codexjourneys

I think I'm more likely to walk to the store a mile or so away, though, whereas I'd drive if I had rented a car. Same thing for using the metro -- I've done it several times, whereas I think I'd have driven if I'd rented a car. So I think it's an improvement, even environmentally.

So this formula seems to boil down to:

- The lack of typical Western stress

- The physical activity of walking on the island

- The diet

Stress is the demon. If Ikarians don't face the typical Western job/money/schedule-associated stress (and I'm not saying they don't face other stress like family or social pressure), that's a huge advantage for them.

Physical activity also has been shown as a major differentiator. People who walk more than 7,000 steps daily have lower cardiovascular mortality (http://www.athleteinme.com/ArticleView.aspx?id=296). As a bonus, they are all getting enough Vitamin D from walking around in the sun.

I'm sure the diet helps, but it's probably a supporting factor.

You were lucky. At my high school someone from the regular track had to jump through hoops and speak up loudly to be allowed into an honors English class. Separately, my high school guidance counselor "lost" the application of a student who wasn't doing very well in high school (it was the student's only application to college, so this may very well have messed up her life for a while), while constantly harassing me in the cafeteria to apply to more/better schools. I believe (somewhat cynically) that her motivation was to make the high school's acceptance rates look better.

But the real crime of the traditional education system, in my mind, is to condition students to be so focused on jumping for gold stars that they don't think about what they really want to accomplish and what activities (stars or no) will get them there.

That is super-interesting; but I bet being 25 in 1776 was more like being 40 in 2015. Not too many people were still students in their 20s (or even their teens) back then.

I also prefer print books for in-depth work that requires flipping around between different pages while also working on the computer. There is also something comforting about reading a paper book for fun. My iPad is just not warm and fuzzy.

However, I can't carry my paper books everywhere I go, so I have largely moved to reading by iPad for necessity's sake (I travel quite a bit). Search functionality is awesome for non-fiction how-to books, but my thought process hasn't quite adjusted.

"Moving around more" actually does significantly lower your risk of death from cardiovascular events (at the very least). http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/19/how-many-steps-does-it...

Common sense, while harder to study in a lab than a new specific medicine XYZ, actually can serve us well in the messy real world.

>> Leonardo da Vinci

>Was an expert in his fields at the time. He spent many many hours studying anatomy and nature.

Yes, but he didn't have an advanced degree in those fields. And he didn't need one. That was more my point (which perhaps I could have made more clearly): We use a lot of over-credentialing and job-titling to filter who is taken seriously in contributing to certain fields, especially in the sciences. Other fields, like software development or entrepreneurship, have much lower barriers to entry and see more disruptive innovation and change, which leads to faster progress.

Having spent about 9 years becoming an expert in risk management, I have credentials, but they have very little to do with my actual ability to do the job or not. And having too many people with similar backgrounds in a room (or an industry) can lead to insular thinking.

Maybe I'll write a follow-up post about this. Thank you for your comment. And an especially good point re: Galileo. You're right.

Huge thank you for making this book freely available via download. So glad I clicked through.

Hopefully it's not like Ender's Game :-)

Trying it out, though.

Happy to hear it!

Yeah, re: the dropout rate, I think registering for a MOOC is more like browsing a book than registering for a college class. If I get through week 3 or 4 and take a midterm, then I find I tend to stick with the MOOC and finish it.

Without that momentum, it gets saved for later and I sometimes return to browse the content long after the class ends. More like a book.

This archived course on Coursera: Startup Engineering:

https://www.coursera.org/course/startup

You can still sign up and access the PDFs, which are a goldmine of information.

Do you really think spontaneous remission is a random miracle? A scientist actually looked at the data and wrote this book: http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Remission-Surviving-Cancer-Aga...

Typically there is a lot of work involved in "spontaneous" remission.

But yes, it's likely we can't eliminate cells' mistakes, just prevent, detect and fix them better in the future.

I agree, if it were me I'd be begging doctors for a test drug OR begging any survivor for a blood transfusion. You're already at serious risk, this is the moment when you try.

I also think the patient should have had a say in this -- they never even asked him what he wanted to do or mentioned that this was a possibility. He was a doctor and could have given informed consent.

I agree, it is uninspiring that harmful products stay on the market if they are definitively harmful.

The best (least unhealthy) liquid hand soap I have found is Deep Steep. The best bar soap I think is Kiss My Face Olive Oil Soap (messes up the soap dish though) or Grandpa's Love-My-Loofah Chlorophyll & Green Tea.

It sounds like you are already doing what you want to be doing (startups). Also, your skills are "soft skills" and you already have them and clearly can use them in a practical setting.

I'm not sure what you'd gain from grad school, except connections if you attend, e.g., Stanford business school. I doubt an MBA would improve your technical ability. Is it a dream of yours to go? Is your current startup making money? How invested are you in the current startup?

YMMV: I went to grad school for a technical degree and enjoyed it, but I wasn't doing anything majorly compelling beforehand. My one regret is that I didn't start a startup with all the time I had while at grad school. I'm correcting that error now, but it's a significant disruption of my life.

I agree it does not seem fair, although if they now use this drug more broadly for everyone who's infected, it would be worth the unfairness. I also think Sheik Umar Khan, who was Sierra Leone's head doctor on this, deserved a chance -- surprised he did not try a blood transfusion from a survivor.

I'm not sure why wind and solar power are always mentioned together, other than they both are forms of "alt energy."

From a U.S. perspective, solar power is less productive in the eastern half of the U.S., so I'm not sure why we haven't just concentrated on blanketing stretches of desert in the U.S. West with solar farms. This is the highest-reward area, not attaching solar panels to someone's roof in Wisconsin. I think that focusing on high-yield areas with lots of sunlight might be one way to make costs fall. Done right, it might fairly well take care of much of our energy needs.

Source: http://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html

Conversely, I don't think wind power can come close to taking care of large percentages of our energy needs. It's subsidized, so it happens, but it's not The Answer (imho).

I wonder if they are using or would consider using blood plasma from Ebola survivors to help people survive. See this article:

http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.f...

There is more of a critical mass of recent Ebola survivors than ever before in history.

I know cultural fears can make it difficult to provide plasma transfusions, but this story is about a doctor who has Ebola. He almost certainly understands the science, and this could give him more of a fighting chance and a chance to show that medicine can help.