly all 10 billion humans on Earth, Mars, and Moon live in powerful non-biological bodies.
2060-2075 – After developing new energy systems, humanity heads for the stars. In searching for energy, forward thinkers see fusion-power, zero-point energy, and anti-gravity schemes as essential for our future. Interest in desktop fusion sky-rocketed after a 60-Minutes interview of SRI scientist Michael McKubre, who predicted fusion cells would one day power cars for four years between charges. Other ideas include zero-point energy, and devices that defy gravity and propel rockets without using any fuel.
Influenced by successful Moon and Mars forays, a new era in world peace and prosperity has been achieved as countries begin collaborative efforts to develop the high frontier. By mid-century, humanity has embarked on a mass exodus to space.
By 2060, terraforming efforts began to provide pleasant atmospheres on offworld communities with breathable air and Earth-like gravity. By 2075, Moon population had reached 10,000, Mars 50,000. By 2100, projected growth will rise to 2 million, Moon; 10 million, Mars.
2075-2100 – Create faster-than-light travel via new drive systems, develop ways to control wormholes, locate other universes and learn how to communicate with them. Recognizing that the vast distances in space must become more manageable; scientists selected fusion-power and zero-point energy as the most probable technologies that could enable space ships to break the light speed barrier.
For example, a 2070s hyper-drive vessel or 2080s warp-speed ship might reach Alpha Centauri, 4-light-years away in just 30 days, or make the 6-month trip to Mars in only 3-hours. Officials at NASA's Glenn Research Center have been searching for other options to travel faster than light-speeds and believe that in a distant future, humans could indeed harness wormholes for instant access to faraway stars.
Travel through wormholes is the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have suggested that the quantum mechanics of something called the 'Casimer effect' could be used to produce a locally mass-negative region of space-time. Theoretically, this could one day lead to stabilizing wormholes, which would allow matter to be sent through its passageways.
This would enable future space travelers to step into a Star Trek-like transport system, and instantly appear at a selected destination site billions of light years away.
How quick might we become a space-faring civilization? NASA Glenn's Geoffrey Landis believes that by 2100, we will break the light-speed barrier and soon after, begin scattering our populations to the stars.
Finally, we'll close this glance into the future with the following mind-blowing scenario: studies at the Swiss Large Hadron Collider revealed that other universes exist. Experts say the next step in exploring these universes will be to send and receive messages. This begs the question, could future technologies help us locate our alternate selves in a parallel world and interact with that world? Welcome, to the future.
http://www.positivefuturist.com/;
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
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Another great article from The Art of Manliness - Ernest Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea
Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea
Posted By Bryan Schatz On July 12, 2011 @ 3:48 pm In A Man's Life
29 Comments
[1]
“Que va,” the boy said, “It is what a man must do.”
“Success” is all too often assumed to be the indicator of the value of a man. But success, in and of itself, merely speaks to a particular status and may have nothing to do with the journey that the man took to get there, or whether or not he retained his integrity along the way. Among the many aspects of the story, it is the idea of redefining success and victory that makes The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, so profound.
It is a seemingly simple story: Santiago is an old, experienced fisherman who hasn’t brought in a catch for months. On the 85th day of this dry spell, he heads far out into the Gulf of Mexico where he hooks a giant marlin. Unable to pull the fish into his skiff, he holds onto the line for three days before killing it with a harpoon. After lashing the fish to his boat, Santiago heads home with his hard-won prize. But along the way, sharks reduce the fish to bones, and the old man returns to port as he left–empty-handed.
Yes, a simple story on the surface, but also a tale with a much deeper message and a relevance that transcends time and place. It speaks to the universal truths of a man’s existence within this world, where pride, respect, tenacity, and dreams fuel a man in his quest to thrive in the face of struggle. It is a story about the indomitable spirit of man; Santiago stands as a symbol of an attitude toward life, and his fight with the mighty marlin offers numerous lessons to all men.
Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea
“A man is not made for defeat.”
Santiago has nothing but a broken-down shed and a rickety skiff with a sail that is “patched with flour sacks” and looks “like the flag of permanent defeat.” The skin of his gaunt body illustrates his hardships and is marked with deeply-set wrinkles, scars, and blotches from the punishing sun. And because of his terrible misfortune, he is a pariah in his small fishing village.
But while nearly “everything about Santiago is old,” his eyes remain “the same color as the sea and are cheerful and undefeated.” Instead of throwing in the towel after 84 days of terrible luck, he sails farther out into the Gulf than he has gone before.
A man continues to do whatever he must do to the best of his ability, no matter what tribulations befall him. While challenges and setbacks can strip a man of all outward signs of success, still his spirit can remain undefeated. For it can will a man to never give up and to keep on trying.
Or as Hemingway puts it: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
A man does not depend on luck.
Luck plays a major role in the story and in our everyday lives, and to a superstitious lot like fishermen, poor luck can seem paralyzing. In Santiago’s little Cuban fishing village he is labeled “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky,” after having gone eighty-four days without taking a single fish.
This makes him a outsider among his peers, and it costs him his trusty partner, the boy Manolin, whose parents forbid him from fishing with the old man. While Santiago deals with the suffering of being hungry and poor, other boats from his village continue pulling in good fish every day.
Anyone can have luck of course, but not everyone one can have determination, skill, and perseverance. Santiago knows this and therefore believes in his ability rather than chance. “To hell with luck,” he thinks. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”
He does this by not taking any shortcuts in his work. He keeps his fishing lines straighter than anyone, and he makes sure that, “at each level…there [will] be a bait waiting exactly where he wishes it to be for any fish that swim there.” Santiago keeps his lines with precision, and he is ready for whatever comes.
We cannot attain success simply by waiting for good things to happen. It is when we strive forward towards a goal that we open ourselves up to opportunity. As Santiago muses, “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when the luck comes you are ready.”
A man bears pain and hardship without complaint.
“He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.”
Whether it’s something as trivial as being cold or as significant as skirting along the borders of death, a man simply does what must be done, without self-pity and without complaint. Santiago does not whine about hunger pains or thirst, nor does he mope about the fishing line that cuts into his hands.
Out at sea, far beyond the other boats, Santiago is presented with the greatest challenge of his life. It comes in the form of an eighteen-foot marlin and makes for a long, long battle that spans days. Near the edge of his exhaustion, Santiago’s hand is cut deeply and cramps up “as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.” He washes the cut in the salt water and lets it dry and warm in the sun. But the hand refuses him and he is forced to work with his right hand alone, against the powerful fish that is two feet longer than his own skiff. Drained, Santiago “settles against the wood” and simply “takes his suffering as it comes. He is comfortable but suffering, although he does not admit the suffering at all.”
A man does not boast.The quality of a man is best seen through his actions, and developing humility is a key ingredient in letting our actions do the talking for us. Santiago is given plenty opportunity to boast during a conversation with his young friend, Manolin, but he does not.
Manolin asks, “Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?”
“I think they are equal.”
“And the best fisherman is you.”
“No. I know others better.”
“Que va,” the boy says, “There are many good fishermen and some great ones, but there is only you.”
"Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.”
And it’s only because of Santiago’s determination that none do. Boasting only briefly satisfies insecurity. It leaves no lasting impression on the crowd who hears it.
A man finds inspiration from others.
“But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.”
For Santiago, it is “the great Joe DiMaggio” who inspires and motivates him. He possesses traits that Santiago admires, reminding him that to be successful you have to put all of yourself into a task and bear up under difficulty. Looking up to others–having heroes–provides us with examples to follow, the knowledge that others have overcome obstacles as well, and the assurance of the great possibilities of a man’s life.
A man goes down swinging–no matter his age.
Old age is a common excuse, and for certain things it is legitimate, but all too often it is used either where it has no place or before any effort has been made to prove the assumption wrong. When the sharks begin attacking Santiago’s marlin, at first he fears that he cannot defend himself because of his age, but before long, he gathers his tools to be used as weapons and does what he must. When he breaks the blade off his knife in the body of one shark, the fear sinks in again. “Now they have beaten me,” he thinks. “I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.”
And many more sharks do come. He has to club and strike them with all of his strength. During the fight, the sun goes down and Santiago wonders, “What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do?” He digs deep. “‘Fight them,” he says, “I’ll fight them until I die.”
Though the sharks do eventually tear Santiago’s marlin apart, they do not defeat him as a man, and he never gives up. Paddling in, he tastes blood in his mouth, so he spits into the ocean and says, “Eat that galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.”
Every man has sharks that circle him; they gather when they smell the blood of real achievement. But you’re never too old to put up a fight.
A man’s legacy comes from maintaining his integrity.
Santiago drifts away from the pages of this story with exactly the same thing he had when it began: almost nothing. His catch does not bring him money nor “success,” but it does provide him with a legacy that will endure far beyond any monetary gain ever could have. For he retains his own integrity in the face of great challenge; he exhausts himself in a good fight. A man doesn’t quit.
Posted By Bryan Schatz On July 12, 2011 @ 3:48 pm In A Man's Life
29 Comments
[1]
“Que va,” the boy said, “It is what a man must do.”
“Success” is all too often assumed to be the indicator of the value of a man. But success, in and of itself, merely speaks to a particular status and may have nothing to do with the journey that the man took to get there, or whether or not he retained his integrity along the way. Among the many aspects of the story, it is the idea of redefining success and victory that makes The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway’s classic novella, so profound.
It is a seemingly simple story: Santiago is an old, experienced fisherman who hasn’t brought in a catch for months. On the 85th day of this dry spell, he heads far out into the Gulf of Mexico where he hooks a giant marlin. Unable to pull the fish into his skiff, he holds onto the line for three days before killing it with a harpoon. After lashing the fish to his boat, Santiago heads home with his hard-won prize. But along the way, sharks reduce the fish to bones, and the old man returns to port as he left–empty-handed.
Yes, a simple story on the surface, but also a tale with a much deeper message and a relevance that transcends time and place. It speaks to the universal truths of a man’s existence within this world, where pride, respect, tenacity, and dreams fuel a man in his quest to thrive in the face of struggle. It is a story about the indomitable spirit of man; Santiago stands as a symbol of an attitude toward life, and his fight with the mighty marlin offers numerous lessons to all men.
Lessons in Manliness from The Old Man and the Sea
“A man is not made for defeat.”
Santiago has nothing but a broken-down shed and a rickety skiff with a sail that is “patched with flour sacks” and looks “like the flag of permanent defeat.” The skin of his gaunt body illustrates his hardships and is marked with deeply-set wrinkles, scars, and blotches from the punishing sun. And because of his terrible misfortune, he is a pariah in his small fishing village.
But while nearly “everything about Santiago is old,” his eyes remain “the same color as the sea and are cheerful and undefeated.” Instead of throwing in the towel after 84 days of terrible luck, he sails farther out into the Gulf than he has gone before.
A man continues to do whatever he must do to the best of his ability, no matter what tribulations befall him. While challenges and setbacks can strip a man of all outward signs of success, still his spirit can remain undefeated. For it can will a man to never give up and to keep on trying.
Or as Hemingway puts it: “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
A man does not depend on luck.
Luck plays a major role in the story and in our everyday lives, and to a superstitious lot like fishermen, poor luck can seem paralyzing. In Santiago’s little Cuban fishing village he is labeled “salao, which is the worst form of unlucky,” after having gone eighty-four days without taking a single fish.
This makes him a outsider among his peers, and it costs him his trusty partner, the boy Manolin, whose parents forbid him from fishing with the old man. While Santiago deals with the suffering of being hungry and poor, other boats from his village continue pulling in good fish every day.
Anyone can have luck of course, but not everyone one can have determination, skill, and perseverance. Santiago knows this and therefore believes in his ability rather than chance. “To hell with luck,” he thinks. “I’ll bring the luck with me.”
He does this by not taking any shortcuts in his work. He keeps his fishing lines straighter than anyone, and he makes sure that, “at each level…there [will] be a bait waiting exactly where he wishes it to be for any fish that swim there.” Santiago keeps his lines with precision, and he is ready for whatever comes.
We cannot attain success simply by waiting for good things to happen. It is when we strive forward towards a goal that we open ourselves up to opportunity. As Santiago muses, “It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when the luck comes you are ready.”
A man bears pain and hardship without complaint.
“He was shivering with the morning cold. But he knew he would shiver himself warm and that soon he would be rowing.”
Whether it’s something as trivial as being cold or as significant as skirting along the borders of death, a man simply does what must be done, without self-pity and without complaint. Santiago does not whine about hunger pains or thirst, nor does he mope about the fishing line that cuts into his hands.
Out at sea, far beyond the other boats, Santiago is presented with the greatest challenge of his life. It comes in the form of an eighteen-foot marlin and makes for a long, long battle that spans days. Near the edge of his exhaustion, Santiago’s hand is cut deeply and cramps up “as tight as the gripped claws of an eagle.” He washes the cut in the salt water and lets it dry and warm in the sun. But the hand refuses him and he is forced to work with his right hand alone, against the powerful fish that is two feet longer than his own skiff. Drained, Santiago “settles against the wood” and simply “takes his suffering as it comes. He is comfortable but suffering, although he does not admit the suffering at all.”
A man does not boast.The quality of a man is best seen through his actions, and developing humility is a key ingredient in letting our actions do the talking for us. Santiago is given plenty opportunity to boast during a conversation with his young friend, Manolin, but he does not.
Manolin asks, “Who is the greatest manager, really, Luque or Mike Gonzalez?”
“I think they are equal.”
“And the best fisherman is you.”
“No. I know others better.”
“Que va,” the boy says, “There are many good fishermen and some great ones, but there is only you.”
"Thank you. You make me happy. I hope no fish will come along so great that he will prove us wrong.”
And it’s only because of Santiago’s determination that none do. Boasting only briefly satisfies insecurity. It leaves no lasting impression on the crowd who hears it.
A man finds inspiration from others.
“But I must have confidence and I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel.”
For Santiago, it is “the great Joe DiMaggio” who inspires and motivates him. He possesses traits that Santiago admires, reminding him that to be successful you have to put all of yourself into a task and bear up under difficulty. Looking up to others–having heroes–provides us with examples to follow, the knowledge that others have overcome obstacles as well, and the assurance of the great possibilities of a man’s life.
A man goes down swinging–no matter his age.
Old age is a common excuse, and for certain things it is legitimate, but all too often it is used either where it has no place or before any effort has been made to prove the assumption wrong. When the sharks begin attacking Santiago’s marlin, at first he fears that he cannot defend himself because of his age, but before long, he gathers his tools to be used as weapons and does what he must. When he breaks the blade off his knife in the body of one shark, the fear sinks in again. “Now they have beaten me,” he thinks. “I am too old to club sharks to death. But I will try as long as I have the oars and the short club and the tiller.”
And many more sharks do come. He has to club and strike them with all of his strength. During the fight, the sun goes down and Santiago wonders, “What will you do now if they come in the night? What can you do?” He digs deep. “‘Fight them,” he says, “I’ll fight them until I die.”
Though the sharks do eventually tear Santiago’s marlin apart, they do not defeat him as a man, and he never gives up. Paddling in, he tastes blood in his mouth, so he spits into the ocean and says, “Eat that galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.”
Every man has sharks that circle him; they gather when they smell the blood of real achievement. But you’re never too old to put up a fight.
A man’s legacy comes from maintaining his integrity.
Santiago drifts away from the pages of this story with exactly the same thing he had when it began: almost nothing. His catch does not bring him money nor “success,” but it does provide him with a legacy that will endure far beyond any monetary gain ever could have. For he retains his own integrity in the face of great challenge; he exhausts himself in a good fight. A man doesn’t quit.
It's a Wonderful Life - The Lessons
In A Man's Life,Lessons In Manliness
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Of course, “manly” is not a word typically associated with the film, especially given the fact that more than one man will find himself teary eyed and avoiding eye contact with his wife at its conclusion. But the film has a good deal to teach us about being a man, the right kind of man. So in the spirit of quality Christmas movies, I offer you a quick guide to manliness, as taught by It’s a Wonderful Life.
•Be a hero where you stand - This is the thread that weaves through George Bailey’s life. Saving his brother in the icy water. Keeping Mr. Gower from poisoning a child. Saving the Building & Loan multiple times. But it is the small things that make the hero; Bailey’s dedication to help others who are down on their luck is the true mark of his manliness.
•Treat women well - At a key moment of their relationship, George visits Mary (Donna Reed) at her home and acts like a boor. Luckily, this leads to a final acknowledgement of their love, and for the most part, George is an example of how to treat women well (despite some cultural changes). Despite human, stressful outbursts, he loves his wife, and remains true to her in temptation. He takes care of his mother and even treats Violet (a woman with a dulled reputation) like gold, as a real man should – without taking advantage.
•Love your family/family fidelity – In spite of his frustration and dreams, George honors his father’s work and keeps the Savings & Loan running. With a drafty house, sick kids, low wages, work stresses, and a normal man’s frustrations, he loves and supports his family. Is it easy? Heck no. But he comes through.
•Facilitate others’ success – Helping people move out of the slums. Investing in the little people. Sacrificing for his brother Harry’s success. George’s dedication to his brother’s success is truly touching. The richness of George’s legacy lies in how he touched others’ lives and made them better for it, quietly sacrificing to improve the lot of those around him.
•Stand up for what is right – Bailey’s morals may be simple common sense, but he lives them and fights for them. This is perhaps seen best when George strongly turns down Mr. Potter’s lucrative offer for everything he ever wanted: success, travel, luxury and security for his family, just to maintain the honor of his name. “I don’t need 24 hours!” he tells the man.
•Know your faults and correct them – Of course our protagonist is not perfect. When facing personal failure, he is particularly prone to outbursts towards those with whom he is closest. And it takes a strong woman to keep him straight. He also has a knowable weakness for luxury and a misplaced view of himself and life. But George tries to lift himself above it, and in the end – with a little help from a different point of view and an angel named Clarence – he finds in himself what is beautiful in life.
•Live your life with gratitude - Life is not measured in salaries, homes, trips, cars or Facebook friends. But it is truly measured in those moments when we love and touch others’ lives. Family and friends. Time and love. It may be sappy, but on your deathbed you won’t be looking to hold the hand of your Porsche.
Finally, it is not just the fictional character of George Bailey that provides valuable lessons in manliness; the real life of the film’s star, my personal acting hero, Jimmy Stewart, does as well. Jimmy epitomized the ideals of a gentleman. He took his responsibility to fight in WWII seriously and flew untold missions over Germany in a B-24 (retiring as a Brigadier General from the US Air Force). Known as a kind and soft-spoken guy, Stewart was discrete and chivalrous in his Hollywood relationships and remained humble despite his great success (his only Oscar stood in his father’s hardware store for years). As a philanthropist, lifelong Boy Scout (Silver Buffalo winner), loving father of 4 (adoptive father too), and a devoted husband for 45 years, Stewart was a man boys could look up to and other men could seek to emulate. President Truman said of him, “If Bess and I had a son, we’d want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart.” His last words were of his wife, “I’m going to be with Gloria now.” You couldn’t ask for a better man example. If you want another example of Stewart working his holiday magic, watch his touching portrayal in Mr. Krueger’s Christmas.
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