#ja relevant

[salamanderinspace]

The work could have implications for research on aging, said Buck professor Gordon Lithgow. His lab studies tiny nematode worms in order to uncover genes and small molecules that prolong lifespan. As an example, Lithgow sites the Caenorhabditis family of nematodes which contains widely divergent species, some of which have significant differences in lifespan. "These animals have incredibly different genomes, even though they look identical under the microscope," he said. "Tools like this give us an opportunity to compare their DNA -- what are the genes that account for their lifespan changes? It's the first step in understanding how we might exploit those differences in order to extend healthspan.

A New Method Furthers Understanding of Evolutionary Genetics, Science Daily

[salamanderinspace]

Russian space music.

[salamanderinspace]

"Natural human mentality is tuned for a life span's progression from impressionable plasticity to self-assured rigidity, and thus is unpromising material for immortality. It would have to be reprogrammed for continual adaptability to be long viable. Whereas a transient mortal organism can leave the task of adaptation to the external process of mutation and natural selection, a mind that aspired to immortality, whether it traces its beginnings to a mortal human being or is a completely artificial creation, must be prepared to adapt constantly from the inside."

-Hans Moravec, Mind Children [10]

Came across this in my reading.  It seems like there’s a lot of thought that points toward perpetually juvenille psyche in (potentially) immortal humans.  It makes sense.  Children are known to adapt quickly to massive epistemological change; young children, especially, learn and remember new languages and skills with remarkable speed and relative comfort.  When extending a human lifespan (either in fiction, or in the whimsical predictions of transhumanist metaphysics) the first question always seems to be, what age is considered adolescent?  When does childhood end?

And if your lifespan is potentially infinite, why would it end?

[abrassaxe]

Daphne Guiness - Evening in Space

Tumblr user youthquakeroats directed me to check this out, and uh, can I say... Jupiter Ascending aesthetic, much? It gets quite nsfw toward the end, so be warned, but holy crap, would you look at all that glitter.