X-Message-Number: 18526
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 00:20:54 -0600
Subject: Re: Subject: Soreff, Kass
From: "Brian A. Stewart" <>

>irst-century B.C. poet Lucretius wrote: "Not by any
>length of life is any new pleasure hammered out." If
>the lifespan were increased only 20 years, asks Dr.
>Kass, "would professional tennis players really enjoy
>playing 25% more games of tennis? Would the Don Juans
>of our world feel better for having seduced 1,250
>women rather than 1,000?" In fact, argues Dr. Kass,
>life could become more meaningless. Mortality brings
>significance, because "to number our days is the
>condition for making them count." ...

Good God!  Is that all the more he can think of to do with an extended
life-span?!  More of the same?!!  That's incredibley myopic!  Heck, off
the top of my head I can easily come up with the hypothetical tennis
player using the extra years to try out snowboarding, rock climbing,
botony, truck driving, breeding dogs, building experimental aircraft,
going back to college for an art major, writing a novel, taking up
farming, or any other of a few hundred things people just don't have the
time to cram into one, ordinary length lifespan!  SHEESH!

Brian (who notes that his list can be expanded upon by things which will
be possible in 20 years, which are not possible now)

Brian A. Stewart
Madison, Wisconsin, USA, Earth, etc.
"Ooo!  They have the Internet on computers now!" --Homer Simpson
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