And now, hopefully sooner than the last set, my notes taken during the Transhuman Superpowers and Longevity Conference held on 12 July 2015 in Oakland, CA. Everything's behind the cut, with references as applicable. Personal observations (are on separate lines in parenthesis) to differentiate them from the speaker's material. Vertical Farm Civilization - Karl Doerrer
It is well known that the human brain is a marvelously complex and flexible mechanism, capable of aggregating and processing information from our senses as well as ruminating and calculating based upon the results of other internal processes. It is so complex, in fact, that at this time we can't be sure of what its limits are or what's actually going on in there. People have built entire careers around studying emergent phenomena within the operation of the brain. The day to day operation of the human brain is so complex that it takes very little to tweak its functionality …
For many years, the development of pharmaceutical drugs has been kind of hit or miss. New and interesting bioactive compounds are discovered and tested in different laboratory animals until someone figures out what a particular compound might be good for. It isn't terribly common that a pharmaceutical company comes up with an idea for an effect and then works backward until they find a compound that will do what they hope to accomplish.
That shows signs of changing.
A company called Parabon Nanolabs in Reston, Virginia has announced the development of a new drug which is effective in treating one …
The board of directors of Saloncon announced a couple of days ago that there will not be a Saloncon in 2009. The board is not in a position to spend the money necessary to get it off the ground this year, unfortunately. Also, given the rising rate of unemployment this year (7.2% and climbing, as of December of 2008) and the generally sad state of the economy there is a high probability that many fewer people would be able to attend this year. They are working on throwing a charity event at Teaberrys instead but it isn't known if …
