Mitch Gann’s

A week after I wrote about Ray Kurzweil here, the New York Times picked up the scent in “The Coming Superbrain.”

The NYT article by John Markoff discusses the rebirth of scientific interest in artificial intelligence, which had a bad spell after initial rosy forecasts did not pan out.  But will a self-aware superbrain emerge any time soon, and will it be nice or nasty?  Markoff notes that this question is moving from  science fiction into reality.  He brings in Kurzweil about half way through the article.  Through his sources, Markoff expresses skepticism about Kurzweil’s idea of living long enough to live forever. For instance, the article concludes with a quote from robotics expert Gary Bradski: “Kurzweil will probably die, along with the rest of us not too long before the ‘great dawn’ . . . . Life’s not fair.”

In truth, it is easy to be skeptical about living forever.  No one has ever done it.  Even the most optimistic religions present heaven in terms of “life after death.”  Kurzweil is cutting out the death part.  As I said, it’s easy to be skeptical.

Markoff focuses on the issue of emerging artificial intelligence and Kurzweil’s notion of humans and computers mind-melding somehow or other. But in his book, Kurzweil spends as much time discussing two other technologies — genetics and nanotech — which he argues will provide a “bridge” to the joining of human and machine minds. How much of a difference that makes, I don’t know.

Markoff provides a link to a trailer of “Transcendent Man,” an entry at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival that explores the debate over Kurzweil — is he the crackpot prophet of a new religion or a legitimate scientific investigator?

I have been reading a book this week — the old-fashion kind with paper pages — Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near (2005).  Kurzweil is an inventor, futurist and Baby Boomer who believes that he and other Boomers just might be able to live long enough to live forever.

Even though the book was a best-seller in 2005 and proclaimed the 13th most blogged about book of 2005 by the NY Times, I somehow missed it. I had heard of or read eight of the first twelve books on the list, so it isn’t that I am completely out of the loop.  (Oddly, the 14th most blogged about book for that year was Orwell’s 1984.  This suggests to me that there is a lot of paranoia on the Web.)

Anyway, I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about Kurzweil until recently because living forever happens to be one of my ambitions. According to Kurzweil, we just may be able to do it; “we” includes Baby Boomers who take care of themselves enough to last another 30 years or so.  By then, accelerating advances in bio-tech, nano-tech and computer science should guarantee anyone who wants it immortality.  You will, of course, have to get intimate with machines; that is, become a machine yourself. Some may see this as a drawback, especially if you get stuck in a computer running, say, Windows 2038. (I think this will be one time to spend a little more and go with a Mac.) Then there is the question of room-mates. What if you get stuck with neighbors you can’t stand and you can’t get away from them ever for all time? However, from the scientific perspective, being dead also has clear drawbacks for any organism. And it makes it harder to get credit or a good table.

Kurzweil calls this approaching change the “Singularity” because it will be a one-time event in human history — perhaps in the history of the universe. He thinks that the destiny of the universe is to achieve a maximum state of information.  Merging human intelligence (including emotional intelligence) with artificial intelligence is a big step toward fulfilling that destiny.

It sounds a little nuts in summary — a geeky, secular version of The Rapture. And there is a risk that if we don’t handle things just right, trillions of malevolent nanobots will take over and destroy us all.  Those of us who are getting up there in years and facing oblivion in the next couple of decades, give or take, may be willing to accept the risk. But is it right to gamble the future of humanity to achieve personal immortality?  Or for once in our self-centered lives, ought we just to go gentle into that good night?

Newsweek, in a story about its latest political poll, is reporting that Barack Obama has opened up a 15 percentage point lead among registered voters. In contrast, notes Newsweek, during June 2004, John Kerry held only a six point lead over President Bush in the same poll. At this point in 2000, Al Gore and Bush were in a dead-heat.

Newsweek acknowledges that its poll shows a much greater lead for Obama than other national polls, but insists that Barack’s Bounce is real and far beyond the poll’s four point margin of error.

I downloaded the PDF of the poll results and took a look.

Among independent voters, Obama leads 48% to 36%. Among men voters, Obama leads 47% to 40% and among women voters, 54% to 33%.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters prefer Obama over McCain by a 69% to 18% margin.

Now comes the rub: age. Younger voters (18-39) are going for Obama by a ratio of greater than two to one. But the middle-aged and older voters — the voters who actually show up to vote — display a much lower degree of Obama-mania. They give the younger candidate the nod, but by a margin that is within the poll’s margin of error. And twice as many over-40 voters are undecided as compared to the under-40 voters.

So, a considerable chunk of Obama’s lead is among younger, less reliable voters. Newsweek admits that “the two candidates are statistically tied among older voters,” but makes nothing of it. What I would make out of it is this: Newsweek is polling registered voters, not likely voters. Now, it could be that the young people will turn out this November in great numbers, on a par with their elders, even though they never have before. Sure, it could.

But don’t bet on it, Barack. Youth is fickle. Go for the mature types — the grizzled ones who know which school gym to line up to vote in.

“Substance in Red Wine, Resveratrol, Found to Keep Hearts Young” (Science Daily):

How, scientists wonder, do the French get away with a clean bill of heart health despite a diet loaded with saturated fats?

The answer to the so-called “French paradox” may be found in red wine. More specifically, it may reside in small doses of resveratrol, a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates, red wine and other foods, according to a new study by an international team of researchers.

What’s new here is the “small doses” finding. Previously, it was thought that you needed to down several buckets of red wine a day to see any heart benefits. The cost to your liver seemed to offset any heart gains. But now it looks like a glass or two of red wine each day will do the trick. As one scientist quoted in the article puts it, “This brings down the dose of resveratrol toward the consumption reality mode.”

And it looks like the benefits go beyond the heart. Low doses of resveratrol apparently give much the same general anti-aging benefits as a restricted calorie diet (a diet with 20-30% fewer calories than the norm).

Let’s see — reduce my food intake by one-fifth or drink a glass of wine every day . . . What to do, what to do . . .

Cathy AJ, who is barely a boomer having come into the world the year that JFK checked out of it (that would be 1963 but if I have to tell you that, you are no kind of boomer), notes that she only meets two of the 25 Signs that You are Getting Old: she has a car with a built-in compass and she can read the newspaper without arm-extenders.

Given her relative youth, I am shocked — shocked, I say — that Cathy meets even these two criteria of emergent decrepitude. I don’t have a compass in my car, though somebody gave me one once. I have it here somewhere . . . . And I can read the paper fine with the arms I have. I just need to take off my glasses and hold the paper against my nose. Maybe a little closer.

“Jokes for Baby Boomers” is a “lense” at Squidoo whose name says it all. Well, mostly all. There is a little more to the site than just jokes for boomers; there are also links to other Boomer lenses, ads aimed at Boomers, and comments by appreciative Boomer readers. But mostly it has jokes and funny lists like You are getting old when . . . (”You and your teeth don’t sleep together”) or 25 signs that you are getting old (#5. “You are proud of your lawn mower”). There are apparently several Boomer lenses on Squidoo, which is a site where anyone can create a nicely structured, well-focused and useful page for free. They call those pages “lenses.” You can even make money with them.

Just for the record, my teeth and I still sleep together and I am constantly embarrassed by my lawn mower. I can’t take it anywhere.

What Happened the Year You Were Born is a website that answers its title question only for those of us lucky enough to be born between 1946 and 1964. Baby Boomers, in other words. Take 1952. This was the year that Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine. Hemingway published The Old Man and the Sea. Richard Nixon defended himself on national TV with his “Checkers” speech. The U.S. exploded the world’s first hydrogen bomb and Great Britain developed an atomic bomb. The Korean War dragged on. Ike was liked enough to be elected to his first-term as President. Somewhere in that muddle of the good, the bad and the highly explosive, I was born.

“Mother’s Day money advice” The Christian Science Monitor:

While greeting their college graduates back home, [Baby Boomer] mothers also assume economic responsibilities for the care of an aging parent, grandparent, or relative. A 2008 study indicated that almost 3 out of 10 baby-boomer mothers now fit the term “sandwich generation,” supporting a child under the age of 18 and a parent or grandparent.

Seventy-five percent of caregivers are women, assuming weighty financial obligations. Long-distance annual caregiver expenses were almost $9,000, with caregiver expenses for someone living nearby half that amount, according to a 2007 study by Evercare and the National Alliance for Care-giving. The majority of mothers will provide care for three or more years. And they frequently trade off a secure retirement to financially support an aging parent, taking out loans or increasing credit-card debt.

Comment: Not for the first time, I’m glad I’m a dad. But enjoy your day, Moms. If it were up to me, you would get two.