Dan Bartlett › Comments

It’s difficult to talk about how to get started with a project without addressing why it can feel so difficult to get started in the first place. And, as I said in the talk, I think this often comes down to perceived barriers. Barriers to even the most modest kind of starting. Barriers that seem entirely real, external, and immovable... - Dan Bartlett

A call to recognise and engage the developmental process itself, as opposed to the religious trappings that are associated with the many varying levels of religion. - Dan Bartlett

DNA is built from a set of twenty amino acids - the first ten of those can create simple prebiotic life, and now it seems that those ten are thermodynamically destined to occur wherever they can. - Dan Bartlett

Do we really believe we can awaken? Stephan Bodian talks with popular lay teacher Adyashanti. - Dan Bartlett

The hot new field of evolutionary psychology is coming under attack from all sides. Let’s just make sure we don't throw the baby of evolutionary thinking out with the bathwater of questionable science. - Dan Bartlett

The emergence of epigenetics represents a fundamental rethinking of how molecular biology works. Scientists have learned that while DNA remains the basic text of life, the script is often controlled by stage directions embedded in a layer of biochemicals that, roughly speaking, sit on top of the DNA. These modifications, called epimutations, can turn genes on and off, often at inappropriate times. In other words, epigenetics has introduced the startling idea that it's not just the book of life (in the form of DNA) that's important, but how the book is packaged. - Dan Bartlett

The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves. - Dan Bartlett

[9 min video, vimeo] We stand at a crossroads. Cities must change radically to achieve long-term sustainability. Energy, food and water sources, transportation systems and basic infrastructure, must all adapt to emerging pressures from climate change, dwindling resources and growing urban populations. Mitchell Joachim is an architect and urban designer as well as a partner in Terreform, a New York–based organization for philanthropic architecture and ecological design. His design of a compact, stackable “city car,” developed with the MIT Smart Cities Group, won the 2007 Time Magazine Best Invention of the Year. - Dan Bartlett

Great visual post showing the costs of a high-carb low-fat food culture. Cut the carbs, get back to real fats. - Dan Bartlett

Life for Warwick’s robot began when his team at the University of Reading spread rat neurons onto an array of electrodes. After about 20 minutes, the neurons began to form connections with one another. “It’s an innate response of the neurons,” says Warwick, “they try to link up and start communicating.” - Dan Bartlett

Web site Academic Earth is like Hulu for academic lectures, pulling free lectures from Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale into one attractive, easy to navigate site. - Dan Bartlett

So how I would advise someone to repair their immune system after a lifetime of destroying it? What can one do over the course of, say, 3 months to turn around (or at least start to turn around) the damage of years and years of poor diet, poor habits, and poor health? - Dan Bartlett

Short, excellent diagnosis of mainstream media idiocy. - Dan Bartlett

The NIF uses an array of 192 precisely timed lasers to bombard a fusion pellet target with four million joules of energy in only a few thousand-billionths of a second (picoseconds). This results in a power of half a petawatt, which doesn't sound big to you only because petawatts are so immense youve never had to hear of them before. Put it this way: New York citys entire electrical consumption runs at about four millionths of a petawatt. - Dan Bartlett

One of this chap's conclusions: There must exist, beyond mere appearances … a veiled reality that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly. In turn, contrary to those who claim that matter is the only reality, the possibility that other means, including spirituality, may also provide a window on ultimate reality cannot be ruled out, even by cogent scientific arguments. - Dan Bartlett

Bacteria and humans tend to live in highly diverse and complex communities. Most interestingly, bacteria and humans appear to prefer to live in a democracy. This is the basic message of a new article in Nature. The article reports that initial high community evenness is a key factor in preserving functional stability of an ecosystem in the face of selective stress. - Dan Bartlett

Great page of advice by Ran Prieur. I also follow a WAPF style diet. - Dan Bartlett

When they combined the values for the 12 most common cancers, they estimated that 39% of UK cancers are preventable, while 34% of US cancers, 30% of Brazilian cancers, and 27% of Chinese cancers could be avoided. - Dan Bartlett

So in a few years everyones twitter client will have the ability to sort/search through the entire twitter flood in real time bringing you threads of conversations happening right NOW on what most interests you. You in turn can respond to those tweets and everyone who wants to can in turn respond to you. If the client is smart enough, it will filter and display all of this real-time streaming conversation with very colorful and soothing visualizations to maximize your relevant connections at any given time. This is really difficult to imagine, precisely because nothing like it has ever been possible before. - Dan Bartlett

The answers to future growth and wealth production are decentralization via localization, regeneration, remediation, renewables, and cybernation all of which results in greater resiliency. - Dan Bartlett

As it says. Creepily awesome. - Dan Bartlett

Huge implications - the whole book industry may be about to enter a new age. Bring it on! Vince Horn wrote another great article on this topic 3 years ago! See http://is.gd/iKwU - Dan Bartlett

Taking the drug ecstasy is no more dangerous than riding a horse, a senior advisor has suggested. - Dan Bartlett

Fantastic graphic visualisations of the DNA processes taking place within all your cells as you read this! Reminds me of the first computers, where they would use punch-cards to feed information into the system. - Dan Bartlett

Is peak oil--the inexorable decline in global oil production--a cause of our troubles, or merely a symptom of a deeper cause? - Dan Bartlett

Excellent research showing that drug addiction is caused by environmental stresses. - Dan Bartlett

A good review of the kick-ass Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha by Daniel Ingram, recently released as a paperback through Aeon Books. Read review. Read MCTB for free online or buy it. Get insight. (Or get a bit high on breath first.) - Dan Bartlett

Nearly the funniest thing I have ever read. Tears streaming down my face. - Dan Bartlett

Another mindblowing post from Kevin Kelly, and the reason all smart dudes should be hooked up to his RSS feed. - Dan Bartlett

More on epigenetics and non-genetic inheritance: just how identical are identical twins? The answer is not as identical as you might think. Moreover, the differences may help to illuminate a process called epigenesis, which allows characteristics to be inherited in a way that is partly independent of the composition of their DNA. - Dan Bartlett