Transhumanism & Gout?

no, it’s not a Googlewhack. Hang on, I’ll just test that assertion. Nope, it’s definitely not a googlewhack

I read this article in the New Scientist earlier today and got rather excited. I’ll explain why in a minute. I wanted to share it with you but I knew – as you’ll have just confirmed if you clicked on the link – that the article is behind a pay wall. New Scientist is the one publication I subscribe to so can read stuff like that, but we’re a tiny minority.

So I went looking for another source for the story and came across this rather dry abstract. And because I’m that sort of nerd, I read it. And got almost as excited again.

That research may have filled a gap in our knowledge regarding the effects of ph on the human body. As a gout sufferer for the last 10 years I have had to research the condition and possible treatments or regimes. I have, by trial and error, discovered what works for me: an alkaline diet. The question is why?

The research is absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with gout. But it may, nevertheless, answer that question. What it is revealing is that if your cells are in an alkaline environment rather than acid, the potassium ion gates are opened and positive ions (which actually constitute or create the alkaline environment in the first place) are able to rush in.

As I’d just learned from the first story – the one I wanted to share – opening the gateway to positive ions turns out to be a good thing if you’re a mammalian cell. It allows the scavenging of “free radicals” like oxygen ions which are poison to the inside of a cell, but are formed as the waste product of cellular “digestion” and one or two other intra-cellular mechanisms.

This would explain why alkalinity tends to promote healing and dampen the infamous “inflammatory response” (which is a principle mechanism for most disease), so I immediately conjecture that the same process, through some related mechanism, also reduces the likelihood of precipitation of uric acid crystals from the blood into the joints – which is the precise cause of gout.

This matters because what I think we are gradually confirming is the reason that alkalinity is good for health generally, not just gout. Many sites around the web have been pumping out the Alkalinity message for over a decade. Many, unfortunately, are misguided nonsense talking about “Blood Alkalinity” and the importance of preventing “acid blood”. In fact, if your serum ph ever went acid, you’d be dead, pdq. Amongst other things, your haemoglobin wouldn’t be able to bind to enough oxygen to let you breath properly.

Blood ph is remarkably stable (typically 7.35-7.45) because it is homeostatically controlled. i.e. it will take whatever it needs from the body to ensure that it NEVER becomes acidic or too alkaline. If you are heading towards acidic, what will happen in the short term is that you’ll start breathing faster as your body insists on ejecting carbon dioxide, the result of which is a change in the serum bicarbonate production and rise in ph back to normal, if you’re lucky. If the problem is more long term your bones will start dissolving as the homeostasis leaches calcium to maintain the higher alkaline ph. Or the liver will break down more than usual nucleic acids resulting from protein digestion into urea, or worse, uric acid – which has the painful tendency to drop out of precipitation from the blood into the most painful places it possibly could – the joints of big toes for instance.

The abstract is essentially explaining the mechanism by which an alkaline diet will flood the system with positive ions, suppressing the requirement to leach the calcium or produce uric acid and leaving the body’s building blocks right where they belong. And allowing the cleanup of free radicals. So now we know…

It was impossible to find another source for the original story, unfortunately, but I did find the same source handily pasted into one of Kurzweil’s Transhumanist forums. Which means you can now read it without charge and I’m not the one in breach of copyright (for a change).

It’s obviously on the forum for precisely the reason I wanted to share it with you. One of the biggest challenges in developing “mind-uploading” techniques involves how we map the entire brain non-destructively. That “Positive Switch” story describes what will almost certainly be a major component of the solution to that problem. The same intracellular switches which will one day return Francisco Sepulveda to full normal (possibly better than normal) hearing, will eventually morph into the devices we need to read every cell in the brain for the purpose of mapping it to our digital clone.

And it looks like it could be ready to roll in the next 10-20 years. That’s got to be worth another spliff!

Visual Resurrection Technology Gets Beta

Warning: – before you dive in to the video – if Rap is not your foreplay, mute the sound, it’s not important. It’s the visual virtual human we’ve come to see.

We’ve moved from Alpha to Beta with this technology. The first Release Candidate should be so good that you will not be able, even in its presence, to distinguish it from reality unless you are close enough to try to touch it.

10 years?

Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control — And Why We’ll Still Be Fighting About it 100 Years From Now | Visions | AlterNet

I have heard others arguing in favour of the historical importance of Contraception, not least Germaine Greer. But all the examples that spring to mind focussed on the importance of Contraception to Women. What I like about Sara Robinson’s argument is her focus on it’s importance to Men, particularly those patriarchal men who, of course, I normally refer to as the Authoritarians. (Yes there are Authoritarian Women too, but the vast majority of them are conditioned by their religious beliefs as we’ll discuss)

It is obvious to all observers that Authoritarianism is primarily testosterone driven. But I hadn’t made what, after reading this essay, now looks like the obvious connection between Contraception and Authoritarianism, viz Religion.

Religion has provided the pseudo ethical justification for the authoritarian control of society for at least two and a half thousand years. Almost every religion throughout human history has been patriarchal and tightly focussed on preserving the subservient status of Women for a variety of reasons, many of which were plausible right up until cheap effective mass FEMALE contraception became available. Suddenly, in one massive swipe, Male Authority was completely undermined, and, I would add, so too was Authority in general.

I disagree with Sara on one thing. Her pessimism (which echoes Margaret Atwoods “Handmaids Tale”) is unjustified. I certainly agree that the battle is not over. They will continue, until their kind has ceased to exist, to try to force many of our new liberties out of existence. I believe this will be the basis for the “Final War”. But I don’t believe they’ll succeed. The “only” risk is that they might render our species extinct in their attempt to regain control…

Why Patriarchal Men Are Utterly Petrified of Birth Control — And Why We'll Still Be Fighting About it 100 Years From Now | Visions | AlterNet.

Technological signs for the end of times

always worth reminding yourself from time to time that the Muslims have an “end times” myth just as psychotic as the Xtian one and here is the technological evidence to prove it…

Technological signs for the end of times.

Mind Uploading: Brain Facts

good to see it discussed so “matter of factly”.

What we’re talking about here is one of the most exciting prospects in human history: the nitty gritty of what it will take to map the mind for digital uploading – i.e. copying your brain to a digital environment, in order to (initially) act as a “backup” but ultimately to permit omortality, as described here

Mind Uploading: Brain Facts.

What If Humans Were Twice as Intelligent? | Digg Topnews

the major benefit of increased intelligence will be that the implementation of true democracy (which is critically dependent on intelligent debate) will become much easier.

The two biggest obstacles to democracy at the moment are the vested interests who are currently in control – who show no signs of wishing to relinquish or even dilute that control; and the generally high levels of ignorance and low levels of intelligence in the population at large. The widespread inability to understand and adopt the principles of rational epistemology make it very difficult to promote or even defend true democracy.

The web is slowly helping to overcome the ignorance problem, but it can’t do much to improve actual processing power. For that I think we’re going to have to wait a couple of decades for the first brain implants to arrive which begin to enhance our intellectual abilities. And the problem with that is that the early adopters will likely be those who need it least, thus widening the gap between top and bottom of the social ladder…

What If Humans Were Twice as Intelligent? | Digg Topnews.

RTP Discussions :: View topic – When will we see “Resurrection” Technology

RTP Discussions :: View topic – When will we see “Resurrection” Technology.

I need to assemble a page of “Resurrection Science” linking to the hundreds of developments which make me optimistic that we will soon achieve “Omortality”.

Until I do that, however, this forum question I’ve just answered will partly fill the gap…