X-Message-Number: 4971 Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:40:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: SPIN magazine, article on cryonics Spin magazine, which has become increasingly serious over the last couple of years, contains a long and perceptive article on cryonics in its November issue, out now. The article focuses almost exclusively on Alcor, and may (or should) be embarrassing to some cryonicists since it does an excellent job of accurately capturing the wishful thinking and wackiness that our field sometimes tends to suffer from. I doubt that Alcor (or anyone else) will pick up a single new member as a result of this article. To me, it demonstrates very clearly that if you want good treatment from the running dogs of the press, you can't just lie down and expose your throat to them. Also, it might be helpful to establish some things that we, as cryonicists, do want to get across (e.g. hard research data) and some things which we will try not to talk about (e.g. fantasies about running off multiple copies of ourselves to have group sex in the distant future). I remain convinced that the ideal way to deal with the media is to do what we did with Omni magazine: sell them a package. This seems to be the only way to exert any real control, and it worked well. I remain unconvinced that articles such as the one in Spin really do any good at all. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4971