From: John Grigg (starman2100@lycos.com)
Date: Mon Feb 24 2003 - 18:52:11 MST
Spike,
I did like your ideas, but please don't forget to send Alcor a check for ten million so they can properly implement your concepts. : )
Perhaps Saul Kent and Bill Faloon will actually do these things if they ever build the Timeship. We will see.
I will post your response to Cryonet.
best wishes,
John
John feel free to cross post this to cryonet.
John Grigg wrote:
> ...
>
> The author of this article is stuck in very conventional
> modes of thought.
Of course he is, however those who are stuck in
conventional modes of thought are those who cause
the most trouble for Alcor. I had some ideas which
I think can help everyone to win. Please read on.
> Alcor is much too expensive and time
> intensive to be a cold storage mausoleum.
Alcor should look into becoming exactly that:
a mausoleum. Let it get whatever legal status
a mausoleum has. Let it sell itself as just
a mausoleum. {They might already do this.}
That the bodies are frozen is immaterial to the
fact that these are hallowed grounds, with human
remains present, etc. Let Alcor get the same
superstitious benefits that any cemetery enjoys.
> Meanwhile, no one with close ties to Williams was allowed access to the lab
> as Williams' body hung suspended in a giant cylinder.
>
> Hamon couldn't accept that.
OK, this seems like an easy one to solve, without
running up the cost too high.
Make dewars that have the right dimensions
to allow the patients to lie horizontal, just
like they would in any cemetery. I can't
imagine this would be all that technically
difficult. Get plaques that say Here *lies*
the Splendid Splinter, etc. Allow the same
access as an ordinary mausoleum would allow.
Let us deal with superstition the way a
surfer deals with waves: dont fight it, ride it.
Seems to me you could even place the corpsicles
in "coffins" of sorts, smaller than the traditional
ones, custom fit so as to not use up a lot of room
in the dewar. Then if the proles get jiggy about
several bodies sharing the same dewar, one could
argue, no, each has its own coffin. They share the
same liquid nitrogen in the same sense that everyone
in the cemetery shares the same soil.
If it makes people feel better, we could even place
the dewar underground, so the families could imagine
their ancestors are buried.
Please indulge me in one more comment on upside-ism.
As one who has talked to a number of innocents
about cryonics, I can assure you that these minor
points do matter. Those of you who are trained in
christian lore, recall that when the Apostle Peter
was to be crucified, he asked to suffer the ignominious
fate of being hung upside down. This practice was
intended to heap further shame upon the prisoner
in his final hours, but Peter requested this because he
felt he was unworthy of the honor of being crucified in
the same manner as Hoerkheimer Christ.
Be that as it may, Alcor really needs to rethink
the upside down posture, even if it makes sense
from a technical point of view. And failing the
coffins in the dewar bit, perhaps us a body bag, so
as to satisfiy the squicked yahoos that think that
it matters. {Again, they might already be doing
this or something equivalent, but it did not come
out in the hysterical news article.}
It is in the best interest of all of us to protect
Alcor and its sister organizations from these kinds
of criticisms raised by uninformed or misinformed
proles, for we all know we have an inexhaustable
supply of these kinds of people, and plenty of lawyers
with nothing to do and plenty of news organizations
eager to print all the news thats fit to sell papers.
spike
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