Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: food

Global food production is one of the key societal challenges of the 21st century. A growing world population with the simultaneous upheaval caused by climate change demand new methods of cultivating crops in regions with unfavourable climates. A closed greenhouse is a good way of growing food in deserts and low-temperature regions – as would be the case on missions to the Moon and Mars – as it permits harvesting regardless of the weather, the Sun and specific seasons. In a closed greenhouse, water consumption is immensely reduced and there is no need for pesticides and insecticides. This kind of model greenhouse will set off for the Antarctic at the end of 2017 for a year of long-term testing under extreme conditions as part of the EDEN-ISS project. Unparalleled elsewhere in the world, this Antarctic greenhouse was presented to the public for the first time at the Bremen site of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) on 7 July 2017.

“DLR is pursuing application-oriented research within the EDEN-ISS project. Its purpose is to bring fresh impetus to food production on Earth and for human space flight,” says Hansjörg Dittus, DLR Executive Board Member for Space Research and Technology. “In doing so, we are advancing the cause of a key technology that will provide a fresh diet to inhabitants of climatically harsh regions – in our case the Antarctic – as well as to astronauts on future long-term missions.”

A year on the eternal ice.

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This is the oldest and largest art magazine by circulation in the world. For the first time, it has #transhumanism in its search engines. A main task of mine all these years has been spreading that word and concept. My talk at #Moogfest on the Immortality Bus is covered a bit in this story.

L ast month, as bidding was underway at Sotheby’s for what would prove to be a stratospheric Jean-Michel Basquiat sale, Lonnie Holley, a 67-year-old artist who was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and has worked for decades in various folksy and homegrown modes, was preparing to take the stage at a sports bar in Durham, North Carolina. He was sitting at a table in the back, in a place that stank of burgers and beer. An audience of a few dozen had convened for the occasion, though it was hard to distinguish between Holley fans and regular denizens of the Bullpen, a joint next door to the stadium for the beloved local minor-league baseball team, the Durham Bulls. Night-game lights were bright outside. Televisions above the bar showed the Bulls making easy work of the Gwinnett Braves, in town for a weekend series from Georgia. The air was thick and languid in the way it tends to be on a deep, hot Southern summer night.

Holley is a hero to some: as an artist, he has made formidable paintings and sculptures that have been collected by the Souls Grow Deep Foundation and exhibited by museums and institutions all over, and as a musician, he has forged an unforgettable sound with a stirring voice and stewing electronics. For all his accomplishments, though, Holley remains underappreciated—certainly not as known in the worlds of either art or music as he should be.

So first came an introduction. Tim Duffy, the founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization devoted to preserving musical traditions of the South, took to a microphone and lavished Holley with praise, running down a list of laurels and markers of a legacy still in the making. “Thumbs up for Mother Universe,” Duffy said, thankful for the cosmic conception of an artist he clearly revered.

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Artificial meat and food may be among our best tools to solve the problems of animal cruelty, feeding a growing population, and (in part) global warming. What do vegans and vegetarians think? In favour of cruelty-free lab-grown meat, or against it by principle?

I often say that I am not a fan of ‘-isms’. Not even those supporting the causes I care for, such as transhumanism. I sympathise with some ‘-isms’ (again, such as transhumanism), but I never consider myself a ‘something-ist’. The reason is that, generally, ‘-isms’ have two problems. The first problem is that they almost always support at least some ideas, or make certain claims, which I disagree with or find too fanciful (certain acceptations of ‘mind uploading’ come to mind, but that’s a story for another post). The second problem is that, if you say you’re a something-ist, people will almost surely assume that you endorse, or believe in, some ideas that are really not your thing, merely because such ideas are either an integral part of the relevant something-ism, or are what people think something-ism is about (which may or may not be true). Not to mention the fact that people often regard the dictionary as the ultimate authority on what ‘real’ something-ism is about, cheerfully ignoring all its variants and flavours (which often blur into mainstream something-ism and each other), whose proponents are usually well persuaded that their own something-ism is the real thing—others just got it wrong.

There’s actually a third problem too. Namely, that if they’re not careful, something-ists who are a bit too zealous might end up putting their ideology before the reasons they embraced it in the first place. Sometimes, this can undermine the very objective something-ists intended to achieve with their embracing the ideology and spreading it left and right.

I had a brilliant example of this phenomenon one time when, while having lunch at a vegetarian restaurant (or vegan, I’m not sure), I mentioned lab-grown meat to my friend. My friend is a vegetarian (or vegan, I’m again not sure), whereas I am not. Vegetarianism and veganism are, obviously, two ‘-isms’; as a corollary of the above, I’m neither a vegetarian, nor a vegan. (Although again according to the above, perhaps I should say ‘vegetarianist’…) I’m not just quibbling about definitions: I do indeed eat animal products of pretty much all kinds. This, however, doesn’t prevent me from sympathising with the cause of vegetarians and vegans who are such because they’re against animal cruelty. Quite frankly, even if animals are raised in the best possible way, and are then killed in the nicest possible way (whatever that means), eating them is still at odds with my own moral compass. Even though I do eat them.

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I’m scheduled to give a short speech here tomorrow in Los Angeles. I’ve been told it’s a free event with fun festivities and food. My talk should be sometime between 12:30PM and 1:30PM. Join me in celebrating seniors and telling them about the importance of maximum longevity.

Free Food! Free Classic Car Show! Free Concert! Free Giveaways! Free Entertainment! Father’s Day Tribute! Veterans Tribute! Free Seminars! Surprise Special Guest!!!!!

Saturday, June 17th 2017, from 11am to 3pm at the “Expo” Ahmanson Senior Center, “Next to the LA Coliseum”, 3990 Bill Robertson Ln, Los Angeles CA 90037 - Seniors on the Move Today and Care Match America, along with many Partners, will host the first “Love a Senior Day!”

Bring your Grandparents, Mom, Dad, and Friends, to this Event! Joining us: A “Who’s Who” of caring Dignitaries, Political Leaders, your favorite Business, and amazing Senior Organizations!

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Robot arms have come a long way since the 1960’s when George C. Devol and Joseph Engelberger created the earliest industrial models. Those had two-finger grippers that, in retrospect, look fit to pluck a rubber ducky out of a bin in a carnival game, but nothing too sophisticated.

By now, robots in factories and warehouses can adjust their grip like human hands, or use suction and pliable materials to move objects wherever they need to go. Problems arise, however, when objects are porous, tiny, or need to be placed with great precision, as with materials handling in textiles, food, automotive and electronics manufacturing.

A startup called Grabit Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., gets around problems with robot dexterity and grip by employing “electroadhesion” to move different materials. Yes, that’s the force that lifts strands of your hair away from your scalp when you rub a balloon on your head.

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Let’s be honest: while planting your garden can be fun, weeding it usually isn’t. Not unless you enjoy crouching down for long stretches, anyway. You might not have to endure the drudgery for too much longer, though. Roomba co-creator Joe Jones and Franklin Robotics are launching Tertill, a robot that weeds your garden all by itself. The machine automatically roams the soil, using sensors to identify small plants (you use collars to protect young crops) and chop them down. It’s solar-powered, so you don’t have to dock it — you can even leave it out in the rain.

In addition to pairing with your phone through Bluetooth, the machine has a USB port to charge during particularly gloomy weeks.

The design does require some careful planning to work properly. You need to space your crops loosely so that the robot can kill weeds in between, and you’ll want to avoid any steep inclines so Tertill doesn’t stuck. There will have to be some kind of basic barrier to prevent the vehicle from wandering away, too. You may also have to rethink how you kill weeds. While you’re probably used to pulling weeds out by the roots, Franklin is counting on its bot repeatedly cutting down weeds until they wither and die.

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