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Subject: Alcor Boston
Date: Thu, 13 Dec 90 06:54:10 PST
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ALCOR BOSTON MINUTES
Sunday December 9th 3:00 - 8:45 PM
Meeting Dates
-------------
Our next meetings will be on Feb 10, Mar 10, and April 14 at 3:00 PM.
Location of the meetings will be at the home of Peter Hurst, 1850
Commonwealth Ave, Brighton, MA 02135 until further notice. We are
skipping the January meeting date in order to spend some time
advertising our group so the meetings get more people.
Member Recruitment
------------------
Our discussion group is not growing.
Here is what was done in the past month: 1) I wrote to The Planetary
Society, StarLog, the Foresight Institute, the Right to Die
Foundation, Omni, and Longevity asking for Massachussetts mailing
lists or for a mention in their magazine. So far, the Foresight
Institute has written back suggesting that I write to either
Longevity magazine or Alcor. (I just told them we were a cryonics
discussion group.) These letters were sent out only two weeks before
this meeting, so I may be getting additional responses. I will
eventually write to the Hemlock society also. 2) Stephen McCusker
passed out 18 flyers at a local space society group. 3) I posted
these minutes and a copy of the latest flyer on the Usenet cryonics
mailing list.
Here is what will be done before the next meeting: 1) Walter Vannini
is going to give my objectivist flyer to the head of an objectivist
group who will then mass mail it to his 70 members. Walter will also
be speaking at that group in late January. Walter will pay the
objectivist group about $12.00 for the postage and xeroxing that the
group will be doing for us. 2) Stephen McCusker is going to look
into having a local space society group getting my space flyer mass
mailed to them. If we could get both mass mailings done before Feb
10th, this could easily increase the size of our next meeting by
100%. 3) I will post these minutes on the Usenet cryonics mailing
list.
If anyone reading this can promote our next meeting I would
appreciate it. I am especially looking for ways to do local mass
mailings. And of course, two of our subscribers publish their own
zines and could mention the dates of my next meetings...
Alcor Membership
----------------
Here we are growing.
At our first meeting only one Alcor member showed up, now we have two
Alcor members. I predict that Stephen McCusker will become a member
within six months, giving us three Alcor members. Also, someone who
attended our first meeting has not only joined Alcor but he has
become an Alcor staff member.
Aging Research
--------------
We discussed two articles in the November issue of Science,
"Gerontology Research Comes of Age" and "In Search of Methuselah:
Estimating the Upper Limits to Human Longevity".
The second, more detailed article said that "Barring major advances
in the development and use of life-extending technologies or the
alteration of human aging at the molecular level, the period of rapid
increases in life expectancy in developed nations has come to an
end." And later said "However, we strongly suspect that major
advances in genetic engineering and life-extending technologies are
forthcoming, and these will be followed by commensurate declines in
mortality and extensions of longevity." I found this quite
optimistic compared to all the talk in the media recently about the
85 year longevity barrier that we are about to hit.
Freezing Research
-----------------
We discussed the article in the December issue of Scientific American
"Frozen and Alive". Woolly bear caterpillars that spend 10 months of
the year frozen solid at -50 degrees Celsius, Siberian salamanders
that can survive being frozen solid at -35 degrees Celsius, Painted
turtles that survive freezing and thawing repeatedly over the winter,
and Gray Tree frogs surviving freezing at -8 degrees Celsius. It was
noted that animals try two methods of surviving: 1) Using ice-
nucleating proteins to start ice formation early so all crystals are
small. 2) Supercooling by removing nucleators from the body fluids.
It was pointed out that metabolism continues in the frozen frogs, who
use their cryoprotectant (glucose) as fuel while they are frozen.
Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition
------------------------------------------------
Walter said this book was great. I'll start looking for it. It is
about people working on things that are theoretically possible
although quite unconventional. Cryonics, private spacecraft, and
tearing apart the sun are discussed in this book. It was written by
Ed Regis and published by Addison-Wesley.
Singularity
-----------
I passed around the latest copy of this zine which covers a wide
range of unusual ideas, from cryonics to the mental health industry.
An article entitled "Memes, Meta-Memes, & Politics" by H. Keith
Henson was in this issue. Keith treats "ideas" as viruses in this
article. He says "A meme survives in the world because people pass
it on to other people, either vertically to the next generation, or
horizontally to our fellows. This process is analogous to the way
willow genes cause willow trees to spread them, or perhaps closer to
the way cold viruses make us sneeze and spread them." He talks about
the hula hoop meme and the Jim Jones meme among others.
Also, the publisher of Singularity, Ron Evans, got married.
Congratulations Ron! Ron has indicated that he and his beautiful
wife may show up at our next meeting.
Ann Landers
-----------
On December 9th, Ann Landers published another letter advocating
death so you don't have to give out lots of gifts. It also
criticized the research that allows middle aged women to have
pregnancies. I quote "The best break Mother Nature gives us is
menopause and the freedom from pregnancy." and "When I read that,
all I could think of was buying Christmas gifts for children,
grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grand children,
and great-great-great-grand children. Have mercy."
I responded with the following:
Dear Ann Landers,
I completely disagree with the December 9th letter that claimed that
being able to have healthy babies is a bad thing. If people were
able to have babies at a later age, then we wouldn't see women like
Connie Chung panicking when their biological clock started to run
out. Of course, it would be better if the aging process itself was
slowed down so that 50 year old mothers would not be too feeble to
care for their children. The researchers who think they have found a
way to get people to their 170th birthday believe that they have
found a way to actually slow down the aging process.
While you have now published twice that it is good that people die at
a young age of 75 years or .0000005% of the age of our universe so
that they can avoid buying lots of Christmas gifts, I believe that
commiting suicide by avoiding life extending techniques is not the
solution to this gift problem. Are you going to start suggesting
that people eat high fat diets and stop exercising so they can die
even quicker and therefore have to give out less gifts? Perhaps you
will tell them to avoid modern medicine entirely so they can go back
to our "natural" life expectancy of 25 years?
While some people may look forward to death, I enjoy life and
consider no amount of healthy years too many. As far as I am
concerned, a cure for the disease of aging would be the biggest favor
scientists could give me.
Sincerely,
LIFE LOVER IN TAXACHUSSETTS
Signup Fee
----------
75% of us were in favor of billing $25/month instead of the $300 sign
up fee. 100% of us were in favor of billing $25/month instead of a
$600 sign up fee.
Thomas Donaldson Case
---------------------
If you wish to contribute to the Thomas Donaldson legal fight, send
money to the Thomas Donaldson Legal Defense Fund (attention Arel
Lucas), 1794 Cardel Way, San Jose, CA 95124. Or call Arel Lucas at
1-408-978-7616. Thomas is fighting to be frozen before his brain
becomes scientifically dead. (Which would happen months before he
became legally dead.) Thomas has lost his first round in the courts
and needs our help! A recent fundraising effort raised more than
$18,000 which was a big help.
Video
-----
A one hour tape from the Venturist group was shown.
Future events
-------------
I predict that Saddam will withdraw from all of Kuwait except for a
few islands and one oil field on Jan 5th. On Jan 13th he will do a
complete withdrawal. I wouldn't bet much money on these dates, but
it will be interesting to see how close my prediction comes to the
truth. If we end up having a war, I predict it will be over within a
week.
Questions
---------
If any e-mail people reading these minutes have questions that they
would like answered in future meetings, send me the questions and
they will be answered in the next minutes published.
Reprinting
----------
If Alcor would like to reprint this newsletter in full or in part in
the next issue of Cryonics, they can feel free to do so. (Without
our names and addresses of course!)
Mistakes
--------
If any of these minutes reflect mistaken information, let Eric Klien
know!
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