X-Message-Number: 6406 From: Peter Merel <> Subject: Australian Law + Blade Runner Cryonics Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 17:18:37 +1000 (EST) Two items of interest: Wrt the Australian euthanasia laws, there's a nice page of pointers at http://netguide.aust.com/daily/features/feat28june96.html - including pointers to the latest details. As I understand from a radio story last night, the Australian federal government, on the express instructions of the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, plans to attempt to scupper the NT laws in two ways. The first is in the courts by suggesting that making such a law is beyond the Northern Territory's brief, as the NT is not actually an Australian state - it didn't exist prior to the Australian federation, and was only created as an autonomous legislature by the Australian government (though quite a long time ago ...) as a matter of expedience. I've heard, though IANAL, that this challenge is not very likely to succeed. The second, much more controversial, spoiling method is to instruct the commonwealth administrator (forget his exact title, sorry) not to enact the law. This would be controversial in that this administrator would then have conflicting instructions from his boss, the commonwealth, and from his parliament, the NT parliament. According to the radio report I heard there is nothing in the administrator's role to dictate just who he should listen to under such circumstances - a real constitutional crisis. *** On a totally unrelated note, I've been reading the latest "Making of Blade Runner" book, "Future Noir" by Paul M. Sammon. For a diehard BR fan like myself (I've got credits in the BR FAQ) this makes spellbinding reading, but I was surprised to find that it has some relevance here. Perhaps a few people will be aware that some of the original BR scripts and production sketches called for a "CryoCrypt" in which, as an oblique reference to Philip K. Dick's marvellous novel "Ubik" - surely a must-read for any cryonicist - the *real* Eldon Tyrell would remain safe while a replicant Eldon Tyrell risked the wrath of Roy Batty. Of course, like quite a few early BR concepts, this one didn't make it into any version of the final movie. But I was fascinated to read that the original actor approached to play Deckard, Dustin Hoffman, was the origin of this whole concept, and that *BOTH* Hoffman and the movie's director, Ridley Scott, were (C 1981) big fans of "cryogenics" (sic). I was wondering whether Hoffman or Scott are signed up? If so I imagine they've got confidentiality agreements, so suspension providers should not regard this as a query. However, if they're not, they might make excellent prospects for those who are still looking for a cryonics white knight. -- | mailto: | Give away what you don't need. | | http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/ | | Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=6406