Comment author: AngryParsley 21 November 2010 01:34:40AM 3 points [-]

This is offtopic but I recognized your name and I just wanted to remind you that you are awesome. In addition to your research, you do a great job of accurately portraying cryonics to laymen. This presentation has helped convince at least two people to sign up for cryonics.

Comment author: chkno 10 June 2015 04:17:11AM 0 points [-]

That presentation link has gone 404. Do you know where else it might be found, or remember the name or context of the presentation?

In response to 2013 Survey Results
Comment author: linkhyrule5 23 January 2014 08:52:51AM 3 points [-]

Were there enough CFAR workshoppers to check CFAR attendance against calibration?

Comment author: chkno 17 October 2014 07:34:37AM *  1 point [-]
In response to An Alien God
Comment author: Chrysophylax 31 January 2013 03:37:38PM -3 points [-]

The human retina is constructed backward: The light-sensitive cells are at the back, and the nerves emerge from the front and go back through the retina into the brain. Hence the blind spot. To a human engineer, this looks simply stupid—and other organisms have independently evolved retinas the right way around.

This isn't entirely accurate - there are advantages to having the retina at the back, because the nerve improves visual precision. I don't recall exactly how this works, but I read about it in Life Ascending by Nick Lane if anyone wants to verify it.

In response to comment by Chrysophylax on An Alien God
Comment author: chkno 17 February 2013 06:10:25AM 1 point [-]

Life Ascending claims that the neurons out in front may act as a "'waveguide'" to funnel photons more efficiently to the light-sensitive bits.

This topic is treated in much more depth in Live Cells as Optical Fibers in the Vertebrate Retina, which I read as marveling at how the darn thing works at all.