Despite the fact that many in the culture drink, smoke and eat fatty foods; experts are now hoping to crack the code. In New York, Cornell scientists will study the stem cells of almost a dozen Ashkenazi Jews who came from a heavily persecuted group with origins from Russia.

Experts believe that years of intermarriage – and the sharing of genetic traits – might have helped the group live for so long.

Usually intermarriage has the stereotype for less “attractive” traits. In general, human beings became better looking after we started travelling far and inter-mingling. Usually, the rich mated with the rich. Then said rich person would get a portrait painted, being apart of a family who can afford it. We look at the features of people from old paintings and they are different from the typical ideals of today. I’m not even talking about weight; more like the roundness of faces, distance between eyes, etc. Microevolution is noticeable from these easy to understand tidbits. How anyone could deny micro- or macroevolution by natural selection is beyond me! (It’s so blatant; one must really not want to know the truth.)

But I digress. Getting back to the genes of Ashkenazi Jews, take Lilly Port for example.

Lilly Port, who turned 98 last week, is one of the Ashkenazi Jews who will be taking part in the study, claims that she has never been ill.

‘I always had good genes,’ she said.

And even though she doesn’t smoke, she does eat bratwurst and chocolate daily and drinks white wine ‘when I want to relax’.

She told the New York Post: ‘I limit my food intake, because I want to be able to fit into my clothes, but I’m in perfect health.’

It will be some time before the results have been carefully dissected and conclusions drawn, but this survey should go some way to unlocking the code to a long life. [Read more.]

Boy, do I envy a woman who says she’s never been ill! Moreover, I wonder what the study will reveal.

I’ve been designing shoes lately. I don’t really have much else to say about that. I just wanted to let you know that – alongside the posters - I’ve been creating other stuff as well. :)

I created this poster more recently. I am also making it available as a downloadable desktop wallpaper. :) Enjoy!

Buy and view this Marie Curie “Understood not Feared” poster. (without any copyright or website info)

I think this is a fantastic quote:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Marie Curie (aka Madame Curie aka Marie Skłodowska Curie); as quoted in Our Precarious Habitat, 1973 by Melvin A. Benarde

I created this poster and wanted to share it as a wallpaper as well. :)

Buy and view this poster.

This mindless tolerance, which places observable scientific facts, subject to proof, on the same level as unprovable supernatural fantasy, has played a major role in the resurgence of both anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism.

Susan Jacoby

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.

Richard Dawkins

EDIT: Using this quote, I created a slightly different version of this poster that is now for sale.

You can see a similar grid of photos (with slideshow option) at Picasa. Music is by morgantj – The Unbroken Thread (The Molecules of Life Remix). Yes, the song features vocals by Carl Sagan and David Attenborough.

BTW, I have a new YouTube channel. I used to use interhuss but I have a new one now.

The self-centered, apathetic, uninterested. It’s hard to believe but there are enough people that don’t care because it will never effect them in a blatant way. I have some family members that, on occasion, will accept global climate change facts but that doesn’t mean they care. The politicians who deny global warming or are paid off by oil companies to hold up legislation are only aided by those citizens who simply don’t care.

And this is a problem. Every year it’s hotter than it’s ever been and it’s colder than it’s ever been. I don’t know when it’ll be too late to make a change but that’s when they’ll care. We need to get them on board so we have more power to tell those politicians who are paid off to work for Americans, not special interests.

Is there a way we can approach this?