X-Message-Number: 394
From att!cup.portal.com!Eric_S_Klien Wed Aug 14 08:43:20 PDT 1991
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Subject: Corrected Alcor Boston Minutes
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 91 08:43:20 PDT
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X-Origin: The Portal System (TM)
ALCOR BOSTON MINUTES
Tuesday July 16th 7:30 - 11:30 PM
and
Sunday August 11th 3:00 - 9:00 PM
Attendees for July 16th meeting
-------------------------------
7 Boston People 3 New York People
Attendees for August 11th meeting
---------------------------------
6 Boston People
Meeting Dates
-------------
Our next meetings will be on Sept 8, Oct 13, and Nov 10th at 3:00 PM.
Location of the meetings will be at the home of Eric Klien, 28 Kenmar
Dr. #272, Billerica, MA 01821 until further notice. (508) 663-5480
Work, (508) 670-5235 Home, e-mail.
To get to my house take 128 to 3 north, then take the Concord Rd
exit, where you should make a right towards Billerica. The second
right after Saint Theresa's Rectory will be Kenmar Dr, make a right
on it. Note that Kenmar Dr is not marked. Follow Kenmar past
building 6 on your left, building 3 on your right and then building 8
on your left (this building has a swimming pool) and building 5 on
your right and then make a left. Travel over the million speed bumps
until you have reached the last building on the street. That will be
building 28. If you miss the left turn after building 8, you will
find yourself on a street that has building 27, not building 28. If
this happens, backup and make the correct left which will now be a
right for you.
Additional informaton for those that get lost: Kenmar Dr. is the
first right before the fork of Concord Rd and Charnstaffe. It is
also the fifth right after the Concord exit, about 1.3 miles from the
exit. There are a lot of little rights before Kenmar Dr. If you
take any of them, just travel left until you can't go any further.
You will then be on Kenmar Dr. If you accidently get on Charnstaffe,
make your first two lefts and you will be back on Concord Rd, with
Kenmar being your second left.
Informal Meeting
----------------
Since some New York members were passing through on their way to
Canada, we decided to meet them at the July 16th MIT Nanotechnology
Study Group meeting. The topic of this meeting was "Macromolecular
Clusters: A New Direction in Materials Science".
This meeting was hosted by Kirk D. Kolenbrander, MIT Materials
Science Dept at MIT NE43-773. Summary of subject:
"Adding or removing a few atoms from an ordinary sample will not
change its properties. This is not true of very small samples. A
cluster of 9 cobalt atoms is practically inert to hydrogen gas,
whereas a cluster of 10 cobalt atoms is quite reactive.
The implications for nanotechnology are mixed. The range of
properties expressed by materials may be very much broader than is
now known. But it also means that the characteristics of materials
can be very sensitive to small errors in design or construction.
Professor Kolenbrander will describe recent developments."
It was pretty neat to have an MIT Nanotechnology meeting where almost
half the participants were Alcor Boston or Alcor New York members. I
was especially pleased by the amount of Alcor Boston members because
we have never had more than 6 members at a meeting and we had 7 Alcor
Boston members at this informal meeting, along with the 3 Alcor New
York members that also showed up. The merits of different forms of
government were a big topic of discussion, with the New Yorkers
tending to push the anarchist view. It was a lot of fun meeting them
again! (I saw them for the first time when Mike Darwin hosted an MIT
Nanotechnology meeting in the summer of '89, a few months before I
became an Alcor member.)
Member Recruitment
------------------
We had a new person show up, Howard Katz, plus we tied with the
record for the most people at an official meeting which was set at 6
people last September. Hopefully this record tieing plus the 7
people who showed up at the informal meeting is the beginning of a
trend towards Alcor Boston growth.
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...
Finances
--------
I got a nice $40 donation from an anonymous donor to help with my
postage and printing costs. I am making a matching donation of $40
to Alcor's endowment fund. We now have a surplus of $40 in our
postage fund and I am open to suggestions on how to use it. No one
had any ideas at our latest meeting.
Gold Standard
-------------
It was a pleasure to have Howard Katz at our latest meeting. In
1974, Howard was part of a group that convinced Congress to legalize
ownership of gold. In 1978, Howard got Congress to legalize written
gold clauses where gold units are used instead of dollars. In 1986,
Howard got Congress to mint the $50 gold Eagle coin, the $25, $10,
and $5 gold Eagle coins and the $1 silver Eagle coin. In 1991,
Howard is trying to get banks or mortgage companies to make loans
based in gold with the advantage of lower interest rates since gold
is more inflation proof than paper money.
We spent most of the meeting discussing the advantages of a gold
standard, going over a lot of the material from Howard's article in
the latest issue of Cryonics. For example, Howard pointed out that
leaving the gold standard in 1933 has caused the value of money to
drop by 90%; money was pretty stable in the 150 years before when it
was based on gold. He also pointed out that the Fed has kept
interest rates artificially low for the past sixty years which has
caused lots of waste by making risky investments such as commercial
buildings in overbuilt areas worth doing. Not only has this left us
with a lot of empty buildings, but inflation was caused when the
government kept interest rates down by printing lots of money. These
reduced interest rates have also reduced the rate of return for bond
holders while helping out stock holders.
Howard is trying to convince cryonics members to invest with him so
their money will not lose value as they save towards their
suspension. Howard stays in stocks when the Fed eases and stays in
bonds when the Fed tightens.
Reminder of next meeting
------------------------
I will not be sending out a reminder of our next meeting. Remember
that it is on Sept 8 at 3 PM, the second Sunday of the month as usual.
Congresscritters
----------------
I received the following from the electronic cryonics mailing list,
I think it is very important so I am reprinting it.
REPORT ON RECENT CONTACTS WITH LEGISLATORS
By Allen Lopp
[ Message #390 was included here, but I deleted it to conserve space and
eliminate duplication. If anyone missed message #390, let me know and
I will resend it to you. - KQB]
Time Travel
-----------
The rest of these minutes will cover the time travel question that
was brought up two issues ago. In the following messages note that
Brian Wowk is arguing that acceleration, not speed, slows down time
but fails to respond to my final good point in favor of speed as the
cause of time travel. Until I hear otherwise, my conclusion is that
the object that moves quickest relative to the fixed stars slows down
the most in time. In particular, the object slows down at the rate of
1/(1-(percentage of speed of light)^2))^.5 so if something is going at
10% of the speed of light the answer is 1/(1-.1^2)^.5 = 1.005038
seconds go by on the non moving object for each second on the moving
object, a minor difference considering the high speed involved. Here
are the answers for various speeds:
50% speed of light = 1.154701
75% " " = 1.511858
90% " " = 2.294157
95% " " = 3.202563
99% " " = 7.088818
99.9% " " = 22.36649
99.99% " " = 70.70481
99.999% " " = 223.4551
99.9999% " " = 702.4583
100% " " = positive infinity (time stops for the moving
object)
Considering the high speeds you need to slow down time, I would
suggest that cryonic suspension is a cheaper way to slow down
time. Even going 99.9999% the speed of light doesn't slow down
biological time anywhere near what liquid nitrogen can do.
Note that Steve Harris and I are arguing in favor of speed versus
acceleration in the following notes while Brian Wowk is arguing the
opposite.
[ Messages #361, #363, #367, and #364 from Brian Wowk, Steven B. Harris,
Eric Klien, and Brian Wowk, respectively, removed to conserve space and
eliminate duplication. If you missed these messages, please let me know
and I will (re)send them to you. Eric Klien also has the successive
correspondence re: relativity and time travel and can send those messages
to interested parties. - KQB ]
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.
Mistakes
--------
If any of these minutes reflect mistaken information, let Eric Klien know!
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