X-Message-Number: 1374 Date: 29 Nov 92 21:35:00 EST From: Charles Platt <> Subject: Various To Cryonet: Re Dave Pizer's plea for harmony and understanding: no doubt some people will write this off as a political maneuver, but personally I find it heartening and pleasant. There is, after all, something to be said for good manners. Thank you, Dave. Having watched a lot of text in the past six months or so, I have seen email's legendary tendency to promote bellicose ranting, and have had to wrestle with it myself occasionally. It seems to me, if I yell at someone in person, and they flinch, my anger is defused. Even if they get angry in return, at least I have the satisfaction of seeing them respond. But if I yell electronically, I don't have any feedback response. I don't have the sense that the stream of electrons will have any impact at all. So, I am likely to get angrier and yell louder. As an email consumer, I would like to see people questioning their motives for sending a message in the first place. Paul Wakfer's recent enumeration of the personal characteristics that he despises in various cryonics activists was fascinating, well written, and some parts might have been cruelly accurate; but what was the purpose of it? If it was intended to wound the people he listed, I doubt it succeeded ... because the fact is, our fears as email scribes are justified. Half the time, the messages don't have much impact. We certainly don't remember email as vividly as if it had reached us as ink on paper. In which case, maybe we would use our time better trying to use this medium for the purpose which it serves best: INFORMATION. (And discussion, too--if and when there is information worth discussing.) If you think back over the past six months and imagine which postings you might want to read a second time, you may find that they are the ones containing useful information (contributed by a handful of people, such as Steve Harris). The squabbles of six months ago will never be re-read, except perhaps by some demented cryo-historian. I am sure I am as guilty of being superficial as anyone. But it would be nice if we could all write a little more as if we were doing it for posterity rather than for immediate gratification (which turns out to be a chimera most of the time anyway). It would also be nice, as Courtney Smith recently pointed out, if someone had the time and energy to dig back through Cryonet and print the postings which were informative. This material is not lost (I'm sure it still exists on many hard drives around the nation), but it is buried, and it will be forgotten unless someone with the instincts of a librarian goes digging through it. Any volunteers? This leads me to the general need for more printed information from Alcor. There are files at the facility containing various booklets and special-interest documents (such as Hugh Hixon's excellent study of chemical activity at various low temperatures, to take just one example). But many of the materials are out of date, and others need to be reprinted. Also, none of the stuff is sent out routinely in response to general information requests. People have to ask for, and pay for, individual items. How nice it would be if there was a set of leaflets on various specific topics, cheap enough so that a selection could be sent in response to inquiries. (Ideally, the selection would match the interests of the caller in each case.) I am writing some new material myself, in cooperation with Ralph Whelan. But other leaflets could contain text that originally appeared on Cryonet. So, again--any volunteers? --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1374