X-Message-Number: 20471 Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 07:58:14 -0800 From: James Swayze <> Subject: Most people are dumber than a box of rocks. References: <> > Message #20466 > From: "Mark Plus" <> > Subject: Wired.com: "Who Wants to Live Forever?" > Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 17:22:08 -0800 > > Who Wants to Live Forever? By Kristen Philipkoski > Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56482,00.html > > 02:00 AM Nov. 20, 2002 PT > > What kind of person believes it's possible to live forever? <snip> > The majority of human beings believe wanting to live forever is just plain > wrong for various reasons. > > Take, for example, Miss Alabama's argument, if you can call it that, given > during the Miss America competition in 1994. The competition host asked: "If > you could live forever, would you want to, and why?" > Miss Alabama answered, > "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we > were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot > live forever, which is why I would not live forever." Duheruuur, dribble drool sputter, duheruuur... Whoa! Her argument just swiped momentarily 100 base points of my IQ! Phew, sure glad they came back. Stupidity like this is contagious! Back, back evil one!! Back I say! Oh I can't believe I'm going to say this but Geezzz she epitomizes the empty-headed beauty clich '. I'm so glad most women have SO much more on the ball than she. She should come with a Surgeon General's warning: ///WARNING, outward appearance of this person is a trap that may lead to less than desirable even dangerously self destructive offspring.\\\ Of course the same warning should be plastered all over the umm... "Bachelor", of "The Bachelor" show infamy, oh and also Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jeremy Rifkin, GWB and especially Leon Kass. > But extreme life extension advocates have answers for every argument -- even > Miss Alabama's. They say such circular thinking stems from the innate and > irrational human fear of death. Or incredible lack of proper use of brain cells. > Bob Newport is a psychiatrist and a member of Alcor's medical advisory > board. Sporting a beret and a shirt pocket full of cigars, he argued that > humans are so afraid of death it's almost impossible to think about it > rationally. Hah! A comrade! Ok folks I must confess, my one and only vice is an occasional and I truly truly mean very occasional cigar. I can't afford any more than a few per year in the first place and in the second, knowing what you all are thinking, "that's not very healthy", I promise I smoke like Clinton claimed, not as he really likely did. ;) I have a very good friend that owns a cigar store in town. He's to me like a father confessor or bartender with a good ear (I don't drink so I don't know a real bartender such as this) or what I could never afford, a really good therapist/psychoanalyst. Once in a blue moon I get to get out of my bed and go to town and sometimes I go there. He's got these old barber chairs and blues or ragtime jazz playing with constant cribbage skirmishes all day long, but best of all really neat people that come to sit, smoke a slow relaxing cigar and shoot the breeze. Most of them are also golfing buddies of my friend and many are local businessmen. It's a really cool place to network. It is here that I met the Judge and EMT I recently spoke about and that both advised me very favorably about laws and procedures for dealing with deanimated bodies and emergency calls to scenes of pending or recent deanimation. By pure serendipity I was there today. I met a man that in conversation asked me how often I get to go there. "Not often enough", I replied. He acknowledged the same for himself. Then I explained why, that I was in bed most all the time due to poor circulation in my legs or other health problems. He then asked what I did to stay busy, and I guess sane as well might have been on his mind. Here's where I got to tell him about all of you and my daily romp through the meaningful meme of real everlasting life. I proudly showed him my newly arrived CI cryonics bracelet and necklace. He exclaimed regarding the concept of cryonics, "Amazing!" Then he began to drill me in honest earnestness for information. We had a very pleasant talk about cryonics, souls vs materialism, cloning, NDE's, how clones would not even look like the original without living through the same environmental pressures exactly as the original and much more. He agreed with all my claims but balked a little on NDE's until I told him of my own, or more precisely my confabulated one and what really happened at point of loss of consciousness. Here comes the good part. I asked him what he did. He said, "I'm with the fire department... I train firemen" My friend the store owner then spoke up and said he was in effect being modest that in fact he was THE Fire Chief! I said, "Wow!" "You are exactly a person I need to talk with!" :) Am I lucky or what? We went on to discuss a lot of things surrounding emergency situations, types of deanimation and the responses to, autopsy and avoiding them, mostly the difficulty in avoiding them where the law demands to know how someone died. Bottom line, it is best, as we all know, to die at home or in hospice with people watching. Even if at home and someone doesn't find you soon someone in power may want to express that power and demand to know exactly what killed you unless it is perhaps a protracted illness well documented and followed. He expressed that I do need, as I know and still intend to do, to talk with police and my coroner. For his part and his EMT's he intimated if they arrive and someone is non responsive they do not as thought or might happen elsewhere just drag the body off to the morgue, that is for the police to handle first then the coroner. Well one plus at least. Actually another as well. As he left I asked could I tell all of you that I met my fire chief and that he was favorable to cryonics? He said, "yeah, sure thing". A n ote about these recent articles covering Alcor's Conference. For the most art they have been fairly friendly and in the very least not hostile. This brings to mind the Ted Williams issue. Does anyone, especially after hopefully some juicy gossip at the conference, know what is happening with Ted's legal fight to stay frozen? Across the CNN crawl this morning I noticed a blurb about Henry Williams winning a case brought against him but it said "by a former associate" so it smacked of his complained about alleged poor business ventures gone awry rather than his idiot half sister's bid to murder their Dad. > > Message #20467 > From: "Mark Plus" <> > Subject: Wired.com: "A Few Ways to Win Mortality War" > Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 17:24:44 -0800 > > A Few Ways to Win Mortality War By Kristen Philipkoski > Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,56476,00.html > > 02:00 AM Nov. 20, 2002 PT <snip> > Cloning: Michael West, chief executive of Advanced Cell Technology, the > company that has become famous for claiming to clone human embryos, was the > celebrity of the conference. <snip> > Stem cells -- very young cells that have the ability to become any cell in > the body -- are a promising treatment for many diseases. The problem is they > might be rejected as foreign by a patient's immune system. To avoid that, > researchers hope to create cloned embryos from the patient's own body. No > one knows if that will eliminate the problem, but West's company's work may > prove it is the solution, one way or the other. > > Some people call stem cell harvesting murder, And which is totally bull durham when a cow's egg in denucleated and human DNA implanted, zapped with a little charge then begins to make stem cells for harvest. What idiot would claim that to be a human being, even a potential one? "Duherr, we took you to term because of the superstitious people, sorry about the cow horns, that weird split between yur toes and the chewing yur cud thing. ready for some hay?" I know I know, that couldn't happen, I believe, but I think you all get my point. > which baffles West, who claims > he hates to kill an ant. You go Michael. Bravo! <snip> > Nutrition: Ray Kurzweil hopes to extend his life with a strict diet, > exercise and 150 supplements a day. While not trained as a doctor, > Kurzweil's track record in other areas of science and technology is > impressive. He's a pioneer in optical character recognition, music synthesis > and speech recognition. > > When doctors diagnosed him with type 2 diabetes 19 years ago, he came up > with his own treatment, basically eliminating sugars and most carbohydrates > from his diet. Kurzweil is writing a book on his longevity health plan with > Dr. Terry Grossman called A Short Guide to a Long Life. They're also > developing a line of food products that Kurzweil says will taste as good as > regular cake and other carbohydrate-rich treats, but will be very low in > carbs, sugar and salt. Man! I wish I'd known about his diet several years ago. > His goal is to stay alive long enough so that advances in nanotechnology and > therapeutic cloning techniques can extend human life into the triple digits. > > "If we can all hang in there another 10 years, we may all be able to > experience the remarkable future ahead," he said. Ten years? Does anyone know if he elaborates more on his website and where on it. For all his brilliance his website is difficult to navigate for finding things. > Message #20468 > Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2002 20:00:52 -0800 (PST) > From: Driven FromThePack <> > Subject: The New Scientist Cryonics Contest > > Did not work out too well: the winner was one who > elected to go to Hawaii....what a dumbass (excuse me, > but that one got out before I could stop it...) No excuse necessary. I hope she reads this. Ditto the remark she is a dumbass... and I could say so much worse. > Over 800 fully completed entries were received from 25 > countries. Over 73% of entrants opted to go to Hawaii > if they won, and 27% said that they would prefer to be > cryonically preserved." Just goes to show you the gene pool is polluted with a rampant anti survival gene. > > Message #20469 > From: > Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 00:15:37 EST > Subject: Requested Conference Article/Impressions > > > > If I can figure out how to do it, I will also upload a reference to some > pictures I took at the conference. Rudi, Go to Sony's "Image Station" at http://www.imagestation.com/. It is where I host my artwork for free. Sign up for free and make a photo album to upload your photos to. Then be sure to send an "invite a friend to see this album" email to yourself or your wife so you may copy and paste the special "invite" URL. Use IE because it does not like Nutscrape. Oops! Did I say that? ;) James<--feeling ornery -- Cryonics Institute of Michigan Member! The Immortalist Society Member! The Society for Venturism Member! MY WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/swayze/ While there follow the links to photos of me and some of my artwork and a radio interview on Dr. J's ChangeSurfer Radio program with me and the father of cryonics Prof. Robert Ettinger, author of "The Prospect of Immortality". A RELIGION I actually recommend: http://www.venturist.org A FAVORITE quote: Last lines of the first Star Trek the Next Generation movie. Capt. Picard: "What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived, after all Number One, we're only mortal." Will Ryker: "Speak for yourself captain, I intend to live forever!" Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20471