Immortality by 2045? Russian scientists think it's possible. [Longevity]

Immortality by 2045? Russian scientists think it's possible. [Longevity]:
Do you want to live forever? Are you on Forbes' World Billionaire List? Holy crap, have we got an opportunity for you.
Entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov and a team of Russia's leading scientists want to make humans immortal. They call it the 2045 initiative, and they plan to create a fully functional, holographic human avatar, complete with an artificial brain chock full of your own thoughts, passions, fears, opinions, emotions and memories. Your total conscious — and, presumably, subconscious — being. Their deadline is 2045.
The project milestones are depicted in the image up top. And yes, Itskov and his colleagues are completely serious. Completely serious, and in need of money:
"Honorable businessmen and businesswomen, members of the Forbes richest list: human life is unique and priceless," writes Itskov in an open letter to the world's 1,226 wealthiest citizens. "It is only when we have to part with life do we realize just how much we have not done, that we have not had enough time to do what we really wanted or to address something we've done wrong." He continues:

I urge you to take note of the vital importance of funding scientific development in the field of cybernetic immortality and the artificial body. Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death.
Contributing to cutting-edge innovations in the fields of neuroscience, nanotechnology and android robotics is more than building a brighter future for human civilization, but also a wise and profitable business strategy that will create a new and vibrant industry of immortality - limitless in its importance and scale. This kind of investment will change every aspect of business as we know it: the pharmaceutical industries, transportation, medicine, energy generation, construction techniques, to cite a few.

If it sounds crazy to you, that's because it is. Totally, absolutely, batshit crazy. Then again, we live in a time of rocket-powered sky cranes and artifically enhanced super-athletes — who's to say Itskov and co. aren't on to something revolutionary, here? Ray Kurzweil, for one, is convinced. The question, now, is whether Itskov can get the money he needs to deliver on his goals. Fundraising results aside, the 2045 Initiative has a very, very long road ahead of it; the world's most advanced brain-machine interfaces are, after all, still incredibly rudimentary, nevermind the implications of actually building a human brain.
Then there's that whole issue of mortality. Who among us really, truly, actually wants to live forever? It's an important question, with strong supporting arguments for both camps, but for thousands of years it's been a purely hypothetical scenario. Is it time we started taking it a little more seriously?

Iggy Pop's entire Star Trek acting career, in under 3 minutes [Video]

Iggy Pop's entire Star Trek acting career, in under 3 minutes [Video]:




In the 1970s, beanpole rock legend Iggy Pop provided animalistic shrieks for his band The Stooges, whipped his genitalia out, and rolled around in broken glass and bloody peanut butter. And in 1997, Pop would guest-star on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the request of DS9 bigwig Ira Steven Behr (below).

Pop's role? Yelgrun, a Vorta negotiator in charge of a prisoner exchange with the Ferengi. Watch as the man who knows how to dance like a Satanically possessed cobra act as stoically extraterrestrial as possible. There's sadly no singing, but Iggy — as Michelle Trachtenberg's father — did serenade the prom on the Nickelodeon children's show The Adventures of Pete and Pete.
[Via Dangerous Minds]

Comic for August 30, 2012

Comic for August 30, 2012:

Why Remakes Are One of Our Greatest Achievements as a Civilization [Open Channel]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/io9/vip/~3/oKX-KAGjeDw/why-remakes-are-one-of-our-greatest-achievements-as-a-civilization

Spec Ops: The Line dev lashes out at “cancerous” multiplayer mode pushed by 2K

Yes. This. What is the point in every game having a multiplayer section that nobody plays?

Spec Ops: The Line dev lashes out at “cancerous” multiplayer mode pushed by 2K:

The lead designer of Spec Ops: The Line, Cory Davis has been talking to Polygon about the game’s multiplayer mode. He claims that it was an unwanted, uncared for, tacked on addition that undermined the gravity of the single player experience, and attacks 2k for consistently pushing for multiplayer against the developers’ judgement. After reading his comments, it’s hard to see how he could put his disagreement with 2K more adamantly. Here goes.
“The multiplayer mode of Spec Ops: The Line was never a focus of the development,” Davis told Polygon, “but the publisher was determined to have it anyway. It was literally a check box that the financial predictions said we needed, and 2K was relentless in making sure that it happened — even at the detriment of the overall project and the perception of the game.”
Davis labelled the multiplayer mode a “low-quality Call of Duty clone in third-person” that “sheds a negative light on all of the meaningful things we did in the single-player experience.”
Spec Ops: The Line was a fairly decent shooter with an interesting knack for putting players on the spot. Its deliberatly ugly methods of documenting its protagonist’s Heart of Darkness style descent into madness were refreshing, especially when contrasted with the lack of imagination shown by most military shooters. Davis labasted the multiplayer for betraying Yager’s original mission statement.
“The multiplayer game’s tone is entirely different,” he said. “The game mechanics were raped to make it happen, and it was a waste of money. No one is playing it, and I don’t even feel like it’s part of the overall package — it’s another game rammed onto the disk like a cancerous growth, threatening to destroy the best things about the experience that the team at Yager put their heart and souls into creating.”
Blimey. For many publishers, multiplayer modes are an absolute must, even in games where they don’t entirely fit. Take Bioshock 2′s weird arena mode, for example. But do you think that a shoddy multiplayer mode actually undermines and diminishes the efforts of the single player campaign?

OnLive lost: how the paradise of streaming games was undone by one man's ego | The Verge

OnLive lost: how the paradise of streaming games was undone by one man's ego | The Verge

Dishonored: No Marines, No Elves, No Bank Heists

Dishonored: No Marines, No Elves, No Bank Heists: Arkane's Harvey Smith on launching new IP, the rejection of cinematic action, and why Minecraft is just like The Beatles

PlayMG launches first dedicated Android gaming portable | GamesIndustry International

So that's an android phone, but without the being a phone bit. Yeah, good luck with that.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-08-28-playmg-launches-first-dedicated-android-gaming-portable

'Retro/Grade:' If I could turn back time | The Verge

Game development costs lives! When will the government act?

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/8/23/3256633/retrograde-if-i-could-turn-back-time

Gamasutra - News - Chris Crawford reflects on a Kickstarter gone wrong

Waaaaaaaa

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176458/Chris_Crawford_reflects_on_a_Kickstarter_gone_wrong.php

Ubi - The Ubiquitous Computer - Voice-Activated & Always On by Team Ubi — Kickstarter

Ubi - The Ubiquitous Computer - Voice-Activated & Always On by Team Ubi — Kickstarter

Bill Nye: "Creationism is not Appropriate for Children" [Video]

Bill Nye: "Creationism is not Appropriate for Children" [Video]:




If the denial of evolution is holding society back, what can be done about it? According to Bill Nye, the answer lies in cutting our losses, favoring science education in our youth over stagnant arguments with benighted adults.
Here, Nye makes the astute observation that those who opt to deny evolution elect to live in a world that's much more complicated than reality, a world that's "completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe." And you know what? That's fine — provided they don't subject their children to that way of thinking. Because the truth of the matter is: we need them.
It's an interesting modus operandi, but perhaps one worthy of consideration.
[Big Think]

Monster of the Week recaps The X-Files in webcomic form [Comics Review]

Monster of the Week recaps The X-Files in webcomic form [Comics Review]:
Great shows never die; they just jump to Netflix and Hulu. Anyone who wants to relive nine seasons of The X-Files need only subscribe to a streaming video service. So how does the show hold up after all these years?
Veteran webcomicker Shaenon Garrity decided to dive into an X-Files rewatch with her pens and pencils in hand. In Monster of the Week, she recaps the supernatural adventures of Agents Mulder and Scully, with all of the alien obsession, small-town weirdos, and dubious detective work that goes with it.
Garrity is someone who knows her monsters and mad scientists. She's the creator of the long-running and now completed webcomic Narbonic, as well as co-creator of the ongoing Skin Horse. Monster of the Week is a side project, but a particularly fun one. Garrity starts from the series pilot and charges on from there, tackling those early X-Files episodes with a clear sense of affection. Yes, she addresses the Mulder as believer/Scully as skeptic dynamic, but she also pokes fun at the nonsensical plot devices, imagines what exactly is going through the redshirts...I mean guest stars' heads, and asks the question, "Why doesn't Scully just shoot stuff in every episode?"
Scully is the clear hero of these comics. She's the straight woman for all of the series' weirdness and Mulder's tendency to act like a hyperactive teenager. She's also effortlessly cool, and as quick with a jibe or a harried sigh as any of Garrity's own characters. She's Scully askew, and I wouldn't mind watching a few full-length, alternate universe X-Files episodes rewritten as a dramedy in Garrity's style.
And what if the episode is just too terrible to recap? Garrity threw out the entire Jersey Devil episode in favor of Batman fighting a Jersey Devil. Because, why not?
[Monster of the Week]

The creator of the British Life on Mars creates a new show about the cross-universe police [Life On Mars]

The creator of the British Life on Mars creates a new show about the cross-universe police [Life On Mars]:
This actually sounds amazingly promising — Matthew Graham, best known for creating the original British Life on Mars, has a deal with Fox to create a new show called Para Time. According to Heat Vision, the show "revolves around a group that polices parallel worlds." So, sliders meets police procedural? We're in. [Heat Vision]

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us [Neuroscience]

Prominent scientists sign declaration that animals have conscious awareness, just like us [Neuroscience]:
An international group of prominent scientists has signed The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they are proclaiming their support for the idea that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are — a list of animals that includes all mammals, birds, and even the octopus. But will this make us stop treating these animals in totally inhumane ways?
While it might not sound like much for scientists to declare that many nonhuman animals possess conscious states, it's the open acknowledgement that's the big news here. The body of scientific evidence is increasingly showing that most animals are conscious in the same way that we are, and it's no longer something we can ignore.
What's also very interesting about the declaration is the group's acknowledgement that consciousness can emerge in those animals that are very much unlike humans, including those that evolved along different evolutionary tracks, namely birds and some cephalopods.
"The absence of a neocortex does not appear to preclude an organism from experiencing affective states," they write, "Convergent evidence indicates that non-human animals have the neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states along with the capacity to exhibit intentional behaviors."
Consequently, say the signatories, the scientific evidence is increasingly indicating that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.
The group consists of cognitive scientists, neuropharmacologists, neurophysiologists, neuroanatomists, and computational neuroscientists — all of whom were attending the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and Non-Human Animals. The declaration was signed in the presence of Stephen Hawking, and included such signatories as Christof Koch, David Edelman, Edward Boyden, Philip Low, Irene Pepperberg, and many more.
The declaration made the following observations:

• The field of Consciousness research is rapidly evolving. Abundant new techniques and strategies for human and non-human animal research have been developed. Consequently, more data is becoming readily available, and this calls for a periodic reevaluation of previously held preconceptions in this field. Studies of non-human animals have shown that homologous brain circuits correlated with conscious experience and perception can be selectively facilitated and disrupted to assess whether they are in fact necessary for those experiences. Moreover, in humans, new non-invasive techniques are readily available to survey the correlates of consciousness.
• The neural substrates of emotions do not appear to be confined to cortical structures. In fact, subcortical neural networks aroused during affective states in humans are also critically important for generating emotional behaviors in animals. Artificial arousal of the same brain regions generates corresponding behavior and feeling states in both humans and non-human animals. Wherever in the brain one evokes instinctual emotional behaviors in non-human animals, many of the ensuing behaviors are consistent with experienced feeling states, including those internal states that are rewarding and punishing. Deep brain stimulation of these systems in humans can also generate similar affective states. Systems associated with affect are concentrated in subcortical regions where neural homologies abound. Young human and nonhuman animals without neocortices retain these brain-mind functions. Furthermore, neural circuits supporting behavioral/electrophysiological states of attentiveness, sleep and decision making appear to have arisen in evolution as early as the invertebrate radiation, being evident in insects and cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus).
• Birds appear to offer, in their behavior, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy a striking case of parallel evolution of consciousness. Evidence of near human-like levels of consciousness has been most dramatically observed in African grey parrots. Mammalian and avian emotional networks and cognitive microcircuitries appear to be far more homologous than previously thought. Moreover, certain species of birds have been found to exhibit neural sleep patterns similar to those of mammals, including REM sleep and, as was demonstrated in zebra finches, neurophysiological patterns, previously thought to require a mammalian neocortex. Magpies in articular have been shown to exhibit striking similarities to humans, great apes, dolphins, and elephants in studies of mirror self-recognition.
• In humans, the effect of certain hallucinogens appears to be associated with a disruption in cortical feedforward and feedback processing. Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans, there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness. Evidence that human and nonhuman animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.

Read more about this here and here.
H/t to Katherine Harmon of SciAM. Image via Vittorio Bruno/Shutterstock.com Inset image of elephant passing the mirror test via. Inset image of Irene Pepperberg and Alex via.

How The Dark Knight Rises should have ended [Video]

How The Dark Knight Rises should have ended [Video]:




It's time for another "How it should Have Ended" webisode. This one focuses on the problems and loop holes in The Dark Knight Rises. Some of these hits come a little too easy, but we will agree about the brilliant plan to put every cop underground. Ah well, can't win them all.