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Sam-Berns-child

Sam Berns, age 17, was diagnosed with Progeria when he was 22 months old; a genetic disorder that results with rapid, premature aging. Progeria affects only 1 out of 4 to 8 million birhs and approximately 350 children, in the world, have this disease. His parents, both pediatricians, established The Progeria Research Foundation in 1999 to find the cause, treatment and cure. Children with Progeria live an average of 13 years.

Sam-Berns-family

In 2013, Sam’s story was broadcasted as a documentary film with the title: Life According to Sam. His courage and spirit moved everyone who came into contact with him. Sam also shared his life philosophy at TEDxMidAtlantic in October 2013.

“No matter what I choose to become, I believe that I can change the world.” he said in his talk at TEDx last year. “And as I’m striving to change the world, I will be happy.”

Unfortunately, this remarkable young man, who inspired millions of people, passed away on January 10,2014 at the age of 17.

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To see some beautiful stories about Sam, please check out: http://storify.com/progeria/remembering-sam-berns-10-23-96-01-10-14

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Please also watch the following TED Talk where geneticist and physician Francis Collins explains that we know the molecular cause of 4,000 diseases, but for only 250 of them, we have available treatments. He asks why it is taking so long?

In this talk titled “We need better drugs — now!” Sam was the guest of Dr.Francis Collins. Despite his difficult condition, Sam’s brief appearance on stage radiated positivity and inspiration. He was a great soul indeed.

Rest at peace dear Sam!

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Watched at: “Curious Souls Get Together” 9th meeting -February 9,2014

Dear Friends,

We had our 8th meeting at the Publico Bar on Sunday December 1,2013.

We were quite numerous in our meeting. Considering that the number of chairs available were not sufficient, I can say that we were more than 55.

During the meeting, as I announced earlier, we watched the following TED Talks:

Pamela Meyer : “How to spot a liar”
Arthur Benjamin does mathemagic:
Bunker Roy: “Learning from a barefoot movement”
Derek Sivers: “How to start a movement”
John Legend: “True colors” (music)

My friends Tolga Yanaşık and Özgür Çağlar Çelik moderated our discussions on two of the talks. I would like to thank them greatly for volunteering and for the work they put into it.

Tolga facilitated our discussions on the first video titled: “How to spot a liar”.

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He made a fantastic work as he had interesting and very clever questions that engaged all members in the discussions. You can also guess that our discussions were often interrupted by loughter 🙂 as the subject was “lie” and we shared our own experiences on it.

Tolga, moderating our discussions on: “How to spot a liar.”

We then watched the amazing Math and Magic 🙂 performance of Arthur Benjamin who is also a math professor:

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Despite that the video was a performance of magic and math, and it seemed like there would be nothing much to discuss upon, it was quite amazing to see how extensive discussions it generated between us. We talked about the limits of our brains, whether with special training anybody could acquire these skills or not, whether such training should be a part of regular education or not, etc. It was also very interesting to note that some of our members didn’t agree that training on acquiring such a skill was relevant as they said that, after all we all have calculators and we do not need to calculate from our heads 🙂 There was also merit to what they said as well 🙂

The video that followed was that of Roy Bunker’s on “Barefoot movement”:

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What a fastinating, mind opening, inspirational and humerous talk it was ! We all loved it! And so were our discussions! It was truely amazing to hear all the views expressed, all the experiences shared and the lessons taken from this video.

At our meeting, such a nice variety – ranging from US, UK to Iran and Pakistan, Panama, Brazil to Austria and eventually Turkey -that normally one would expect very diverging views. Nevertheless, during our discussions on Barefoot Movement, I noticed that, despite all our differences, we were all at the same wavelenght (as we Turkish people say) and that we all talked with the same language (and I do not mean English only :-)). What a fantastic “World Union” we had :-). I love you dear Curious Souls 🙂

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We then went on to watch the short and humorous video on “How to start a movement”:

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Özgür moderated our discussions on this video and with his entertaining and insightful questions, our discussions became a very lively one. It was also interesting to note that the video lasted only for 3 minutes but our discussions lasted much longer then that 🙂 Özgür even made us a suprise at the end ! As he is an active Qi Gong practitioner at the level of trainer – in addition to his acutal job, he gave us the secret to live a very long life and he made us all stand up and do Qi Gong together! It was a valuable initiation! Thank you Özgür.