It occurs to me that one of the things being discussed then was recipes,
largely in connection to calorie restriction I suppose. I first heard of
lactose intolerance in that discussion. While I didn't think it was
that inspiring, it was actually more practical than most other threads,
now or then. And it illustrates a point *against* topical lists: there
already are newsgroups and mailing lists to discuss many extropian
topics separately. I could go try to follow cryonics and cryptography
and space tech and quantum tech and libertarian politics and frugal
living and cal-res diets and ... in a whole bunch of separate places. I
don't have the time. It's nice to have one place where (1) there are a
bunch of people who share a similar spectrum of interests and (2) topics
can *cycle* among the various possibilities, so over time you visit
everything, hear the news worth hearing, without drowning yourself.
I have a megabyte of unread extropians and cypherpunks mail from 3 years
ago (this was the L. Detweiler meets Medusa phase of the latter) and am
looking at the subjects of the posts, figuring this won't really violate
the closed list policy.
Something inspired by the Polly Klaas shooting on how to balance the
effects of a Singularity so that more people don't go beserk from
distruption as we approach it.
Something on the Hubble telescope and its relationship to spy
satellites.
"I highly recommend Mosaic."
Proof that AltInst already existed, which I didn't realize.
Why aren't there more women on the list?
The possibility of early retirement. Very early.
When one first used a computer.
Will Cryptoanarchy keep us safe?
NMR microscopy.
The decline and fall of the extropians list.
Future neologisms (detweil)
Will Jupiter Brains consider us lunch?
Copyrights under cryptoanarchy.
Iceland's saga-era legal system. (Guess who wrote that post.)
Steganography.
Virtual Seminars on stuff, such as startups.
I miss "the squirrel." And many other names from then.
I also didn't see any cypherpunks mail. That much extropians and
altinst stuff? Wow. I also didn't realize I'd been subscribed to
AltInst then.
I second John Blanco-Losada's call for subject headers.
META, PHIL, POLI, SCI, TECH, HUMOR, FRIV(olous), JUNK, NOISE. SPACE,
CRYO, BIO, LIT.
I notice that in the Golden Age, we didn't use abbreviations, or at
least more rarely. POLITICS. CRYONICS.
Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
Do not look upon this glass,
Lest your soul from this world pass
This legend burned upon its case
You dare not see the mirror's face.