Slashdot Mirror

My proposals: https://www.changemakers.com/m...
https://www.newschallenge.org/...

And also advice to Larry from that my own individual sensemaking from 2012:
"Larry Page & Sergey Brin hopefully getting enough sunlight and vegetables?"
https://groups.google.com/foru...

"Eat For Health - The Anti-Cancer Diet" https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...

Especially mushrooms as discussed there...

Also look into iodine, vitamin D, and exercise (including to keep the lymph moving so it can do its job). And good sleep and various ways to relax (friends, music, laughter, nature walks, pets,etc.-- see Andrew Weil and also Blue Zones) and put the nervous system in a health-promoting state of mind as far as controlling the immune system.

And also avoiding toxins/radiation in food and the environment (including consumer products).

We need to learn about the role of some compounds or organisms found in moldy fruit and pond water (and mushrooms, as above, and also various herbs) that may also help the body deal with cancer. Our too clean environments may have their costs, since our bodies are adapted to live in a certain context of threats and opportunities.

Fasting can also sometimes help prevent cancer, since the body can selectively get rid of problematical cells first. Fasting also makes chemotherapy less bad because normal cells go into a sort of resting phase during fasting whereas the cancer cells keep growing and are more exposed to the chemotherapy toxins (not that the benefits of most chemotherapy seem worth the costs from what I read -- although some treatments may be worth it).

People are always getting cancerous cells, and most times their immune systems get rid of them. We nee do do what we can to boost the immune system (nutrition etc.) and also reduce the frequency of cells going rogue (toxins).

That said, sure it would be good to have better treatments for when people's immune systems fail to regulate their cancer cells. As you said, it is heart breaking to watch such a progression. And as Dr. Fuhrman says, once cancer is detected as a macro scale, it is iffy to get rid of if by means known today in most cases. So yes, better magic bullets would be great. But what we can do right now is try to minimize the need for magic bullets.

My guess as to why this measles treatment works is that cancer cells have shifted so much of their cellular pathways to replication that they are unable to defend at all against the measles virus, compared to other cells. This probably either causes them to self-destruct or tags them in some way that triggers the immune system. This effect is probably not specific to the measles virus but may well apply to any of many broad classes of virus.

Good luck with your career. Maybe someday something like this will take off (my proposal for better software for medical sensemaking):
https://www.newschallenge.org/...
http://www.changemakers.com/di...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Sorry to say, from the slurring of the interviewer in the video, which suggested clogged arteries throughout your body. Check out health ideas here for unclogging them through nutritional changes:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for 32.3% of deaths in the United States in 2010, but you can protect yourself. A significant number of research studies have documented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and reversible) through a diet rich in plant produce and lower in processed foods and animal products."

More in general:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://www.changemakers.com/di...
https://www.newschallenge.org/...

Good luck Rob, I think we may have we met once briefly around 1999 at an Open Source conference in NYC (one where Ralph Nader spoke), and thanks for all the stories.

And the shift does not have to be that unpleasant as your tastes will adapt after six weeks:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap--as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation--and more self-discipline--than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation - and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."

Another good health resource if you are willing to take one week to do a medically supervised water-only fast in Santa Rosa, CA for a quick reboot of your taste buds. Compared to a heart bypass operation or years of physical therapy for a stroke, you won't even have to stop posting to Slashdot the whole time during a fast. Posting would help keep you busy and distracted as your body re-calibrates itself and goes into "garbage collection" mode and shifts to new biological pathways during the fast. See:
http://www.healthpromoting.com...
"TrueNorth Health Center was founded in 1984 by Drs. Alan Goldhamer and Jennifer Marano. The integrative medicine approach they established offers participants the opportunity to obtain evaluation and treatment for a wide variety of problems. The staff at TrueNorth Health Center includes medical doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, psychologists, research scientists, and other health professionals. The Center is now the largest facility in the world that specialize

Sorry to say, from the slurring of the interviewer in the video, which suggested clogged arteries throughout your body. Check out health ideas here for unclogging them through nutritional changes:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/libra...
http://www.diseaseproof.com/ar...
"Cardiovascular disease (CVD) accounted for 32.3% of deaths in the United States in 2010, but you can protect yourself. A significant number of research studies have documented that heart disease is easily and almost completely preventable (and reversible) through a diet rich in plant produce and lower in processed foods and animal products."

More in general:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://www.changemakers.com/di...
https://www.newschallenge.org/...

Good luck Rob, I think we may have we met once briefly around 1999 at an Open Source conference in NYC (one where Ralph Nader spoke), and thanks for all the stories.

And the shift does not have to be that unpleasant as your tastes will adapt after six weeks:
https://www.drfuhrman.com/libr...
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap--as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation--and more self-discipline--than most people are ever willing to muster.
Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits--and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure--thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation - and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."

Another good health resource if you are willing to take one week to do a medically supervised water-only fast in Santa Rosa, CA for a quick reboot of your taste buds. Compared to a heart bypass operation or years of physical therapy for a stroke, you won't even have to stop posting to Slashdot the whole time during a fast. Posting would help keep you busy and distracted as your body re-calibrates itself and goes into "garbage collection" mode and shifts to new biological pathways during the fast. See:
http://www.healthpromoting.com...
"TrueNorth Health Center was founded in 1984 by Drs. Alan Goldhamer and Jennifer Marano. The integrative medicine approach they established offers participants the opportunity to obtain evaluation and treatment for a wide variety of problems. The staff at TrueNorth Health Center includes medical doctors, osteopaths, chiropractors, naturopaths, psychologists, research scientists, and other health professionals. The Center is now the largest facility in the world that specialize

These can sometimes help. A collection of health links I put together:
https://www.changemakers.com/d...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Laughter can help too. http://www.humorproject.com/

Medically-supervised fasting can also help sometimes. http://www.healthpromoting.com...

Better nutrition implies avoiding various problematical food additives. http://fedup.com.au/factsheets...

Getting enough sleep is also important of good health. Try to avoid looking at screens a couple hours before going to bed. And before going to sleep, try to make a mental list of all the things that you would still want to be there in the morning and that you are thankful for (e.g. enough to eat that day, water to drink that day, a safe place to sleep, garbage collection services, etc.), as gratitude helps mental health, and what you think about before going to sleep often programs the subconscious mind as to what to think about.

A lot of people creating startups and working long hours may ending up eating poorly, not exercising, and not getting enough sunlight for vitamin D. So they are at risk.

Deeper issues in the sense that we live in a crazy-making society with many organizations emphasizing unhealthy aspirations, even celebrated ones: http://www.pdfernhout.net/read...

Good luck!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
"The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion is a 1998 book by American author Ken Wilber. It reasons that by adopting contemplative (e.g. meditative) disciplines related to Spirit and commissioning them within a context of broad science, that "the spiritual, subjective world of ancient wisdom" could be joined "with the objective, empirical world of modern knowledge". The text further contends that integrating science and religion in this way would in turn, "have political dimensions sewn into its very fabric"."

And see also stuff by Charles Tart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

The mystery of consciousness (where it come from, what it means if anything, where is goes, how it changes, and so on) remains a fundamental unknown and maybe unknowable of our lives on this plane of existence. The uncertainty ranges across all sorts of religious ideas to also include things like whether we are living in a computer simulation or computer game of some sort. That mystery is intertwined with the great mystery of everything.

Both links above are Wikipedia links to show Wikipedia can be useful as a starting point, if you go to it aware of its limits including expecting bias. Here is another example of an article on economics which it seems to me is being aggressively policed for years by a "deletionist" who won't let anything but pro-mainstream-Capitalist economics be on the page regardless of whether the other material includes a citation from a notable published source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

To avoid being misled by Wikipedia, especially on health issues or economic issues, one must be aware that Wikipedia does suffer from some sort of mainstream bias most areas. Looking at past versions of the pages or related discussion can sometimes help overcome those biases. Example including a recent edit war of reversions in the last month or two:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...

One alternative to Wikipedia was Google Knol. Aside from being owned by a for-profit with a history of abandoning projects, there was something good to the now-defunct Google Knol with the notion of articles from a point-of-view authored by either one person, a small group, or everyone. Peer review is a form of censorship (several essays on on it on the web), PhD training produces "Disciplined Minds" (the name of an enlightening book), and peer review is getting more problematical with increased competition for funding (see Dr. David Goodstein on "The Big Crunch"),

Related things I've written:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-j...

And also, on trying to think more deeply together about health and other issues:
https://www.newschallenge.org/...
http://opengov.newschallenge.o...
http://www.changemakers.com/mo...
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...

More on the important of discussion by Hugo Mercier:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes....
"We do not claim that reasoning has nothing to do with the truth. We claim that reasoning did not

We can create new habits and preferences: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap -- as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation-- and more self-discipline -- than most people are ever willing to muster.
    Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits -- and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure -- thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation -- and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."

My own collection of health advice and ideas for goign further:
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

But it was a cool idea to make a book about health just for programmers.

We can create new habits and preferences: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
"Scientific evidence suggests that the re-sensitization of taste nerves takes between 30 and 90 days of consistent exposure to less stimulating foods. This means that for several weeks, most people attempting this change will experience a reduction in eating pleasure. This is why modern foods present such a devastating trap -- as most of our citizens are, in effect, "addicted" to artificially high levels of food stimulation! The 30-to-90-day process of taste re-calibration requires more motivation-- and more self-discipline -- than most people are ever willing to muster.
    Tragically, most people are totally unaware that they are only a few weeks of discipline away from being able to comfortably maintain healthful dietary habits -- and to keep away from the products that can result in the destruction of their health. Instead, most people think that if they were to eat more healthfully, they would be condemned to a life of greatly reduced gustatory pleasure -- thinking that the process of Phase IV will last forever. In our new book, The Pleasure Trap, we explain this extraordinarily deceptive and problematic situation -- and how to master this hidden force that undermines health and happiness."

My own collection of health advice and ideas for goign further:
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

But it was a cool idea to make a book about health just for programmers.

Good points. To take it further, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman says, the many correlation studies on nutrients like beta carotene mostly show, when you think about them, a "marker" effect. That is, having a high level of beta carotene or vitamin C is a marker for eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and/or legumes. These plant foods have lots of phytonutrients (thousands of different things, many yet unclassified), that our bodies (or gut bacteria) use in different ways. That is why when people through diet have high beta carotine levels, they may be very healthy. But when they take beta carotine supplements, it may cause things to get out of balance, including for reasons you mention, and then they might get cancer or other illnesses. They have raised their level of the marker substance, without having all the other nutrients that would normally go along with it.

As another analogy, high blood pressure often indicated clogging arteries, but lowering your blood pressure with pills doesn't stop the artery clogging process, it just makes the marker go away. That is why much of drug-based mainstream medicine that focuses on symptomatic relief is somewhat like if an auto mechanic disconnected out the "check oil" light in your car rather than fix an oil leak that the dashboard light might indicate. Somehow most doctors get away with that when most auto mechanics don't -- perhaps because cars with service manuals are way easier to understand than thousands of undocumented biochemical pathways in a human body. Most people in the USA seem to take better care of their cars than their bodies, too.

I'm not sure of any specific drawbacks of high vitamin C supplements, beyond diarrhea from excess and the fact most vitamin C in the US is manufactured in China and so may be contaminated with who knows what. But certainly Vitamin C may be a marker for a healthier diet. So, if you get daily "chemotherapy" from relatively cheap phytonutrients in fruits and vegetables and legumes all your life, you may avoid oncologists trying to give you expensive chemotherapy later in life. Thus Linus Pauling was right that we should be living in such a way as to have higher vitamin C levels -- but he was wrong in not seeing Vitamin C as a marker for a health diet of whole foods (and mostly plant-based) and then advocating you could fix this complex situation by adding just one isolated nutrient.

Another issue, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about in his book "Eat to Live", is that the US RDA for Vitamin C is way too low by several times. However, the US RDA for Vitamin C can't be greatly raised without flagging the fact that the average US resident is getting way too few fruits and vegetables and legumes (the normal source of most vitamin C). And that would be in contradiction to US farm policy and profits which are directed to subsidies for the meat, dairy, and grain industries:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

I have suggested that we create better health sensemaking tools to try to figure this all out collectively in an open source way:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

By the way, periodic "fasting" is another part of the health equation. One advocate of many:
http://www.drbass.com/

The Flexner Report from a century ago is where modern medicine in the USA took a problematical turn, when MDs focusing on procedures and drugs legally crowded out

http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

Going forward, there are many other implications of trends from "better, faster, cheaper". We should think about the positive trends and try to help amplify them. Related suggestions by me in areas of collective intelligence for mutual intrinsic security, space settlement, and health sensemaking:
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/09/paul-fernhout-open-letter-to-the-intelligence-advanced-programs-research-agency-iarpa/
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

Or, read "The Skills of Xanadu" for ideas from the 1950s by Theodore Sturgeon which helped inspire Ted Nelson and hypertext and so the world wide web:
http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Or look to groups like the Maker community or sustainable technology community inventing new ways of local subsistence.

Something I wrote thirteen years ago to Doug Engelbart's Unrev-II mailing list, and we are still more-or-less following predicted exponential trends:
"[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
"Below are six "explosive" technology trends that all appear to culminate in around twenty years. Even if some of them don't pan out, the others will revolutionize our world (for good or bad). ...
You may argue the dates -- ten years for some, forty for others. You may point out Y2K didn't melt things down, that AI researchers predicted AIs by now, that fusion power was supposed to be here by now, etc. And you would be right to be skeptical. My point is that these are trends in many different areas -- any one of which would make this world radically different. Together, they spell awesome change -- in economics, politics, lifestyle, relationships, and values.
It is quite likely we are heading for a singularity in

More ideas: http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

On self-replicating space habitats:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html

The grad plans were about "Elysium" but for all. Contrast:
http://www.itsbetteruphere.com/
with, from me:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/solarius/

Related attempts, but not very successful so far:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
http://www.openvirgle.net/

David Brin on the Transparent society:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparent_society

Related suggestions by me:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

A basic income would give more people more time for self-education and civic engagement and raising independent children. They would have more time to review all this data.

Alaska has a bit of a basic income. Brazil has something of one recently. Germany has been talking about one. The USA has a basic income for people over 65 called "Social Security", so it could just be extended to all from birth and replace things like public schooling and unemployment insurance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee

Of course, two countries that implemented something of them, Lybia and Iran have experienced US attempts to destabilize them. See also "the Threat of a Good Example" by Noam Chomsky:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_Example.html
"No country is exempt from U.S. intervention, no matter how unimportant. In fact, it's the weakest, poorest countries that often arouse the greatest hysteria. ..."

Still, once could argue a basic income just props up capitalism. I guess it depends how it is implemented and what people actually would do with their time.

See Marshall Brain's Manna for a fictional example with both a basic income and a transparent society.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

There are many reasons things change slowly. People are naturally resistant to change, since they know the old ways work somewhat at least in the past. New intellectual paradigms take a while to propagate. Some people are invested in the current system emotionally and financially, even as it crumbles or faces increasing catastrophic systemic risks. And so on.

Although, perhaps it is better to not know what "X" is now, if it will take decades to see it come into being, with so much needless suffering along the way? :-(

James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" is a good example of people not being willing to embrace "X" when it is staring them in the face.
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary

Another "X" is vitamin D and good nutrition to prevent or reverse much chronic disease.
https://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

But that's been know for thousands of years. It just gets forgotten now and then.
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/62262-let-food-be-thy-medicine-and-medicine-be-thy-f

Lots of health links collected by me: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Iain Banks should look into iodine, vitamin D, eating a lot more vegetables, medically supervised vegetable juice and/or water fasting, and a variety of other things (beyond what is in mainstream medicine might be helpful, too). While once you have cancer getting rid of it is iffy, some things can still help, including preventing it from coming back again if you do manage to get rid of it somehow. See especially:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx

And see also these other links:
http://theiodineproject.webs.com/cancerandiodine.htm
http://www.futurity.org/health-medicine/vitamin-d-helps-body-put-brakes-on-cancer/
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART03060/Treating-Cancer-With-Integrative-Medicine.html

And:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2098363/Fasting-help-combat-cancer-boost-effectiveness-treatments.html
"In every case, combining fasting with chemotherapy made the cancer treatment more effective. Multiple cycles of fasting combined with chemotherapy cured 20 per cent of those with a highly aggressive form of cancer while 40 per cent with a limited spread of the same cancer were cured."

Mix that approach with a high-phyto-nutrient diet (including certain mushrooms), eliminating refined sugar and refined starch, eliminating food additives, supplementing with vitamin D and iodine, and some other related changes, and maybe there is some small chance of Iain Banks getting several more years of good health.

And so we can get at least one more fantastic Culture novel. :-)

I love his writing. I hope we can figure out a way to help him with all this post-scarcity technology like he wrote about and which we already have to some small degree (like the internet), whether he would choose to use that time to write another novel or not.

But the health advice above is generally good for anyone who wants to minimize cancer risk and maximize health. And I could only put all that together thanks to the internet and similar post-scarcity technology like Google and web servers and personal computers and all the advances in nutritional science made possible by less expensive testing and the accumulation of medical research knowledge and so on. Which is all the stuff implied in his books. Even if much of Earth may perhaps be oblivious to it all:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_State_of_the_Art
"'Also while I'd been away, the ship had sent a request on a postcard to the BBC's World Service, asking for 'Mr David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for the good ship Arbitrary and all who sail in her.' (This from a machine that could have swamped Earth's entire electro-magnetic spectrum with whatever the hell it wanted from somewhere beyond Betelgeuse.) It didn't get the request played. The ship thought this was hilarious.'"

Existing military technology like nukes, plagues, and bureaucracy, are so powerful that they could greatly harm most human life on the planet. What kinds of plagues does north Korea got? Do we really know? I worried about the same thing when the USA invaded Iraq. Plagues are the poor man's WMD. The USA got lucky with Iraq in that we did not see hundreds of millions of US casualties on US soil from a plague launched by Saddam when things looked bleak for him personally and billions more casualties globally among those on the sidelines.

Soon enough, cheap military robotics (flying mines), nanotech, cyberwar, and other things will add to that list of massively harmful possibilities which we have, at best, limited defenses against at the civilian level and could thus completely disrupt our infrastructure in a place like the USA. For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

As in my sig, the biggest challenge of the 21st century is technologies of abundance like nuclear energy and biotechnology and so on can be made into powerful weapons or they can be used to bring material abundance for all. The increase in powers of our technology are making the Earth seem smaller and smaller relative to the capacity for either governments or individuals to do harm. Modern technology requires us, if prudent, to both expand into space and to come up with better ways of living together on Earth.
http://globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

Because the US military has not yet integrated this truth into all their doctrines, they still seem to think they can "defend" the USA against an (apparently) crazy person by a show of force, as with these bombers. That does not work that way if the person is crazy enough or if the local social dynamics is crazy enough to force a leader on to ever more aggressive actions. Just look at the US financial meltdown to show how individuals or collectives can deny reality for a long time or can take great risks (Enron) and so eventually destroy themselves while greatly harming the lives of everyone around them.

That is why the USA needs to rethink its security policy along the lines of mutual and intrinsic security. Thus:
http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/09/paul-fernhout-open-letter-to-the-intelligence-advanced-programs-research-agency-iarpa/
"Especially in conjunction with an exponential Moore's law, it feels like there has been a systematic global intelligence failure to connect the dots about exponential change and present that information to decision makers in a persuasive way."

There may be no good way to deal with this situation. As with most disease (including mental illness) it is best to avoid it by healthier global living.
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

One other idea by me though -- to airdrop millions of small cell-phone or tablet-sized mesh-networked solar-powered computers into repressive countries:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=192755&cid=15823703

Total cost: $1 billion to transform North Korea into a connected place. Or about the cost of one of those bombers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit

Not saying it would work for sure, but at least it is a different option.

Remember: the people of oppressive regimes are generally suffering a lot too. Why make them suffer more just to get the leadership to change? That tends rarely to work anyway (for example, Cuba or Iraq). Any external threat just tends to make collectives pull together and silence dissent -- just like happened in

Xest makes some good points about reasons to be more optimistic. However, I've certainly been pessimistic about this myself in the past. Here is an excerpt from a satire I wrote about this and posted to slashdot over a decade ago in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" after sending a copy of the US Department of Justice who had asked for comments (I also sent a copy to Richard Stallman who said it made him laugh):
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
"My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. ... [Inaudible shouted question] Prisons? There are only a million Americans behind bars for copyright infringement so far. No one complained about the million plus non-violent drug offenders we've had there for years. No one complained about the million plus terrorists we've got there now, thanks in no small part to a patriotic Supreme Court which after being privatized upheld that anyone who criticizes government policy in public or private is a criminal terrorist. Oops, I shouldn't have said that, as those terrorists aren't technically criminals or subject to the due process of law are they? Well it's true these days you go to prison if you complain about the drug war, or the war on terrorism, or the war on infringers of copyrights and software patents -- so don't complain! [nervous audience laughter] After all, without security, what is the good of American Freedoms? Benjamin Franklin himself said it best, those who don't have security will trade in their freedoms. ..."

Sad it is all becoming a little too true, even with some progress on the drug war front.

As I've realized, the USSR had to guard its borders to keep people from escaping that often dysfunctional society -- and we've all been told that showed how bad a country they were. But the USA needs to guard its medicine cabinets instead to keep people from escaping -- what does that say about the USA?

Some books related to your points:

"War is a racket" on the profit-oriented ("fascistic") military-industrial complex
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html

"Mistakes Were Made, But Not By Me" on cognitive dissonance
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909

In one of Freeman Dyson's books, like "Infinite in All Directions" he talks about the coming conflicts between government and individuals wanting to redefine themselves biologically, where drug use is just a first example of a more general issue.

On the accelerating problem of addiction to "supernormal stimuli", which is a much more general issue than "drugs":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/B0057DC3VY
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

By the way, some health ideas to look into, including vitamin D deficiency and eating more vegetables and omega-3s, which can help in avoiding depression:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

When all else fails, somethign from Howard Zinn:

Great link. Speaking of "mileage", a treadmill workstation can help too, by providing some extra extraneous input and thus supporting focus on the task at hand.
http://www.squidoo.com/walkingwhileworking

Consider that the original poster said her or she has no problem mowing the lawn to completion -- which entails walking.

Eating better (especially veggies and omega 3s) and getting adequate vitamin D can help improve general concentration as well. A list of key health links I put together:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Having a real window to look out from can probably help, too, since it is distracting, but it is good for the eyes and brain to look far away at naturally lit surroundings.

Humans were not adapted through evolutionary forces for apparently hundreds of thousands of years to sit all day in one place in isolation, day after day after day for years at a time, just making some small finger motions and staring straight ahead. Such humans probably tended to starve, atrophy, not reproduce, and/or get eaten. So, it's actually "natural" that it is hard for anyone to do that (let alone be healthy doing that), even with an occasional bathroom break or pizza run thrown in there now and then. See for example:
http://www.howtogeek.com/93822/sitting-is-killing-you-infographic/

And while this link is about escaping the "Pleasure Trap" of eating poorly, perhaps it applies to escaping the multi-tasking trap of thinking that makes you feel more productive long-term?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

I agree that limiting distracting notifications can make a big difference too. Every interruption costs something to recover.

Of course, these recommendations I make or agree with are from a more introverted perspective of a programmer, where introverts tend to have a lot of internally-generated stimulation. Extroverted people doing different sorts of task may thrive on lots more chaos and may benefit from a higher level of external stimulation. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraversion_and_introversion#Biological_factors
"Eysenck proposed that extraversion was caused by variability in cortical arousal. He hypothesized that introverts are characterized by higher levels of activity than extraverts and so are chronically more cortically aroused than extraverts."

So, another possibility is just that the original poster might be extroverted and better suited for some other type of work involving a lot of people-oriented interactions? Whereas the fact that you or I might seek to minimize distractions (and can do that) might reflect being more introverted overall?

Good points, but my wife and I put more than six person-years on our own dime into making a free garden simulator so people could grow their own food on "Spaceship Earth" -- and it is also a step towards living in space because people in space need to eat too. There is an edited version of one of Rick Guidice's pictures as a backdrop in the add-on pack:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/

So a lot of the ideas are complimentary. You're using the internet now to make your point and some of that technology indirectly came out of the space program which pushed technology along, including satellite communications. The picture of Earth seen from space has (arguably) done probably more than any one single thing to unite our planet (especially the image with a small Earth in a sea of darkness)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg

Thinking about things on a smaller scale like for a space habitat can focus the mind wonderfully on issues like recycling, meeting essential needs vs. expansive wants, being efficient in resource use, learning to get along with neighbors, sustaining human health without lots of expensive interventions, developing economic paradigms that are sustainable both socially and physically, and so on.

Anyway, one of the reasons for my not getting further directly on this is, beyond raising a next generation, actually investing significant my time on those topics you point to, for example education about health & nutrition and about transcending militarism & artificial scarcity:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://artificialscarcity.com/

But as I say, making good places to live in space and on Earth is complementary from a certain perspective, so it is not like that was wasted time in that sense in progressing towards space habitats.

Anyway, there are very few material resources in short supply on Earth. Pretty much all such shortages are politically motivated or the product of competitive economic tragedies or unaccounted for externalities. At the current rates of falling prices for solar, the world will be running off of mostly solar energy in 20 years unless something even better (like hot or cold fusion) is cheaper. As it is, probably at least 95% of the work done on Earth in the industrialized world is either useless or harmful to the common good, so there is plenty of spare capacity; see:
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

As I wrote in 2008, (perhaps a bit wishfully as far as OSCOMAK itself, true):
http://oscomak.net/wiki/Main_Page
====
OSCOMAK supports playful learning communities of individuals and groups chaordically building free and open source knowledge, tools, and simulations which lay the groundwork for humanity's sustainable development on Spaceship Earth and eventual joyful, compassionate, and diverse expansion into space (including Mars, the Moon, the Asteroids, or elsewhere in the Universe).

You can read an essay on how to to find the financing to create a "Star Trek" like society here.
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/AchievingAStarTrekSociety.html

A flow into foundations of $55 trillion is expected over the next 25 years: "Is Open Source the Answer To Giving?"
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/20/

Terrific point about separating an appraisal of the world from general moods.

And after all, some people even like tough challenges:
http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html

As I quote here from "What Dreams May Come":
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
===
"This is their composite mental image?" I asked. Soundless; hueless; lifeless.
"It is," he said.
"And you work here?" I felt stunned that anyone who had the choice would elect to work in this forbidding place.
"This is nothing," was all he said.
===

Howard Zinn also suggested there is always reason for the "optimism of uncertainty": http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm

I agree about the bringing nutrition/lifestyle stuff all together synergistically:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Also maybe of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_approaches_to_depression

And:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/the-science-of-success/307761/
"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind's phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail -- but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society's most creative, successful, and happy people."

While Shirky's post has some great insights, I actually disagree with a sentiment implied where he says: "Most of us won't kill ourselves, no matter how bad things get. ... Madoff hasn't killed himself because he isn't the kind of person who kills himself." While perhaps true, it is misleading. I'd suggest depression and suicide could happen in almost anyone's life probabilistically, but that certain circumstances make it more or less likely. Then, if it does, the survivors tend to work backwards from "if only" proximate causes, but overall it is always a network of interacting causes and effects. Genes are one thing affecting probabilities, but so is nutrition, lifestyle, mental outlook, mental habits including gratitude, religions and spiritual upbringing or life philosophy, social networks, physical infrastructure, and many other factors (including what we think about the world) which interact with each other. Or, in other words, a life is like a tree, and whether that tree is blown over by any particular storm in life is about both how big the (perceived) storm is and how deep the tree's roots are (and roots help us grow more roots). For a person, roots are things like nutrition, family, friends, hobbies, community, music, values, habits, religion/philosophy, and so on. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology

Thanks for the success story of personal growth to grow deeper roots in various ways. Good luck in continuing to grow them as best as is possible in this plane of existence filled with various dualistic tensions, with life at a Yin/Yang interface of

"The unfortunate fact is that there's no way to fix depression."

Nutrition can help oftentimes: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx

See also on optimism:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
    To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth."

More health advice:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Ideas towards building a better world:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Related by me: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html

By others:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/natural_depression.aspx
http://www.anwot.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738337/
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

reducing stress, being thankful, and more simple things that help prevent, and sometimes cure, cancer: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Example: http://www.livestrong.com/article/251358-vitamin-d-and-brain-cancer/
"Another study found that three out of 11 patients with tumors went into complete remission after being treated with vitamin D."

See especially:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/brain-cancer/
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx

From: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx "Interventional cardiology and cardiovascular surgery is basically a scam based on a misunderstanding of the nature of heart disease. Searching for and treating obstructive plaque does not address the areas of the coronary vascular tree most likely to rupture and cause heart attacks. If there was never another CABG or angioplasty performed or stent placed, patients with heart disease would be better off. Doctors would be forced to educate our citizens that their heart disease risk is determined by what they place on their forks. Millions of lives would be dramatically extended. To abandon the theory of stretching and cutting out areas with plaque would shut down interventional cardiology, nearly all cardiovascular surgery, and many suppliers of the biotechnology. In many cases, interventional cardiology is the major income generator to hospitals. The ending of this ill-conceived, out-dated and ineffective technology would dramatically downsize hospitals in the United States and free up over $100 billion annually in medical care costs. Besides being ineffective, interventional cardiology places the responsibility in the hands of the doctor and not the patients. When patients finally realize they must take control of their heart problems with aggressive dietary modifications (and when needed medications for temporary periods) we will essentially solve the health crisis in America.
The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions.
Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

When I heard about his treatment a couple weeks ago, I tried to figure out how to contact him, but to no avail. Neil Armstrong benefited from the best of 1960s technology, but sadly did not benefit from the best of 21st century medicine (aggressive nutritional intervention). Sad. We could have had him healthy and vibrant and as a witness to the better side of human kind for another decade or two. Instead some heart surgeons can afford to make a few more payments on luxury cars and big houses.

We just lost Martin Fleischmann (just as LENR aka "cold fusion" is resurging) probably from the same kind of widespread nutirional ignorance in the medical profession.

Some attempts by me to try to help with improving human health:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Something to keep in mind:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challengin

From: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx "Interventional cardiology and cardiovascular surgery is basically a scam based on a misunderstanding of the nature of heart disease. Searching for and treating obstructive plaque does not address the areas of the coronary vascular tree most likely to rupture and cause heart attacks. If there was never another CABG or angioplasty performed or stent placed, patients with heart disease would be better off. Doctors would be forced to educate our citizens that their heart disease risk is determined by what they place on their forks. Millions of lives would be dramatically extended. To abandon the theory of stretching and cutting out areas with plaque would shut down interventional cardiology, nearly all cardiovascular surgery, and many suppliers of the biotechnology. In many cases, interventional cardiology is the major income generator to hospitals. The ending of this ill-conceived, out-dated and ineffective technology would dramatically downsize hospitals in the United States and free up over $100 billion annually in medical care costs. Besides being ineffective, interventional cardiology places the responsibility in the hands of the doctor and not the patients. When patients finally realize they must take control of their heart problems with aggressive dietary modifications (and when needed medications for temporary periods) we will essentially solve the health crisis in America.
The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions.
Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

When I heard about his treatment a couple weeks ago, I tried to figure out how to contact him, but to no avail. Neil Armstrong benefited from the best of 1960s technology, but sadly did not benefit from the best of 21st century medicine (aggressive nutritional intervention). Sad. We could have had him healthy and vibrant and as a witness to the better side of human kind for another decade or two. Instead some heart surgeons can afford to make a few more payments on luxury cars and big houses.

We just lost Martin Fleischmann (just as LENR aka "cold fusion" is resurging) probably from the same kind of widespread nutirional ignorance in the medical profession.

Some attempts by me to try to help with improving human health:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Something to keep in mind:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challengin

"The man does not need the surgery, chemotherapy radiation one-two into an early grave but vitamins and nutrition. Start educating yourself about health and nutrition first before you come begging for wagon loads of money to pay for "treatment". This may not sound very sympathetic in your ears if you can't move your mind past the pink-ribbon Susan-Komen TM cancer industry programming, but it is from the viewpoint of someone who beat cancer with proper nutrition and avoiding those many many toxins they put in our food and drink."

Well, the AC got modded down to -1, plus disagreed with, but their certainly is a germ of truth in the comment. I won't agree 100% with it, though. I'd agree (based on what Dr. Fuhrman writes) that most cancer is preventable by good nutrition and lifestyle choices (especially lots more vegetables, vitamin D, iodine, fasting, avoiding refined carbs and food additives, etc.). However, once you have cancer, whether nutrition can cure it is pretty iffy. It depends on the exact nature of the cancer and other factors. Slow growing cancers are more likely to be amenable to cure or management by excellent nutrition (we are talking aggressive nutritional intervention here like Dr. Fuhrman specializes in, not just eating a few extra greens now and then). Fast growing cancers that are localized, like Steve Jobs had, are places where surgery etc. may make a lot of sense, but good nutrition may still be needed to prevent recurrences. In that sense, cancer like Steve Jobs had is not so much the *disease* but it is a *symptom* of root causes like sunlight deficiency disease (like from working indoors too much and not supplementing with vitamin D3), vegetable deficiency disease, iodine deficiency disease, toxic food excess disease, etc..

I'd still be very curious what diet style AC worked from. Certainly the Rave Diet, Dr. Fuhrman's work, Dr. Mercola's work, and many others suggest that an excellent diet does max a difference in dealing with cancer. The problem is, there is so much conflict-of-interest, group think, advertising pressure, and risk adverseness from malpractice worries in the medical community these days, that it is hard to find unbiased advice. Good nutritionally-aware doctors can be hard to find (and then hard to get appointments with), given the expense and academic qualifications requirements and limited number of slots of medical schools have created an artificial scarcity of good doctors (in part to keep their fees up).

Related:
"Doctors' woeful lack of training about nutrition dooms millions to early graves "
http://www.naturalnews.com/036702_doctors_nutrition_fatalities.html
"The largest source of funding for medical schools comes from drug companies and medical schools curricula are set by the American Medical Association (AMA). Is it any surprise that doctors are taught to treat patients primarily with drugs and surgery? Given the power of proper nutrition, doctors' inability to give informed nutrition advice surely dooms millions to early graves due to illnesses which might have been prevented or healed. It is a national health tragedy which begs to be corrected."

At the end of my comment linked below are lots of background health links that ultimately link to the science of why nutrition and lifestyle make a big difference in health outcomes:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

I posted other stuff in various replies to an article on IBM's Watson's involvement in cancer treatment.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/09/12/2059243/ibms-watson-to-help-diagnose-treat-cancer
Here is one of those:
http://science

You could ask yourself, could life be made worth living for you? Also, you could look into vitamin D deficiency, iodine deficiency, phyto-nutrient deficiency, omega-3 deficiency, sleep deficiency, and so on (and avoiding refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour). More info on heath issues here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

A life is like a growing tree. What keeps a tree from toppling over in the storms of life is deep roots. To reduce the risk of toppling over in a strom, grow your roots -- friends, family, community, neighbors, hobbies, recreations, communing with the infinite, nature, music, and so on.

See also:
"Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals"
http://books.google.com/books/about/Dark_Nights_of_the_Soul.html?id=EG1E8boPodQC
"Every human journey is filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments, or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these "dark nights" in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Thomas Moore's extensive career as a psychologist and theologian has taught him that honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and opportunities to delve into the soul's deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life's meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transforming rites of passage. Moore shows specific ways to engage life more deeply through particular challenges and shares a powerful new outlook. With the soothing, accessible tone and practical philosophy that have made Moore an internationally beloved author, Dark Nights of the Soul will help you tend to the deepest needs of the heart and spirit in a modern world full of life's challenges, and is sure to be a comforting companion during your most difficult times. Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Care of the Soul comes the long-anticipated sequel, an uplifting and groundbreaking approach to life's darkest hours. Moore shows specific ways to engage life more deeply through particular challenges and shares a powerful new outlook on such topics as: The healing power of melancholy; The sexual dark night and the mysteries of matrimony; Finding solace during illness and in aging; Anxiety, anger, and temporary Insanities; Linking creativity, spirituality, and emotional struggles; Finding meaning and beauty in the darkness."

Or, as Howard Zinn said:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning.
To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world. There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible. What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because

http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

Vitamin D deficiency is a hazard of indoors work, and contributes to why academia in general is messed up (along with other parts of the industrialized world). Likewise for people not getting enough good nutrition from omega 3s and vegetables -- poor health just makes people messed up. Other ideas I've collected on improving health:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Here are some links I put together for context about current academia:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

See especially:

      "The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
      http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

      "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
      http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

And one other that is not there:
    http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

Good luck.

"According to the Agenda 21 crowd, the carrying capacity of the world is actually only about 500 million."

Unlike for most animals, carrying capacity is a function of lifestyle and technology where humanity if concerned. The more people you have around, generally the more ideas you have for improving lifestyle and technology. For example, people are busy working on fusion energy technology and cheaper solar power, more energy efficient transportation, advanced bioremediation processes for toxic waste, ways to live in outer space or the oceans, and ways to grow vegetables and meat indoors in vertical farms. If 90-99% of people were killed off, there would be much less innovation, perhaps making that doomster agenda a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, as Julian Simon suggests, the human imagination is the ultimate resource.
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

That said, it might be a good idea to set an occupancy limit for the Earth at around a billion people or so when we have much nicer self-replicating space habitats to live in and the Earth becomes more of a tourist destination. Although, a limit might not be required because probably no one born in space would probably want to go there. After all, how many people living in the USA feel a need to take a pilgrimage to Africa to see where humanity came from?

I can't disagree that some crazy ignorant callous frightened scarcity-obsessed people could try what you mention with the technologies of abundance. Weaponized bird full is probably more likely, btw, as it would spread more easily than smallpox. It's a good idea to optimize your health with adequate vitamin D and phytonutrients from vegetables, which is a good thing to do regardless of fears about groups with such a regressive agenda: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

A lot of life circumstances (especially lack of good sleep) can put us on a downward spiral where we let things slide and things get worse, especially as we turn to junky comfort foods. Here is some health advice I put together to help with an upward spiral, but it is true that it is easier to follow with more social support and community (and less worries over money): http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Watch out especially for vitamin D deficiency and how using the computer indoors to deal with aches and pains may just make that worse as a downward spiral. Many adults need 5000 IU D3 daily as a supplement, as the US RDA is too low and dermatologists have gotten us to fear the sun. Taking vitamin D supplements is at least an easy first step back to wellness.

Also, eating a lot more vegetables and taking omega 3 supplements may help, too.

People may become obese eating "empty calorie" junk food because the body keeps searching for nutrients and filling fiber that is not in junk food, so their "appestat" (your thermostat for appetite) is never satisfied. In the same way, people may turn to more and more computer use when what they really want is something else (more human contact, more time in nature, more hands on projects, more satisfying work, etc.) -- searching for something they can't find much of online.

Good luck in moving onto an upward spiral again.

Other health ideas along those lines: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Breastfeeding to age 2+ has been shown to reduce disease (WHO). Eating a great vegetable-heavy diet based mostly on vegetables, fruits, and beans has been shown to reduce disease (Dr. Joel Fuhrman). Getting enough sunlight or supplements to get vitamin D has been shown to reduce disease (Dr. John Cannell). Having a less stressed-out household, have all been shown to reduce disease (Dr. Andrew Weil). Exercise has been shown to reduce disease. Some of these have actually been shown to be more effective than immunization for some diseases (like vitamin D and the flu in some studies), Hardly any US American families do any of these things to a significant degree.

For an example of what I'm talking about, see:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/shop/ChildBookReviews.aspx
"Dr. Fuhrman has the solution for your frequently ill child. Backed up by a multitude of scientific studies, he explains how eating particular foods and how avoiding others can have a significant impact on your child's resistance to dangerous infections, their intelligence and success in school. For example, a change in dietary habits can have a dramatic effect on reducing the occurrences of illness like ear infections, asthma and allergies. The right foods introduced early in life can increase your child's IQ. Dr. Fuhrman presents the fascinating science which demonstrates that the current epidemic of adult cancers and other diseases are closely linked to what we eat. In the first quarter of our life, he explains that eating right in childhood is the most powerful weapon against the growing cancer epidemic. Also, he reveals how the seeds for future auto-immune diseases are sown in childhood, and how by eating right today, children can be healthy tomorrow."

So, are parents who do not maximize their children's and their own health not equally culpable? Or are parents who do not get their children to do such things even more evil, because while vaccines have demonstrable risks (and some questionably science behind some of them full of conflicts-of-interest), most of these more basic approaches to healthy living do not have significant associated risks (except maybe some forms of exercise) and all are based on fairly solid science.

Also, it seems sending a kid to school or sending a kid to a doctor's waiting room is one of the fastest ways to get a kid exposed to pathogens. That is something else to consider for those parents who choose to not to have personal physicians or who choose not to homeschool. Where is the moral outrage for parents who choose to send their children to schools and thus participate in spreading disease? Or where is the moral outrage for people who take unnecessary car trips (including to schools) and create traffic hazards? And so on, for all sorts of things people do that can create risks for others (including making the world a more depressing place by too much competition and greed).

The posts to this story frequently show an extreme moral outrage about parents who for whatever reason do the cost-benefit analysis and say a specific vaccination does not make sense for their child (as if parenting wasn't hard enough already involving many sacrifices and tough judgement calls). Yet, given the sad state of health for most people in the USA always getting colds and flus and so many being obese, the hypocrisy and ignorance in these posts is mind-boggling for anyone who knows something about how to ensure good health like through the above approaches. See, for more details:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

I wish people posting here would apply even 10% of their moral outrage about vaccination to those who eat poorly or make risky lifestyle choices and thus become disease carriers. I'd suspect that outrage would apply to most people posting on slashdot (including most of the outraged people).

But I don't think we'll see th

This was a very interesting reply, thanks. It points out a few important issues.

As when people leave conventional schooling for "unschooling" or "homeschooling", it may take some time to decompress. A rule of thumb there is somewhere between one month to one year of decompression for every year of compulsory schooling.

Also, humans naturally are lazy to conserve energy. It's a good thing to be lazy because it prevents wasting resources on things that don't help survival. That is weighed in the mind against the fact that it is also a good thing to do certain things (things that contribute towards survival). The mind is in tension between those two things. Or, in other words, necessity is the mother of invention, but laziness is the father. :-)

Also, in our society, with "supernormal stimuli", it is indeed easy to get caught in "pleasure traps" whether you have to work 9-5 or not:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

Also, people in industrialized societies have become so vitamin D deficient (from lack of sunlight), so phytonutrient deficient (from lack of vegetables), so omega 3 deficient (from lack of vegetables and fish), and so on from modern processed food, that their brains are affected in a bad way, which makes it harder to be self-directing.

Please get your vitamin D level checked if you are indoors so much... Vitamin D is an occupational hazard of indoors workers like most electrical engineers.

More health tips here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Anyway, put those all together, and yes, it can be really hard for a mainstream person to suddenly become self-directing and healthy and connected to a health community. It can be a big challenge. Good luck with it. Part of that is to get into the right environment that stimulates us in healthy ways. See for example:
http://www.bluezones.com/

BTW, and to address some of the other points you made too, have you thought about a career in agricultural robotics? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_robot

As our technology improves (like with better agricultural robotics, 3D printing, mining robotics, LENR cheap energy, etc.), it will only take the 1% who enjoy stuff like that to provide enough of the basics for everyone (whether lurker or shirker), same as with GNU/Linux, Wikipedia, blogging, slashdot, etc. provide lots of information for us all through the efforts of a relatively few percent of the population. So, that is how there can be cell phones and such even if few people work to make them. Already we see a continuing drop in manufacturing employment while still producing just as much, just like agriculture before that. We'll probably increasingly see that in services, too. Here is an example for sharing free 3D designs for stuff you can print in 3D printers:
http://www.thingiverse.com/

Also, Bob Black, in The Abolition of Work (the first article I think you're referring to), talks about making work into play. You are playing "games" at home. What if making stuff or providing services felt pretty much just as much fun, with a sense of flow?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

Maybe you could even invent yourself a job as a "job designer"? :-)

Anyway, there are no easy answers for individuals, even if collectively the USA could with a stro

"MDs have extensive training on the importance of nutrition, lifestyle,"

Citation needed. How many hours out of their medical training does the average MD have in these topics? Factoid for you to start with if you want to talk BS:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/83/4/941S.full
"A total of 106 surveys were returned for a response rate of 84%. Ninety-nine of the 106 schools responding required some form of nutrition education; however, only 32 schools (30%) required a separate nutrition course. On average, students received 23.9 contact hours of nutrition instruction during medical school (range: 2-70 h). Only 40 schools required the minimum 25 h recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. Most instructors (88%) expressed the need for additional nutrition instruction at their institutions. "

That's 25 hours out of how many thousands?

Anyway, I could go point by point though the rest of this, but I won't. :-)

But a few comments anyway.

First off, the lung cancer may be more from vegetable deficiency disease and iodine deficiency disease and vitamin D deficiency disease and other messed up social processes leading to distress than from smoking. I'm not saying smoking is good for you generally, of course, but consider:
"Why I Recommend to NOT Stop Smoking"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9DZBzKppHQ

Ask your wife, outside of an initial patient intake interview, how many minutes can her practice let her spend actually with a patient per visit? I doubt the average is higher than ten minutes. How can that result in good outcomes? It's like schools. No matter how well the staff means, the overall institutional dynamics prevents really good stuff from happening for most people most of the time.

Contrast with:
http://www.patchadams.org/
"The Gesundheit! Institute is a project in holistic medical care based on the belief that one cannot separate the health of the individual from the health of the family, the community, the world, and the health care system itself."

Or read the last chapter of:
"Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future" by M.D. Andrew Weil
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Our-Health-Matters-Transform/dp/B004KAB3U2

I'd just suggest you, your doctor, and your wife read "Eat To Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, MD and you'll see why sending a patient to the hospital for heart disease may someday be considered malpractice. :-)
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."

Here are a collection of links I put together about wellness:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

See especially this on losing weight:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

I feel 20% of what most MDs do is miraculous (e.g. burn care, reattaching severed limbs, therapies for genetic defects, etc.), even if much of the other 80% is probably misguided (the part mostly about treating the symptoms of malnutrition, and where a good alternative practitioner probably does better). The problem is being able to learn which is which... So, this is not to disagree with that aspect of your point about homeopaths.

By the way, strep throat may be a sign of vitamin D deficiency and other nutritional deficie

http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Look into vitamin D, eating more vegetables, getting enough iodine, periodic fasting, omega 3s, and so on.

Regular exercise to keep lymph circulating and mind-body coordination (Yoga, Tai Chi) can help, too.

And social and psychological aspects make a difference too (especially in supporting good nutrition, adequate exercise, time for learning, and limiting bad stress).

The seeds of cancer are usually set decades before the problem emerges. The body is always getting cancerous cells; the issue is does the immune system fight it off. And the more reserve capacity a brain has, the longer mental decay takes to become significant and life-altering.

Sorry to hear about your father, but maybe these can help you avoid the same fate.

See also, not that it applies directly, but might be suggestive:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-study-finds-that-vitamin-d-may-help-in-treatment-of-pediatric-bone-cancer/
"Vitamin D can cause cancerous bone cells to turn into normal bone cells, according to research by scientists at the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC). The discovery may lead to new treatments for pediatric bone cancer, the scientists say. Recent studies have shown that vitamin D may be helpful in treating cancer of the breast, prostate and colon by inhibiting the growth of malignant cells. KUMC scientists built on that foundation, using tests to show that vitamin D produces a similar response in osteosarcoma -- a type of malignant bone tumor that mainly affects children and adolescents."

According to Dr. Fuhrman: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

Now, she may well need a pacemaker, but she should also look into things like nutritional issues, omega 3s and good fats, vitamin D, and other similar things, if she has not. Links here: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Hard to say where might you be now by putting all that energy, intelligence, and creativity into your own small software business or an apprentiship in a trade instead of college?
http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/05/25/6717536-the-entrepreneur-whos-paying-kids-not-to-go-to-college

But either way is a roll fo the dice...

Make sure you get enough vitamin D, omega 3s, and vegetables to keep going at that pace.
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

"No medical system is perfect, but from my vantage point the American system is pretty messed up."

Even worse, the real solutions (prevention and cures) are not very profitable (compared to palliation and treatments). For example, expensive international heart surgery as $50K+ a pop is basically a "scam" according to Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx

On top of that, diverting money to what really is "sick insurance" prevents it from being invested in wellness, like building parks, creating walking trails and bicycle paths, subsidizing cheap vegetables, fruits, and beans (healthier to eat), and so on. Worse, we subsidize and propagandize about unhealthy foods, like (for many people) dairy, factory farmed meats, and products with refined starch and sugar:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramids -- subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."

Here are some real solutions to obesity and other chronic issues I've collected:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

They are relatively basic things like getting enough vitamin D, eating lots of vegetables, fruits, and beans, and so on.

That said, 20% of modern medicine in miraculous. The problem is, doctors and the medical system don't seem to be able to so the right thing the other 80% of the time (especially for chronic disease) and do problematical interventions instead.

So, in general, I agree with Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel's point. Still, advanced technology can play two important roles.

One is advanced diagnostics. Imagine a test kit (or device) you could buy at the supermarket that would tell you if you had any nutritional deficiencies. Then you could look up what foods or recipes would help in fixing that.

The other is in living well beyond 80-120. Good nutrition may be able to get most people into 80 still doing fairly well, but getting past 120 is going to take advanced technology (which entails confronting a complex ethical, moral, and spiritual issue about the meaning of life, made even worse if life extension is available only to some).

But why put so much money into making "magic bullets" to shoot the apples from the top of the tree when the low hanging fruit is being ignored?

"I'm 28, in good health, and I'm already weary of this world."

While I understand the sentiment, and the other points you made on connections and Seneca are wise, you might still want to check your vitamin D levels and think about how you are eating and exercising. Some health tips I put together:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

http://www.terrywahls.com/
"In 2003 Terry Wahls, M.D., was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis and soon became dependent upon a tilt-recline wheelchair. After developing and using the Wahls Protocol, she is now able to walk through the hospital and commute to work by bicycle. She now uses intensive directed nutrition in her primary care and traumatic brain injury clinics. Dr. Wahls is the lead scientist in a clinical trial testing her protocol in others with progressive MS. "

Also:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/23/overcoming-multiple-sclerosis-through-diet.aspx

Her work was done In Iowa, so maybe a little better then Transylvania? :-)

See also my other comment to this article mentioning Dr. Joel Fuhrman and Dr. John Cannell; with links here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Perhaps there is some nutrients and vitamin D and such in the blood of young creatures? But you can get it from vegetables, sunlight, and other things instead of blood...

From Dr. Wahls' site:
========
I am a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa, U.S.A., where I teach internal medicine residents in their primary care clinics. I also do clinical research and have published over 60 peer-reviewed scientific abstracts, posters and papers.

In addition to being a doctor, I am also a patient with a chronic, progressive disease. I was diagnosed with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis in 2000, just as I began working for the University. By 2003 I had transitioned to secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. I underwent chemotherapy in an attempt to slow the disease and began using a tilt-recline wheelchair because of weakness in my back muscles. It was clear: eventually I would become bedridden by my disease. I wanted to forestall that fate asmy long as possible.

Because of my academic medical training, I know that research in animal models of disease is often 20 or 30 years ahead of clinical practice. Hoping to find something to arrest my descent into becoming bedridden, I used PubMed.gov to begin searching the scientific articles about the latest multiple sclerosis research. Night after night, I relearned biochemistry, cellular physiology, and neuroimmunology to understand the articles. Unfortunately, most of the studies were testing drugs that were years away from FDA approval. Then it occurred to me to search for vitamins and supplements that helped any kind of progressive brain disorder. Slowly I created a list of nutrients important to brain health and began taking them as supplements. The steepness of my decline slowed, for which I was grateful, but I still was declining.

In the fall of 2007, I had an important epiphany. What if I redesigned my diet so that I was getting those important brain nutrients not from supplements but from the foods I ate? It took more time to create this new diet, intensive directed nutrition, which I designed to provide optimal nutrition for my brain. At that time, I also learned about neuromuscular electrical stimulation and convinced my physical therapist to give me a test session. It hurt, a lot, but I also felt euphoric when it was finished, likely because of the endorphins my body released in response to the electrical stimulation. In December 2007, I began my intensive directed nutrition along with a program of progressive exercise, electrical stimulation, and daily meditation. The results stunned my physician, my family and me: within a year, I was able to walk through the hospital without a cane and even complete an 18-mile bicycle tour.

In 2007 I was losing my phone and keys and was afraid my chief of staff would soon be calling me

"Knowing people with multiple sclerosis, I can say it is a horrid disease, you gradually lose your functions over time. I believe there is some links to aspartame intake."

I would mod you back up, but then I could not reply. Hope this can help the people you know:
"Doctor Reverses MS in 9 Months by Eating These Foods "
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/23/overcoming-multiple-sclerosis-through-diet.aspx

There is a mention of avoiding aspartame there (I don't know how big a part of that it is), but there is also getting enough vitamin D, getting Omega 3s, getting enough iodine, eating lots of fruits and vegetables, and more... Those for sure could make a difference for many people eating the Standard American Diet and avoiding the sun.

The website of that doctor in the video who cured herself by eating better:
http://www.terrywahls.com/

More health links by me:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Much chronic disease in the USA will yield to dietary interventions and vitamin D (see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's website, too, and Dr. John Cannell's).

Hope those people you know can benefit from this.

I also mention three other aspects that are important too besides a basic income (a gift economy, improved subsistence, and improved planning). More on all that by me:
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

If you look at the hard data yourself, you will see that US governments (federal, state, local) together spend about US$600 per month per capita on welfare, unemployment, and schooling. If that money was given directly to every citizen, a family of four would be getting US$2400 per month (tax free) which for many would be enough to live on and homeschool in an area of the country with a low cost of housing (especially as both parents could still do additional work or subsistence gardening activities and would have time to be frugal and would have less stress leading to recreational shopping therapy).
http://www.whywork.org/action/lifestyle/jobfree.html

With more involved parenting, and more neighbors with free time for being involved in their communities, most neighborhoods will be much better place to grow up in, and there will be less juvenile delinquency and fewer kids wanting to act out by hurting others. See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html

The graph you point to, indicating rising government over the next few decades up to about one-half the GDP, is pretty meaningless in the sense that it must depend on a lot of unstated assumptions all subject to political action. Also, some things like health spending may drop greatly as people understand health better; see the links I assembled here:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Besides, what is wrong with redistributing one half the GDP as a basic income (and health insurance)? That would amount to about US$2000 per month as a right of citizenship right now (more if the economy grew more), and to make up for the effective enclosure of the land and of the copyright commons and for pollution suffered from industry and so on. I think that could make a lot of sense, and so do many others:
http://www.usbig.net/whatisbig.php
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

The remaining half of the GDP would be about as big as the total US GDP around 1995, which seemed big enough to motivate anyone who needed motivating by money back then. :-)

Alaska has something called a Permanent Fund that is somewhat like that (Sarah Palin helped grow it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund

Also, right now the US governments spend more per capita for medical care than other countries require to give all their citizens generally better health care outcomes than in the USA.

So, the numbers easily work out. It is the ideology that is the problem. See:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"Justifications for elites and social hierarchy goes all the way back to the pharaohs. ..."

The fact is, our current socioeconomic system is falling apart (see other links I've posted in this thread) -- and one consequence of that is increased domestic violence and increased warfare. I have collected more details here:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery

So, the status quo is failing, and increasingly at risk from WMDs from alienated people. We ne

It's not exactly robotics, but for about $20, my kid is learning a lot about electronics Minecraft through building redstone circuits:
http://www.minecraft.net/
http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_Circuits
"Redstone circuitry is a feature introduced in Alpha which allows for intricate Redstone wire based mechanisms to be created by players. Redstone circuitry is similar to digital electronics (based on boolean algebra) in real life. t's also possible to use pistons in redstone circuits. "

You can even build stuff like elevators and music players.

Warning: Minecraft can be pretty addictive-seeming. Be sure to get your vitamin D, maybe get a treadmill workstation, and take regular breaks...
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

I've found waves of grief gradually get farther and father apart when a loved on dies (though this process may take a long time)...

Here are some general health tips I put together, on vitamin D deficiency and other nutritional deficiences given that health can effect mood: http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

Here is some information about moving past addictions: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Suicide could be seen as like a tree falling over in a storm. The trees that stay up in a storm tend to be the ones that are a bit flexible and have deep strong roots. What are the roots in your life (friends, family, hobbies, community, habits, pets, spiritual beliefs, good work, nature, music, and so on) and how can you strengthen them?

Please get yourself and your Dad tested for vitamin D deficiency... Look up Dr. John Cannell's site on that.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/

And check out Dr. Fuhrman's on eating more vegetables and fruits and gettign enough omega 3s:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/disease/default.aspx

Exercise can help, too. You could talk to your doctor about juice fasting, too.

People might be better off if Facebook helped spread good health advice than just tried to pick up the pieces from unhealth living that is so promoted in our society (because addicting others is profitable to someone, often, and the basics of good health can be pretty cheap and profit less).

Good luck to you and you Dad. At least you can make the most of the time you still have together. That would mean a lot to him, I'm sure. And, in some sense, people remain alive when we hold a memory of them in our hearts.

Storm has some good points. The main character is ignoring mystery of consciousness, to begin with, and leaps from the fact that science does have a lot of explanatory power to a religion of "scientistic" materialism assuming that whatever is not currently explained well (and may never be explained well) should be or can be ignored.

Google on work by Charles T. Tart for example: http://www.paradigm-sys.com/end-of-materialism/index.cfm
"Charles T. Tart is internationally known for his more than 50 years of research on the nature of consciousness, altered states of consciousness (ASCs) and parapsychology, and is one of the founders of the field of Transpersonal (spiritual) Psychology. His and other scientists' work convinced him that there is a real and vitally important sense in which we are spiritual beings, but the too dominant, scientistic, materialist philosophy of our times, masquerading as genuine science, dogmatically denies any possible reality to the spiritual. This hurts people, it pressures them to reject vital aspects of their being."

Or:
http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=9&pageid=121&pgtype=1
"According to Tart's model, the interface between the transpersonal "mind" and our brain-body's computational assessment and virtual reality construction of the physical world results in consciousness as-we-experience-it. Our consciousness is not pure, and we don't see "reality" as it is. Rather, what we experience is a semi-arbitrary construction derived from the balance between the transpersonal mind and the brain-body to produce a virtual reality that we simplistically call "reality." This virtual reality is a good simulation of the physical world, so it works well most of the time for our practical purposes, but it isn't reality per se. "

Many people loved the "Matrix" movies. Plato had the allegory of the "Cave" millennia ago which is similar. How do we know that reality and our own conscious being is not much more complex than our current limited brains can handle? It is indeed a leap of faith to say we are nothing but carbon atoms, or even just patterns of carbon atoms. It is not scientific! But many, many people make that "scientistic" leap of faith quite possibly in error because science can be so blindingly helpful sometimes in developing technology or making some predictions.

More points here on the limits of science as a *social* enterprise:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html

I give an example there about how for many people homeopathy may indeed work as a system of healing, even if only from the fact that the placebo effect is scientifically proven (it's even getting stronger) and homeopathy is a way of accessing that placebo effect power. There may be other aspects in practice as well, like most homeopaths may listen more to clients than MDs and may give good nutritional advice.

Also, unlike most usually innocuous homeopathc remedies, many drugs are put on the market after questionable studies and may be deadly. For example, consider Vioxx that may have contributed to my own father's death (when now I know better nutrition and vitamin D might have helped with his joint pain):
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/29/merck-pays-a-pittance-for-mass-murder/
"Q: Who killed more Americans-- al Qaeda crashing airplanes into the World Trade Center, or Merck pushing Vioxx?
A: Merck, by a factor of 18."

That disaster is one more reason we need better health sensemaking:
http://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

Als

http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine (Marcia Angell)."

Some cancer (as well as much other chronic Western disease) can be prevented and sometimes treated with vitamin and eating more vegetables and other run-of-the-mill things:
http://www.changemakers.com/discussions/discussion-493#comment-38823

But there is not much profit in telling people that...

So, who really are the frauds and/or dunces here?

"My best friend died recently, boom! Was in fine health, didn't have any problems, but found dead at his computer."

Maybe vitamin D deficiency and maybe other nutritional deficiencies? See the end of this page: http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments

Humans *need* sunlight, or appropriate supplements. And they need to eat vegetables, lots of them. And they need good fats in their diet. And they need to avoid too many junky additives. And they need exercise, like a treadmill workstation.

I'll copy it here:

By the way, here are some key useful health related links, and these are some of the issues I'd like to use such a system to discuss, refine, rebut, or promote.

On healthy diet:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/1573244872
http://www.amazon.com/Diet-New-America-John-Robbins/dp/0915811812

Knife and blender skills for eating better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM
http://greensmoothierevolution.com/

On medically supervised fasting (both water and juice) and health:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrman-on-fasting....
http://www.healthpromoting.com/why-water-fasting
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

And on getting enough vitamin D (in decreasing levels of recommended supplements):
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d...
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/vitamin_D_recommendations.aspx

On vitamin D and pregnancy:
http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20100504/high-doses-of-vitamin-d-may-cut-...
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/neurological-conditions...

On autism and health care in general:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_...

Understanding about good and bad fats:
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-deba...
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21515108

Mental health:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/...
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Treadmill workstations for computer users (but be sure to get vitamin D being indoors so much):
http://www.engadget.com/2005/06/08/the-treadmill-workstation/
http://www.squidoo.com/wal

http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments

See also: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/bipolar-disorder-and-nutrition/

Good luck with it. Everyone has something...

Still, as I say here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
"In the end, what I have learned about suicide is that it is ironically a hopeful act and a sign of great faith. It is hope things could get better, and faith that one's actions can make one's world a better place. Anyone even thinking of it has the seeds within themselves for something much more life-affirming. "

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/

Presumably it is very common among hard working programmers, and it can lead to immune dysfunctions, depression, and other difficulties.

Other health advice here:
http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments

My heart goes out to his family and friends for his loss.

See: http://www.changemakers.com/node/113512/comments

Have you thought about something voice activated, like Siri on an iPad?