The Intelligence of Frogs

I guess you can tell by reading the following news item I'm not talking about green amphibians. This is just stupid. How in the hell is this man by honoring his parents wishes in any way hurting anyone apart from himself if even that? Ok, I'll come clean right away. Yes, I'm a Cryonicist.

You'd have to be stupid nowadays not to be. That's right I might have just called you stupid if you are reading this and haven't looked into and signed up for Cryonics. Unless you hate your life you owe it to yourself to take the chance to cheat death. With the pace of tech and science and medicine development at break neck runaway speed advancing toward some exponential unpredictable unknown, how could anyone rule out the possiblity that it might work? I prefer being in the experimental group rather than the control. The control group is guaranteed dead in my opinion. Sure maybe there's an after life but you see I'm not excluded from that by doing Cryonics, why would I be? If that exists it has to be outside of normal time and dimension so it'll still be there if it is there whenever my luck finally does run out.

Has Cryonics a decent chance to work? Even though we cannot predict where the development of science and medicine technology might lead we sure can draw some inferences based on trends. These lead me to believe at least within the next two centuries, but I'm expecting sooner, we'll have licked the total control of matter. If that happens all bets are off. And even if someone hates their life they'll be able to choose a new one, sort of, in the future. I'll get back to that in a later blog. The bottom line though is, there's too much wonderment and exciting possiblities to chance missing out on. I'm sure not going to chance it.

A book that half the world holds dear and wise says that even God said of us (that's right, human beings), "Anything they dream they will do". That's almost a commandment to invent and progress! I'll tell you something true, so far that has been the truest statement from that book ever, in my opinion.

Jules Vern dreamed of flying machines and even nuclear (nook lee ur) subs approximately 100 years (or more than 100 for the subs) before they occurred. This theme rings true for countless visionaries. What they dreamed came true.

I believe what Robert C. W. Ettinger dreamed will also definately come true. He dreamed of cheating death and I'm betting my life on it. Mid 20th century he dreamed of freezing people at the point of death to preserve them for future advanced medicine to revive them. I'll get back to more on that below. For now check out how dumb frogs can be. ;)

Son to Appeal Against Cryogenic Freezing Ruling

Jon Henley in Paris

Wednesday January 11, 2006

The Guardian

A French man has vowed to take his 20-year battle to freeze his dead parents to the European court of human rights.

Rémy Martinot, the son of two cryopreservation enthusiasts who believed scientific progress might one day bring them back to life, said he refused to accept a ruling yesterday from France's highest legal authority, the council of state, that keeping his parents Monique (who died in 1984) and Raymond (who died in 2002) in a minus 65C vault in the family chateau near Saumur threatened public order and health. "I fail to understand how this practice is a threat," he said.

Please see the original article here.

More about the case and 20 uear Martinot struggle may be found here.

Just what are the frogs, er French thinking? I should stop picking on them but they, at least these officials involved in the Martinot case, have it coming for being so bloody minded and short sighted if not plain stupid about this. Are they afraid more will want to do this? What if they do? So what! What's so terrible about that? What, it's not "normal"? What is normal interment anyways? There's been numbers of different ways to inter our loved ones throughout history from mummification to cremation. I personally think burial is hideous. Worm food, ick! Just imagining my loved ones or myself slowly rotting, now that is grotesque. I know worms need to eat too but not me.

Now before any of you go and say, "it's snake oil for the gullible and hopeful" or "it's a scam to get people to give up their retirement funds", I have a story for you that blows that bollux out of the water. I'm not a rich man and I'm disabled as well. As such I live under certain financial restrictions my government burdens me with. I would never on my current income have been able to afford Cryonics on my own. I wouldn't have been allowed to save enough, even if that were fiscally possible on so little. I am not healthy enough to get a life insurance policy to fund it. I should clarify here that we are talking economies of scale. If you make 30k a year than ten dollars to me is like $50 to me. Most people pay for it with life insurance afforded on a normal not wealthy income. It costs only as much as coffee a day.

Well in late 1999 I got involved with the Cryonics community when my brother, tired of hearing me preach to him and the family, got me a link to a message list. There was a discussion going on that compelled me to bare my woes for all to see. I didn't expect what happened, in fact quite the opposite because I had been rather, well, terse in what I had to impart. It didn't matter, the next day having heard of my trapped situation several had pledged several thousand dollars toward my suspension policy.

The best thing of all was that early on Robert Ettinger, the actual "Father of Cryonics", had himself donated. However, after about a year the donations had plateaued and Robert wasn't having that. Lots of charities slack off when the news is not new anymore, it wasn't a big deal to me. But it was for Robert and so he created a new fund for me out of the existing pledges and kicked in another 13k of his own estate if the remainder to bring it to 33k total could be gathered. It wasn't long my fund goal was met and so by the grace of the wonderful future forward thinking loving people in Cryonics and Transhumanism I am fully funded for Cryonics at Cryonics Institute of Michigan. Neat stuff, huh?

That's right you could be signed up for so little too, just about 30k. That's a standard automobile these days. Isn't your life worth a dumb ole car?

Ok you green amphibians, er ah, French people, back off the Martinot's. Tell your leaders to get a clue!