Sudden Disruption


Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Emergence of Man

First posted 08-03-12





Let's start at the first primate and work our way forward:

Tiny Chinese Archicebus fossil is oldest primate yet found

Walking and Running


Walking Upright





Human ancestors changed diet 3.5 million years ago



04-14-15 World's oldest stone tools discovered in Kenya 


Tool-Making 3 Million Years Ago?

Tool-making 1.4 Million Years Ago?


When Did Humans Begin Hurling Spears?  - 90,000 Years Ago?





Mirror Test

And a nice test of abstract thinking is meta-cognition:


And have episodic memory:

Chimpanzees and orangutans remember distant past events


Art on the half-shell



Prairie dogs' language decoded by scientists




We know of no other primate who developed independent use of fire, (thought some Bonobos have now been trained to do so with a lighter, and even use water to put it out).  Man's sustained use of fire is estimated to have begun sometime between a million and 400,000 years ago:

Who Mastered Fire?

Were Early Humans Cooking Their Food a Million Years Ago?


Out of Africa

Whatever makes us different was probably well established by 60,000 (or 100,000?) years ago, as that's when humans became successful enough to spread from Africa to the rest of the world.  Was it a combination of language, hunting methods, tools, spears, and fire?  Or was it some kind of proto-agriculture for which we've yet to find evidence?


Or 100,000 Years Ago?

Music, Art and Property?


Border Cave


Archaeologists Unearth 35,000 Year Old Musical Instrument

World's Oldest Portrait - Symbolic Abstraction 26,000 Years Ago


What 15,000 Years Of Cooking Fish Tells Us About Humanity



This may be the key to domestication 14,000 years ago:

We Didn't Domesticate Dogs.  They Domesticated Us.

How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals.

Another line blurred:

Baboons Kidnap and Raise Feral Dogs as Pets


12,000 Year-Old Gobekli Tepe

Gobekli Tepe Update 04-04-15




State of the Species - Charles C. Mann






Is a long childhood the key difference?  Maybe:

Why Are We the Last Apes Standing?


Bursting the Bubble of Human Intelligence  04-09-13


It appears we must guard against cultural imperialism in our Inquisition of knowledge. And does human behavior vary to try all possible combinations in the same way a species replicates to fill the physical range of it's environment?

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

The Most Dangerous Drugs

04-14-15 - Views are changing: Pew Research on Marijuana

02-23-15 - Marijuana may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say 

02-09-15 - Landmark Study Finds Marijuana Is Not Linked to Car Crashes 

From 3-23-2007:

By British drug class:

By actual aspect of harm:

Having spent over two years on the Washoe County Grand Jury, I've been amazed at how disproportionate the law is compared to the actual physical and social damage resulting from the use of each type of drug.

Apparently others agrees - details here.

Paper - Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis

Even this chart has a muted range when applied to an individual. In the cases I've seen, the curve's far steeper on both ends with meth at the top. Do solvents REALLY do less social damage than cannabis?!?! Certainly not if you're the one huffing.

I can only assume they were measuring TOTAL social impact as opposed to individual social damage, since the incidence of solvent abuse is far more rare than cannabis. Of the 12 million monthly users in America, ever hear of anyone over-dosing on marijuana?

In any case, it's good these drugs are finally being painted with separate brushes. From all the studies and history, our laws are obviously upside-down - especially when it comes to alcohol and cannabis.

Let's get real with the science and the law, before more kids decide they have to try ALL of these things just to learn the truth. Remember that chant from the 60s?

Let's start telling it like it IS!

A useful interview with Dr Nutt 2011:

Mouse Party Teaches Drug Effects

Psychedelics Actually Benefit Mental Health

Interesting links:

Reset Me

The Speed of Hypocrisy: How America Got Hooked on Legal Meth

Monday, March 23, 2015

Minimal Transportation - Self Balancing Unicycle

03-23-15 - And another:



Video Link

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Defy Aging - Keep Moving and Stay Hungry

First posted on 01-29-12:

60 is the new 40. 50 is the new 30. I've even seen a proclamation that 80 is the new 30!

Such declarations about this new "age" can be seen everywhere. Are they simply age denial? Do baby-boomers refuse to grow old? And is this denial just a way to lie about our age? Will lying to ourselves help us live a longer? Maybe.

There's been lots of interesting research about the placebo effect in all it's forms. What's interesting is, placebos seems to work even when the patient KNOWS it's a placebo. And how is lying about your age different from giving yourselves a placebo?

Unfortunately, the placebo effect will not solve everything. There are still some hard facts in this new age of aging. Since the Kellogg brothers made health a popular topic at the beginning of the last century, thousands of treatments have been tried in an attempt to stay younger. Most have been proven to be worthless, but a few obviously make a difference:


"People are living 34 years longer than their great-grandfathers."

"The number of people in the world over 100 years old is now approaching half a million."

The internet is full of such dramatic results, so how does one gain the benefit?  A few simple things make most of the difference.

Avoiding tobacco and limiting solar exposure is good for the skin.  The guy to the left was a life-long truck driver.  Get a side shade.

But by far the most important factors in staying young are still diet and exercise.

The obvious conclusion?  Keep moving and stay hungry.

Keep Moving

Whether you are overweight, have chronic pain, arthritis, dementia, depression, diabetes, anxiety or fatigue there is one piece of advice that will improve your quality and length of life - "Keep Moving". What's surprising is how this advice not only affects the physical, but also your mental health.

ANY physical activity that keeps you moving for at least 30 minutes a day, EVERY day will make a huge difference. That "every day" is the hard part. Success comes from finding something you enjoy. It can be yoga, swimming or walking.  Start slowly and work your way up. Even if it takes a year to do 2 miles a day, after that you've gained 80% of the benefit of exercising in general. The second, fifth and seventeenth years are much easier.  The best exercise is the one that you DO, so it's probably the one you enjoy most.  Find your favorite way to move.

Here is the best summary I've found on the topic, graphically presented.  If you do nothing else about your health this year, at least spend nine minutes watching this video.  It may add years to your life:

23 and 1/2 Hours : What is the Single Best Thing You Can Do For Your Health?

“You don’t deteriorate from age, you age from deterioration.” - Joe Weider 

Stay Hungry

The meaning is obvious. The trick is to not stay TOO hungry. Just like the exercise part, if you take it to the point of pain you're more likely to return to your old lifestyle. If on the other hand, if you eat only what you need, you not only stay lean and healthy, you'll enjoy life more.

Have you noticed how much better food taste when you're hungry? Well at least the first few hundred calories, which is an important hint. When the meal becomes less compelling, stop eating. If you eat just 100 calories less than you burn each day, you'll lose 12 pounds a year - that's hard science, and it's major progress.  The trick is finding how many calories you really NEED - it's probably a lot less than you think. That's because we're used to eating about twice as much as we require.  Fortunately, our body is smart enough to allow most of those extra calories to go down the toilet, but this makes it hard to judge that "just enough" point.

Start by quantifying your calorie consumption, then slowly limiting your intake until you find that edge between hunger and healthy. Then limit just a little more, and take your time losing the extra pounds.

"Staying hungry" will also improve the quality of experience for your other appetites. From sex to alcohol, less can be much more if you hone your appetite with a bit of moderation. Find the "sweet spot" and stay hungry in all respects.

If it's that simple, why is everyone not healthy? It's obvious not everyone is gaining these extra years. Not surprisingly, access to excess, and electric grocery carts are the reasons. The majority of people today are actually shortening their lives with calories and the couch. Many are now dying YOUNGER than they would have a hundred years ago because of their default lifestyle. And more will follow them into the grave shortly.  Just look around.

Our society has become bifurcated where most people (of all ages) default into less activity and consume more calories; and a minority eat less and lead more active lives. What is truly amazing, is that this minority is STILL able to skew the average increase in lifespan while the bulk of America is doing the opposite. So a healthy lifestyle may extend one's life even more than the averages indicate. If you live well, your chronological age may not matter as much as you think.

Misrepresenting your age may be a lie, but it's a lie worth living.

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears." - John Lennon

Even more data:

04-17-13 Here is a demonstrative meta study of the effects of 50 calorie reduction per day for an entire country! Now if we could just learn to do that as individuals:


06-10-13 Cause or effect?

Fast walkers stay ahead of the game

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Liquid Piston's New Engine Design

It's fascinating to see the various ways of converting liquid fuel to horsepower.  The Otto piston has long dominated, but is famously inefficient.  Wankel was a nice challenge, but suffered from low compression and its oil squeegee valves burned more than they wiped.

The LiquidPiston guys set out solve the problems of both designs, and they may be getting close with this inverse Wankel approach.  The picture above is of the older X1 design and the text at this link is distracting, but watch the video for a quick visualization:

Autoevolution on the LiquidPiston X Mini Engine

Here's a much better presentation of the technology:

Gizmag on the LiquidPiston X2 Engine

And here is a description of their early prototype:

MIT Technology Review of the X0 LiquidPiston

It will be interesting to see how this technology evolves.

Another weight and space efficient engine:

The Duke Axial

Thursday, October 16, 2014

The Next Economic Bubble Will Be a Zen Bubble

04-23-14 - I've been collecting data for this post since 2010.  Considering recent prices for art, it's past time to post:

1988 Jeff Koons sculpture of Buster Keaton on a horse - sold for $5 million 12-17-12

Economic bubbles

Economic bubbles are fascinating specifically because they have little to do with economics, and everything to do with human behavior. In other words, little to do with logic, and everything to do with intuition.

Goods and services have a fundamental value reflected in how the thing contributes to our calories or shelter. Yes, there's more to life than than being fed and dry, but values become more abstract and subjective once security, health and aesthetics become factors.  And things get REALLY crazy when human vanity, greed and speculation are brought to bear.  These last factors are the source of economic bubbles.

Bubbles are driven by the "Greater Fool Theory" in which the value of something will increase with each transfer as long as there is another a greater fool.  Well, until there isn't.  The guy holding title when the music stops is the loser.  That's when everyone realizes the price of the last transaction was absurd. In other words, there were no more greater fools. After that, the object in question's "value" will drop dramatically and its market go quiet for decades.  Whomever is left holding the bag will have to wait until "the thing" comes back in fashion.  If ever.  There are lots of fools in history, but no one ever talks about their transactions, especially the fools themselves.

Even though the lesson of economic bubbles has been presented many times and in vivid detail, the lesson never seems to take. Or maybe I should say, there always seems to be a greater fool.  In the interest of those thinking about becoming a fool and chasing the next bubble, I'll present some historical examples of the phenomenon, their characteristics, and why it's ill-advised to get involved.  Finally, for those still interested, I'll present my candidate for the next bubble, and why.  Maybe you can get in (and out) early. Let's review some of the more famous bubbles to understand how they expanded, collapsed, and their ultimate impact upon our economy.

 Tulip Mania

The genesis of bubble behavior almost certainly goes back to ownership of property itself.  There are likely examples lost to history, but one of the earliest and most vivid major economic bubbles was Tulip Mania.

Strange as it may seem, it was literally the selling of future contracts for, of all things, tulip bulbs. Don't let this humble flower fail to impress you. The demand was amazing, and provides an example of human behavior run a muck with a thing called fashion.  For a flower.

 In February of 1637 there were examples of single tulip bulbs selling for the current equivalent of ten years salary for a craftsman - for EACH bulb!  This was certainly in the hundreds of thousands of today's dollars. Yep. One flower bulb, a decoration for the table.  The key was that each bulb was unique in color and pattern.  These bulbs could be farmed, and their contracts traded.  Even though many similar families were bred, uniqueness is well, unique.  And unique allows for amazing rationalization, or shall we say irrationalization?

Some of the stories are amazing.  In one case, a workman mistakenly assumed a valuable tulip bulb on the kitchen table of his employer was a common onion.  He sliced it up for his sandwich, (appreciating it for its aesthetic flavor, and fundamental value in calories). When discovered, he was sent to debtor's prison for his error.  There are many other examples of how these crazy tulip prices destroyed people's lives. Mania is a good description for the love of these flowers and the strange market it created.

Though this bubble was narrow (a small part of national wealth), it was extremely deep (10,000 multiple). Though narrow, the dramatic multiple significantly increased the asset value of the Bank of Amsterdam for a time.  After the bubble popped, negative effects were felt for years.  In less than 90 days from the peak price, a tulip bulb was only worth, well, a tulip bulb.  It could be argued that the workman was the most rational person in that economy.  A couple of smaller tulip bubbles in other areas happened later, but the value of tulips has never again approached that peak anywhere in the world.

South Seas Bubble

You'd think Tulip Mania would be chapter one in every business book for centuries, but less than 80 years later everyone seems to have forgotten the lesson. The South Seas Bubble had almost nothing to do with the South Seas. Instead its major asset was literally HALF of England's debt. The hopeful trade with South America allowed for the instruments of speculation (contract shares), and much of the government was complicit in promoting the investment.  Soon, people were borrowing to speculate.  The shares increased ten-fold before they popped. This bubble was both wide (half the national debt) and fairly deep (ten times any possible fundamental value).  When the price collapsed, the resulting debt depressed the economy of England for years.

The First Tech Bubble

Let's move to modern times. The first tech bubble has many good examples, but one I know well - they were a competitor.  In 1982 Fortune Systems was building a 68000-based micro-computer system.  They raised $110 million in a public offering at a half a billion dollar evaluation. Yes, these numbers are modest compared to today, but in 1982 this was the 7th largest IPO in U.S. history, and 500 million was a lot for a new company with no profits that had shipped fewer than 200 units, most of which were having problems. Of course the investment was lost when the product didn't pan out. This "little" bubble popped.  There were other early public tech offerings but except for a few like Apple Computer, they shared the same fate.  This shows bubbles don't have to be big to be crazy. This was a modest bubble at the time, but it provided a taste of what was soon to come.

Tokyo Real Estate Bubble

Japanese real estate prices started rising dramatically in 1986 and were highest in Tokyo's Ginza district in 1989.  Choice properties were fetching over 30 million yen per square meter ($20,000 per square foot!). Prices were only marginally less in other large business districts of Tokyo.  Literally HALF of the WORLD's real estate value was in one relatively small island called Japan.

By 1990 the party was over.  In 2004, prime "A" property in Tokyo's financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo's residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak, but still managed to be listed as the most expensive in the world, only being surpassed in the late 2000s by Moscow and other cities creating their own bubbles. The Tokyo bubble was both wide and deep.  Tens of TRILLIONS of dollars worth of "asset value" were wiped out with the combined collapse of the Tokyo real estate and dependent stock markets. Only 18 years later in 2007 had property prices begun to rise, before falling again in late 2008 due to the global downturn.  Japan has not yet recovered.  It's now been decades.

The Internet Leads the Second Tech Bubble

On the day Netscape went public I gave a talk explaining how there was NO reason to value a company with NO revenue and NO profits at almost 4 BILLION dollars.  As it turns out, this too was just a taste of what is common today.  By the time the internet bubble crashed in the spring of 2000 it had created an estimated 6.2 TRILLION dollars in value, 90% of which disappeared within weeks. Even though mostly limited to only a segment of technology, this bubble was widely subscribed.  It's impact was felt for years. 

U.S. Housing Bubble

As money shuffle out of the internet, I began wondering where it would go next.  I watched in disbelief as house prices doubled (or in some cases tripled) in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. At the peak, lotteries were held for the RIGHT to buy new residential construction.  By 2006, some high-end properties were being sold for up to $700 a square foot at nearby Lake Tahoe, which was far beyond its value in materials.  The difference was (ir)rationalized by location, but even in Reno some places sold for over $500 a square foot.  And Reno is on the edge of a vast desert whose value approaches zero.

I don't need to go on about the housing bubble.  Everyone else already has.  I'll just note that it represented "assets" of around 10 TRILLION dollars and seems to have triggered a collapse of a credit bubble on Wall Street of even greater magnitude in late 2008.  This housing / credit bubble was also devastating to main street, which continues to be affected six years later.

Chinese Real Estate and Debt Bubble

What may come to be known as the Chinese bubble is similar to what happened in the west but may be far larger when evaluated in retrospect, once good data is available.  In the United States, approximately five million "extra" housing units were constructed during the early part of this century.  China has built between 70 and ONE HUNDRED MILLION housing units in a similar time-frame.  Now, China has a lot more people and many of them need houses, but there was a disconnect in market forces for of this construction.  Most of these units are executive homes and do not match the need nor demand from the market. Mitigating these glorious ghost cities will be far more difficult than foreclosing and reselling the American homes.  If you own anything in China, sell.  Which brings us to the point of this post.  Where will all the fools go next?

05-05-14 - "Forget it, Jake; it's Chinatown" - more signs of cracks in China:

Zombies once destroyed Japan’s economy—now they’re infecting China’s

11-19-14 - Prices have tripled to over $2600 per square foot in Hong Kong since 2003

The Next Bubble...

Now that bubbles are understood, we'll never again get caught.  Right?  Not necessarily. In Wikipedia on Bubbles it's noted that bubbles are generally identified in retrospect, much like bull and bear markets. Bubbles sneak up on people. As a matter of fact, people (and their human behavior) seem to be their secret sauce.

Is a fool someone who pays more for a thing than its fundamental value? Or is a fool someone who doesn't manage to sell the thing to a greater fool before the music stops? As the price increases well beyond fundamental value, at what instant does one become a fool? Where do the lines get drawn? In retrospect it's easy. Seeing that line while it is happening is more of a challenge.

The truth is, ALL investors are fools to one degree or another. It's just a matter of how long we feed the bubble, and how it eventually deflates. It's all depends on where you get in, and where you get out. That's where the human behaviors of greed, denial and fear come in.

So what will be the next bubble?

Real estate? Not in our life-time.  Population growth is finally flattening out and may even head down in a couple of decades.  In any case, China will be the final nail for real estate bubbles.  The upturn in the U.S. real estate last year was just a dead cat bounce.  It will abate soon, and mark the beginning of a long flat market for residential real estate in America, and around the world, with a few exceptions.

Stocks? Nope.  Like real estate, the current bull market is just a return to normal after the crash. There's already stock bubble talk, which will likely dampen the drive upward in time.

Gold Bubble?  Nope.  It's too obvious to do more than double unless we have major civil disruption. Also, since it has virtually no fundamental value, it could be argued that gold is always in a bubble.  By degrees.

The next significant bubble will be none of the above.  The next bubble will be in collectibles, and it's already well underway.

... will be a Zen Bubble

Let's start with contemporary paintings.  According to Businessweek, auction sales of postwar contemporary art has gone from a few million dollars in 1988 to nearly $8 billion dollars in 2014. And most of those gains have been since 2003.  In another article, Businessweek notes, "There has been a 434% increase in value of the top 50 contemporary and postwar artists since 2003".  A record high of $142 million has been set for "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" who only died in 2002.  Usually artists have to be dead for MUCH longer to fetch such absurd prices.

A total of almost $66 BILLION of fine art was sold in 2013.  That's only ONE year of ONE segment of collectibles. There's also fine wine, cars, books, stamps, money and too many other obscure segments to be named, which is the real point.  With tulips, it was only tulips.  With web start-ups, it was only web start-ups.  In collectibles, there are at least a million places for fake value to hide, many of them unique.  This bubble has truffles at $100K per pound, a figurine for $5 million and a puppy (!) for $1.5 million.  Did you even realize people collected truffles? I didn't.  And a puppy dies.

The point is, the prices for art (and cars, and wine, and etc.) reflect far more than typical aesthetic value. These prices are dominated by speculation.  This is clearly a bubble, no matter how you wish to (ir)rationalize it. Or more precisely, these are bubblets as each of these segments lives in its own world of "investors" who generally ignore the other segments.  There is no limit to their (ir)rationalized value.  This segmentation is what will make this bubble so different from the ones that have come before. This bubble is not a bubble at all.  It's more like foam rising off the euphoria of too much champagne.  And as foam, it will play out in a far different way than the typical bubble.

This collectibles bubble is both wide, deep and insidious.  Worse than its absurd dollar value is its stealth. The types of collectibles are almost infinite, since virtually anything ever created by man or nature can be collected..  Many unique items are literally in a class of one.  If it has value to anyone, it has value to a speculator. And if it has value to a speculator, its price will ultimately be driven far beyond it's fundamental or aesthetic value.

Like other bubbles, the price of any unique item or the whole segment will increase right up until it doesn't. If you dig deep, you'll find many examples of bubblets collapsing, but most investors don't even notice unless they own something in the segment, or that particular item.  When each price collapses, these collectors lick their wounds in silence.  Who wants to brag about a loss?

Its stealth nature will be the hallmark of this bubble.  This collapsing foam of bubblets will not make any major news, well unless a big segment such as fine art collapses in general.  But that's less likely because each piece can be effectively (ir)rationalized then hidden away, which will be another aspect of this bubble - the absence of liquidity. Pieces will ultimately be hard to sell, and will therefore go back in the closet.  We may even see a time when collectible sales drop off, and the items simply used as collateral for loans, which may drive yet another credit bubble.  In any case, this Zen bubble may go on for decades.  Or longer.

Since a unique item can have a theoretically infinite value, expect some wild examples.  Here are a few I've "collected" over the last several years.  Most are just headlines or links.  You'll have to Google for details.

The next questions is, "when will we see the first BILLION dollar transaction for something with no fundamental value?"

I suspect it'll be sooner than you think:

"$160,000 for a $666.66 Computer! An Apple computer purchased more than 30 years ago has sold for 425 times its original selling price. From the article: 'An Apple-1, one of only about 200 such machines built in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' parents' garage, sold at Christie's auction house in London today for 133,250 pounds (about $210,700). The Apple-1, which didn't include a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor, originally retailed for $666.66 in 1976. Apple discontinued the model in 1977.'"

10-23-14 Apple I Price Update - $905,000!

$330K for 2.87 lbs of rare white truffle!

05-23-11 A Rolex wristwatch made in 1942 sold for a record $1.16 million at Christie's!

$194K for a 38 inch toy boat once owned by Malcolm Forbes!

$302,500 for Andy Warhol print of Mao Zedong - TEN TIMES the estimate!

1923 Leica 0-series becomes world's most expensive camera, fetches $1.89 million at auction!

Marilyn Monroe's Seven Year Itch dress, which went under the hammer at auction on Saturday, is a record breaker.  The iconic white dress fetched $5.5 million!

A Stradivarius built in 1721, which once belonged to Lord Byron's granddaughter, sold online for $15.9 million!

06-27-2011 - A Jean-Michel Basquiat self-portrait sold for $3.3 million, five times more than in 2003!

World's oldest running car fetches $4.6 million at auction

10-24-11 - Gerhard Richter's 1982 painting Kerze (Candle) fetched $16.6 million at a Christie's sale, an auction record for the artist, who says the price is "as absurd as the banking crisis".

12-03-11 - Why IS Art So Damned Expensive?

11-07-11 -Queen Victoria's bloomers sold for $15K, three times estimate.  Skid marks included for free.

Rare 1787 Gold Coin Sells for $7.4 Million

11-14-11 - Roy Lichtenstein's 1961 painting, I Can See the Whole Room!... and There's Nobody in It! sold for $43 million

11-30-11 - A set of eight scrolls of lotus flowers PAINTED THIS YEAR by Chinese artist Cui Ruzhuo sold for $16 million!

01-16-12 - The ultimate inflation: A 1793 copper one-cent coin sold for $1.38 million at Heritage Auctions, an increase in value of more than a hundred million times.

02-19-12 - The 1889 van Gogh Vue de l'asile et de la Chapelle de Saint-Remy formerly owned by Elizabeth Taylor sold for $16 million.

02-20-12 - The 1963 Francis Bacon "Portrait of Henrietta Moraes" sold for $33 million.

04-09-12 - A Ruyao bowl that dates from 1086 to 1106 sold for $26.7 million at Sotheby's, a record

05-01-12 - This year paintings by Warhol and Munch are expected to sell for more than $50 million each. WRONG!

05-04-12 - Munch's "The Scream" went for $119.9 million dollars, more than twice estimates. Warhol's Elvis only brought $37 million, for an average of $78.5 million, 57% over estimates.

Why did this Mini sell for over $65,000?

05-08-12 - A teacup Lady Gaga used last year in Japan sold for $75,000.  What's next, used toilet tissue?

05-09-12 The $412 check that DC Comics gve artist Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 to buy the right to the Superman character fetched $160,000 at an online auction.

05-11-12 A blue flannel New York Yankees baseball cap worn by Babe Ruth in the 1930 is on the block, estimated to be worth $400,000.

05-15-12 Mark Rothko's fiery 1961 canvas, Orange, Red, Yellow fetched a record $86.9 million after a $45 million estimate.

07-07-12 Joan Miro's 1927 Peinture fetched $37 million at Southeby's

08-20-12 Cover art for issue 328 of The Amazing Spider-Man sold for $657,250, a record for comic book art.

09-01-12 and setting new records in each category:

Cezanne's painting "The Card Players" for $250 million
Superman's first edition went for $2.16 million.
The first map of the United States for $1.5 million
A live Red Tibetan Mastiff puppy for $1.5 million
Audubon 1st edition bird book $11.5 million

10-18-12 - The two guns taken off Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow sold for a total of $504,000.  I wonder if they could have appreciated the irony.

10-22-12 - Two 1941 Sun Yat-sen stamps sold for $709,000

11-19-12 - The 1951 drip painting Number 4 by Jackson Pollock sold for $40,400,000 at Sotheby's.

Indian weddings have become a bubble and are an excellent example of bizarre human fashion.  The wedding industry in India is now growing at 25% per year.  India is now consuming 30% of the world's gold production, and half of it goes for Indian weddings.  The estimates for 2012 wedding costs in India are about $40 billion, and this is in a country with a per capita GDP of only $4000. Could this gold be considered a collectible?


  03-20-13 - A blood-stained sock worn by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling in the 2004 World Series fetched $92,613 at auction.

04-06-2013 A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $2.1 million

$38 Million for a car?


07-01-13 An untitled 1982 painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold for $29 million at Christie's

09-04-13 A vintage Ferrari Spyder convertible sold for 28 million in the same week that a diamond and a yacht went for about same amount.  Is $30 million a special price point?

10-14-13 Sotheby's sets new record prices in China with $30,800,000 for a diamond, $30,500,000 million for a bronze Buddha and $23,300,000 for Zeng Fanzhi's, "The Last Supper", the highest price ever for a contemporary Asian artist.

11-18-13 The car that won the 1954 Formula 1 world championship, a Mercedes-Benz W196R coupe became the most expensive car ever sold at $30 million.

04-30-2014 "In 2013, one blue-fin tuna was auctioned off for $1.7 million..."  I hope they froze some of it.

05-01-14 Even sales of early scraps of an artist's work have exceeded a million dollars:


04-25-14 A collector paid $2 million for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone", a record for lyrics.

05-15-14 I'm not sure if unique houses qualify as collectible, but it's hard to imagine any other reason to pay this much and it would certainly break the billion dollar absurd threshold I mentioned above :

The Most Expensive Homes in the World

And one more from the age of opulence:

This Absurd Mansion Features Star Trek-Themed Rooms And Could Be Yours For $35 Million

And what's up with Popeye?

Steve Wynn paid $28 million for Jeff Koons sculpture of Popeye.
Andy Warhol's Popeye is appraised at $50 million.
Roy Lichtenstein's Popeye is appraised at $47 million.
It makes one want to open a can of spinach and draw some cartoons.

Why are so many people paying so much money for art?

"Owning collectibles offers one major advantage – one that I think drives 90% of the demand for collectibles: It's a great way to protect your wealth from the IRS. People know that when they die, the IRS won't have any idea what is hanging up on their walls or hiding in their vaults. So they hide money in these trophies to give to their children to avoid estate taxes. Mind you, I'm not passing judgment on these actions, nor am I recommending them… I just believe that's why a lot of demand for collectibles exists.

Collectibles are also easily transferable across borders. You can take a Picasso on a private jet and move $100 million offshore. And no one even knows you have it.

When you buy collectibles, you're betting on the irresponsibility of the government and the wickedness of the tax system… If the government gets more irresponsible and the tax system gets more heinous, you'll probably do well. And I think that's a good bet. But you should understand that's what you're betting on."

04-29-14 - The above observation is an excellent example of how tax policy can distort markets.  It's also an excellent reason to collect, and a reasonable rationalization.

07-09-14 Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" sold for $54 million.

09-04-14 A copy of the first Superman Comic which originally went for ten cents sold for $3.2 million yielding a multiple of 32 million times it's original value.

09-07-14 A 1962 250 GTO Ferrari sold for $38 million and is lifting prices for all sports cars of the era - a nano-bubble of its own?

09-18-14 - Hyundai spending $10B for 20 acres turns land into a collector's item for the first time. This is in the price range of the Tokyo bubble of 1989.  They could have done a lot better in the Nevada desert like Tesla just did - a THOUSAND acres for FREE.  Even Tesla's 370 acres in the BAY AREA, some of the more expensive land on Earth only cost them $42M - and it had a 5.5 million square foot working factory on it! Has Hyundai been bit with bidding fever in the process of taking the site away from Samsung?  Did this bidding war turn this plot into a collector's item?


From the above link: "A Francis Bacon triptych set an auction record for any artwork, at $142.4 million. Jeff Koons’s sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange), at $58.4 million, set a high mark for a living artist. An Andy Warhol picture of a Coca-Cola bottle sold for $57.3 million, pushing the overall take that night to $692 million, at the time the biggest single sale of art ever."

"The final price for Apocalypse Now, including the buyer’s premium paid to Christie’s: $26.4 million. It had appreciated roughly 350,000 percent in 25 years."


01-19-15 - $100 Million New York Apartment

5-5-15 A Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $1.3 million

05-13-15 A Mark Rothko painting sold for $46.5 million at a Sotheby's 

Friday, October 03, 2014

What Ever Happened with H2S Induced Hibernation?

The latest:

Apparently "Torpor" is the new handle for this technology:

10-03-14 NASA Eyes Crew Deep Sleep Option for Mars Mission

04-21-14 Survival of teenage stowaway on five-hour flight to Honolulu is medical 'miracle'

03-27-14 Doctors will place patients between life and death in suspended animation trials

10-07-13 - Ain't No Science Fiction, Suspended Animation Is FDA Approved and Heading to Clinical Trials
Mass extinction is a great reason to hibernate:

04-17-12 Key ingredient in mass extinctions could boost food, biofuel production

02-20-12 - Peter Skyllberg Snowed in for Two Months - Related?
Was Mitsutaka Uchikoshi another example?

09-30-10  Considering the theme of my original post, here is yet another example of the media missing the story and working the "politically incorrect" angle.  

In this case, documents were revealed from a Naval Surgeon in 1805.  The headline is about "Bizarre naval experiments" and the focus is tobacco smoke and deliberate transmission of venereal disease, when the real story is quite probably the first documented case of suspended animation.  

When will they ever "get it"?

Bizarre naval experiments revealed

 Significant advancement and recognition for the concept of induced hibernation! 

I revisit this topic each year.  It appears there's been significant progress.  Look through my list of uses below to understand why, and how important this discovery is.  Or start with Mark Roth's latest TED video at the end of the post.

CNN Update - 10-15-09...

Another major update 02-18-10 - Wired Interview

What Ever Happened with H2S Induced Hibernation?

I originally wrote this post on April 22, 2006

One year ago today [April 22, 2005]...

Mark Roth at Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle announced the astounding ability to induced hibernation in mice by having them breathe 80 parts per million (ppm) hydrogen sulfide
gas (H2S). Yes, that's the gas that smells like rotten eggs.

Not only did these critters fall asleep for six hours, their heart rate and respiration dropped by 92% - apparently replicating the effects of true hibernation. And their temperature dropped to 2 degrees C above ambient temperature. They in effect became cold-blooded.

It should also be noted, when the gas was removed, the mice awoke with no apparent ill effects. The critters could still run their maze in a normal fashion.

There are hints that H2S Induced Hibernation might be a natural defense mechanism or at least a normal biological process. It appears this H2S gas is produced by the body under certain
conditions and may be the key to normal hibernation. This may also be the cause of "Cold Water Shock Reflex" in which those who have "drowned" in cold water come back to life.

At 80 ppm, H2S can not simply be replacing O2 in the blood which exist at 210,000 PPM in typical air. It seems that H2S acts more like a hormone causing ALL cells in the body to slow down at the same time. Is H2S the body's way of adjusting the thermostat?

Hold on! I'm way out of my element here. I'm not qualified to do biology. I'm not even qualified to write about it.

But I DO considered this ASTOUNDING news! And indeed the world reported it. Well at least in a tepid way (sorry about the pun). From the BBC to the Washington Post they did at least rehash Mark's original work. Even
Wikipedia added three paragraphs to the Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) page. I was impressed with that.

But THAT was it...

I'm serious.

Nothing more.

No follow-up questions.

No follow-up answers.

No in-depth reporting.

No detailed analysis.

No flying out to Seattle.

No camping on the lawn.

No helicopter shots.

No checking tax returns.

Hell, Tom Cruise jumps up and down on a couch and the media follows him around for weeks! Where is the coverage for the stuff that REALLY counts? Oh well. I would wait. There was sure to be more news on the topic in a short time. So I set my Google news reader and waited...

And waited...

And waited...

And I'm still waiting.

It's been one year. Other than some comments from an aging blog and one think tank, there has been nothing at all. Nothing! Am I way off base or is this NOT a Nobel class discovery?

Where's the follow-up from Mark Roth?

Where's the H2S Induced Hibernation blog?

Where are the frat boy posts about their flatulent experiments?

Where's the Flatliner crew?

Where's Kiefer Sutherland when we need him?

Where are all the science fiction plots?

When I read the news release last year, I thought follow-up would be like the coverage for Cold Fusion a few years ago - lots of people trying to reproduce the results. Maybe we would even get some quick test with humans.

But no...




What's a geek to do? There's only one thing. Ask the questions that SHOULD have been asked a year ago. So here goes.

Does this Roth effect work longer than six hours?

Does it work for days?

Does it work for weeks?

Does it work for months?

Does it work on other larger mammals?

Does it work on humans?

Any obvious side effects?

Any long term side effects?

How long can someone stay under without ill effects?

Does this low-level metabolism consume fat like it does in bears?

Does muscle tone also atrophy?

Does this low-level metabolism extend life?

Is 80 PPM a threshold or is there a proportional effect at 40 PPM? 20 PPM?

What happens at 160 ppm? Is the sleep deeper? (yes, I know H2S is deadly at higher concentration, but so is table salt).

Is this truly a natural feature of mammals?
  If H2S is produced internally, can the effect be induced by meditation? If so, how does one exit the state?

I could go on and on but you get the idea. To get the answers to these and other questions, first they have to be asked. And then asked by the right people. That's what this blog post is all about. We need the right people asking these questions - not me.

There's a saying in the world of finance, "Capital finds it's highest and best use". This seems to take a little longer with science. It also takes imagination, speculation and a whole lot of

Promotion is important. America was not named for Columbus. America was named for a navigator and blogger of the fifteenth century - Amerigo Vespucci. His letters were published widely on his
return from the new world. He didn't discover anything, but promoted what he found. The name stuck.

That's why H2S Induced Hibernation now needs to be all about blogs, Digg and Wikipedia. It's up to us. It's time for some speculation. Maybe even some speculative fiction. We need serious talent
applied to finding the answers to the above and other questions. More discussion may help.

Here are some ideas as to how H2S could be used. Maybe this will help move things along.

Time in trauma care - This one is obvious. With such low concentrations of H2S needed, a simple regulator mask in first aid kits might extend that "Critical Hour" to a "Critical Day" giving time to do a better
job with transport, evaluation, and treatment. It's easier to stop bleeding when the heart is only pumping eight times per minute. It's easier to keep cells alive when their demand for resources has dropped by 92%.

Mine Disasters - During the recent mine disaster in West Virginia, the miners only had air for one hour. Could this have been extended to 12 hours by adding a little H2S to those respirators? Coal mine accidents are an even bigger problem in China with over 6,000 dead per year. Think of the lives that could be saved even if a small percentage had this advantage.

Fire Escape - Since most fire deaths are caused by smoke inhalation, many extra minutes could be gained with one of those new and improved masks from the coal mine? Check the first-aid kit. Is it there yet? Again, the lives saved would be in the thousands

Underwater Rescue - Another good application for limited oxygen? And maybe a re-make of the movie Abyss? Lots of possibilities here.

ALL incurable disease - This is a no brainer. Got a problem? Take a break for a while. Wake up to review the literature. Take another break. Repeat until cured.

Medical scheduling - Waiting for an organ? Make
sure you have enough time. It's better than death.

Military Use - Lot's of possibilities here, from trauma to transport. Here's where Kiefer Suterland comes in with a new release of 24 Hours lived in 24 years. How's THAT for a challenge to
his premise?

Sleep Efficiency - How about all that time we waste sleeping? Might we extend our life by taking it deeper? Or maybe the opposite, and find out how to shorten sleep? Keep an open mind.

Weight Loss - this could be a biggie, both in terms of dollars and quality of life. Let's say you're not a fan of winter anyway. Why not do like the bears do? You could wake up ready for your
new spring swim suit.

Capital Punishment - This is a bit radical, but at least it's not a death sentence. And they aren't causing any problems in the mean time. In time we might even find a "cure" for murder.

Pregnant Mothers - This might at first seem radical too, but Mark Roth's page refers to "embryonic diapause, a pause in embryonic development found in about 70 species of mammals". It might be
useful one way or the other. Don't count it out.

Punishment - What the hell. Let's put them ALL on ice as a cost reduction measure! We could count it as good time. Would it still be punishment? Fun to think about. (note - after I wrote this I found one blog post at World Think Tank that talked about using H2S for prison riot control. Could we extent this to riot control in general?)

Athletes - Since I'm getting radical, how about extending the performance window of our very best athletes? We could give them the option of waking up every four years in time to train for the Olympics. The other option would simply be to let them "rest" off season.

Space Travel - Yep. Classic application. Maybe we could finally do some. There are at the very least, some fresh movie plots here, or the chance to make them more realistic.

Time Travel - This is of course relative and one direction. But how about sleeping a few weeks at a time and find yourself subjectively rushing forward into the future? It might be fun.

Tivo for life - This is an extension of the time travel idea - sort of fast forward when you want, live life when YOU want. Let's say you're a basketball fan but hate the rest of the year -
beep, beep, beep. Treat the boring parts of life like one big commercial. Live life on YOUR terms!

Tivo for the heart - Will H2S sleep dampen a heartache? I think Heinlein used this in "Door Into Summer". Would it help? Who knows. If you've ever been there, anything's worth a try.

Tivo for the soul - Could this be the ultimate form of meditation? Stay awake for only short slices of life and jump WAY into the future. Would it give you a different perspective? Would you dream? Would it matter?

Anyway, you get the idea. The point is, there are LOTS of possibilities not being effectively promoted. Feel free to ad yours below. These examples are why it's so important to know...

H2S Induced Hibernation useful?

It's been a YEAR!

Clue us in.

Or is everyone, "No Longer Sleepless in Seattle" ?

BTW, amazing work Mark. Congratulations.

Sudden Disruption
the radical option for editing text