post on Josh Mitteldorf's blog

The thing is, that there appear to be quality control mechanisms that ensure dysfunctional mitochondria are eliminated.

“Thus, suggesting that mitochondrial dysfunction is a good enough reason for eliminating mitochondria and as Dr. Skulachev says, mitochondria follow the samurai’s law; “it’s better to die than to be wrong”.”-Mitoptosis, a Novel Mitochondrial Death Mechanism Leading Predominantly to Activation of Autophagy, 2012

We already have the sequences of animals(bowhead whale) that appear to live for multiple centuries, and that according to some do not even appear to age. As far as I know, I’ve not heard of evidence of mitosens like solutions having evolved to allow such extreme longevity. Even in mammals, afaik, humans do not have further mitochondria genes transferred to the nucleus compared to shorter lived species like bonobos or mice, the solution to extend lifespan proposed in mitosens, iirc.

For all we know the only reason mitochondria dysfunction might occur is either inheritance of sufficient mutation load from parents or age related downregulation of quality control mechanisms.-Darian S, link to source

cool tech vid

Best ps4 graphics e3 2015

Watch in fullscreen 1080p directly on youtube for a better experience.

Article on conscious perception

What this means is that the brain samples the world in rhythmic pulses, perhaps even discrete time chunks, much like the individual frames of a movie. From the brain’s perspective, experience is not continuous but quantized.

Another clue that led to this discovery was the so-called wagon-wheel illusion, in which the spokes on a wheel are sometimes perceived to reverse the direction of their rotation. This illusion is easy to induce with a strobe light if the rotation of the wheel is such that each strobe flash captures the spoke location slightly behind the location captured on the previous flash, leading to the perception of reverse motion. The illusion results from “sampling” the scene in discrete frames or time chunks.

 The telling fact, for perceptual scientists, is that this illusion can also occur during normal observation of a rotating wheel, in full daylight. This suggests that the brain itself, even in the absence of a strobe light, is sampling the world in discrete chunks...-nytimes

Interesting article on perception and likely discreteness of it.