Last week I had the opportunity (thanks Alton!) to attend the launch event for the Palo Alto Longevity Prize. In short, it’s a $1m prize for substantial progress on “hacking the code of aging”. The Washington Post has more. $1m is not […]
Michael Edward Johnson
Posts by Michael Edward Johnson
The mystery of pain and pleasure
Trying to solve a scientific mystery is like starting a startup: timing is everything. Try to solve a problem too soon, and your efforts are wasted. Try to solve a problem too late, and you can’t contribute anything new. But there’s […]
What the trendy smart people are worrying about
Every year, literary-agent-to-famous-intellectuals John Brockman emails his 150+ clients a philosophical question to publicly weigh in on. The question he asked this year is, What should we be worried about? I can’t say this list did much for my peace-of-mind, […]
How to Fix Politics: Celebrity Edition
The American political scene is in sorry shape. If you’re reading this blog– or indeed, if you have a pulse– you likely agree with this, so I won’t belabor the point. The standard prescription is to get out and vote. While […]
Startup School 2012
I’ll be at Y Combinator‘s startup school at Stanford this weekend. If you see me (Mike Johnson) there, feel free to say hello.
Jaan Tallinn on carrots and social status
Jaan Tallinn (of Kazaa/Skype fame) gave a ‘big picture’ talk at SS2011 on existential risks and how society may (or may not) meet our coming challenges head-on. There’s a lot of good stuff in there, but one thought in particular […]
How to cheat at the Olympics
Sports doping is an eternal arms race. You have black-market chemists making undetectable ‘designer drugs’, and you have anti-doping agencies coming up with more-and-more sophisticated tests in response. Sadly, the dopers are winning right now, and few sports are ‘pure'[1]. Many athletes — perhaps […]
What rich people are worrying about
Spend any time around finance people, and you start to worry about things. Unsustainable trends, ruinous policies, global economic collapse. I think it’s always like this— it’s a career that attracts and rewards worriers. But something’s different in 2012 finance: […]
Inflation, briefly.
The question of whether the official government inflation numbers are right (currently 2-3%, depending on inclusion of food and energy) is really important. It would be hard to understate how important this is. But it’s considered a fringe topic, a […]
Three Mysteries of Modern Physics
I’m often pleasantly surprised by how much smart laypeople are interested in physics. Regardless of their educational background, peoples’ ears perk up when the discussion turns to how weird quantum mechanics is, issues in contemporary physics, or even odd physics […]