SUBJ: He did not cry “Fire”, nor did he make it a duty for everyone to doubt
SUBtitle: Missed my birthday
A traveler should have a hog’s nose, a deer’s legs, and an ass’s back. Poor Richard’s |Almanac
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SHORT NOTES:
1..It’s my birthday today, 77 and going strong. Please subscribe for $1/week.
2.. Chocolate no longer the new vegetable!
3.. Fewer neural states may contribute to older adults experiencing time as passing more quickly.
4..A retinal implant has restored vision for advanced macular degeneration.
5..Israel’s average life expectancy is 83.8 years.
6..Device for bladder cancer treatment. MY TRIUMPH SUPPLEMENT PREVENTS RECURRENCE OF BLADDER CANCER.
7..Successful treatment for essential tremor.
8..The auditory cortexvchanges how it operates when we focus on a task.
LONG NOTES:
It’s my birthday today, 77 and going strong. Please subscribe for $1/week. My gift to you – my favorite quotation since I was a new high school graduate: May 20, 1966
He did not cry “Fire”, nor did he make it a duty for everyone to doubt; for Descartes was a quiet and solitary thinker, not a bellowing night-watchman; he modestly admitted that his method had importance for him alone and was justified in part by the bungled knowledge of his earlier years.
Let no one think that I am here about to propound a method which everyone ought to follow in order to govern his reason aright; for I have merely the intention of expounding the method I myself have followed.
Most people live dejectedly in lonely sorrow and joy; they are the ones who sit along the wall and do not join in the dance. The knights of infinity are dancers and possess elevation. They make the movements upward, and fall down again; and this too is no mean pastime, nor ungraceful to behold. But whenever they fall down they are not able at once to assume the posture, they vacillate an instant, and this vacillation shows that after all they are strangers in the world. This is more or less strikingly evident in proportion to the art they possess, but even the most artistic knights cannot altogether conceal this vacillation.
It would not be difficult for me, however, to write a whole book, were I to examine the various misunderstandings, the preposterous attitudes, the deceptive movements, which I have encountered during my brief practice. He whose soul has not this romantic enthusiasm has sold his soul, whether he got a kingdom for it or a paltry piece of silver. – Soren Kierkegaard “Fear and Trembling”
The Economist, Oct 11, 20-25, pg 78 -Dark Chocolate no longer the new vegetable! So sorry to all of my former students who heard me praise dark chocolate. New research in the COSMOS study indicates that it may not have the great health benefits previously reported in smaller studies. However, it still did reduce death from heart disease by 27%. But it states the best flavanol-boosting strategy is to eat fruits, veggies, nuts, legumes, coffee and tea.
In a study published Sept. 30 in the journal Communications Biology, scientists pulled data from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN), a long-term brain-aging research project. In total, 577 people had previously watched an excerpt from the old television series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” — specifically, eight minutes of an episode called “Bang! You’re Dead.” As the study participants watched the clip, functional MRI (fMRI) scans were recorded; these scans would provide a measure of how the participants’ brain activity changed over time. During the eight-minute clip, the brains of older participants shifted to new activity states less frequently, and those brain states lasted longer for them than they did for younger participants. This pattern was consistent across the full age range of 18 to 88 years. “This suggests that longer [and, therefore, fewer] neural states within the same period may contribute to older adults experiencing time as passing more quickly,” The more notable events occur in a given time period, the longer it subjectively seems.
A new prosthetic retinal implant has restored some vision to individuals with advanced macular degeneration in a recent study. The device, paired with special glasses, enabled many participants to read again, offering hope for those with this common cause of irreversible blindness.
People with a leading cause of blindness were able to read again thanks to a tiny wireless chip implanted in the back of the eye and specialized augmented glasses, according to study results published Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The trial involved 38 European patients, all of whom had an advanced stage of dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) known as geographic atrophy.
Israel ranks 4th in OECD for life expectancy. Israel spends less than most OECD countries on health, yet it has one of the lowest levels of infant mortality, heart disease mortality, and preventable deaths. Israel’s average life expectancy is 83.8 years – almost a year more than in 2023 and the fourth highest in the OECD.
Breakthrough device for bladder cancer treatment. (TY Ron M) Israel’s CAPS Medical (see here previously) has received FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for its its PlasmaSure™ System to treat low- to intermediate-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). TRAGIC FEW REALIZE MY TRIUMPH SUPPLEMENT PREVENTS RECURRENCE OF BLADDER CANCER.
Creator Lord Julian Fellowes was successfully treated for essential tremor at St. Mary’s Hospital, London with the incisionless focused ultrasound therapy from Israel’s Insightec. He had lost the ability to write by hand due to involuntary shaking.
Be smart – pay attention. A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem shows that the auditory cortex, one of the brain’s main sound-processing centers, changes how it operates when we focus on a task. It synchronizes its activity to the rhythm of the task rather than merely reacting to sounds.
