My friend and very talented artist Ben Genislaw has finally released the multiple-award winning animation short “Happily Ever After: A Journey to the future of a young couple moving in together for the first time“. It’s happy, sad, depressing, inspiring and above all, amazingly done. Enjoy!
Dr. Aubrey de Grey (Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey to be exact, age 50) came to Israel for the first time to take part in the 8th European Congress of Biogerontology (fallback link) organized this year by Ben Gurion University of the Negev.
Utopia, the Tel-Aviv International Festival for Science Fiction, Imagination and the Future, organized an informal lecture and Q&A session with de Grey in Tel Aviv, to which I had the privilege to join.
The first part of the lecture was dedicated to a short description of de Grey’s research on regenerative and preventative medicine to thwart the aging process (his work at the SENS Research Foundation). The rest of the lecture was based on questions from the crowd about radical life extension.
Good news, everyone! One day in the future, we will may be allowed to drink and smoke, and go to McDonald’s! de Grey claims that the damage from these unhealthy activities, “a lifestyle that departs from what your mother told you to do…“, is the same damage our bodies accumulate anyway, just by breathing and eating, only faster. This means that we’ll have to get the same preventative treatments and “tune-ups” more often, or more thoroughly.
However… de Grey emphasizes: “Don’t do it yet! We don’t have these therapies yet. I don’ t know how soon we’re going to have them – I think there’s a 50/50 chance of getting them in the next 20-25 years, but at least 10% chance of not having them for 100 years.” It’s kind of hard to predict technological progress. (0:39:25)
One interesting question was “aren’t you trying to fight entropy?”, to which de Grey answered that all of life, all of the living world, is already fighting entropy very successfully just by being alive for as long as it is. Being alive requires exporting entropy – transferring entropy to the environment, all the time. We are trying to improve the comprehensiveness of that process of exporting of entropy. At the moment, there are certain parts of the process of metabolism where entropy is created and is retained in the body, and that is exactly the accumulation of damage. (0:50:50)
“Purple Shirt“, that was me, asked a “great question”. Basically, I asked if it’s true that the pharmaceutical industry only develops treatments to diseases, rather than cures, because that’s how they make their money. de Grey rephrased my question to “Won’t the medical industry be opposed to these therapies because they will stop people from getting sick, and the industry makes its money out of sick people?” (0:36:00)
Oded Carmeli wrote an interesting article on Time Out Tel-Aviv (pp. 112-116).
A story about the fire at the heart of suffering.
Bringing together dancers, musicians, visual artists and 3D animators, the film takes a critical look at current events.
A mysterious figure travels aboard his boat through a dark and desolate landscape in his quest for inner peace.
An award winning 3D animated short by Heliofant set to The Stream by the Tanuki Project.
Join this lovable crew of droids as they solve their differences the only way dubstep robots know how.
A 3D animated short by Fluxel Media set to music by Nostalgia.
My first real exposure to Dubstep was while watching Beavis & Butthead, and the video clip and sound of First of the Year (Equinox) by Skrillex blew my mind.
Update: Check out Researching ThruYOU for downloads and information about Kutiman’s YouTube remix project
Yesterday, when I first set my eyes and ears on what Ophir Kutiel (aka Kutiman) did, my mind was immediately blown away by the freshness, the untamed talent and the attention to details. Did it really take him only two months to produce?!
The minimalist site, thru-you.com (which is down, again), designed by Bacon Oppenheim (who also did the amazing innovid site), gave the perfect feeling. The music and visuals sent shivers down my spine and gave me goose bumps (especially the final part of I’m New).
I found myself feeling the same feelings of astonishment when I first listened to DJ Shadow’s Brainfreeze, or during Coldcut’s live performance in Tel-Aviv. I immediately started downloading the MP3 tracks – I had to “own” a copy… Then I went over some of the original videos, which were used as samples in the tracks, and started having YouTube conversations with some of the surprised talents, who seemed extremely flattered (as they should!). Then I emailed Kutiman (and got a very warm response from his agent), and started sending every one I know to the site… which was already down. I’m still wondering why they chose to stream the video from their servers, instead of using YouTube’s most powerful feature – embed. Since I didn’t want people not to be able to experience it, I set up a very minimalist “unofficial mirror” site, containing the MP3 files and the YouTube videos downwithutube put online (great thinking, and kudos for including all the links to the originals!).
Kuti, if you’re listening, you are a genius, and I think you’ve just started a revolution (just an example: see what Kevin Rochowski wrote here. He immediately went to the iTunes store and purchased Kutiman’s debut album). I am new.
P.S. You can follow @kutiman and tell him how much you loved his project. Also, I wonder what Colbert is going to have say about it.
Update: I’ve just added the full list of credits/samples to the mirror site, thanks to progosk and Andy Baio.
Update #2: I’ve made the credits/samples list more usable, and I’ve officially changed the title to Researching ThruYOU. I am interested in collecting information about the featured musicians and how this project affects their lives. Please post a comment or edit this wikipedia page…
Innerlogics 