Chris writes: Your feed has something wonky with it. I leave my PC on all the time so my podcasts can DL automatically through the night etc. Noticed lately loads of times, your podcasts keep loading themselves, even old ones, I already deleted etc.
Anyone else experiencing similar problems?
In August 2005 I interviewed Dr Aubrey de Grey, biogerontologist from the Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, UK, about his work to develop a cure for human aging. He calls it SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) and is confident that, given enough funding (a measly $100 million a year for ten years), we can make significant in-roads towards curing human aging. He and his partners have established The Methuselah Mouse Prize, a scientific competition designed to draw attention to the ability of new technologies to slow and even reverse the damage of the aging process. Back in August, Technology Review magazine issued another challenge – a prize of $20,000 for any molecular biologist working in the field of aging who could submit an intellectually serious argument that SENS is so wrong that it is unworthy of learned debate. Well this week an independent panel of judges decided that none of the three submissions received were worthy of the prize.
Who were the judges? Just a bunch of nobodies.
What does it all mean? I guess it means that, despite the derision aimed at Dr de Grey’s theories from certain members of the scientific community, no-one has been able to provide a scientific rationale sufficient to convince the panel of judges that SENS is inherently flawed. Now, I’m no biogerontologist (hell, I can hardly spell it), but I’m all for backing any serious big brain (and, in Dr de Grey’s case, a big beard as well) who thinks they might be able to delay, let alone cure, aging. Shouldn’t this be the #1 field of scientific research?
Of course, all de Grey needs to do is reverse engineer Keith Richard’s DNA. The guy IS Methuselah.
Listen to my original interview here. Read the three submissions here.
[audio:http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/audio/gday_world/Gday_World_onthepod_20050801_42_aubrey_de_grey.mp3]I had the pleasure this morning of being a guest on a pilot for a new TV show on the ABC. The hosts are Red Symons and Nathan Cochrane. It was good to finally meet Nathan in person because we have some friends in common and he’s part of the Fairfax IT mafia. It was also great to meet Red, as I’ve been a fan of his since I was a kid. For those of you who live outside Australia (or too young to remember), Red is (according to his Wikipedia profile) "probably best known as lead guitarist with the (chart-topping 70’s Australian band) Skyhooks and as the snide judge of "Red Faces", a The Gong Show-esque segment of the long-running Hey Hey It’s Saturday variety television show. He currently hosts 774 ABC Melbourne‘s breakfast show."
One thing I learned today is that he likes to spend his off-time geeking around with video editing tools and his particular thing is to take video footage of speeches from politicians and mash them up into a song. He showed me one today featuring George Bush which was brilliant, lots of 3D rendering, just amazing. And here’s an earlier one he did featuring Australian Prime Minister John "I never made that deal" Howard called "Trust". Check it out, I think it’s cutting edge stuff!
TPN (that’s The Podcast Network for those of you new around here) needs a VP to head up our US operations. The main responsibilities will be to represent TPN to venture capitalists in the US and deal with advertisers. Should have experience in either media / tech start-ups / capital markets / advertising. Here’s the thing – I can’t pay you a salary. But you will get equity in TPN and a success fee. An ideal opportunity for someone who wants to be part of the new media space. We’re the only podcasting business of any significant size that hasn’t got investors, so we are ripe for the picking, but it’s impossible to work the US markets from Australia. I intend moving to the USA ASAP but can’t afford to do it at the moment. Email me if you’re interested in the position.
Club Troppo does the world a great service by bring us this:
With completely customized lyrics including:
“Cut yer hair once a year boys”
“Don’t ill-treat me pet dingo, Ringo”
“George’s guitar is on the blink, I think”
“Prop my up by the wall, Paul”
“Keep the hits coming on, John”
Truly, a masterpiece of history.
I’m mainly writing about this over on my fitness blog, but I thought it was worth a mention here. One month ago today I decided to get hardcore about my diet again. That means getting my spreadsheet (this time with some modifications borrowed from Jeremy Zawodny) out and paying attention to how much I’m putting in my gob. The results so far have been positive – I’ve dropped 6 kgs. The best is that I am still eating pretty much anything I want – ice cream, latte, cheese, even donuts. I just eat less than I normally would and make sure my average daily KJ intake is where it needs to be in order to lose one kg a week. So far I’m ahead of my goal. Got another 7 weeks to go to hit my target weight.