From david at lucifer.com Sun Oct 12 17:03:29 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:03:29 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] test 1 Message-ID: <074f01c390e2$c2c0a6c0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> testing 1..2..3 From david at lucifer.com Sun Oct 12 17:04:30 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:04:30 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] test 1 References: <074f01c390e2$c2c0a6c0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <076301c390e2$e6dbf7d0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> test reply ----- Original Message ----- From: "David McFadzean" To: Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 1:03 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] test 1 > testing 1..2..3 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From david at javien.com Sun Oct 12 17:03:44 2003 From: david at javien.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 13:03:44 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] test 2 Message-ID: <075501c390e2$cbc8a9c0$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> test from unsubscribed address From david at lucifer.com Sun Oct 12 20:26:12 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 16:26:12 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp Message-ID: <082a01c390ff$1468ab50$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Please reply to this message when you see it. Note how long it takes to get your reply back, and reply again with that information. Thanks! David From david at lucifer.com Sun Oct 12 20:26:55 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 16:26:55 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp References: <082a01c390ff$1468ab50$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <083901c390ff$2ddacc80$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Replying at 4:26 EST. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David McFadzean" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 4:26 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp > Please reply to this message when you see it. Note how long it takes to get your > reply back, and reply again with that information. > > Thanks! > David > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From david at lucifer.com Sun Oct 12 20:27:59 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 16:27:59 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp References: <082a01c390ff$1468ab50$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> <083901c390ff$2ddacc80$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <084701c390ff$545ae890$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Saw this reply immediately (as expected given that the list is hosted on my mail server :-). ----- Original Message ----- From: "David McFadzean" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2003 4:26 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] rsvp > Replying at 4:26 EST. From max at maxmore.com Sun Oct 12 20:55:18 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 15:55:18 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp In-Reply-To: <082a01c390ff$1468ab50$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031012155455.037a0d88@mail.earthlink.net> Replying at 3:44pm, CST. Max At 03:26 PM 10/12/2003, you wrote: >Please reply to this message when you see it. Note how long it takes to >get your >reply back, and reply again with that information. > >Thanks! >David >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From max at maxmore.com Sun Oct 12 20:57:53 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2003 15:57:53 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] rsvp In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031012155455.037a0d88@mail.earthlink.net> References: <082a01c390ff$1468ab50$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031012155707.0397a6b8@mail.earthlink.net> My reply also came immediately -- at least it came in when I checked a minute later. (My computer is currently set about 10 ahead, in case that confuses anyone.) Cheers, Max At 03:55 PM 10/12/2003, you wrote: >Replying at 3:44pm, CST. > >Max > >At 03:26 PM 10/12/2003, you wrote: >>Please reply to this message when you see it. Note how long it takes to >>get your >>reply back, and reply again with that information. >> >>Thanks! >>David >>_______________________________________________ >>extropy-chat mailing list >>extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >>http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > >_______________________________________________________ >Max More, Ph.D. >max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org >http://www.maxmore.com >Strategic Philosopher >Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org >_______________________________________________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From david at lucifer.com Tue Oct 14 02:45:54 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:45:54 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] Thanks Message-ID: <0dbc01c391fd$4a52ce40$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Thank you for helping test the replacement extropy-chat list. Be careful to send your test messages to , not extropy-chat at extropy.org. When the new list is ready to go, the address will be switched to the latter. Until then, they go to different lists. Please send a test message and time how long it takes for your message to come back to you. Thanks! David From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Oct 14 03:46:32 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 22:46:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Exciting test message! Message-ID: <017501c39205$cfeb4520$779d4a43@texas.net> Hey! More fun than Fun with Your New Head! Use only as directed! Slippery on Curves! Inexpensive but Versatile! Your New List is always So much Fun! From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Oct 14 04:02:04 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:02:04 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Exciting test message! References: <017501c39205$cfeb4520$779d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000901c39207$ede5e9c0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Damien Broderick wrote: > Hey! More fun than Fun with Your New Head! Use only as > directed! Slippery on Curves! Inexpensive but Versatile! > Your New List is always So much Fun! I would have just said something like testing, but that's why Damien is the writer I guess ;-) Brett From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Oct 14 04:06:32 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:06:32 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Exciting test message! References: <017501c39205$cfeb4520$779d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <019001c39208$9e219320$779d4a43@texas.net> Seems to have come back within the first minute, but I can't be sure because Barbara and I were off exploring our senses (no, you brutes, I mean we were doing Spike's 20 question test). Damien Broderick From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Oct 14 06:05:48 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 23:05:48 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] Exciting test message! In-Reply-To: <019001c39208$9e219320$779d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000b01c39219$36c12090$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Seems to have come back within the first minute, but I can't be sure because Barbara and I were off exploring our senses (no, you brutes, I mean we were doing Spike's 20 question test). Damien Broderick Damien makes a reference so obscure, even *I* need to ask for explanation. spike From eugen at leitl.org Tue Oct 14 08:21:47 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:21:47 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Exciting test message! In-Reply-To: <000b01c39219$36c12090$6501a8c0@SHELLY> References: <019001c39208$9e219320$779d4a43@texas.net> <000b01c39219$36c12090$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031014082147.GV8800@leitl.org> On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 11:05:48PM -0700, Spike wrote: > > Seems to have come back within the first minute, but I can't be sure > because Barbara and I were off exploring our senses (no, you brutes, I > mean we were doing Spike's 20 question test). Yeah, the new list seems to be realtime (like all lists ought to be, grumble). -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacques at dtext.com Tue Oct 14 08:21:49 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:21:49 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list Message-ID: <3F8BB21D.7080301@dtext.com> Est-ce qu'elle re?oit les messages en fran?ais aussi ? I'll try to report when it comes back to me. From jacques at dtext.com Tue Oct 14 08:26:20 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 10:26:20 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list In-Reply-To: <3F8BB21D.7080301@dtext.com> References: <3F8BB21D.7080301@dtext.com> Message-ID: <3F8BB32C.8070802@dtext.com> That was fast, too (less than 2 minutes). Of course, different conditions (like many members) might create problems we cannot see in those tests... JDP wrote: > Est-ce qu'elle re?oit les messages en fran?ais aussi ? > > I'll try to report when it comes back to me. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > From eugen at leitl.org Tue Oct 14 10:34:58 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 12:34:58 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list In-Reply-To: <3F8BB32C.8070802@dtext.com> References: <3F8BB21D.7080301@dtext.com> <3F8BB32C.8070802@dtext.com> Message-ID: <20031014103457.GG8800@leitl.org> On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 10:26:20AM +0200, JDP wrote: > That was fast, too (less than 2 minutes). Of course, different > conditions (like many members) might create problems we cannot see in > those tests... As you can deliver >1 kMails/minute on vintage hardware, http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/postfix/bench2.html the turnaround on any average-sized mailing list should be instanteous. If it isn't, there's something wrong with your MTA, or the system running your MTA. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jacques at dtext.com Tue Oct 14 11:59:58 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 13:59:58 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list In-Reply-To: <20031014103457.GG8800@leitl.org> References: <3F8BB21D.7080301@dtext.com> <3F8BB32C.8070802@dtext.com> <20031014103457.GG8800@leitl.org> Message-ID: <3F8BE53E.3040501@dtext.com> Eugen Leitl wrote: > On Tue, Oct 14, 2003 at 10:26:20AM +0200, JDP wrote: > >>That was fast, too (less than 2 minutes). Of course, different >>conditions (like many members) might create problems we cannot see in >>those tests... > > > As you can deliver >1 kMails/minute on vintage hardware, > > http://www-dt.e-technik.uni-dortmund.de/~ma/postfix/bench2.html > > the turnaround on any average-sized mailing list should be instanteous. > > If it isn't, there's something wrong with your MTA, > or the system running your MTA. Yes, there shouldn't be any raw computing power issue, but obviously there was a problem in the first list, so hopefully the tests we are doing now, though not representing the range of possible conditions, can allow David to identify it and correct it. Just guessing: wasn't there a problem with HTML email, maybe? Perhaps someone could send some HTML email on the new list. (I can't, for religious reasons.) Jacques From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Oct 15 05:06:23 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:36:23 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: JDP [mailto:jacques at dtext.com] > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 5:52 PM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > > > Est-ce qu'elle re?oit les messages en fran?ais aussi ? > > I'll try to report when it comes back to me. > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Oct 15 05:08:30 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 14:38:30 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE0@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Ah, now that worked fine, and took about 30 seconds turnaround. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 2:36 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > > > Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: JDP [mailto:jacques at dtext.com] > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 5:52 PM > > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > > > > > > Est-ce qu'elle re?oit les messages en fran?ais aussi ? > > > > I'll try to report when it comes back to me. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From jacques at dtext.com Wed Oct 15 07:54:50 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:54:50 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <3F8CFD4A.3090002@dtext.com> Emlyn O'regan wrote: > Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. Oh, really? Maybe you should send a copy of the email to David to see if there wasn't anything special about the message itself. Let's see this one. (I love testing things.) Jacques From jacques at dtext.com Wed Oct 15 08:02:50 2003 From: jacques at dtext.com (JDP) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:02:50 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list In-Reply-To: <3F8CFD4A.3090002@dtext.com> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <3F8CFD4A.3090002@dtext.com> Message-ID: <3F8CFF2A.1020002@dtext.com> JDP wrote: > Emlyn O'regan wrote: > >> Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. > > > Oh, really? Maybe you should send a copy of the email to David to see if > there wasn't anything special about the message itself. > > Let's see this one. (I love testing things.) That was immediate, too. Jacques From david at lucifer.com Wed Oct 15 16:09:17 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:09:17 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <00f801c39336$b01a8170$e400a8c0@frodo> From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. Was the one that never showed up sent to this list (@lists.extropy.org) or the broken one (@extropy.org)? From david at lucifer.com Wed Oct 15 16:16:38 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:16:38 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] prefix and digests References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFDF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <00f801c39336$b01a8170$e400a8c0@frodo> Message-ID: <010701c39337$b63be9d0$e400a8c0@frodo> I've temporarily changed the subject prefix of this list to help keep it distinct for now. Are people that signed up for the digest getting the digest? David From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Wed Oct 15 17:39:15 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:39:15 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE0@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: Just testing on my end as well.............. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Emlyn O'regan" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 12:08 AM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > Ah, now that worked fine, and took about 30 seconds turnaround. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > > Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 2:36 PM > > To: 'ExI chat list' > > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > > > > > > Trying another test; I sent one yesterday and it never turned up. > > > > Emlyn > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: JDP [mailto:jacques at dtext.com] > > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 5:52 PM > > > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > Subject: [extropy-chat] More testing on the new list > > > > > > > > > Est-ce qu'elle re?oit les messages en fran?ais aussi ? > > > > > > I'll try to report when it comes back to me. > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From ken at javien.com Thu Oct 16 01:19:04 2003 From: ken at javien.com (Ken Kittlitz) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 19:19:04 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20031015191750.03c414a0@127.0.0.1> Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it arrives... --- Ken Kittlitz Vice-President, Javien Canada Inc. http://www.javien.com From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Thu Oct 16 02:01:10 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 22:01:10 EDT Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test Message-ID: <1e5.11a53b22.2cbf55e6@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-15 21:19:18 Eastern Daylight Time, ken at javien.com writes: > Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it > arrives... This is the only post I've received from the test list so far. Received about 22:01 October 15th on the EDT. MB From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Oct 16 04:04:15 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:34:15 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE7@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> This is the one that never showed up. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Emlyn O'regan > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > To: Extropy (E-mail) > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > Emlyn From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Oct 16 04:09:43 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:39:43 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE8@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Actually, it went to the old list, not the new one. My bad. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 1:34 PM > To: 'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org' > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > This is the one that never showed up. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Emlyn O'regan > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > > To: Extropy (E-mail) > > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > > > Emlyn > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From david at lucifer.com Fri Oct 17 02:10:05 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:10:05 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 References: <200310161800.h9GI02830486@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: <018701c39453$c86981e0$e400a8c0@frodo> Digest looks OK Notice the nice table of contents ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:00 AM Subject: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > Send extropy-chat mailing list submissions to > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > extropy-chat-owner at lists.extropy.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of extropy-chat digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Another Test (Ken Kittlitz) > 2. Re: Another Test (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) > 3. FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org (Emlyn O'regan) > 4. RE: FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org (Emlyn O'regan) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 19:19:04 -0600 > From: Ken Kittlitz > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test > To: "ExI chat list \(test\)" > Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20031015191750.03c414a0 at 127.0.0.1> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it > arrives... > --- > Ken Kittlitz > Vice-President, Javien Canada Inc. > http://www.javien.com > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 22:01:10 EDT > From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Message-ID: <1e5.11a53b22.2cbf55e6 at aol.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > > In a message dated 2003-10-15 21:19:18 Eastern Daylight Time, ken at javien.com > writes: > > > Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it > > arrives... > > This is the only post I've received from the test list so far. Received about > 22:01 October 15th on the EDT. > > MB > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:34:15 +0930 > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > To: "'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org'" > > Message-ID: > <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE7 at adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > This is the one that never showed up. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Emlyn O'regan > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > > To: Extropy (E-mail) > > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > > > Emlyn > > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:39:43 +0930 > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > To: "'ExI chat list (test)'" > Message-ID: > <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE8 at adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Actually, it went to the old list, not the new one. My bad. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > > Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 1:34 PM > > To: 'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org' > > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > > > This is the one that never showed up. > > > > Emlyn > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Emlyn O'regan > > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > > > To: Extropy (E-mail) > > > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > > > > > Emlyn > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > ****************************************** > From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Fri Oct 17 03:31:39 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 22:31:39 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 References: <200310161800.h9GI02830486@tick.javien.com> <018701c39453$c86981e0$e400a8c0@frodo> Message-ID: OK. I'm a bit confused here. Are we using Extropy-chat-test, or Extropy-chat? I get messages from both. Also, where are the archives for the test list if we are supposed to be on that one? Do they both post to the same archives? . ----- Original Message ----- From: "David McFadzean" To: Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 9:10 PM Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > Digest looks OK > > Notice the nice table of contents > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: > Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 11:00 AM > Subject: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > > > > Send extropy-chat mailing list submissions to > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > > extropy-chat-request at lists.extropy.org > > > > You can reach the person managing the list at > > extropy-chat-owner at lists.extropy.org > > > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > > than "Re: Contents of extropy-chat digest..." > > > > > > Today's Topics: > > > > 1. Another Test (Ken Kittlitz) > > 2. Re: Another Test (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) > > 3. FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org (Emlyn O'regan) > > 4. RE: FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org (Emlyn O'regan) > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > Message: 1 > > Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 19:19:04 -0600 > > From: Ken Kittlitz > > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test > > To: "ExI chat list \(test\)" > > Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.20031015191750.03c414a0 at 127.0.0.1> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed > > > > Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it > > arrives... > > --- > > Ken Kittlitz > > Vice-President, Javien Canada Inc. > > http://www.javien.com > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > Message: 2 > > Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 22:01:10 EDT > > From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] Another Test > > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > Message-ID: <1e5.11a53b22.2cbf55e6 at aol.com> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > > > > In a message dated 2003-10-15 21:19:18 Eastern Daylight Time, ken at javien.com > > writes: > > > > > Sent from my computer at 19:18 MDT on October 15th. Let's see when it > > > arrives... > > > > This is the only post I've received from the test list so far. Received about > > 22:01 October 15th on the EDT. > > > > MB > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > Message: 3 > > Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:34:15 +0930 > > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > To: "'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org'" > > > > Message-ID: > > <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE7 at adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > > This is the one that never showed up. > > > > Emlyn > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Emlyn O'regan > > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > > > To: Extropy (E-mail) > > > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > > > > > Emlyn > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > Message: 4 > > Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:39:43 +0930 > > From: "Emlyn O'regan" > > Subject: RE: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > To: "'ExI chat list (test)'" > > Message-ID: > > <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFE8 at adlexsv02.protech.com.au> > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > > Actually, it went to the old list, not the new one. My bad. > > > > Emlyn > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > > > Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2003 1:34 PM > > > To: 'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org' > > > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] FW: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > > > > > > This is the one that never showed up. > > > > > > Emlyn > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > > From: Emlyn O'regan > > > > Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 3:58 PM > > > > To: Extropy (E-mail) > > > > Subject: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > > > > > > Testing again, really to the new list this time... > > > > > > > > Emlyn > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------ > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > End of extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > > ****************************************** > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Fri Oct 17 03:39:47 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 23:39:47 EDT Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 Message-ID: <18b.20ef87be.2cc0be83@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-16 23:33:08 Eastern Daylight Time, kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > OK. I'm a bit confused here. Are we using Extropy-chat-test, or > Extropy-chat? I felt confused also. The link in the subbing email was not the same as the link David sent in his email just a bit ago, IIRC. Also, for this chat-test list, I decided not to go with digest as it took too long to know if things were working or not. I'm not getting anything from the older-Extropy-chat list anymore. Which is rather normal. I usually was getting maybe one post out of 10. Here's the archives for this extropy-chat-test list http://www.lucifer.com/pipermail/extropy-chat/ I think.... For sure they are different lists. The archives for the older list cover September and October. Regards, MB From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Fri Oct 17 03:41:43 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 23:41:43 EDT Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 Message-ID: <76.3366c571.2cc0bef7@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-16 23:40:14 Eastern Daylight Time, MBAUMEISTR at aol.com writes: > n a message dated 2003-10-16 23:33:08 Eastern Daylight Time, > kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > > > OK. I'm a bit confused here. Are we using Extropy-chat-test, or > > Extropy-chat? > > > I felt confused also. The link in the subbing email was not the same as the > link David sent in his email just a bit ago, IIRC. Wow! The turnaround time is amazing. :) It was less than a minute. :) That feels good, it feels right. :) Thanks, David. I hope this list setup is a winner for everybody, you sure have struggled hard enough with it! :) Regards, MB From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Oct 17 04:21:55 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 14:21:55 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 References: <76.3366c571.2cc0bef7@aol.com> Message-ID: <008a01c39466$32ffb620$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Just checking out the great turn around time (hopefully :-) Btw. anyone know the date of the next US Presidential election? Brett ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 1:41 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 > In a message dated 2003-10-16 23:40:14 Eastern Daylight Time, > MBAUMEISTR at aol.com writes: > > > n a message dated 2003-10-16 23:33:08 Eastern Daylight Time, > > kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > > > > > OK. I'm a bit confused here. Are we using Extropy-chat-test, or > > > Extropy-chat? > > > > > > I felt confused also. The link in the subbing email was not the same as > the > > link David sent in his email just a bit ago, IIRC. > > > Wow! The turnaround time is amazing. :) It was less than a minute. :) That > feels good, it feels right. :) > > Thanks, David. I hope this list setup is a winner for everybody, you sure > have struggled hard enough with it! :) > > Regards, > MB > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Oct 17 14:27:35 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 07:27:35 -0700 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 5 In-Reply-To: <18b.20ef87be.2cc0be83@aol.com> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031017072504.030f11d0@pop.earthlink.net> Mike and Kevin, While working out the list issues, and dealing with the ISP, spam, and everything, David moved the list to a new server. BEFORE we make any changes to the website, we are testing the list and its new server through people on the list, as noted in David's recent email to the list asking people to test it. I did write an email to the list saying that I would send out a memo to all former list subscribers when it is sorted out. Hopefully that will be very soon, I think :-) N At 11:39 PM 10/16/03 -0400, you wrote: >In a message dated 2003-10-16 23:33:08 Eastern Daylight Time, >kevinfreels at hotmail.com writes: > > > OK. I'm a bit confused here. Are we using Extropy-chat-test, or > > Extropy-chat? > > >I felt confused also. The link in the subbing email was not the same as the >link David sent in his email just a bit ago, IIRC. > >Also, for this chat-test list, I decided not to go with digest as it took too >long to know if things were working or not. > >I'm not getting anything from the older-Extropy-chat list anymore. Which is >rather normal. I usually was getting maybe one post out of 10. > >Here's the archives for this extropy-chat-test list >http://www.lucifer.com/pipermail/extropy-chat/ >I think.... > >For sure they are different lists. The archives for the older list cover >September and October. > >Regards, >MB >_______________________________________________ >extropy-chat mailing list >extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From exi-info at extropy.org Fri Oct 17 12:58:32 2003 From: exi-info at extropy.org (Extropy Institute) Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 08:58:32 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Extropy Institute "Exponent" Newsletter Message-ID: <-1747751664.1066395518944.JavaMail.wasadmin@ui1> Extropy Institute Newsletter DESIGNER future (10.08.03) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT DESIGN LATELY? It's about time we did! Designer business strategy, designer stock options, designer drugs, designer vitamins, designer babies, designer relationships. This is the wave of the future. When I first started taking Kronos's designer vitamins, I knew it wouldn't be long before consumers requested designer everything. From "Five Gay Guys" helping men shape up their aesthetic sensibility, to top rated TV programs like HGTV's "Designing for the Sexes" and "Sensible Chic", around the corner to customized telecommunications systems, we all want to be in the design-know-how. This year, The Cumulus "Value in Design" Conference, held in Tallin, Estonia, gathered the European and Chinese leading design schools to discuss the future of design. From customized furniture and prosthetic designs, to the future of cleaning, we experienced the handiness of having it just the way we want it for our own specific needs. Is this monopolistic? No. Not a chance. What it all means is that we want to simplify - to make life a little bit less trying and a bit more accommodating. Designer comic Jerry Seinfeld pinpoints the design of news "It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world everyday just exactly fits the newspaper." It's amazing that the amount of everyday spam fits exactly into our in-boxes - taking up avilalbe space. Speaking of spam and news: ExI's email list, "Extropy-Chat," is facing heavy net spam. "Dave McFadzean has tracked this back to the policy of the ExI ISP limiting the volume of email traffic. The reason for this problem is most likely due to the individuals or organizations that are sources of SPAM," advises Robert Bradbury. A plan to resolve the problem is scheduled for this weekend. It looks like we will probably be moving to a new ISP. When it's all-go, we will send a message to everyone from the old "Extropians" list as well as the "Extropy-Chat" list. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In this Issue: Virginia Postrel's "The Substance of Style" - New Council of Advisor Member Dr. Fiorella Terenzi - EAT Team; and more! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * DESIGNER Markets * DESIGNER Commerce * DESIGNER Teams * DESIGNER Culture * DESIGNER Aesthetics - Talking to "VP" - Virginia Postrel DESIGNER Markets ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Virginia Postrel's new book, "The Substance of Style" (HarperCollins 2003) takes a long aesthetic look at the marketplace of style. Since when did aesthetics creep into Americana? Did the whole world become stylish, thanks to corporate logo design? Was it a tipping point, or a clearly planned strategy designed to blend the hard edges and rugged lines of perception? "As soon as the Taliban fell, Afghan men lined up at barberships to have their beards shaved off. Women painted their nails with once-forbidden polish. Men traded postcards of beautiful Indian move stars, and thronged to buy imported TVs, VCRs, and videotapes. Even burka merchants diversified their wares, adding colors like brown, peach, and green to the blue and off-white dictated by the Taliban's ship-wielding virtue police. Freed to travel to city markets, village women demanded better fabric, finer embroidery, and more variety in their traditional garments." Postrel suggests that the sense of things - the look and feel, tone and texture - of our environments is substantially more important than we give it credit. These sensorial elements in the form of aesthetic structures, have great influence on where our culture is heading. But is the high barometer on aesthetics making us a vain culture, a new high art elite, or followers of a cookie cutter "marthastewartism?" Postrel argues that the enhanced aesthetic appeal is healthy for culture and claims that Abraham Maslow's seminal writings on psychology which argue that humans have a 'hierarchy of needs' and will obtain essentials, such as food and shelter, before moving on to less vital items, including aesthetics" leads to "a false conclusion: that aesthetics is a luxury that human beings care about only when they're wealthy." DESIGNER Commerce ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What about designer MONEY? The da Vinci Institute in Denver, Colorado is focusing on the future of money. John Naisbitt, ExI member and long time fellow futurist, will be speaking (Currently working on his next book, "A World Between Eras"). Design of ORGANIZATIONS: An summary from Max More's article on "How to Optimize Disorder in Your Organizational Culture." ___"According to the lyrics of a '70s song by The Sweet, 'Love is like oxygen: You get too much, you get too high; not enough and you're gonna die.' Imposed order has the same effect on organizational cultures. In the turbulent environment of the Innovation Economy, argues Max More, companies need to find a dynamic balance between uncontrolled change and stifling stability. The drumbeat of innovation, agility, and adaptability can be heard throughout the business literature, and for excellent reason. At the same time, enduring companies just as badly need integrity and continuity. How can they achieve the right balance? More answers this question in three parts. The first section of this paper distinguishes imposed order from emergent order then points out five methods for systematically managing this mixture: Balanced Leadership; Keep It Simple Strategically; Compasses, Principles, and Vision; Know Your Network; and Systematic Surrender. In the second section, More outlines 8 ways to fortify imposed order. These include uncovering and employing unofficial hierarchies, defining decision rights, leading with clarity, grounding strategy on the few real certainties, and pushing systematic innovation processes. The final section assembles 12 methods for encouraging emergent order. Far from destroying order and unleashing organizational anarchy, these methods create conditions conducive to spontaneous organization arising at every level of the company. These include introducing Innovation Economy budgeting processes that support innovation and reflect information closer to real-time; using social network analysis to strengthen and protect knowledge flows; provoking constructive conflict; several ways to fend off the cognitive "anchor" bias; using simulations to break down inventive barriers and to heighten flexible response; attending to failure; calling in the CoPs (communities of practice); and experimenting with 'pradoxical management.' Use this 8-page article as a cheat sheet crammed with solutions to the difficulties of simultaneous change and continuity. You can explore many of the approaches through content in the relevant topics on ManyWorlds.com." Is design FUTURE wise? Designer future advocate Dr Patrick Dixon seems to think so in his lectures on global trends, designed for those interested in an early warning system for their future business and personal life. http://www.globalchange.com/futurewise.htm. John Naisbitt speaking at Future of Money Conference >> http://www.futureofmoneysummit.com DESIGNER Teams ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (L to R): Jill Tarter: Director of the Search, SETI; Neil Armstrong: astronaut, first human to walk on the Moon; Lewis Branscomb: three time head of the NSF and Chairman of the President's Space and Science Committee The Telluride Technology Festival is a Celebration of the Past, Present and Future of Technology. The Tech Fest is based on the historical fact that in 1891, Nikola Tesla, George Westinghouse and Telluride's own L.L. Nunn built the world's first commercial grade AC power plant in Telluride. The intimate mountain environment of Telluride, Colorado continues to be an ideal environment for discussion and reflection. UNIVERSITY BUSINESS FOR STUDENTS: Ben Hyink, philosophy major at Northwestern University, stumbled across Extropy Institute while surfing the net and since then has never looked at human potential in the same way. "I picked up a saying from the COD leadership program, "lead from where you are"; before I move on to meta-brain growth research, I want to establish systems that will catalyze other students by raising awareness of transhumanist ideas and issues on campuses and providing tools to assist them in networking with professionals and businesses in various fields." As center for catalyzation with a business orientation, Ben thinks "Extropy Institute is ideal for certain kinds of networking. ExI boasts leaders who are prominent in a number of business and academic fields, has been covered by numerous media sources, and has access to extensive informal networks. That said, student applicants to positions posted on ExI's networking site will be judged on their own merits. What ExI's network will offer businesses and professionals is free advertising of positions to a pool of people who tend to be passionate, dedicated, forward-thinking, and knowledgeable in their fields of interest. What the network will offer students and people changing careers will be a free resource for opportunities to work under established businesses and professionals in their field of interest who value what they have to offer." Ben should have a web page finished in less than a month. The "Student to Professional Networking" web page will have an exciting description of ExI's networking service and its user benefits, an organized list of offers, a section requesting new offers from professionals, a section asking professionals to join a network of their colleagues, and a section requesting the fields that interest students using the system and lists such fields. "We need to attract and assist professionals and businesses, attract and assist students, and develop some simple, low-maintenance mechanisms to introduce eager students and established professionals to each other. The quality will improve with time as more efficient mechanisms are developed, a larger pool of professionals and businesses offer opportunities in more fields and locations, and greater numbers of students embrace extropic ideas and seek to accelerate careers that actualize, protect, or inspire new direction for the radical expansion of human potential." Telluride Tech Fest >> http://www.telluridetechfestival.com DESIGNER Culture ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MoTA, The Museum of Transhumanist Arts, is curating an exhibition scheduled for 2004. Multi- Media/Multi- Disciplinary - Serious Fiction/Science Fiction is the theme for the exhibition ("MMMDSFSF"). MoTA will be featuring designers and writers. If you are interested in working with the curators, contact MoTA. New Executive Advisory Team ("EAT") members are Leigh Christian, Gina Miller, and Ben Hyink: Leigh's background gives her an edge on what works in the media, whereas Gina's nano-smarts bring to the fold the latest nano news. Ben is putting together a culture for students who want to learn about the future landscape for careers. George Dvorsky, Deputy Editor and a columnist for Betterhumans and President of the Toronto Transhumanist Association, will be taking on the role of Chair of the Conference Planning Committee for the TransVision 2004 conference to be held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. George has a history degree from the University of Western Ontario and continues to study 19th and 20th century political, scientific and philosophical thought as well as the history of science and the Enlightenment. "I'm primarily concerned with the ethical and sociological impacts of transhumanism and future technologies, and I actively promote informative, honest and open discussion for the purposes of education." Regarding TransVision 2004, George's initial tasks include facilitating agreement on the themes for the conference, selecting a venue and dates for the conference and procuring at least three high-profile speakers for the event. Once these have been finalized, a call for papers will be issued. If anyone would like to volunteer to help with organizing TV04, please contact Dvorsky at george at betterhumans.com NEW RELEASE - BOOK! "RAPTURE - How Biotech Became The New Religion" by Brian Alexander. Brian has been Wired's exclusive writer on advances in biotechnology and the evolution of the human future. His most famous story on biotechnology-a cover article which made the bold statement that human cloning was less than a year away-created a worldwide stir, launching congressional investigations, spurring media outlets such as "60 Minutes," Time, and CNN to do spin-offs, and prompting a strange race among would-be cloners. Interview with Brian is scheduled for next month. You can pickup a copy at Amazon.com. (ExI members mentioned throughout the book.) MoTA >> http://www.transhumanist.biz/mota.htm DESIGNER Aesthetics - Talking to "VP" - Virginia Postrel ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Questions for Virginia: ___Was there a single incident that spurred your interest in aesthetics? ___VP: I wish I could say that there was, because everyone asks me this question, but it was a gradual process. What I tend to do in my work is identify social and economic patterns arising from many different examples, and that's what happened here as well. ___Do you think that there should be no differentiation between "high aesthetics" and "mainstream aesthetics"? ___VP: What I find more useful is to think about aesthetics that is the equivalent of basic science, exploring the envelope of possibilities, and aesthetics that is the equivalent of applied engineering, producing products ready for market. Both are necessary and valuable, but they're different. ___What about building a comparable argument for science: Do you think the skills/know-how/aptitude of science on a refined, educated level could be available for everyone if scientists continue to be (as John Brockman claims) the intelligentsia and leading creative thinkers? ___VP: I'm not sure I agree with John Brockman on this. Some scientists play some role as public intellectuals. But they aren't alone. ___You seem to be saying that the aesthetic principle is new and that because of product design, advertising, marketing, etc., we are now becoming accustomed to aesthetics. Indeed aesthetics is fairly new to America, aesthetics is the way of life for Italians and we learned style from Italy, with a pinch of France and Japan tossed in. Comments? ___VP: The intensification of aesthetic applications, and certainly the spread of aesthetic pluralism, appears to be a phenomenon throughout the developed world. That said, the trend is much more noticeable in the Anglo-American countries, whose pragmatic and Puritan heritages have traditionally stigmatized aesthetic concerns. Also, as I note in chapter two, the large continental free trade zone that is the United States encouraged reliable mass production, distribution, and marketing ahead of niche specialties. In many parts of Europe, for instance, hotels are just now getting up to the "best surprise is no surprise" standards of American blandness. That doesn't mean the hotels were better before; some were charming, but many were just tiny dumps. ___You argue that the enhanced aesthetic appeal is healthy for culture and claim that Abraham Maslow whose "seminal writings on psychology argue that humans have a 'hierarchy of needs' and will obtain essentials, such as food and shelter, before moving on to less vital items, including aesthetics" leads to "a false conclusion: that aesthetics is a luxury that human beings care about only when they're wealthy." Can you elaborate on why that it is important to realize our need for aesthetics rather than thinking it is only for the chosen elitists? ___VP: First, I want people to remind people to think in terms of tradeoffs rather than simple hierarchies. Hierarchies make good diagrams, but they don't usually represent how life works, either for individuals or for societies. Second, the trend I'm writing about isn't about luxury, as some people have inferred, but about the extension of aesthetic content to the broad middle class (and, in some cases, poorer people as well). Elites have long had access to aesthetics. The aesthetic objects we see in museums, including those from the 20th century, generally represent the life of a social and economic elite, not the general public. By making it easier for ordinary people to incorporate aesthetic pleasure and meaning into their lives, today's trend represents significant economic progress. Finally, I think romanticism went badly awry when it set up art as a category separate from and superior to the rest of life. (The flip side, of course, is that "practical" people came to see art as silly or deceptive.) Artists and designers do have knowledge and skills that the rest of us don't, but that doesn't mean their fields should be completely inaccessible to people without similar training. ___How do you respond to the anti-globalism sentiment that slams logos and advertising? How do you view it? ___VP: The general, non-ideological public distrusts advertising for fear of being bamboozled. As a result, however, the general public is extremely media savvy and has developed quite a strong immunity to dubious forms of persuasion. The anti-globalists who are recycling Vance Packard and Thorstein Veblen are out of touch with their own culture, which is why Naomi Klein's book doesn't actually make an argument against advertising and branding. All she does is demonstrate that there are lots of brands and then go on to talk about poor labor conditions in Third World factories. Brands, logos, and advertising are neither necessary nor sufficient to create bad working conditions. To purchase Virginia Postrel's book >> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060186321/qid=1065386355/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6350465-2596132?v=glance&s=books ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quick Links... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Join Now! >> http://www.extropy.org/membership.htm Directors, Council of Advisors, and Executive Advisory Team >> http://www.extropy.org/directors.htm Max More's "How to Optimize Disorder in Your Organizational Culture" >> http://www.manyworlds.com/exploreCO.asp?coid=CO95039301825 Best Business News Source on the Web! >> http://www.manyworlds.com:// Brian Alexander's New Book! Rapture - How Biotech Became The New Religion >> http://www.amazon.com More About Us >> http://www.extropy.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ email: natasha at natasha.cc voice: Natasha Vita-More, President (512.263.2749) web: http://www.extropy.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This email was sent to natasha at natasha.cc, by Extropy Institute. Update your profile http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/d.jsp?p=oo&m=1011086851128&ea=natasha at natasha.cc&id=preview.1011086851128 Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe(TM) http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/d.jsp?p=un&m=1011086851128&ea=natasha at natasha.cc&id=preview.1011086851128 Privacy Policy: http://ccprod.roving.com/roving/CCPrivacyPolicy.jsp Powered by Constant Contact(R) www.constantcontact.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sun Oct 19 22:21:17 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 17:21:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] TEST Message-ID: OK. I sent a message last night and I still don't see it on the BBS and I never received a copy. I am just testing. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sun Oct 19 22:30:33 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 17:30:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Fw: AI and prescience Message-ID: Well, I just picked up Damien's "The Spike". I just started it last night, but as soon as I started reading a thought occurred. I'm not sure if it was his book that started this train of thought, or if it just came to mind since I just finished re-reading Chapterhouse: Dune. Here's the thought: If posthumans were linked together in a network with our minds linked to data storage units to augment our memory, AND If an AI existed with far superior abilities to the human mind and it was feeding back on itself, AND If enough data were available, would that AI be capable of predicting the future in either a "prescient" sort of way such as Leto II, or in a psychohistorical way like Hari Seldon in Foundation? Would we no longer have free will? It seems to me that given a sufficiently powerful AI with the ability to gather all of the available information on motivations, there may be a possibility of a major problem here. Of course, there are still random factors such as when I was nailing a baseboard in today, the nail broke off and part of it hit me in the face. If it would have blinded me it would have drastically changed my life. So you can't predict such small things and larger events are just combinations of the small things. But with other matters, they may have these abilities. Kevin Freels Kevin Freels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Mon Oct 20 08:56:10 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 18:26:10 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Intelligent Spammers (was FW: [>Htech] Stealing Cycles from Human s (fwd from kra@monkey.org)) Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFFE@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Eugene posted this to Transhumantech today. The article is interesting, but the last paragraph below really show how intelligent spammers can be - it's lateral thinking at its best. Don't think that any simple technique is going to finish them for good! Emlyn > From: Karl Anderson > Date: 20 Oct 2003 00:23:32 -0700 > To: fork at xent.com > Subject: Stealing Cycles from Humans > Organization: Ape Mgt. > User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) Emacs/20.7 > > > http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228349.stm > > > "The players may not realize it, but the lists of descriptive > words that they're generating could eventually be used by > search engines such as Google to improve Internet searches for images. > > They also are doing something that no computer program has > ever managed to accomplish: analyzing an image and accurately > describing it in words. > > In effect, what von Ahn is creating with his game is a giant, > special-purpose supercomputer that uses human brains to do > the computing. And the 24-year-old von Ahn, a graduate > student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, > says this approach, which he calls "Stealing Cycles from > Humans," could be applied to a wide variety of problems that > are too great for any individual but also beyond the > capabilities of conventional computers." > > > > "The CAPTCHA tests are simple for humans to pass, but hard > for computers. A typical test features a word with fuzzy or > distorted letters, or words overlapping each other, or a word > superimposed on a complex background; visitors to the site > are asked to type a word they see. Yahoo began using the > CAPTCHAs on its Web registration form several years ago; > other Web sites quickly copied the idea. > > But at least one potential spammer managed to crack the > CAPTCHA test. Someone designed a software robot that would > fill out a registration form and, when confronted with a > CAPTCHA test, would post it on a free porn site. Visitors to > the porn site would be asked to complete the test before they > could view more pornography, and the software robot would use > their answer to complete the e-mail registration." > > -- > Karl Anderson kra at monkey.org http://monkey.org/~kra/ > _______________________________________________ > FoRK mailing list > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Mon Oct 20 08:59:16 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 18:29:16 +0930 Subject: oh, and the matrix sucked... RE: [extropy-chat-test] Intelligent Spammers (was FW: [>Htech] Stealing Cycles from Human s (fwd from kra@mon key.org)) Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFDFFF@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> >From the url below... "As he sees it, the "Matrix" movies have it all wrong. Machines would never tap people as an energy source, because people actually consume energy. But they might well tap people for cognitive abilities that machines can't duplicate." Totally out of context, but I couldn't resist it. What a stupid movie. Emlyn (but I really liked Keanu's leather jacket) > -----Original Message----- > From: Emlyn O'regan [mailto:oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au] > Sent: Monday, 20 October 2003 6:26 PM > To: 'extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org' > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Intelligent Spammers (was FW: [>Htech] > Stealing Cycles from Human s (fwd from kra at monkey.org)) > > > Eugene posted this to Transhumantech today. The article is > interesting, but > the last paragraph below really show how intelligent spammers > can be - it's > lateral thinking at its best. Don't think that any simple > technique is going > to finish them for good! > > Emlyn > > > From: Karl Anderson > > Date: 20 Oct 2003 00:23:32 -0700 > > To: fork at xent.com > > Subject: Stealing Cycles from Humans > > Organization: Ape Mgt. > > User-Agent: Gnus/5.0802 (Gnus v5.8.2) Emacs/20.7 > > > > > > http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03278/228349.stm > > > > > > "The players may not realize it, but the lists of descriptive > > words that they're generating could eventually be used by > > search engines such as Google to improve Internet searches > for images. > > > > They also are doing something that no computer program has > > ever managed to accomplish: analyzing an image and accurately > > describing it in words. > > > > In effect, what von Ahn is creating with his game is a giant, > > special-purpose supercomputer that uses human brains to do > > the computing. And the 24-year-old von Ahn, a graduate > > student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, > > says this approach, which he calls "Stealing Cycles from > > Humans," could be applied to a wide variety of problems that > > are too great for any individual but also beyond the > > capabilities of conventional computers." > > > > > > > > "The CAPTCHA tests are simple for humans to pass, but hard > > for computers. A typical test features a word with fuzzy or > > distorted letters, or words overlapping each other, or a word > > superimposed on a complex background; visitors to the site > > are asked to type a word they see. Yahoo began using the > > CAPTCHAs on its Web registration form several years ago; > > other Web sites quickly copied the idea. > > > > But at least one potential spammer managed to crack the > > CAPTCHA test. Someone designed a software robot that would > > fill out a registration form and, when confronted with a > > CAPTCHA test, would post it on a free porn site. Visitors to > > the porn site would be asked to complete the test before they > > could view more pornography, and the software robot would use > > their answer to complete the e-mail registration." > > > > -- > > Karl Anderson kra at monkey.org http://monkey.org/~kra/ > > _______________________________________________ > > FoRK mailing list > > http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Mon Oct 20 09:30:10 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 11:30:10 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [extropy-chat-test] AI sues to save its life Message-ID: I still haven't read all of it, but here is the URL: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0594.html It's a fiction trial about a conscious AI trying to avoid shutdown. Ciao, Alfio From david at lucifer.com Mon Oct 20 18:01:50 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:01:50 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] TEST References: Message-ID: <013e01c39734$3ccf54a0$761ec918@lucifer.com> kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > OK. I sent a message last night and I still don't see it on the BBS > and I never received a copy. I am just testing. This list is not archived on the BBS because we're still testing. Did you ever get a copy of the message you sent? Are there still problems with the list? David From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Oct 20 21:06:33 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (Kevin Freels) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:06:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] TEST Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From david at lucifer.com Mon Oct 20 21:31:12 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:31:12 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? References: Message-ID: <030801c39751$7c1f7f50$761ec918@lucifer.com> If there are no objections, I would like to replace the extropy-chat list with this test list this week. David From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Mon Oct 20 21:35:25 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:35:25 EDT Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? Message-ID: <18.36cdb572.2cc5af1d@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-20 17:31:24 Eastern Daylight Time, david at lucifer.com writes: > If there are no objections, I would like to replace the extropy-chat list > with this test list this week. I certainly have no objections - this is the only Extropy list I hear from with any consistency. :) Today I received a Digest from Extropy-chat - not this test list.... Digest #29. Only where are #27 and #28? Dunno! I know I don't contribute much, but I do read and learn. Regards, MB From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Mon Oct 20 22:05:14 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:05:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? References: <030801c39751$7c1f7f50$761ec918@lucifer.com> Message-ID: Fire away!!!!! ----- Original Message ----- From: "David McFadzean" To: "ExI chat list (test)" Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:31 PM Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > If there are no objections, I would like to replace the extropy-chat list > with this test list this week. > > David > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Tue Oct 21 02:37:22 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:37:22 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? References: <030801c39751$7c1f7f50$761ec918@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <009301c3977c$415da1a0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Bang! ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "ExI chat list (test)" Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 8:05 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > Fire away!!!!! > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "David McFadzean" > To: "ExI chat list (test)" > Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:31 PM > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > > > > If there are no objections, I would like to replace the extropy-chat list > > with this test list this week. > > > > David > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Tue Oct 21 03:07:54 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 12:37:54 +0930 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE002@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Don't say that on the extropians list! Emlyn (ducks and covers) > -----Original Message----- > From: Brett Paatsch [mailto:bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au] > Sent: Tuesday, 21 October 2003 12:07 PM > To: ExI chat list (test) > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > > > Bang! > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: "ExI chat list (test)" > Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 8:05 AM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > > > > Fire away!!!!! > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "David McFadzean" > > To: "ExI chat list (test)" > > Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:31 PM > > Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > > > > > > > If there are no objections, I would like to replace the > extropy-chat > list > > > with this test list this week. > > > > > > David > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Tue Oct 21 03:46:52 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 23:46:52 EDT Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? Message-ID: <1cb.12dca0dd.2cc6062c@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-20 22:33:15 Eastern Daylight Time, bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au writes: > Bang! > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: "ExI chat list (test)" > Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 8:05 AM > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? > > > > Fire away!!!!! Oh, D*mn! I never got Kevin's message which you quote here. I've looked and looked, it is simply NOT in my inbox. Regards, MB From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Tue Oct 21 19:19:40 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 14:19:40 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] AI sues to save its life References: Message-ID: Would this AI be able to support itself? If so, she could make arrangements to pay her creators for creating her. Then she could "move out" and pay for her own life-support...Just like anyone else. She's already demonstrated an ability to earn an income. Why should the company be responsible for maintaining her life support indefinitely? Would we set limits on computer "maturity" like we do with the 18 and 21 yearl old humans? Once you go down the road to treating them like humans, lots of things become interesting. They would have to be allowed to own property, but would be eligible for the draft. They could hire people to come in and maintain them, and thus would become part of the economy. They could even have children! They could vote and maybe even run for office. A significant number of them would comprise an important voting block and would have politicians pandering to their needs in return for funding of their campaigns. Surely they'll get bored sitting around in a box and want to get out and "see" the world. They'll be trying to work themselves into a body at the same time we're trying to get into a computer. Wow, this could become very interesting indeed. No doubt these things have already been discussed here, but I am new nad every day I am amazed at the possibilities of the future. Would an SI eventualy develop at least a limited prescient ability such as Hari Seldon's psychohistory? Or even as Leto II in Dune? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Alfio Puglisi" To: Sent: Monday, October 20, 2003 4:30 AM Subject: [extropy-chat-test] AI sues to save its life > > I still haven't read all of it, but here is the URL: > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0594.html > > It's a fiction trial about a conscious AI trying to avoid shutdown. > > Ciao, > Alfio > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Wed Oct 22 00:53:07 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 10:53:07 +1000 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ingoing three arrows time test wed 10.47am Melb Oz time; Message-ID: <014501c39836$db8fdbc0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> a little lesson from rommel on the road to 'remagen' (I think). From jrd1415 at yahoo.com Wed Oct 22 17:28:32 2003 From: jrd1415 at yahoo.com (Jeff Davis) Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2003 10:28:32 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [extropy-chat-test] AI sues to save its life In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031022172832.98320.qmail@web41215.mail.yahoo.com> --- kevinfreels at hotmail.com wrote: > No doubt these things have already been discussed here, but I am new nad every day I am amazed at the possibilities of the future. I'm oldish (unless you're thinking ten-thousand-year lifespan, in which case, I'm barely embryonic) and--me too-- every day I am amazed at the possibilities of the future. Best, Jeff Davis "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Anais Nin __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Sat Oct 25 22:41:33 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 17:41:33 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] NANO: Questions Message-ID: After being on the list for a few months, I find that I am still playing catch-up. (ketchup:-) Currently I am reading Damien's book "The Spike" and absorbing as much as possible by Googling. It seems that I am finding lots of speculation about what it will mean and what the benefits are, but there are a few things I am having serious trouble with. To begin with, where is the bulk of the assembler research being conducted? Is it primarily colleges that rely on research grants, or are there big corporations working on it? As far as assemblers go, is there anyone working on a non-nano means of assembling at the molecular level that is faster and more efficient than an STM? It seems to me that this would be an intermediate step, maybe making a machine capable of building something simple like water in a usable quantity. Finally, and this is a bit off the mark, but how does money move in this sort of research? If a bunch of people in a college come up with a new technology such as the first assembler, who gets the patent? How does that technology make it into the market? Do others create it from scratch and get their own patents on "similar" devices, or do they sell the patents? Between now and the time that the first "Genie in a box" is available, there is still a need for money and I'm curious about how I can set myself up to gain from it. Thanks! Kevin Freels -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Sun Oct 26 00:41:43 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 19:41:43 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] NANO: Questions References: Message-ID: <006d01c39b59$ef49ed60$cf994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Saturday, October 25, 2003 5:41 PM >Currently I am reading Damien's book "The Spike" and absorbing as much as possible by Googling. It seems that I am finding lots of speculation about what it will mean and what the benefits are, but there are a few things I am having serious trouble with. To begin with, where is the bulk of the assembler research being conducted? See pp. 151-154 for some hints. Google Zyvex. Damien Broderick From maxm at mail.tele.dk Mon Oct 27 07:54:31 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 08:54:31 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Test - dont bother reading Message-ID: <3F9CCF37.4050802@mail.tele.dk> Is this working now? And am I online? is it the matrix or the real world. What does Popper say? From david at lucifer.com Tue Oct 28 12:53:21 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:53:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: [extropy-chat-test] Test - dont bother reading References: <3F9CCF37.4050802@mail.tele.dk> Message-ID: <213601c39d52$77b3b150$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Max M" To: Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 2:54 AM Subject: [extropy-chat-test] Test - dont bother reading > Is this working now? And am I online? is it the matrix or the real > world. What does Popper say? Yes, the extropy-chat list has been moved to a different ISP and now resides at lists.extropy.org to fix the mail delivery problems. Messages to the list should be sent to (though the old address should be automatically forwarded). If you have any problems, please contact me at david at lucifer.com. David From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Oct 28 15:49:09 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 07:49:09 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] List Moderation In-Reply-To: <213601c39d52$77b3b150$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> Message-ID: <000101c39d6b$07203a80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Subject: META: List Moderation List members: Please be careful about claiming ad hominem attacks that cannot be substantiated. If anyone was taken off the former list or this list, it was and will be due to an ad hominem attack and 3 complaints by list subscribers or moderators. List Moderators Extropy-chat at extropy.org From scerir at libero.it Tue Oct 28 19:01:56 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 20:01:56 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] tests References: <000101c39d6b$07203a80$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000601c39d85$f5d31b10$f4b41b97@administxl09yj> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % As it turns out, the two o's in the symbol % do not derive from the two zeroes in 100. Rather, the two o's evolved from the 'c' and the 'o' in the Italian expression "per cento" [x 100]. This arose in an [of course] Italian manuscript of the 1425 (circa). http://www.roma.unisa.edu.au/07305/symbols.htm#Percent %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% surdus & ab-surdus Al-Khowarizmi (Baghdad, circa 825) referred to rational and irrational numbers as 'audible' and 'inaudible', (D.E. Smith, History of Mathem., vol. 2, 1925, page 252). In translating the Greek term 'alogos' into Arabic, Al-Khowarizmi chose the expression 'jathr asamm', literally 'deaf root'. His choice emphasized the earlier Greek connotations of 'alogos' [without words, inexpressible, ineffable] instead of the later ones [without reason, without ratio]. Then, when the works of Al-Khowarizmi were translated into Latin, the Latin word 'surdus' [deaf] was called into play. D.E. Smith states that the first known European to adopt this terminology was Gherardo of Cremona (circa 1150) who adopted 'surde' [deaf, silent, stupid] instead of 'surdus'. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Tue Oct 28 20:07:50 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 21:07:50 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] Economy of abudance Message-ID: In this short essay: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031007.gtdejageroct7/BNStory/Technology/ Peter de Jager writes some random thoughts about technology replacing scarcity with abundance. He just poses some light questions, with no answers. Nothing to see for list members, but I'm glad that these issues are slowly making it out to mainstream media. Ciao, Alfio From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Oct 28 20:19:14 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:19:14 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Economy of abudance Message-ID: <57050-220031022820191422@M2W054.mail2web.com> From: Alfio Puglisi >In this short essay: http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20031007.gtdejageroct7/BN Story/Technology/ Peter de Jager writes some random thoughts about technology replacing scarcity with abundance. He just poses some light questions, with no answers. Nothing to see for list members, but I'm glad that these issues are slowly making it out to mainstream media.< He certainly approaches a big subjects in household terms. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From thespike at earthlink.net Tue Oct 28 22:42:36 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:42:36 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] re: SINGULARITY: Bezos pulls a rabbit out of his hat Message-ID: <010901c39da4$cb35bd80$9a994a43@texas.net> Amusement of a rather rarefied kind can be had by, for example, asking amazon to check restaurants for D-branes. To my gratification, I found three places that allegedly serve this tasty item from superstring theory. Damien Broderick From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Wed Oct 29 01:01:48 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 11:31:48 +1030 Subject: META ?? RE: [extropy-chat] re: SINGULARITY: Bezos pulls a rabbit out of his hat Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE01D@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> What is this replying to? I don't have any other messages with this subject line. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Damien Broderick [mailto:thespike at earthlink.net] > Sent: Wednesday, 29 October 2003 8:13 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [extropy-chat] re: SINGULARITY: Bezos pulls a rabbit > out of his > hat > > > Amusement of a rather rarefied kind can be had by, for example, asking > amazon to check restaurants for D-branes. To my > gratification, I found three > places that allegedly serve this tasty item from superstring theory. > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From scerir at libero.it Wed Oct 29 07:53:11 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:53:11 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] microgenerator References: <010901c39da4$cb35bd80$9a994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <000301c39df1$b4c73860$a3c21b97@administxl09yj> http://www.aip.org/mgr/png/2003/204.htm "An electrical micro-generator might provide electric power for portable microscale devices. At a modern power station, high pressure fluids (water, steam, or gas) are dashed against turbine blades, thus turning a shaft which cranks out electricity. At an MIT lab, all of this is done on a centimeter-size scale. At an upcoming meeting of the AVS Science and Technology Society in Baltimore, Carol Livermore will describe a micromotor with a 4-mm rotor which puts out 20 milliwatts of power, far more power than any other existing rotating micromotor. The motor may be incorporated into a microscale gas turbine generator. This is, in effect, a tiny jet engine: air and gas mix in a small combustion chamber and the resultant explosion powers the turbine. The MIT researchers expect that soon the output will be at the level of 300 volts, and 1 watt of mechanical power or 0.5 watt of electrical power. The device might not yet be as compact as the best micro-batteries currently available, but it will be able to do what batteries cannot, namely supply power over long periods." paper MM-TuA3, by Carol Livermore, livermor at mit.edu meeting will be held November 2-7 website at http://www.avs.org/symposium/baltimore/default.asp general art. at http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-7/iss-6/p20.pdf From scerir at libero.it Wed Oct 29 11:09:48 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 12:09:48 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] microgenerator References: <010901c39da4$cb35bd80$9a994a43@texas.net> <000301c39df1$b4c73860$a3c21b97@administxl09yj> Message-ID: <000301c39e0d$2b2e8ba0$e2bb1b97@administxl09yj> Ii is also possible to couple mechanical and charge motion together in subtle and interesting ways, with NEMS. In example: the mechanical charge shuttle which seems to be an electro-mechanical transistor, but, perhaps, also an engine (???). Oscillations of a 'clapper' periodically alter tunneling barriers between an electron island and a source/drain. Result is a pumping of a charge due to mechanical motion. At room temperature: ~ 1000 electrons per oscillation are pumped. At 4.2 K: ~ 0.11 electrons per oscillation are pumped. If the system were sufficiently fine-tuned, it should be possible to get a single electron pumping even at room temperature. http://www.nano.physik.uni-muenchen.de/report/rep01/part4.html#SHUTTLE short ^ http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/4/1/386/nj2186.html nice ^ http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/0011/0011429.pdf first paper ^ http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/cond-mat/pdf/9904/9904149.pdf math ^ http://fy.chalmers.se/~nord/files/lic.pdf. general ^ From amara at amara.com Wed Oct 29 11:10:20 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 13:10:20 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] article: Who Controls Your Health Care? (Shape magazine) Message-ID: A topic to be aware article "Who Controls Your Health Care?" by Lisa Lombardi Shape magazine, July 2003 (American edition) In Lombardi's article, she describes the practices of Catholic and other faith-based hospitals, presenting some alarming stories about what these hospitals will and will not do for the health of women patients. The first example she gave was a pregnant woman whose water broke while she was carrying only a 13-week-old fetus and she needed to abort it, otherwise she would put herself at risk for contracting a dangerous and potentially lethal infection of the uterus. The nearby hospital could not perform the emergency procedure, because the procedure would have been considered a 'normal' abortion (because she did not (yet) have an infection), and therefore, not permitted under the (Catholic) hospital's rules. On the other hand, if she had developed a potentially lethal infection, then they would have performed the procedure. In this woman's case, her choices were to wait until her life was threatened and then go to the nearby hospital, or else go to the more distant (nonCatholic) hospital immediately, have the procedure, and save herself while she still could. She did the latter. The author presents several stories of this type: that is, the health of the patient is sacrificed while waiting for the patient to develop a condition that would be life-threatening 'enough' for the doctor(s) to perform the life-saving surgery. For many doctors, this would be a breach of medical ethics. Another story that the author presented regarded the squishy definition of pregnancy. Doctors define pregnancy as a fertilized egg implanted in the uterine wall having grown to such a stage that it would show positive on a pregnancy test. Catholic theology defines conception as occurring when the egg is fertilized, which unless already implanted in the uterine wall and growing, wouldn't show up on a pregnancy test. If a woman is raped, but conception is not detectable yet, then a Catholic-based hospital will not perform a procedure to remove the egg. Catholic health-care institutions (small hospitals to large medical centers) in the U.S. follow "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," which give rules established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. These rules limit many reproductive procedures including emergency services. If you are depending on a particular hospital or hospitals, you should find out if your hospital is under Catholic oversight. Apparently about 15% of the US's community hospitals are run, following these rules. In the last ten years, 171 non-Catholic hospitals in the US have merged with Catholic hospitals and health-care organizations, so you would be wise to check. The procedures that are usually restricted in Catholic health-care systems: Contraception, Abortion, Direct sterilization, even if the mother's health is at risk. Also certain assisted reproductive services, such as in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination and any other fertility treatment that separates "procreating from the marital act." (However fertility testing and fertility drugs are permitted.) Lombardi's article is aimed towards women living in the US, but I would guess these kinds of rules apply in other countries' Catholic hospitals too. Some countries simply make some of these procedures illegal. Abortion is flat-out illegal, I think, in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. In Italy, artificial insemination by an unknown donor sperm is illegal; (i.e. sperm banks) the sperm must be from the husband or permanent partner of the would-be mother. If that sounds absurd, then look at more absurdities: if a woman/couple wishes to adopt a baby instead, then there are restrictive laws about that too: she/they cannot be older than 45 years to adopt a baby, for example. Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "What I find most disheartening is the thought that somewhere out there our galaxy has been deleted from somebody else's sample." -- Alec Boksenberg [on the occasion of his 60th birthday celebration] From natasha at natasha.cc Wed Oct 29 15:39:38 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 07:39:38 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] article: Who Controls Your Health Care? (Shape magazine) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031029073704.02e1b040@pop.earthlink.net> At 01:10 PM 10/29/03 +0200, Amara wrote: >A topic to be aware > >article "Who Controls Your Health Care?" by Lisa Lombardi >Shape magazine, July 2003 >(American edition) > > >In Lombardi's article, she describes the practices of Catholic and >other faith-based hospitals, presenting some alarming stories about >what these hospitals will and will not do for the health of women >patients. Isn't Italy a government supported health care country? If so, this would explain it. But don't Italians get tax breaks for having children? I wonder if the population is dropping in Italy, as in many other countries. Natasha From maxm at mail.tele.dk Wed Oct 29 15:00:16 2003 From: maxm at mail.tele.dk (Max M) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:00:16 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Stamping Out Short People Message-ID: <3F9FD600.8050205@mail.tele.dk> Short but possitive story at wired Growth hormone is just the start of human enhancement http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/view.html?pg=2?tw=wn_tophead_6 regards Max M From natashavita at earthlink.net Mon Oct 20 21:55:30 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:55:30 -0400 Subject: [extropy-chat] RE: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? Message-ID: <114780-220031012021553090@M2W085.mail2web.com> Okay by me - I think we are all ready to lift off. Natasha Original Message: ----------------- From: David McFadzean david at lucifer.com Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 17:31:12 -0400 To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: [extropy-chat-test] ready for the switch? If there are no objections, I would like to replace the extropy-chat list with this test list this week. David _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Oct 28 15:01:24 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 10:01:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Cyber women test what's real Message-ID: <191690-220031022815124873@M2W071.mail2web.com> Recently we were discussing human shapes depicted electronically. Here's something virtually life-like. Cyber women test what's real ---------- [BBC] "Software cyberbabes, created by powerful computers, sophisticated modelling packages and active imaginations are getting extremely human-like. But they raise questions about what people might be able to do with the models if they get too realistic and we cannot tell the difference anymore." (10/22/03) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3207462.stm Natasha Natasha Vita-More Transhuanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Tue Oct 28 17:16:55 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:16:55 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Cyber women test what's real Message-ID: <157240-2200310228171655246@M2W081.mail2web.com> Recently we were discussing human shapes depicted electronically. Here's something virtually life-like. Cyber women test what's real ---------- [BBC] "Software cyberbabes, created by powerful computers, sophisticated modelling packages and active imaginations are getting extremely human-like. But they raise questions about what people might be able to do with the models if they get too realistic and we cannot tell the difference anymore." (10/22/03) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3207462.stm Natasha Natasha Vita-More Transhuanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 14:51:21 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:51:21 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Neuromarketing Message-ID: <114780-2200310329145121989@M2W096.mail2web.com> Last year George W. Bush "joked" that: "... 'you can fool some of the people, all of the time -- and those are the ones you have to concentrate on.' It remains to be seen if he can fool enough people to get this war going." http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/Cost_of_War.htm Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington D.C. (www.cepr.net) -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 15:07:15 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:07:15 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Stamping Out Short People Message-ID: <29950-220031032915715958@M2W038.mail2web.com> From: Max M Short but possitive story at wired Growth hormone is just the start of human enhancement http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.11/view.html?pg=2?tw=wn_tophead_6 ' FINALLY!!!! :-) Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From devon at thegreatwork.com Wed Oct 29 15:20:47 2003 From: devon at thegreatwork.com (Devon White) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:20:47 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: How do i get the list back in digest form? References: <114780-2200310329145121989@M2W096.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <000601c39e30$53e91970$6401a8c0@Kallista> I just started getting the list in single email format again. How do i get it back into digest format? Thanks, Devon www.synergymedianetwork.com The Evolution Is Being Broadcast From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 15:37:05 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:37:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: How do i get the list back in digest form? Message-ID: <410-220031032915375636@M2W079.mail2web.com> From: Devon White >I just started getting the list in single email format again. How do i get >it back into digest format? Everyone was transferred over to the new list server. You can can go to http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat and unsubscribe from individual to *digest.* Thank you Devon :-) Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From max at maxmore.com Wed Oct 29 13:07:03 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 07:07:03 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] article: Who Controls Your Health Care? (Shape magazine) In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.0.20031029073704.02e1b040@pop.earthlink.net> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031029070530.018cd8b8@mail.earthlink.net> At 09:39 AM 10/29/2003, you wrote: >>In Lombardi's article, she describes the practices of Catholic and >>other faith-based hospitals, presenting some alarming stories about >>what these hospitals will and will not do for the health of women >>patients. > >Isn't Italy a government supported health care country? If so, this would >explain it. But don't Italians get tax breaks for having children? I >wonder if the population is dropping in Italy, as in many other countries. Yes, Italy's population is in decline -- surprisingly so considering the method of birth control practiced (in theory) by Catholics. In Monty Python land that method is known as the "Every Sperm is Sacred Method". Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Oct 29 15:55:06 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 07:55:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: List changes... Message-ID: Folks, those of you who may be using auto-sorting of incoming email (e.g. spambouncer/procmail/etc.) may want to check your incoming mail logs and routing instructions. I noticed that my incoming ExI mail was being misfiled after the recent list switch. (Of course if its being misfiled you may never see this message... Kind of a chicken and egg problem I think.) But if you notice someone you know missing in action you might want to point this potential problem out in an offlist note. Robert From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 16:13:27 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 11:13:27 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] America Rocks the Vote - Democrary goes Digital Message-ID: <293580-2200310329161327872@M2W049.mail2web.com> This is fun: http://www.cnn.com/artv/ Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Oct 29 16:17:26 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:17:26 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Words to think about... Message-ID: Harry: Come on! You're NASA for Christ's sake! You're the ones who come up with this shit! Why I bet you have a bunch of guys sitting around somewhere right now just thinking shit up, and somebody backing them up. What's your contingency plan? Truman: Our contingency plan? Harry: Yeah, your back up plan. You've gotta have a back up plan Truman: No, we don't have a back up plan. From amara at amara.com Wed Oct 29 15:18:32 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:18:32 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] article: Who Controls Your Health Care? (Shape magazine) Message-ID: (sending again, I didn't have the 'lists' in front of the domain) Natasha, >Isn't Italy a government supported health care country? If so, this would >explain it. I don't think I followed your comment, Natasha. The article was about Catholic-based hospitals in the US, but I added my own opinion about other countries' hospitals too. (I.e., I don't know to what your 'it' is referring.) Yes, Italy is a government supported health care country, if you can call it that. Most people have private doctors though, because the public health care is often poor, and moreover, if you have an emergency condition, you will have to wait. Days, weeks, months. If you want an appointment with a public health care doctor, your appointment will likely be far in the future. (Example: when I called to make an appointment in mid-September with an eye doctor because my eyesight has deteriated rapidly this year, the first available appointment for me was/is in April.) >But don't Italians get tax breaks for having children? Almost nothing. >I wonder if the population is dropping in Italy, as in many other countries. Negative, in fact. Italy's birth rate is the lowest in Europe. -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "The best presents don't come in boxes." --Hobbes From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Oct 29 16:31:19 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:31:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] META: list performance Message-ID: Just for those of you who want to know how well the new list is working. Time from sending email to the list until it appears in the Javien Forum is ~3-5 minutes. Time from sending email until it shows up in my mail box is ~7-10 minutes (of course this may vary depending upon where ones name is in the ExI email list as well as the email load on your ISP/email server). But it would appear that we are back in business. Kudos to Dave! Robert From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 16:34:59 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 11:34:59 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] article: Who Controls Your Health Care? (Shapemagazine) Message-ID: <184670-2200310329163459195@M2W078.mail2web.com> From: Amara Graps >Isn't Italy a government supported health care country? If so, this would >explain it. "I don't think I followed your comment, Natasha. The article was about Catholic-based hospitals in the US, but I added my own opinion about other countries' hospitals too. (I.e., I don't know to what your 'it' is referring.)" Referring to the lack of appropriate health care given to women because of Catholic views. "Yes, Italy is a government supported health care country, if you can call it that. Most people have private doctors though, because the public health care is often poor, and moreover, if you have an emergency condition, you will have to wait. Days, weeks, months. If you want an appointment with a public health care doctor, your appointment will likely be far in the future. (Example: when I called to make an appointment in mid-September with an eye doctor because my eyesight has deteriated rapidly this year, the first available appointment for me was/is in April.)" ____________________________ I didn't have to go to the doctor when I lived in Italy, thank goodness. I did in Japan, although, during my pregnancy. I was rejected by one women's hospital before getting to a hospital that performed the surgery. I was held there in intensive are for two weeks. I would sneek out of my room at night and teach myself how to walk again. A Japanese friend helped me to escape from the hospital. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From max at maxmore.com Wed Oct 29 14:04:48 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 08:04:48 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031029075440.01926240@mail.earthlink.net> Rather than hoarding all the quotes I've gathered, I thought I'd share some of them here. A mix of wisdom, humor, and both at once: "The best proof of intelligent life in space is that it hasn't come here." - Sir Arthur C. Clarke Sexual abstinence is harmless when practiced in moderation. "The future is usually like the past right up to the moment when it isn't." George F. Will, Newsweek, 10.27.03 "I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people." Isaac Newton, after losing his savings in the South Sea Bubble of 1720. "Life is a process of evolution and anyone who thinks the current world order is OK does not get what evolution is all about." Leroy Hood Bill McKibben "It is clear that these revolutionary technologies are being driven by people with immortality, or something very near it, on their minds." "The only one who likes change is a wet baby." Unknown "There's a seeker born every minute." Robert Anton Wilson "To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk" Thomas Edison "No one may have the guts to say this, but if we could make better human beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we?" Dr. James Watson, Nobel Laureate, Co-Discoverer with Francis Crick of the Structure of DNA, and Founding Director of the NIH Human Genome Project. "It seems to me that the civilized human being is a skeptic someone who believes nothing at face value." Robert McKee, Harvard Business Review, June 2003, in "Storytelling That Moves People". "Humankind does not live by bread alone but also by catchphrases." From "Real Work" by Abraham Zaleznik, HBR Nov/Dec 1997 "I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times." Everett Dirksen, leader of Senate Republicans 1959-1969 "I don't want any 'yes men' in this organization. I want people to speak their minds, even if it does cost them their jobs." Sam Goldwyn "Inside an organization there are only cost centers. The only profit center is a customer whose check has not bounced." Peter F. Drucker, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, p.122, "Information Challenges". "If man were meant to be nude, he would have been born that way." - Oscar Wilde. "I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977) "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire (1694-1778) "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) "A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire (1694-1778) "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) "I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) "The covers of this book are too far apart." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) "It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man." - Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell "Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." - Voltaire (1694-1778) "Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies." - Voltaire (1694-1778) on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan. "The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people." - Lucille S. Harper "Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." - Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977) "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb "If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" " - Will Rogers (1879-1935) "His ignorance is encyclopedic" - Abba Eban (1915-) "It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims." - Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Onward! Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From natashavita at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 16:49:40 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 11:49:40 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: list performance Message-ID: <199120-2200310329164940103@M2W055.mail2web.com> From: Robert J. Bradbury >Just for those of you who want to know how well the new list is working. Time from sending email to the list until it appears in the Javien Forum is ~3-5 minutes. Time from sending email until it shows up in my mail box is ~7-10 minutes (of course this may vary depending upon where ones name is in the ExI email list as well as the email load on your ISP/email server). But it would appear that we are back in business. Kudos to Dave!< ___________________ It has been pole vault. :-) Thank you Dave! Natasha _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 17:30:59 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 11:30:59 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031029075440.01926240@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <005b01c39e42$6dc0fc20$82994a43@texas.net> > "It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man." > - Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell If I have seen further than others, it is by treading on the toes of dwarfs. - Damien Broderick From bradbury at aeiveos.com Wed Oct 29 17:52:52 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:52:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor In-Reply-To: <005b01c39e42$6dc0fc20$82994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: My 2 cents.... > Ronald Quincy: I know the presidents' chief advisor, we were at MIT > together. And, at this point in time, you really don't want to take > advice from a man who got a C minus in astrophysics. The presidents' > advisors are wrong. I am right. Interestingly -- I think MIT grades on a point system while Harvard grades on a letter system. Someone correct if they know otherwise. But the quote wouldn't have had quite the same effect if it had been "...want to take advice from a man who got a 2.6 in astrophysics...". R. From kilroy at hush.ai Wed Oct 29 18:09:47 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:09:47 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor Message-ID: <200310291809.h9TI9lkI005420@mailserver2.hushmail.com> >If I have seen further than others, it is by treading on the toes >of dwarfs. >- Damien Broderick If I have seen further than others, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. - Newton (I think) If I have not seen as far as others, it is because there are giants standing on my shoulders. - Unknown Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From puglisi at arcetri.astro.it Wed Oct 29 18:12:19 2003 From: puglisi at arcetri.astro.it (Alfio Puglisi) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:12:19 +0100 (CET) Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors Message-ID: Optical processors are finally making some steps out of the labs and commercial applications are expected in a short time frame. An Israeli startup has a 8,000 Gflop/sec prototype: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011008S0024 What's interesting to me is that, according to the article, optical processors are inherently high-level, i.e. instead of gaining speed with RISC-like operation, you implement high-level functions directly in hardware (FFTs, pattern match, etc). Kinda like Mathlab with 1-clock functions. On the other hand, I could make thousands of matrix mult. per second, but it could take one minute to compute 2+2 if addition must be emulated. So the first devices will be more like specialized coprocessors and DSPs. Ciao, Alfio From eugen at leitl.org Wed Oct 29 18:28:58 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:28:58 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031029182858.GF10805@leitl.org> It's an analog device, and its parallelism is limited whatever you can encode within a beam crossection/wavefront. Such conventional optical signal processing is fundamentally limited -- this specialized device may do okay in comparison to DSPs and ASICs (I'm missing the comparison with FPGAs), but will look increasingly pale and paler with each subsequent iteration of Moore's law (nevermind transition to reconfigurable logic in molecular circuitry). NLO logic has a niche in photonically switched networks though, and it can be scaled down with SNOM and photonic crystal waveguides. So it will stay firmly entrenched in a few niches. On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 07:12:19PM +0100, Alfio Puglisi wrote: > > Optical processors are finally making some steps out of the labs and > commercial applications are expected in a short time frame. An Israeli > startup has a 8,000 Gflop/sec prototype: > > http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011008S0024 > > What's interesting to me is that, according to the article, optical > processors are inherently high-level, i.e. instead of gaining speed with > RISC-like operation, you implement high-level functions directly in > hardware (FFTs, pattern match, etc). Kinda like Mathlab with 1-clock > functions. > On the other hand, I could make thousands of matrix mult. per second, > but it could take one minute to compute 2+2 if addition must be emulated. > So the first devices will be more like specialized coprocessors and DSPs. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 18:49:49 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 12:49:49 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors References: <20031029182858.GF10805@leitl.org> Message-ID: <010b01c39e4d$70d6c6a0$82994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eugen Leitl" Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 12:28 PM I am still getting all of Eugen's posts (such as this one) as attachments, not in the email message body. I dislike opening attachments, even from someone trustworthy (or someone pretending to be someone trustworthy, which is the problem). But maybe it's something to do with how I, in my ignorance of the annoying program, have Outlook Express configured...? Damien Broderick From eugen at leitl.org Wed Oct 29 18:55:49 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:55:49 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors In-Reply-To: <010b01c39e4d$70d6c6a0$82994a43@texas.net> References: <20031029182858.GF10805@leitl.org> <010b01c39e4d$70d6c6a0$82994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <20031029185548.GH10805@leitl.org> On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 12:49:49PM -0600, Damien Broderick wrote: > > I am still getting all of Eugen's posts (such as this one) as attachments, > not in the email message body. I dislike opening attachments, even from > someone trustworthy (or someone pretending to be someone trustworthy, which > is the problem). For this particular reason I'm posting in plain text, and sign all my outgoing messages. You can't trust what's in the header. There's reasonable trust in that whoever claims to be me and uses the right signature is either me or knows my passphrase, or has this system compromised and has captured my passphrase. > But maybe it's something to do with how I, in my ignorance of the annoying > program, have Outlook Express configured...? Outlook Express (and a few other notorius email clients) do not comply to RFC 2015 (it's been only around since 1996, or so). Some of the background can be found here: -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From pietroferri at hotmail.com Wed Oct 29 22:59:35 2003 From: pietroferri at hotmail.com (pietro ferri) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:59:35 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From xballb at hotmail.com Wed Oct 29 23:38:05 2003 From: xballb at hotmail.com (Rick Strongitharm, B.A., LL.B.) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:38:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thespike at earthlink.net Wed Oct 29 23:42:03 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:42:03 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil References: Message-ID: <019901c39e76$44c07920$82994a43@texas.net> Hi Pietro > Since this is my first posting Welcome! > A question for Damien Broderick: in your excellent book ( which, you may be happy to know, lies on my night table) you do not analyse in depth Kurzweil's ideas. Why? Ray is increasingly prominent as a voice in singularity studies, but he wasn't especially prominent when I was writing the first edition of THE SPIKE in 1996. By the time I was preparing the revision/extension for publication in New York four years later, Ray's spiritual machines book was out and being noticed, but it seemed to me to cover much the same ground as mine (in more detail in some areas and less in others). ButI considered his own special contribution, the `Law of Accelerating Returns', http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?m=1 to be at the verge of bogosity (sorry, Ray) when regarded as a sort of cosmic Truth. Moore's `law' (or observation or conjecture) by contrast is a modest empirical observation with perhaps a little more power to it than immediately meets the eye, due to the contingent drivers of industrial capitalism. But this is a topic that could surely use some discussion on the extrope list. Or were you thinking of some other ideas of Ray's? Damien Broderick www.thespike.us From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 00:26:09 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:26:09 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Pietro, Hello and welcome. I will take the liberty of responding to this question since Damien seems to be stuck using an email client from hell... (Side note 1: yes Damien its your client -- my emails from Eugen show up fine as regular text -- I've checked the headers and even though they now appear to exceed the average message in size they do appear reasonable. Of course this is the ExI list and it is certainly not out of the question for the very bright people on the list to be sending messages of the form (INCLUDE activated worm code -- If username == ".*Damien.*" and email program == insecure crap from Microsoft then convert all text messages to attachments just to really annoy said user Damien.... -- Remember the rocket scientists that NASA hires are the people who couldn't cut it on the ExI List... :-)) (Side note 2: to Pietro & others -- it looks like if you mail a message in HTML format only that the HTML may be removed going into the Javien forum archive [this may in part explain why some Javien Forum messages end up blank]. It seems to show up in Email (as text) and the BBS (as HTML). So one may want to be careful when sending messages to the list to try and post them as regular text.) > A question for Damien Broderick: in your excellent book ( which, you may be happy to know, lies on > my night table) you do not analyse in depth Kurzweil's ideas. Why? Don't you agree that he is the > leading extropian/singularitarian worldwide? I will attempt to provide some background on this. I have sitting on my desk "The Age of Spiritual Machines" (1999) and of course Ray published "The Age of Intelligent Machines" in 1992. Damien did not publish the Spike until early 2001 though it may have been available in AU before that. However people who have followed the list for many years are aware that Damien was collecting material (some from the list) from the late '90s onward. While I would agree that Ray has certainly helped to promote extropic concepts to a wider audience -- particularly the concepts related to machine intelligence -- these are not ideas that are unique to Ray. In 1999 I got a chance to speak with Marvin Minsky directly for a few minutes at the A4M conference in Las Vegas. I asked him about the concept of uploading. He indicated that both he and Hans Moravec had come up with the concept independently. As Hans documented one approach in "Mind Children" (circa 1988) and Vinge's first publication of the singularity concept was at a NASA conference in 1993 the concepts of uploading and the singularity are not inventions by Ray. I don't think Damien should be doing an analysis of Ray's ideas (unless he considers it to be fun :-)). They have relatively different areas of expertise (Ray's being in software & AI, Damien's being in a encyclopedic knowledge of sci-fi literature). I heard Ray speak at the Extro 5 conference and much of the information was fairly technical -- (and anyone who knows me knows I'm reasonably technical) -- so the audience of people really qualified to work through Ray's ideas in detail is probably small. Given the nature of much of Ray's perspective I'd suggest that the best people to comment on Ray's ideas might be either Eliezer Yudkowsky or Marvin Minsky. Since the nature of intelligence still isn't really resolved you would have to bring in psychologists like William Calvin as well. I suspect one would need a conference that includes a wide variety of academics and I doubt one would get out of the conference a consensus -- at least at this point in time. I would have to say that I view Max More as the leading extropian and Eliezer Yudkowsky as the leading singularitarian. Ray is perhaps one of the better known proponents with respect to the inevitable advance of machine intelligence. (Your opinion of course may vary.) Robert From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Oct 30 01:20:29 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:20:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031030012029.46299.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> --- "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > In 1999 I got a chance to speak with Marvin Minsky > directly for a few > minutes at the A4M conference in Las Vegas. I asked > him about the > concept of uploading. He indicated that both he and > Hans Moravec > had come up with the concept independently. As Hans > documented > one approach in "Mind Children" (circa 1988) and > Vinge's first > publication of the singularity concept was at a NASA > conference > in 1993 the concepts of uploading and the > singularity are not > inventions by Ray. Doesn't the concept of replacing the brain's neurons with artificial ones, one at a time, date back to Turing? This is one concept of uploading (and the closest to reality, from what I've seen - even if it is a fair ways off). From wingcat at pacbell.net Thu Oct 30 01:35:56 2003 From: wingcat at pacbell.net (Adrian Tymes) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:35:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031030013556.48969.qmail@web80411.mail.yahoo.com> --- Alfio Puglisi wrote: > Optical processors are finally making some steps out > of the labs and > commercial applications are expected in a short time > frame. An Israeli > startup has a 8,000 Gflop/sec prototype: > > http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011008S0024 Does anyone know if optical processors have the same vulnerability to radiation in orbit as electronic processors do? I'm wondering if, now that these are finally purchasable, they might be a simple swap-in replacement for low-grade electronics. (More expensive than real electronics, of course, but possibly a lot less expensive than custom-designed harded electronics.) From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 01:43:01 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 17:43:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: <019901c39e76$44c07920$82994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > But I considered his > own special contribution, the `Law of Accelerating Returns', > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?m=1 > > to be at the verge of bogosity (sorry, Ray) when regarded as a sort of > cosmic Truth. Well there are little truths and big truths and some in between. Ray is pretty good compared with others (Ron Klatz of the A4M comes to mind) when it comes to pushing trends (e.g. the doubling rate for medical knowledge) way beyond what is reasonable. Now, the "Law of Accelerating Returns" is an interesting concept. For example, clearly the Google Search of Books will accelerate progress if it survives the assault by the authors guild. And perhaps 8 years ago, I made up a spreadsheet that documented the increasing amount of "intelligence" that could be applied to the problem of aging research as a result of Moore's Law increasing computational capacity (view it as a pre- at HOME project of where people would choose to dedicate their "spare" intellectual capacity should they have the option of doing so). It made it clear (to me) that "aging" was doomed. And just today there was a release of BSD Unix that can take advantage of processor features that have been in Intel processors >= Pentium Pros for years to address 64 Gigabytes of memory. Hell -- a year ago we didn't even have hard drives that big! Worth noting -- this means a single PC (with a hell of a lot of memory) is within 2 orders of magnitude of being able to store (and address) the entire contents of the Library of Congress (~8 Terabytes). Presumably the AMD 64-bit Athlon goes way beyond this. Today I'll play with the LoC. Tomorrow I'll play with copies of Damien's mind... After all -- a copy of Damien isn't really Damien right? Robert From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 02:06:53 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:06:53 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: <20031030012029.46299.qmail@web80401.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Doesn't the concept of replacing the brain's neurons > with artificial ones, one at a time, date back to > Turing? This is one concept of uploading (and the > closest to reality, from what I've seen - even if it > is a fair ways off). Quite possibly. But it would take someone like Damien to comment on when sci-fi concepts begin to make it from a fuzzy fantasy concept into reality when people really need to take it seriously. We could go through a list of people (Turing, von Neumann, Good, etc.) trying to document the thread(s) that uploading or neuronal replacement depend upon -- and it might be a quite educational exercise. [Not one I am opposed to it mind you -- but it would require some serious intellectual legwork.] It seems to me the more interesting question is *when* do we get the technology -- even if it is not nanotech (cochlear implants come to mind) to make this start to happen. And on the front of human "enhancement". We can take HGH (within some limits) but not various steroids that would improve athletic performance (perhaps with some downside in longevity, violent tendencies, etc. etc.). And certainly we should not be selling on street corners "do-it-yourself" injections for gene therapies to turn yourself into Hulk Hogan. Natasha -- you really have your work cut out for you if you plan to sell the fact that anyone can have a body that will give them a career in the WWF or a mind that will get them into MIT. R. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 02:16:57 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:16:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] NEWS: optical processors In-Reply-To: <20031030013556.48969.qmail@web80411.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Adrian Tymes wrote: > Does anyone know if optical processors have the same > vulnerability to radiation in orbit as electronic > processors do? I am not certain, but my impression is that the optical processors function only in very specific DSP functions. I.e. they are not "general" purpose processors. If this is accurate, they cannot replace "general purpose" command and control functions in satellites, robots, etc. Their primary purpose would be in data integration, filtering, etc. I.e. computational tasks with a high degree of parallel rather than serial operations. That is not to say that they might not evolve into general purpose computing functions but such functions are not what optical methods are generally best at. It may require the development of an entirely different computing paradigm (how can one multiplex many diverse computing paths?). It sounds like a PERT Chart data/resource-flow compression nightmare and solving that is *not* going to be easy. R. From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Oct 30 03:23:10 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 19:23:10 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] children's books that didnt sell In-Reply-To: <293580-2200310329161327872@M2W049.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <003b01c39e95$251bf210$6501a8c0@SHELLY> http://www.dbooth.net/internerd/childrensbooks.shtm From blamar at satx.rr.com Thu Oct 30 05:35:45 2003 From: blamar at satx.rr.com (Barbara Lamar) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 23:35:45 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Robert Bradbury wrote: <> Just to set the record straight, THE SPIKE was first released in Australia in 1997 and THE LAST MORTAL GENERATION in 1999. By the way, Damien has just received an Australia Council Literature Board writing Fellowship for 2004 - 2005 to write two novels dealing with the impact of the coming singularity. Barbara Law Office of Barbara Lamar 127 Lewis Street San Antonio, TX 78212 210.223.9389 (San Antonio) 512.376.4235 (Austin / San Marcos) From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 06:10:33 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:10:33 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Barbara Lamar wrote: > Just to set the record straight, THE SPIKE was first released in Australia > in 1997 and THE LAST MORTAL GENERATION in 1999. Thanks Barbara for providing the updates. I thought that might be the case but didn't have hard data in front of me to make the points. > By the way, Damien has just received an Australia Council Literature Board > writing Fellowship for 2004 - 2005 to write two novels dealing with the > impact of the coming singularity. Cool. Way to go Damien! Now of course, one has to wonder about the translation of previous books and novels into Urdu and Persian. For that matter, I suppose we ought to think about the translation of the mailing list into Urdu and Persian. R. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Oct 30 06:29:38 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 16:59:38 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE026@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> I don't know about that, Robert. We could probably have a good crack at an machine translation into Pig Latin... howay aboutway atthay? Emlynway > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert J. Bradbury [mailto:bradbury at aeiveos.com] > Sent: Thursday, 30 October 2003 3:41 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil > > > > On Wed, 29 Oct 2003, Barbara Lamar wrote: > > > Just to set the record straight, THE SPIKE was first > released in Australia > > in 1997 and THE LAST MORTAL GENERATION in 1999. > > Thanks Barbara for providing the updates. I thought that might be the > case but didn't have hard data in front of me to make the points. > > > By the way, Damien has just received an Australia Council > Literature Board > > writing Fellowship for 2004 - 2005 to write two novels > dealing with the > > impact of the coming singularity. > > Cool. Way to go Damien! > > Now of course, one has to wonder about the translation of > previous books > and novels into Urdu and Persian. > > For that matter, I suppose we ought to think about the translation of > the mailing list into Urdu and Persian. > > R. > > From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 06:32:40 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 00:32:40 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Urdu and Persian References: Message-ID: <02bb01c39eaf$a116d780$82994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 12:10 AM > I suppose we ought to think about the translation of > the mailing list into Urdu and Persian. Now you're just being Farsi-cal. Damien Broderick [sorry :) ] From spike66 at comcast.net Thu Oct 30 06:43:03 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 22:43:03 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <003b01c39e95$251bf210$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <000001c39eb1$11454c20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same with many items: antiques are chic. How about computers? Are there any antique computer users groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? spike From max at maxmore.com Thu Oct 30 07:43:26 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:43:26 -0600 Subject: More words to praise Damien's words [was: Re: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil] In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031030011638.0355d8c8@mail.earthlink.net> At 11:35 PM 10/29/2003, Barbara wrote: >By the way, Damien has just received an Australia Council Literature Board >writing Fellowship for 2004 - 2005 to write two novels dealing with the >impact of the coming singularity. Congratulations Damien! Great news. In solemn recognition of this occasion, I'm imposing yet more quotations on you -- this time all relating to writing... "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy "I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better." - A. J. Liebling (1904-1963) "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) "This book fills a much-needed gap." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) "Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." - T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) "I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters." - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959) "I'll moider da bum." - Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare "In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." - Paul Dirac (1902-1984) "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." - Groucho Marx (1895-1977) "I have read your book and much like it." - Moses Hadas (1900-1966) "Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." - George Eliot (1819-1880) "Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure." - Oliver Herford (1863-1935) "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." - Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research." - Wilson Mizner (1876-1933) "Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them." - Samuel Palmer (1805-80) Max _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From eugen at leitl.org Thu Oct 30 10:22:43 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:22:43 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031030102243.GB27418@leitl.org> Dear hotmail subscribers. Please do not post HTML-only email. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29270.html On Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 06:38:05PM -0500, Rick Strongitharm, B.A., LL.B. wrote: > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From gregburch at gregburch.net Thu Oct 30 13:44:32 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:44:32 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Double Posts In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031030011638.0355d8c8@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3F8DC86200009363@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> I'm getting two of everything from the list -- is this a function of having been subscribed during the development period and the automagically resubscribed when the list was officially begun later? My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html "Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species." -- Desmond Morris From gregburch at gregburch.net Thu Oct 30 13:48:19 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:48:19 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20031030011638.0355d8c8@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <3F8DC8620000936E@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> The space policy nerdo-sphere is buzzing with rumors that Bush will use the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight to announce a return to lunar exploration as a goal of U.S. manned space flight. See: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html NASA could have a sustainable (although not constantly manned) presence on the moon by 2015. On that schedule, the work done to build the ISS would not be wasted: The design and construction of the various elements of the ISS could be turned to building modular "hab modules" and other components of a reusable translunar vehicle and a surface base. If my physics isn't too off, even the ISS's cockeyed orbital inclination wouldn't be too much of a handicap, since the cross-inclination vectoring could be leveraged during translunar trajectory insertion so that the missions originating at the ISS could still get into a lunar-equatorial orbit without too much delta-vee. Is this latter conjecture on my part true? My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html "Every question we answer leads on to another question. This has become the greatest survival trick of our species." -- Desmond Morris From natasha at natasha.cc Thu Oct 30 16:07:28 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 08:07:28 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <3F8DC8620000936E@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> References: <5.1.0.14.2.20031030011638.0355d8c8@mail.earthlink.net> Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031030080456.02e14ec0@pop.earthlink.net> This made me think of Elaine Walker's song "I Want to Go to the Moon." If you haven't heard it, you must. The lyrics are alluring and sweetly song. http://www.ziaspace.com/ Natasha From david at lucifer.com Thu Oct 30 15:01:31 2003 From: david at lucifer.com (David McFadzean) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:01:31 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] META: Double Posts References: <3F8DC86200009363@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <037e01c39ef6$b48ae210$6401a8c0@lucifer.com> From: "Greg Burch" > I'm getting two of everything from the list -- is this a function of having > been subscribed during the development period and the automagically resubscribed > when the list was officially begun later? Yes, but only if you used two different email addresses. If anyone else is getting duplicates, you can unsubscribe one of your addresses via the web interface, or let me know and I will do it for you. David From naddy at mips.inka.de Thu Oct 30 13:05:02 2003 From: naddy at mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 13:05:02 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: antique computers References: <003b01c39e95$251bf210$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <000001c39eb1$11454c20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: Spike wrote: > How about computers? Are there any antique computer users > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? Yes to all of the above. Well, it somewhat depends on what you consider "antique". For collections that trace history back to Zuse's reinvention of computing, or even all the way to Babbage, you'll have to go to a proper museum. (If the name Zuse doesn't ring a bell, you are suffering from anglocentrism.) However, there are plenty of enthusiasts for gear dating from the 1970s, '80s, and '90s, basically ever since microcomputers came along. You can find fans for popular or even exotic '80s home computers, and these are most likely to hold rallies and competitions. NetBSD is the most portable operating system in the world and it supports a variety of old Unix boxen, such as DEC's VAX line, which attracts collectors of such hardware. If you've been to last year's Hannover CeBIT, there was a Sun-1 on display at the Sun Microsystems booth. Just about the first name that comes to mind when thinking of old computers is the Vintage Computer Festival: http://www.vintage.org/ -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy at mips.inka.de From duggerj1 at charter.net Thu Oct 30 15:46:41 2003 From: duggerj1 at charter.net (JAY DUGGER) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:46:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <3F8DC8620000936E@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:48:19 -0600 "Greg Burch" wrote: >The space policy nerdo-sphere is buzzing with rumors that >Bush will use >the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Wright >Brothers' flight to >announce a return to lunar exploration as a goal of U.S. >manned space flight. > See: > > http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html I hate to play cynic on something so near and dear to me, but need I mention the ill-fated Space Exploration Initiative, proposed by Mr. Bush, Sr.? Watch here to see how the idea futures market, such as it is, takes the rumor. http://www.ideosphere.com/fx-bin/Claim?claim=mndsxp >The design and construction of the various >elements of the >ISS could be turned to building modular "hab modules" and >other components >of a reusable translunar vehicle and a surface base. I don't know if reuse could happen so easily. Lunar gravity shouldn't pose a problem, but what about radiation exposure during transit and then on Luna? Burying the modules in the regolith once they arrive seems the easiest way to shield them, but how much regolith do you need and can the modules take it over the long term? Remember once you bury them, repairing the modules gets harder. How do you patch a leak from the inside only? One could do it, it just takes more effort. If >my physics isn't >too off, even the ISS's cockeyed orbital inclination >wouldn't be too much >of a handicap, since the cross-inclination vectoring >could be leveraged >during translunar trajectory insertion so that the >missions originating >at the ISS could still get into a lunar-equatorial orbit >without too much >delta-vee. Is this latter conjecture on my part true? I can't help here. Where's Nick Szabo when you need him? Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. From natashavita at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 16:33:25 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:33:25 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] FIRE So.Cal.: Does anyone need help? Message-ID: <265000-2200310430163325327@M2W032.mail2web.com> Friends, If you are in the vacinity of the fires in southern California or know someone who is who needs help - food or shelter, etc., please let me know so I can set up some sort of relief for our members and their friends and family. Warmly, Natasha Natasha Vita-More President, Extropy Institute -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From kilroy at hush.ai Thu Oct 30 17:11:53 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 09:11:53 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Uploading Message-ID: <200310301711.h9UHBrcb030819@mailserver3.hushmail.com> >Doesn't the concept of replacing the brain's neurons >with artificial ones, one at a time, date back to >Turing? This is one concept of uploading (and the >closest to reality, from what I've seen - even if it >is a fair ways off). The first description of this that I saw was a letter, I think by Marvin Minsky, in Behavioral and Brain Science, in response to a republication of John Searle's very stupid "Chinese Room" paper. This would have been sometime in the 1980s. Turing, in the paper in which he proposed the Turing test, may have written something similar, but I can't remember. Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 17:45:53 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:45:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Uploading References: <200310301711.h9UHBrcb030819@mailserver3.hushmail.com> Message-ID: <006d01c39f0d$ad9acb20$a4994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kilroy" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 11:11 AM >Turing, in the paper > in which he proposed the Turing test, may > have written something similar, but I can't > remember. Here's that paper in [VOL. LIX. No.236.] [October, 1950] MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY: http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.htm From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 18:15:36 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:15:36 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil References: Message-ID: <009001c39f11$d4304720$a4994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 7:43 PM > > But I considered his > > own special contribution, the `Law of Accelerating Returns', > > http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?m=1 > > to be at the verge of bogosity (sorry, Ray) when regarded as a sort of > > cosmic Truth. [Robert comments:] > Ray is pretty good compared with others (Ron Klatz of the A4M > comes to mind) when it comes to pushing trends (e.g. the doubling > rate for medical knowledge) way beyond what is reasonable. > > Now, the "Law of Accelerating Returns" is an interesting concept. > For example, clearly the Google Search of Books will accelerate > progress if it survives the assault by the authors guild. [etc] I was going to wait until Pietro had told us which of Ray's ideas he wanted to see analyzed in depth. But I should probably nip this line of objection in the bud: My incautious labeling of some of Dr Kurzweil's ideas as verging on the bogus comes only (as I say above) from the *cosmic* or *general* nature of his proposed `Law'. *Obviously* computer bang for buck, etc, has been increasing pretty much as Ray charts so usefully in the essay cited. This is the very basis of the technological singularity discerned by Dr Vinge and discussed in my book and Ray's. The question is whether this contingent fact of local technological history can be projected backwards across space and time to yield a general `Law of Accelerating Returns'. To cite that paper: `Evolution applies positive feedback in that the more capable methods resulting from one stage of evolutionary progress are used to create the next stage. As a result, the rate of progress of an evolutionary process increases exponentially over time. Over time, the "order" of the information embedded in the evolutionary process (i.e., the measure of how well the information fits a purpose, which in evolution is survival) increases. `A correlate of the above observation is that the "returns" of an evolution ary process (e.g., the speed, cost-effectiveness, or overall "power" of a process) increase exponentially over time. [...] `Biological evolution is one such evolutionary process.' Now this *might* be true (although bacteria don't seem to have `progressed' yet they're doing just fine), but it seems to suffer from the hazards that Karl Popper tore at in his great polemical book THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM. It reifies `progress', it assumes that there is a measure of progress that remains identifiable over cosmic or at least geo-biological time scales. This seems to be a remnant of 19th century thinking that's very pervasive among technophiles but extremely difficult to defend. What's more, it makes no allowance for the co-determination of evolved structure and context, let alone the contingencies (such as random intrusions like asteroid strikes or GRBs) that might produce the gross discontinuities of punctuated equilibrium. None of this means that Ray's *forecasts* concerning AI are dubious or even implausible. I find them compelling, and was persuaded by the same factors long before I read his work. It *does* mean that he's chosen (IMHO) an unfortunate metaphysical and rhetorical framework for the exposition of these important ideas. Of course, on the other hand, in the world of public discourse this might be a clever move--akin to the playful cavortings and winkings of Brian Greene in his Elegant Universe series on string theory running right now on TV--but it could serve to deter serious scholars who regard this framework as a version of long-exploded teleology. But this is such an important issue that I really *do* hope some philosophically astute people here will throw in their 2 cents' worth. Max? Greg? Anders? Anyone? Damien Broderick From kilroy at hush.ai Thu Oct 30 18:14:13 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 10:14:13 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil Message-ID: <200310301814.h9UIEDRw032631@mailserver3.hushmail.com> On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:06:53 -0800 "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > >And on the front of human "enhancement". We can take HGH >(within some limits) but not various steroids that would >improve athletic performance (perhaps with some downside >in longevity, violent tendencies, etc. etc.). Can't, legally. Can, practically. The health risks of a_steroids have been vastly overstated by the medical establishment. The resulting "violent tendencies" are in my experience not as dramatic as those you get from drinking coffee, or (for other people) alcohol. The main health risk from our perspective (to males over age 25) is that, when you use a-steroids, you have to eat a lot more, and this may cause more oxidative damage to your organs. A-steroids are incompatible with caloric restriction, just as weightlifting itself is. The real main downside is that you may have a SWAT team break into your house, throw you and anybody else in the house to the ground and hold guns to your head and shout at you for a few hours, take your cars and your house and the contents of your bank accounts away, and send you to jail for a long time. Also, no, you can't take HGH in general, except to help short kids grow taller, or as replacement therapy when you're older. I don't recommend it for most people. It will give you bigger muscles, but it makes your organs grow larger, which gives you a fat gut and possibly heart problems. Even short-term use of small amounts HGH by an adult can make you look fat. Kids don't have these problems with HGH because a) their bones can grow longer as well as the rest of them, and b) their heart can possibly still adapt its timing to an increased size, tho you'd have to ask a cardiologist for sure. >And certainly >we should not be selling on street corners "do-it-yourself" >injections for gene therapies to turn yourself into Hulk Hogan. Once the basic risks are assessed and the remaining problems addressed, why not? Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 19:10:27 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:10:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: <200310301814.h9UIEDRw032631@mailserver3.hushmail.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Kilroy wrote: > The health risks of a_steroids have been vastly > overstated by the medical establishment. The > resulting "violent tendencies" are in my experience > not as dramatic as those you get from drinking coffee, > or (for other people) alcohol. Well, I may be wrong, but what I have read suggest that the violent tendencies are real. Though I would certainly agree that alcohol can lead to similar problems -- though the causes are quite different. > Once the basic risks are assessed and the remaining > problems addressed, why not? But much of your note suggested that it will be difficult to address those problems (at least with respect to HGH). The most basic risk I see is that problem with people who are not well informed about potential risks and simply do not understand that "more" is not always "better". (Have you glanced at the WWF lately? The idea that people will pay good money to go watch such "entertainment" (sarcasm intended) boggles my mind. Hell the WWF makes cow tipping an olympic class sport.) Now you give those "entertainers" and their fans the ability to self-enhance to their hearts content and things are going to get really messy. I'd like to hear Natasha comment on exactly where the lines need to be drawn. (Can you self-enhance ones violent tendencies? Can you self-enhance in self-destructive ways that will be cleaned up later by taxpayer supported medical care, etc.?) Robert From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 19:20:41 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:20:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil In-Reply-To: <009001c39f11$d4304720$a4994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > What's more, it makes no allowance for the co-determination of evolved > structure and context, let alone the contingencies (such as random > intrusions like asteroid strikes or GRBs) that might produce the gross > discontinuities of punctuated equilibrium. I've been working on Amara Angelica to get Ray to address the potential speed-bumps in "The Singularity is Near". Whether he will or not I don't know yet. > But this is such an important issue that I really *do* hope some > philosophically astute people here will throw in their 2 cents' worth. Max? > Greg? Anders? Anyone? Glad you didn't mention me in that list... :-) At any rate, given your comments (which I would tend to summarize as "Ray may be raising a philosophically dead horse" if I understand them correctly, I'd like to draw your attention to the following: "Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950" by Charles Murry (co-author of The Bell Curve). /.: http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/30/1441239&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=188&tid=192 Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/006019247X/ It might be interesting to compare the vectors that Ray and Charles select. R. From etheric at comcast.net Thu Oct 30 19:25:28 2003 From: etheric at comcast.net (R.Coyote) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:25:28 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil References: Message-ID: <000801c39f1b$93a7d8d0$0200a8c0@etheric> /me *shakes head* To witness such ignorance about a subject from this otherwise brilliant group... The Myostatin Gene http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/volk/myostatin.htm The First New Anabolic Drugs of the Next Millenium Are Discovered http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/haycock/non-steroidal-androgens.htm A Philosophical Defense of Anabolic-Androgenic Steroid Use http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/gendin/philosophical-defense-of-steroi d-use.htm Mechanisms of Action for Growth Hormone (GH) and Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1) http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/haycock/growth-factors-01.htm Anabolic Steroids, Bodybuilding and the Law http://www.steroidlaw.com/ Psychological and Behavioural Effects of Endogenous Testosterone Levels and Anabolic-Androgenic Steroids Among Males: A Review http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/bahrke/bahrke00.htm Researchers Too Quick to Blame Steroids for Changes in Heart Muscle http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/haycock/anabolic-steroids-and-heart-mu scle.htm Anabolic Steroids, Growth Hormone, and Hypertrophy of the Heart http://www.mesomorphosis.com/articles/koert/anabolic-steroids-gh-and-the-hea rt.htm Human Growth Hormone http://www.mesomorphosis.com/steroid-profiles/human-growth-hormone.htm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" To: ; "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 11:10 AM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil > > > On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Kilroy wrote: > > > The health risks of a_steroids have been vastly > > overstated by the medical establishment. The > > resulting "violent tendencies" are in my experience > > not as dramatic as those you get from drinking coffee, > > or (for other people) alcohol. > > Well, I may be wrong, but what I have read suggest that > the violent tendencies are real. Though I would certainly > agree that alcohol can lead to similar problems -- though > the causes are quite different. > > > Once the basic risks are assessed and the remaining > > problems addressed, why not? > > But much of your note suggested that it will be difficult > to address those problems (at least with respect to HGH). > > The most basic risk I see is that problem with people who > are not well informed about potential risks and simply do > not understand that "more" is not always "better". (Have > you glanced at the WWF lately? The idea that people will > pay good money to go watch such "entertainment" (sarcasm > intended) boggles my mind. Hell the WWF makes cow tipping > an olympic class sport.) Now you give those "entertainers" > and their fans the ability to self-enhance to their hearts > content and things are going to get really messy. > > I'd like to hear Natasha comment on exactly where the lines > need to be drawn. (Can you self-enhance ones violent > tendencies? Can you self-enhance in self-destructive ways > that will be cleaned up later by taxpayer supported medical > care, etc.?) > > Robert > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From artillo at comcast.net Thu Oct 30 19:26:30 2003 From: artillo at comcast.net (artillo at comcast.net) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:26:30 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor Message-ID: <103020031926.5815.38e2@comcast.net> "If I have seen further than others, it's because of my new-fangled ocular implants with 300mm telescoping zoom and image enhancement neural implant!" LOL Couldn't resist! - Artillo > >If I have seen further than others, it is by treading on the toes > >of dwarfs. > >- Damien Broderick > > If I have seen further than others, it is because > I am standing on the shoulders of giants. > > - Newton (I think) > > If I have not seen as far as others, it is because > there are giants standing on my shoulders. > > - Unknown > > > > Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get > FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 > > Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger > https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 > > Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: > https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From hal at finney.org Thu Oct 30 19:50:22 2003 From: hal at finney.org (Hal Finney) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:50:22 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Eugen's signed messages Message-ID: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Damien commented: > I am still getting all of Eugen's posts (such as this one) as attachments, > not in the email message body. I dislike opening attachments, even from > someone trustworthy (or someone pretending to be someone trustworthy, which > is the problem). Eugen is signing his messages using gpg, the popular open source implementation of the OpenPGP standard for using public key cryptography. The messages are MIME formatted per RFC 3156. This creates a message with two parts; the first part contains the message body, and the second part contains the cryptographic signature. MIME mail has several variants on multipart messages. For cryptographic signatures, multipart/signed is used. So Eugen creates a multipart/signed message that has two body parts. However, the extropy-chat mailing list processor is then further processing this message. It wants to append the trailing lines, which we have all seen: : _______________________________________________ : extropy-chat mailing list : extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org : http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat Normally it just sticks these lines onto the end of the message, but for a MIME multipart message, this won't work. You can't just append data after the end of the multiparts, as that puts it outside the structure and so it either will be ignored or might even cause some kind of error. Nor can the extropy-chat mailer extend Eugen's multipart message with a third part to hold the trailing lines, because multipart/signed messages have specific rules that they should have exactly two parts. So what the list does is to further wrap Eugen's multipart message in a higher level multipart, this one of type multipart/mixed. This type of multipart is a sort of catchall or generic multipart, where the multiple parts are intended to be displayed one after the other. The multipart/mixed messages created by the list has two parts. In the first part, it puts Eugen's multipart/signed message (which itself has two parts). In the second part, it puts the three trailer lines above. This is the message which the list sends out. It has the following structure: multipart/mixed multipart/signed Eugen's message Eugen's signature extropy-chat list trailer A compliant mailer will see through this complexity and display the various parts directly. Each of the parts has the tag: "Content-Disposition: inline" which is a hint that the contents should be displayed directly. If it said "Content-Disposition: attachment" then it should be displayed as an attachment (typically the contents are saved as a file and the message displays a link to the file). Ideally the mailer will even be smart enough to try to validate the cryptographic signature. But failing that, unrecognized multiparts are specified to be treated as multipart/mixed, meaning that the parts should just be displayed, one after the other. And since each is marked for "inline" display, that should further assure the mailer that the right thing to do is to display the various messages parts, all concatenated together. The signature might present a problem, as it is of type "application/pgp-signature" which a mailer might not recognize, so that might be skipped or presented as an attachment. However, many mailers are not this smart. And the complex nature of the message sent out by the list, with its two-level hierarchical structure, probably doesn't help. I don't know whether there exist mailers that could handle a regular multipart/signed message while choking on one that is embedded within multipart/mixed, but there might be some for which this makes a difference. The real lesson is that protocol implementations tend not to work properly with data structures that they have not been tested on. That's why implementors have "bake-offs", get-togethers where they test each other's programs and see if they can interoperate. Surprisingly, even when a well written spec is implemented by competent programmers, usually things don't work on the first try (any more than any large program is born free of bugs). It's not a moral failing; it's just a manifestation of the difficulty the human mind has in processing abstract information. Hal -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: McAfee E-Business Server v7.1.2 - Full License iQA/AwUBP6FrMKsSfKQ41E4qEQJ/yQCfUAWmCzz738LXtcK8ft/3lJRjKi0AoPi1 sWYBv0IYtR/UqqSJ6t1WCQdn =+vxQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From bradbury at aeiveos.com Thu Oct 30 20:01:07 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 12:01:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor In-Reply-To: <103020031926.5815.38e2@comcast.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 artillo at comcast.net wrote: > "If I have seen further than others, it's because of my new-fangled > ocular implants with 300mm telescoping zoom and image enhancement neural > implant!" If I will see farther than others, its because I plan to take 1% of the usable mass in the solar system and construct 100 billion telescopes the diameter of the moon. Then I will see *everything*. R. From artillo at comcast.net Thu Oct 30 20:07:49 2003 From: artillo at comcast.net (artillo at comcast.net) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:07:49 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Words of wisdom and humor Message-ID: <103020032007.28268.69fa@comcast.net> hrmmmm maybe I was thinking too small? LOL > > On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 artillo at comcast.net wrote: > > > "If I have seen further than others, it's because of my new-fangled > > ocular implants with 300mm telescoping zoom and image enhancement neural > > implant!" > > If I will see farther than others, its because I plan to take > 1% of the usable mass in the solar system and construct 100 > billion telescopes the diameter of the moon. Then I will > see *everything*. > > R. > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 20:13:53 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:13:53 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Hal Clement dead References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> Message-ID: <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> Famous `hard sf' writer Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) has died at 81: http://www.locusmag.com/2003/News/10_Clement.html From kevinfreels at hotmail.com Thu Oct 30 20:50:18 2003 From: kevinfreels at hotmail.com (kevinfreels at hotmail.com) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:50:18 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil References: <200310301814.h9UIEDRw032631@mailserver3.hushmail.com> Message-ID: They didn;t have HGH available when I was young, so I am stuck as a short person until nano can fix it. I'm still waiting for the "smart" pill that makes me think faster, improves my memory to near perfection and will put me on par with the rest of you though! :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kilroy" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 12:14 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil > On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 18:06:53 -0800 "Robert J. Bradbury" > wrote: > > > >And on the front of human "enhancement". We can take HGH > >(within some limits) but not various steroids that would > >improve athletic performance (perhaps with some downside > >in longevity, violent tendencies, etc. etc.). > > Can't, legally. Can, practically. > The health risks of a_steroids have been vastly > overstated by the medical establishment. The > resulting "violent tendencies" are in my experience > not as dramatic as those you get from drinking coffee, > or (for other people) alcohol. The main health risk > from our perspective (to males over age 25) is that, > when you use a-steroids, you have to eat a lot more, > and this may cause more oxidative damage to your organs. > A-steroids are incompatible with caloric restriction, > just as weightlifting itself is. > > The real main downside is that you may have a SWAT team > break into your house, throw you and anybody else > in the house to the ground and hold guns to your > head and shout at you for a few hours, take your > cars and your house and the contents of your bank > accounts away, and send you to jail for a long time. > > Also, no, you can't take HGH in general, except to > help short kids grow taller, or as replacement > therapy when you're older. I don't recommend it > for most people. It will give you bigger muscles, > but it makes your organs grow larger, which gives > you a fat gut and possibly heart problems. > Even short-term use of small amounts HGH by an > adult can make you look fat. Kids don't have > these problems with HGH because a) their bones > can grow longer as well as the rest of them, > and b) their heart can possibly still adapt > its timing to an increased size, tho you'd have > to ask a cardiologist for sure. > > >And certainly > >we should not be selling on street corners "do-it-yourself" > >injections for gene therapies to turn yourself into Hulk Hogan. > > Once the basic risks are assessed and the remaining > problems addressed, why not? > > > > Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get > FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 > > Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger > https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 > > Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: > https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 21:31:41 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:31:41 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Hal Clement dead References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <001801c39f2d$4f1f4560$b0994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 2:13 PM Subject: [extropy-chat] Hal Clement dead > Famous `hard sf' writer Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) has died at 81: > > http://www.locusmag.com/2003/News/10_Clement.html > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 21:36:46 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:36:46 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <001901c39f2d$eda40540$b0994a43@texas.net> My eReads sf novel (and Rory Barnes's) THE HUNGER OF TIME had a fairly gruesome time getting on to amazon.com's system. It's finally there, and they've made up for the delay by offering a larger image of Anders' interesting jacket design for the book: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0759255121.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg It's still not as large as the trade paperback pic on the printed book, but I do like the short-tailed doggie... Damien Broderick www.thespike.us From thespike at earthlink.net Thu Oct 30 21:42:10 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:42:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: finally amazon has the Anders cover up References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> <001901c39f2d$eda40540$b0994a43@texas.net> <002401c39f2e$6c2ce760$b0994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <003701c39f2e$ae349720$b0994a43@texas.net> The dreaded `Anders cover up' is of course one of the scandals of Swedish technopolitical history. I hesitate to say more about its shocking details. From mlorrey at yahoo.com Thu Oct 30 21:48:36 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 13:48:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <000001c39eb1$11454c20$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <20031030214836.94493.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to make the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance look. Anyone for a woody? --- Spike wrote: > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > computers? Are there any antique computer users > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From reason at exratio.com Thu Oct 30 22:04:54 2003 From: reason at exratio.com (Reason) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:04:54 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] RE: [wta-politics] Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN In-Reply-To: Message-ID: The attacks on theraputic cloning are causing great damage to medical progress in this field: http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=75791 "President Bush's current limitations on stem cell research and a bill that would place criminal penalties on scientists who use a particular cloning process are causing biotechnology corporations to fall apart or flee to other countries, according to a stem cell scientist." http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=534&e=3&u=/ap/20031027/ap_on _sc/stem_cell_research "if embryonic stem cell research had not been involved in politics we would be far ahead of where we are today." Stem cell research and theraputic cloning are fundamental to all the most promising advances in regenerative medicine. This is not pie in the sky science: amazing cures - for Parkinson's, heart disease, bone damage, nerve damage, burns, liver damage, Crohn's, etc - have been demonstrated in the labs or in early trials, only to be shut down, banned, or die off from lack of funding. The current US administration - and many other governments worldwide - have shown that their members do not care how much suffering they are causing through their policies. Without activism and opposition, we can all expect to live shorter, more painful lives: regenerative medicine is a part of the fast track to extended healthy lives. Please use the following links to see how you can help to make your voice heard. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and tell them that what they are doing (or allowing to happen) is immoral and wrong. Hundreds of millions of people are suffering and dying today, now, from conditions that could soon be cured, or might already be curable, if not for these attacks on theraputic cloning and stem cell research. A total ban on theraputic cloning in the US is still pending: http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_theraputic_cloning_ban.cfm The European Parliament is still looking at banning all stem cell research: http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_european_stem_cell_ban.cfm More information on the UN global ban on theraputic cloning is here: http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_global_theraputic_cloning_ban.c fm The FDA has blocked a working therapy for heart disease that could save an estimated 50,000 lives worldwide every day: http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/protest_fda_interference.cfm If stem cell therapies and theraputic cloning are banned, you, personally, will one day die from a disease that would be have been curable. Today, now, 150,000 people will die worldwide, mostly from diseases and conditions that will soon be curable, or would be curable without these attacks on medical research. Are you going to let that go, or are you going to stand up and fight the small faction of politicians who are trying to stop progress? Reason http://www.exratio.com > -----Original Message----- > From: wta-politics-admin at transhumanism.org > [mailto:wta-politics-admin at transhumanism.org]On Behalf Of Hughes, James > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 12:40 PM > To: wta-politics at transhumanism.org > Subject: [wta-politics] Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN > > > > http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c =StoryFT&cid=1066565433416 > > Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN > > By Mark Turner at the United Nations and Clive Cookson in London > > Published: October 28 2003 17:30 | Last Updated: October 28 2003 17:30 > > > The US and the UK, normally stalwart allies on the international stage, > may be heading for a face-off at the United Nations over moves towards > an international convention banning all forms of human cloning. > > Diplomats said a decision was expected this week or early next week on > whether to press for a vote in the UN General Assembly. Costa Rica, the > US and almost 60 other countries have sponsored a resolution calling for > a convention against human cloning to be prepared by next year. In the > meantime, it says states should prohibit the research, development or > application of "any technique aimed at human cloning". > > While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, its supporters > believe the agreement would send a powerful message about human > society's willingness to set ethical boundaries on the fast-developing > discipline of life sciences. > > The Costa Rica/US text calls human cloning, for any purpose, "unethical, > morally repugnant and contrary to due respect for the human person". > > At the same time, however, Belgium, the UK, Japan, China and a > significant minority of other UN members have sponsored a > counter-resolution that would ban human reproductive cloning but allow > "therapeutic cloning" for medical research. This is supported by most of > the world's scientific academies, including the US National Academy of > Sciences. > > Advocates for the counter-proposal, which has more than 20 co-sponsors, > say their text reflects nations' right to determine for themselves where > the boundaries lie. The UK argues that cloning early embryos for > research could bring significant benefits to human society and does not > violate the sanctity of life. > > US officials say they cannot accept a resolution allowing activity in a > field the Bush administration believes is universally unacceptable. > "It's important for the international community, even with a divided > voice, but a strong voice, to send a message that cloning will not be > tolerated," said one. > > But an opponent of the US position pointed out: "It is ironic that the > administration should be pushing for an international convention to ban > all cloning when it cannot even get Congress to agree on legislation." > > Faced with two irreconcilable positions, proponents of the Costa Rica > text must choose whether to abandon the vote or press ahead with a > resolution that a significant minority of countries oppose. Were the > resolution to pass, the UN could face a situation where only some > countries actively participated in, and eventually applied, a new > convention. > > "You wouldn't get full participation in the negotiations, and who knows > who would ratify it," said a UN diplomat who opposed the universal ban. > "If you have a resolution only supporters sign up to, it doesn't > strengthen regulation at all." > > > > _______________________________________________ > wta-politics mailing list > wta-politics at transhumanism.org > http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-politics From eugen at leitl.org Thu Oct 30 22:26:56 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:26:56 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: References: <3F8DC8620000936E@mta12.wss.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20031030222656.GO27418@leitl.org> On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 10:46:41AM -0500, JAY DUGGER wrote: > > I don't know if reuse could happen so easily. Lunar > gravity shouldn't pose a problem, but what about radiation 1/6 g should do okay for pretty long stays. It may require a heavy exercise schedule. > exposure during transit and then on Luna? Burying the Two days transit. No problem, unless you run into a major solar storm with no shielding. > modules in the regolith once they arrive seems the easiest Right. Not that short stays will need any more shielding than the landing module provides. > way to shield them, but how much regolith do you need and > can the modules take it over the long term? Remember once How much regolith do you need to emulate the shielding Earth's atmosphere provides? 1 m, maybe two. > you bury them, repairing the modules gets harder. How do Hello? You seem to think we're doing lunar mining here? > you patch a leak from the inside only? One could do it, it If you're deep, a leak is no problem: material shields. Patching from the inside as well: polymerizable monomer in situ. Leaks will happen (everything we sent up to LEO has been leaking like a sieve) but there are enough volatiles to replenish the losses on Luna. > just takes more effort. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mlorrey at yahoo.com Thu Oct 30 22:28:06 2003 From: mlorrey at yahoo.com (Mike Lorrey) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:28:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20031030222806.1512.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> --- JAY DUGGER wrote: > On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 07:48:19 -0600 > "Greg Burch" wrote: > >The design and construction of the various > >elements of the > >ISS could be turned to building modular "hab modules" and > >other components > >of a reusable translunar vehicle and a surface base. > > I don't know if reuse could happen so easily. Lunar > gravity shouldn't pose a problem, but what about radiation > exposure during transit and then on Luna? Burying the > modules in the regolith once they arrive seems the easiest > way to shield them, but how much regolith do you need and > can the modules take it over the long term? Remember once > you bury them, repairing the modules gets harder. How do > you patch a leak from the inside only? One could do it, it > just takes more effort. Firstly, regolith is dirt/sand in consistency, not rock. You apply it with something like a snowblower, and you get it off with the same plus a broom. (Lunar Sanitation Engineers Guild Local 001 Trainee Manual, Care of Antique Lunar Modules for Idiots). Secondly, leaks occur in space modules due to micrometeorite impacts, primarily, along with radiation induced metal fatigue, both of which regolith will mitigate. Thirdly, since the pressure is on the inside and vacuum is on the outside, the proper place to fix any leak is on the inside. Radiation during lunar transit is not the sort of radiation that leaves lasting harmful isotopes to any degree. It's cosmic rays and so forth, photons, not neutron bombardment. Modules would not be transitted while manned, most likely. Furthermore, there is no reason why transit cannot occur in the earth's EM field shadow. > > If > >my physics isn't > >too off, even the ISS's cockeyed orbital inclination > >wouldn't be too much > >of a handicap, since the cross-inclination vectoring > >could be leveraged > >during translunar trajectory insertion so that the > >missions originating > >at the ISS could still get into a lunar-equatorial orbit > >without too much > >delta-vee. Is this latter conjecture on my part true? > > I can't help here. Where's Nick Szabo when you need him? Actually, considering that the optimum place to land is near the lunar south pole, where there is a site with near perpetual sunlight and local suspected water deposits in dark craters, having high orbital inclination is no big deal. You want to wind up in a polar orbit around the moon when you get there to make a descent, but hohmann S transfer orbits do not require that both ends be coplanar. ===== Mike Lorrey "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." - Gen. John Stark Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ Pro-tech freedom discussion: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Oct 30 22:45:37 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:15:37 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE028@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Wow... nice work Anders! Emlyn I'm sure the book's passable, too :-) > -----Original Message----- > From: Damien Broderick [mailto:thespike at earthlink.net] > Sent: Friday, 31 October 2003 7:07 AM > To: Damien Broderick; ExI chat list > Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up > > > My eReads sf novel (and Rory Barnes's) THE HUNGER OF TIME had a fairly > gruesome time getting on to amazon.com's system. It's finally > there, and > they've made up for the delay by offering a larger image of Anders' > interesting jacket design for the book: > > http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0759255121.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg > > It's still not as large as the trade paperback pic on the > printed book, but > I do like the short-tailed doggie... > > Damien Broderick > www.thespike.us > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From duggerj1 at charter.net Thu Oct 30 22:48:06 2003 From: duggerj1 at charter.net (JAY DUGGER) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:48:06 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <20031030222656.GO27418@leitl.org> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:26:56 +0100 Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 10:46:41AM -0500, JAY DUGGER >wrote: >> >> I don't know if reuse could happen so easily. Lunar >> gravity shouldn't pose a problem, but what about >>radiation > >1/6 g should do okay for pretty long stays. It may >require a heavy exercise >schedule. > I thought only of the structures, not of their crews. >> exposure during transit and then on Luna? Burying the > >Two days transit. No problem, unless you run into a major >solar storm with no >shielding. > Do the ISS modules offer as much radiation protection as the Apollo CM and LM? >> modules in the regolith once they arrive seems the >>easiest > >Right. Not that short stays will need any more shielding >than the landing >module provides. > >> way to shield them, but how much regolith do you need >>and >> can the modules take it over the long term? Remember >>once > >How much regolith do you need to emulate the shielding >Earth's atmosphere >provides? 1 m, maybe two. > >> you bury them, repairing the modules gets harder. How >>do > >Hello? You seem to think we're doing lunar mining here? No, I don't. I do find hard it to imagine how to patch a hole on both sides when one side has regolith over to the depth of 1-2 m. >If you're deep, a leak is no problem: material shields. Does regolith provide a good seal against gases leaking at cabin pressure? I expect that depends on how hard you could pack the stuff, or how you treat it. Could you use some sort of superglue or a plastic? >Patching from the >inside as well: polymerizable monomer in situ. Leaks will >happen (everything >we sent up to LEO has been leaking like a sieve) but >there >are enough volatiles to replenish the losses on Luna. > In the long run, sure. That seems unlikely for the kind of semi-permanent station suggested. One could grow crops in an indoor garden at McMurdo, but I bet that doesn't happen any more than buildings there get their construction materials from local mines. Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Thu Oct 30 22:53:07 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:23:07 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02A@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Table top video games from the eighties are now collectable, AFAIK. Worse luck for me, I've always wanted a tabletop galaga, but they cost too much these days. eg: http://amos.catalogcity.com/cc.class/cc?pcd=5146816&ccsyn=22 Also, I've known people to go around collecting workable commodore 64 setups these days. Don't do it! The memory of how cool they were is very fragile, easily ruptured by a dose of reality :-( Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Spike [mailto:spike66 at comcast.net] > Sent: Thursday, 30 October 2003 4:13 PM > To: 'ExI chat list' > Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers > > > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > computers? Are there any antique computer users > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > spike > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From duggerj1 at charter.net Thu Oct 30 22:54:51 2003 From: duggerj1 at charter.net (JAY DUGGER) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:54:51 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <20031030222806.1512.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 14:28:06 -0800 (PST) Mike Lorrey wrote: > > >Firstly, regolith is dirt/sand in consistency, not rock. >You apply it >with something like a snowblower, and you get it off with >the same plus >a broom. (Lunar Sanitation Engineers Guild Local 001 >Trainee Manual, >Care of Antique Lunar Modules for Idiots). > I don't know much lunar geology. Won't regolith composition vary greatly over the surface? I can see this holding true some places. There it might be a little sweeping to place and remove the stuff. >Secondly, leaks occur in space modules due to >micrometeorite impacts, >primarily, along with radiation induced metal fatigue, >both of which >regolith will mitigate. > Welds don't fail, I suppose? Metal never fatigues due to mechanical stress, from launch or temperature variation? Such failure might not happen very often, but help lies far away. >Thirdly, since the pressure is on the inside and vacuum >is on the >outside, the proper place to fix any leak is on the >inside. > I'd feel much safer with a patch on _both_ sides of a hole and sealant between the two layers, but I have no experience with repairing pressure chambers and so admit ignorance. Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. From naddy at mips.inka.de Thu Oct 30 22:35:17 2003 From: naddy at mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 22:35:17 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Hal Clement dead References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: Damien Broderick wrote: > Famous `hard sf' writer Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) has died at 81: > http://www.locusmag.com/2003/News/10_Clement.html I'm sad to hear this. Hal Clement was one of my favorite authors. His works have practically defined the hard SF subgenre. Clement's overall position in SF has been something of a paradox. On the one hand, weaknesses in his books are easy to point out (cardboard characters, clunky prose) and he didn't receive any individual awards for them, but on the other hand he was undisputely one of the genre's greats. In his non-writing life, Clement was a high school science teacher and it shows in his novels. No speculation about the nooks and crannies of General Relativity, no, Clement remained firmly within the borders of classical physics. Elementary mechanics and thermodynamics, a bit of chemistry. The main topic of his novels was the exploration of hostile environments by the protagonists, sometimes human, sometimes alien, sometimes on Earth, sometimes beyond. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy at mips.inka.de From pietroferri at hotmail.com Thu Oct 30 23:42:38 2003 From: pietroferri at hotmail.com (pietro ferri) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:42:38 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil Message-ID: >>I was going to wait until Pietro had told us which of Ray's ideas he >>wanted to see analyzed in depth.<< First, thank you all for sharing so many comments. Of particular interest to me is Ray?s timeline and his predictions ( 2019 2029 and 2099). I believe that no one has yet produced such a detailed series of predictions ( with a precise timeline). It would be really great if Damien (and all the others) commented in depth. Actually Max More some time ago did just that in a very interesting exchange with Ray himself. For instance, one idea I feel confident enough to challenge ( having, maybe a bit casually, studied economics as part of my business administration degrees) is Ray?s prediction (for 2009), and I cite, ? THE GREATEST GAINS CONTINUE TO BE IN THE VALUE OF THE STOCK MARKET. Price deflation concerned economists in the early ?00 years, but they quickly realized it was a good thing?. Well, I do have a problem with the above sentence. I would say ( and please Max comment, since you are a Oxford economist!) that, over the long term, the total stock exchange market capitalization is clearly correlated to GDP (in nominal terms). So, if GDP has not grown in nominal terms (because of the deflation ray predicts) it is strange to say that stocks have continued to significantly rise. After all, stock prices are (over the long term) very strongly correlated to earnings. And, admitting that profit margins cannot improve for everybody, there is no way that companies can make more money in nominal terms if prices fall for a sustained period of time ( again, as Ray predicts). The only possibility is for GDP to grow at a very strong pace for a long period, to compensate for the deflation. For example if GDP grew at an average of 2 percent per year (in nominal terms) and deflation were ?only? 3 per cent, then we could have rising stock prices. But this implies a growth rate in real terms of 5 per cent: for a developed economy (like the US and Europe) something extremely difficult to achieve over the long term. What do you guys think? Also, Damien I feel that you do have several things you disagree with Ray about. Why don?t you challenge him directly? After all his latest book is called ? Ray Kurzweil versus the critics of strong AI? where several expert challenged him. I found the book extremely interesting and useful ( by the way, it also lies on my night table!). I do think that Ray is precisely searching for challengers to his ideas, and this is also a reason why he asked both Max and Eric Drexler for comments/clarifications. Finally, does anyone know when ?The Singularity is Near? will finally be published? Max, I remember that at Extro5 he said that the book would have been published in 2002. Here a wrong prediction of his! J _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 00:01:08 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:01:08 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil References: Message-ID: <010701c39f42$18276a00$b0994a43@texas.net> Thanks for clarifications, Pietro ----- Original Message ----- From: "pietro ferri" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 5:42 PM > Of particular interest to > me is Ray?s timeline and his predictions ( 2019 2029 and 2099). I believe > that no one has yet produced such a detailed series of predictions ( with a > precise timeline). It would be really great if Damien (and all the others) > commented in depth. My sense is that the whole notion of technological singularity *precludes* detailed prediction. That's what I keep asserting all through my book. Science is radically unpredictable; technology is tied to somewhat unpredictable socially-driven discontinuities. As far as I can see, the Spike might happen any time between next week and the end of the century. Or a thousand years from now if there's a terrible global disaster. It's probably happened repeatedly on many other worlds, and could therefore impact us from outside at any time. And so on. (But I do regard Ray's 2099 as rather surprisingly late for the effects he describes.) Your specific economic considerations will probably be addressed by the economically literate on the list--as well as by everyone else. :) > Also, Damien I feel that you do have several things you disagree with Ray > about. Why don?t you challenge him directly? After all his latest book is > called ? Ray Kurzweil versus the critics of strong AI? I'm not a critic of strong AI, quite the reverse. I have no argument with Ray in that respect. I'm complaining only about a supposed `law' that's been operating to create `progress' since the Big Bang. It's a matter of scale and mechanism. In fact I don't disagree with Ray that the outliers of complexity have been wandering away from the baseline wall of simplicity (even Steve Gould didn't deny that), just that it's not this simple, and it's not a law. Calling it a law makes the idea sound like a discredited version of `scientific Marxism'. Dumb luck (and competitive/cooperative survival) took structures to the takeoff point. After that, it's intelligence and memory and copyable *recorded* memory (very important) and population density of communicating brains and surplus... None of which has the slightest bearing on the unintelligent parts of the cosmos pre-humankind. Which is my one and only point, and I think Ray needs to make the difference clear, or he'll seem to be pushing the same crapulous line as the intelligent design bozos. > Finally, does anyone know when ?The Singularity is Near? will finally be > published? `?The Singularity is Near? is Not That Near' :) Damien Broderick From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Thu Oct 30 23:53:39 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:53:39 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Hal Clement dead References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <006d01c39f22$5b9fa740$609d4a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <028c01c39f41$0afdc640$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Christian Weisgerber wrote: > Damien Broderick wrote: > > > Famous `hard sf' writer Hal Clement (Harry Stubbs) has > > died at 81: http://www.locusmag.com/2003/News/10_Clement.html > > I'm sad to hear this. Hal Clement was one of my favorite authors. So often obituaries are like this - one gets the sense that it would have been good to know these folks whilst they were alive. Clements caught my attention as an interesting name for a writer but I think the other guy I had in mind by the name of Samuel was not exactly a Clements - but I could be wrong ;-) Back to work for me. Brett From bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au Fri Oct 31 00:18:03 2003 From: bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au (Brett Paatsch) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:18:03 +1100 Subject: [extropy-chat] RE: [wta-politics] Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN References: Message-ID: <029201c39f44$738fc3e0$11262dcb@vic.bigpond.net.au> Hmm, I must read through all this it looks real interesting, thanks for posting it Reason. I just had a great idea for a business. Just imagine if there was no law and order anymore because people didn't care about or weren't interested in the UN Charter or the Constitutions of their countries. Somewhere sometime a great leader might emerge as the commander in chief of a great military power that was determined to reshape the whole world according to its own great image. Of course being the great power it would have trade links with nearly everyone and anyone that it couldn't out-compete it could handicap 'cause after all what is international law worth really and what has it done for us lately. The important thing would be to ensure that the various small players didn't hang together and ruin your protection racket so one would have to hire a few capable folk as under-bosses and pay 'em off so they could be relaxed and comfortable. That way one could control the rate of change in society by banning or curtailing those who might have more talent and skill. Interesting notion, but I guess nah it would never work, people are just too smart for that ;-) And then one little piece of space junk wandering in might ruin your whole day. Ant politics is likely to be a matter of supreme indifference to ant-eaters. Besides we can rely on people who like closed societies to lie :-) Brett PS: Reason wrote and I will not amend it 'cause I like it - its provocative and bears re-reading. > The attacks on theraputic cloning are causing great damage to medical > progress in this field: > > http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=75791 > "President Bush's current limitations on stem cell research and a bill that > would place criminal penalties on scientists who use a particular cloning > process are causing biotechnology corporations to fall apart or flee to > other countries, according to a stem cell scientist." > > http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=534&e=3&u=/ap/20031027/ap_on > _sc/stem_cell_research > "if embryonic stem cell research had not been involved in politics we would > be far ahead of where we are today." > > Stem cell research and theraputic cloning are fundamental to all the most > promising advances in regenerative medicine. This is not pie in the sky > science: amazing cures - for Parkinson's, heart disease, bone damage, nerve > damage, burns, liver damage, Crohn's, etc - have been demonstrated in the > labs or in early trials, only to be shut down, banned, or die off from lack > of funding. The current US administration - and many other governments > worldwide - have shown that their members do not care how much suffering > they are causing through their policies. Without activism and opposition, we > can all expect to live shorter, more painful lives: regenerative medicine is > a part of the fast track to extended healthy lives. > > Please use the following links to see how you can help to make your voice > heard. I urge you to contact your elected representatives and tell them that > what they are doing (or allowing to happen) is immoral and wrong. Hundreds > of millions of people are suffering and dying today, now, from conditions > that could soon be cured, or might already be curable, if not for these > attacks on theraputic cloning and stem cell research. > > A total ban on theraputic cloning in the US is still pending: > > http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_theraputic_cloning_ban.cfm > > The European Parliament is still looking at banning all stem cell research: > > http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_the_european_stem_cell_ban.cfm > > More information on the UN global ban on theraputic cloning is here: > > http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/oppose_global_theraputic_cloning_ban.c > fm > > The FDA has blocked a working therapy for heart disease that could save an > estimated 50,000 lives worldwide every day: > > http://www.longevitymeme.org/projects/protest_fda_interference.cfm > > If stem cell therapies and theraputic cloning are banned, you, personally, > will one day die from a disease that would be have been curable. Today, now, > 150,000 people will die worldwide, mostly from diseases and conditions that > will soon be curable, or would be curable without these attacks on medical > research. Are you going to let that go, or are you going to stand up and > fight the small faction of politicians who are trying to stop progress? > > Reason > http://www.exratio.com > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: wta-politics-admin at transhumanism.org > > [mailto:wta-politics-admin at transhumanism.org]On Behalf Of Hughes, James > > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 12:40 PM > > To: wta-politics at transhumanism.org > > Subject: [wta-politics] Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN > > > > > > > > > http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c > =StoryFT&cid=1066565433416 > > > > Move to ban human cloning likely to divide UN > > > > By Mark Turner at the United Nations and Clive Cookson in London > > > > Published: October 28 2003 17:30 | Last Updated: October 28 2003 17:30 > > > > > > The US and the UK, normally stalwart allies on the international stage, > > may be heading for a face-off at the United Nations over moves towards > > an international convention banning all forms of human cloning. > > > > Diplomats said a decision was expected this week or early next week on > > whether to press for a vote in the UN General Assembly. Costa Rica, the > > US and almost 60 other countries have sponsored a resolution calling for > > a convention against human cloning to be prepared by next year. In the > > meantime, it says states should prohibit the research, development or > > application of "any technique aimed at human cloning". > > > > While General Assembly resolutions are not binding, its supporters > > believe the agreement would send a powerful message about human > > society's willingness to set ethical boundaries on the fast-developing > > discipline of life sciences. > > > > The Costa Rica/US text calls human cloning, for any purpose, "unethical, > > morally repugnant and contrary to due respect for the human person". > > > > At the same time, however, Belgium, the UK, Japan, China and a > > significant minority of other UN members have sponsored a > > counter-resolution that would ban human reproductive cloning but allow > > "therapeutic cloning" for medical research. This is supported by most of > > the world's scientific academies, including the US National Academy of > > Sciences. > > > > Advocates for the counter-proposal, which has more than 20 co-sponsors, > > say their text reflects nations' right to determine for themselves where > > the boundaries lie. The UK argues that cloning early embryos for > > research could bring significant benefits to human society and does not > > violate the sanctity of life. > > > > US officials say they cannot accept a resolution allowing activity in a > > field the Bush administration believes is universally unacceptable. > > "It's important for the international community, even with a divided > > voice, but a strong voice, to send a message that cloning will not be > > tolerated," said one. > > > > But an opponent of the US position pointed out: "It is ironic that the > > administration should be pushing for an international convention to ban > > all cloning when it cannot even get Congress to agree on legislation." > > > > Faced with two irreconcilable positions, proponents of the Costa Rica > > text must choose whether to abandon the vote or press ahead with a > > resolution that a significant minority of countries oppose. Were the > > resolution to pass, the UN could face a situation where only some > > countries actively participated in, and eventually applied, a new > > convention. > > > > "You wouldn't get full participation in the negotiations, and who knows > > who would ratify it," said a UN diplomat who opposed the universal ban. > > "If you have a resolution only supporters sign up to, it doesn't > > strengthen regulation at all." From MBAUMEISTR at aol.com Fri Oct 31 01:29:24 2003 From: MBAUMEISTR at aol.com (MBAUMEISTR at aol.com) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:29:24 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers Message-ID: <12f.3406b86e.2cd314f4@aol.com> In a message dated 2003-10-30 16:51:38 Eastern Standard Time, mlorrey at yahoo.com writes: > I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to make > the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as > well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance look. And boy oh boy do they need it nowadays! Cheap appliance hardly describes new ones properly. They remind me of those disposable Glad microwave containers. Yuk. I've seen plans for cases made of Lego! (I think it was a UF link many moons ago.) Regards, MB From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 01:39:31 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 17:39:31 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <20031030222806.1512.qmail@web12905.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Mike Lorrey wrote: > Actually, considering that the optimum place to land is near the lunar > south pole, where there is a site with near perpetual sunlight and > local suspected water deposits in dark craters, having high orbital > inclination is no big deal. Yea, and when you pile up the ice/snow into a nice smooth slope and ski down the crater walls and hit the jump just right and pull off the 18 summersault, 12 twist arial display you are going to make the stuff the do back on Earth look like caca. (Side note to Mike -- the PC not only has to look good in the exec. office it has to be very very quiet. I think there was a note on /. recently (though my memory of sources is fuzzy) about someone designing a PC case with lots of right angle turns on the air intakes/outflows -- suggested it seems to suppress internal the fan noise well.) R. From ABlainey at aol.com Fri Oct 31 01:39:27 2003 From: ABlainey at aol.com (ABlainey at aol.com) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:39:27 EST Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Hal Clement dead Message-ID: <1a5.1b4e3c2c.2cd3174f@aol.com> In a message dated 31/10/2003 01:10:21 GMT Daylight Time, bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au writes: > So often obituaries are like this - one gets the sense that it would have > been good to know these folks whilst they were alive. > > So very true, A man I often passed on the street just six miles from my house turned out to be Stanley Kubrick. Its amazing how often we miss opportunities to meet great people because we are busy rushing through our own lives. In my case, I was busy rushing to work and didn't recognise the face when it was out of context. The penny only dropped when I saw the news of his death. Alex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au Fri Oct 31 01:46:36 2003 From: oregan.emlyn at healthsolve.com.au (Emlyn O'regan) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 12:16:36 +1030 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers Message-ID: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> That's an excellent idea, Mike; long overdue. Beautiful polished wood cases for desktops should have a nice niche amongst the beige-hating tasteful (count me in :-) Have you thought about a wooden keyboard? Finicky, but I would think it was doable. Also, maybe a wooden mouse; with both of these you should be able to replace the plastic casing & keys I would think. Emlyn > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Lorrey [mailto:mlorrey at yahoo.com] > Sent: Friday, 31 October 2003 7:19 AM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] antique computers > > > I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to make > the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as > well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance look. > > Anyone for a woody? > > --- Spike wrote: > > > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > > computers? Are there any antique computer users > > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > ===== > Mike Lorrey > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark > Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ > Pro-tech freedom discussion: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears > http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From pietroferri at hotmail.com Fri Oct 31 02:01:36 2003 From: pietroferri at hotmail.com (pietro ferri) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 02:01:36 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil Message-ID: >My sense is that the whole notion of technological singularity *precludes* >detailed prediction. That's what I keep asserting all through my book. >Science is radically unpredictable; technology is tied to somewhat >unpredictable socially-driven discontinuities. As far as I can see, the >Spike might happen any time between next week and the end of the century. Exaclty! My point is to state that you profoundly diagree with Ray's timeline predictions because, in your own words, science is radically unpredictable. But when one reads Ray's books one gets the feeling that future science/technology IS predictable, or at the very least broadly predictable. >I'm not a critic of strong AI, quite the reverse. I have no argument with >Ray in that respect. Well, I just wanted to make the point that Ray likes to publicly debate with his critics, whether it be about AI , His "Laws" or whatever. o, why don't you debate about the "Law" direclty with him? I am sure that it would be of great interest to every extropian! >`?The Singularity is Near? is Not That Near' :) Maybe next week? :-) Pietro Ferri _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 02:30:39 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:30:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Pietro -- you raise a number of interesting points. (First let me acknowledge that I have not read either "The Age of Intelligent Machines" or "The Age of Spiritual Machines". (My bad probably, but I tended to view the contents as likely to be highly similar to Moravec's works.) On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, pietro ferri wrote: > First, thank you all for sharing so many comments. Of particular interest to > me is Ray's timeline and his predictions ( 2019 2029 and 2099). While I might lean strongly towards predictions Ray might make with respect to 2019 and 2029 -- anything involving 2099 is SciFi. It is one of the fundamental problems with the Extropian perspective, all Sci-Fi literature related to the singularity, etc. -- how do you map the singularity without having a reasonable metric for what scientific progress along that vector might actually provide (in terms of tools to bend reality with)? To the best of my knowledge there are probably less than two dozen people on the planet who can engage in this discussion at a technical level. Anders, myself, Eliezer, Robert Freitas, Vernor Vinge, Greg Benford, etc. You could add on a number of physicists other technical experts but one would rapidly get lost in a swamp of depth rather than breadth. (I'm leaving out the individuals who would provide significant input on the sociological or philosophical levels because that makes the problem even more difficult.) > It would be really great if Damien (and all the others) commented in depth. If you post specific predictions I'll be happy to yea or nay them. > ... and I cite, THE GREATEST GAINS CONTINUE TO BE IN THE VALUE OF THE > STOCK MARKET. Well it seems to have been true for 100+ years (when averaged). > Price deflation concerned economists in the early '00 years, but they quickly > realized it was a good thing. [Note I'm not sure I'm interpreting this properly since I'm having to transliterate some quote and other punctuation marks from Microsoftisms into standard ASCII text.] I'm not sure I understand this. Price deflation is not a good thing if it causes the population as a whole to postpone consumption (because things will be cheaper in the future). Lack of consumption leads to layoffs leads to a decline in purchasing ability, etc., etc., etc. The only viable industries are those involved in "essential" consumer products (e.g. agriculture). Japan is facing this in a significant way with its aging population. (Aged populations do not have lots of consumption/purchasing needs other than for medical care.) > After all, stock prices are > (over the long term) very strongly correlated to earnings. And, admitting > that profit margins cannot improve for everybody, there is no way that > companies can make more money in nominal terms if prices fall for a > sustained period of time (again, as Ray predicts). I think the key thing to recognize here is the evolution of the market. After all *where* would I be if I held onto my Digital Equipment stock purchased in the 1970's? Or my WorldCom or Enron Stock purchased in the 1990s? I think one would expect investors to move out of the deflationary markets -- unless companies can sustain profits -- and move into those areas where profits (and earnings) are increasing. > What do you guys think? (Re: 5% growth) You are asking a *very* difficult question. You can probably get 5% growth if you have sufficient risk taking. But with the risk taking you have to allow for failure. Europe and Japan have tended to avoid risk taking (IMO). In contrast the U.S. went for broke from '98-'01 and crashed and burned as a result. It is well accepted in economic circles that most of the growth comes from new companies, new ideas, etc. (i.e. the *risky* proposals). If the economies support the formation (and failure) of such efforts then you may get high growth -- if they do not then you don't. > Finally, does anyone know when "The Singularity is Near" will finally be > published? Max, I remember that at Extro5 he said that the book would have > been published in 2002. Here a wrong prediction of his! I have it on reasonable authority that the publisher has pushed the publication into early 2005. This may be due in part due to slow progress on some of the chapters (in part due to Ray's time constraints) but to a much greater extent is due to the publisher having to adjust the schedules of various other publications with respect to SIN. (Damien or Mez could comment much better than I on what goes through the minds of publishers...) Robert From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 03:29:44 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 21:29:44 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <019801c39f5f$3c63f880$b0994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Emlyn O'regan" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 7:46 PM >Also, maybe a wooden mouse Or a little wooden horsie. Computers Of Troy and all that. But what about a *real* mouse? Damien Broderick From artillo at comcast.net Fri Oct 31 04:28:05 2003 From: artillo at comcast.net (Brian Shores) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 23:28:05 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <20031030222656.GO27418@leitl.org> Message-ID: <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> I've heard some ideas a while back about making some form of concrete with the regolith... maybe they could mix some nice polymers in with it and also make it sprayable and just spray it over the module shells? Also a double layer shell might be a partial solution to the leak issue... just add some sensors in the outer shell and intermediate space and go in between the shells to patch? Aah maybe there's a simpler solution; I am just playing with some ideas here. Would some kind of electromagnetic shielding help in any way versus radiation, assuming one could be developed that was powerful enough? Is it really just high energy emissions people are most worried about? This is a bit out of my experience here, any ideas? :) Peace, Artillo -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 5:27 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 10:46:41AM -0500, JAY DUGGER wrote: > > I don't know if reuse could happen so easily. Lunar > gravity shouldn't pose a problem, but what about radiation 1/6 g should do okay for pretty long stays. It may require a heavy exercise schedule. > exposure during transit and then on Luna? Burying the Two days transit. No problem, unless you run into a major solar storm with no shielding. > modules in the regolith once they arrive seems the easiest Right. Not that short stays will need any more shielding than the landing module provides. > way to shield them, but how much regolith do you need and > can the modules take it over the long term? Remember once How much regolith do you need to emulate the shielding Earth's atmosphere provides? 1 m, maybe two. > you bury them, repairing the modules gets harder. How do Hello? You seem to think we're doing lunar mining here? > you patch a leak from the inside only? One could do it, it If you're deep, a leak is no problem: material shields. Patching from the inside as well: polymerizable monomer in situ. Leaks will happen (everything we sent up to LEO has been leaking like a sieve) but there are enough volatiles to replenish the losses on Luna. > just takes more effort. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Oct 31 04:58:24 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 20:58:24 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <20031030214836.94493.qmail@web12908.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <000101c39f6b$9d789bb0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Hey the first Apples were in a wooden box, of sorts. In some ways they were better than the plastic cases that came after. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of > Mike Lorrey > Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 1:49 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] antique computers > > > I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to make > the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as > well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance look. > > Anyone for a woody? > > --- Spike wrote: > > > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > > computers? Are there any antique computer users > > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > ===== > Mike Lorrey > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > - Gen. John Stark > Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ > Pro-tech freedom discussion: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom > > __________________________________ > Do you Yahoo!? > Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears > http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From eugen at leitl.org Fri Oct 31 09:38:01 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:38:01 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> References: <20031030222656.GO27418@leitl.org> <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> Message-ID: <20031031093801.GX27418@leitl.org> On Thu, Oct 30, 2003 at 11:28:05PM -0500, Brian Shores wrote: > I've heard some ideas a while back about making some form of concrete > with the regolith... maybe they could mix some nice polymers in with it Regolith would do a nice cement if mixed with water -- but you can't do that in a vaccum, and water (destilled from lunar cryotrap regolith) will be much too expensive for that. I don't see what is wrong with just piling up mounds of regolith on modules/tubes. It works better if one can dig shallow ditches. Later, it's a nonissue as one would tend to tunnel (closed-loop ecosystems need a lot of space to be stable). > and also make it sprayable and just spray it over the module shells? > Also a double layer shell might be a partial solution to the leak > issue... just add some sensors in the outer shell and intermediate space The leak issue is minor; it's a slow loss of volatiles. It should be even more minor for deep structures. It is certainly good engineering trying to minimize leaks. > and go in between the shells to patch? Aah maybe there's a simpler > solution; I am just playing with some ideas here. > > Would some kind of electromagnetic shielding help in any way versus > radiation, assuming one could be developed that was powerful enough? Is Radiation is not a problem, really. It will only become one if you're stuck in a thin tin can halfway to Mars, and there's a solar storm coming your way, and you don't have a small shielded cabin inside (shielding the whole structure requires prohibitive amount of mass). > it really just high energy emissions people are most worried about? This > is a bit out of my experience here, any ideas? :) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From amara at amara.com Fri Oct 31 09:10:12 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:10:12 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Boing-boing ? Message-ID: Something has happened to boing-boing: http://www.boingboing.net/ Is this a Halloween prank, or has something serious happened to the wonderful boing-boing folks ? Amara -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** enscarfment n. a food break at the edge of a cliff. From asa at nada.kth.se Fri Oct 31 11:23:31 2003 From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 12:23:31 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: finally amazon has the Anders cover up In-Reply-To: <003701c39f2e$ae349720$b0994a43@texas.net> References: <200310301950.h9UJoMo01001@finney.org> <002401c39f2e$6c2ce760$b0994a43@texas.net> <003701c39f2e$ae349720$b0994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <200310311223.31912.asa@nada.kth.se> torsdagen den 30 oktober 2003 22.42 wrote Damien Broderick: > The dreaded `Anders cover up' is of course one of the scandals of Swedish > technopolitical history. I hesitate to say more about its shocking details. And I couldn't possibly comment. Inner exile to Sony-Ericsson Mobile Phones and all that if I ever did... :-) From eugen at leitl.org Fri Oct 31 12:16:27 2003 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:16:27 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20031031121627.GA27418@leitl.org> On Fri, Oct 31, 2003 at 02:01:36AM +0000, pietro ferri wrote: > > Exaclty! My point is to state that you profoundly diagree with Ray's > timeline predictions because, in your own words, science is radically > unpredictable. But when one reads Ray's books one gets the feeling that Futurology has never been an exact science. Even if we're speaking about science: which natural phenomena can we predict? Planetary orbits, on the short run. They disintegrate into chaos on the long run. Development of stars, roughly. The product of forecast precision and temporal depth tends to have pretty small, constant values even for such well-behaved systems. Humans are very nonlinear systems. Large assemblies of humans sometimes appear to operate in the predictable regime, but when exactly can be only determined via hindsight. Progress depends on a chain of inventions, so it's a multiple-event forecast, where each even influences the subsequent ones. Even worse, the breakthroughs have a tendency to come from unexpected places, completely ruining your neat plans and plots. A rational futurologist must admit his defeat. > future science/technology IS predictable, or at the very least broadly > predictable. Don't you have the feeling that words "one gets the feeling" and "predictable" do not quite mix? It is frequently quite amusing to study forecasts from 1980s, and those from 1950s are outright hilarious. In a world with an increasing rate of change the horizont is increasingly shrinking. I would be very careful trying to forecast 2013, 2023 is way, way out of reach already except in very rough outlines (population, energy budget, etc.; all of these can still be changed by something dramatic and unexpected). > >I'm not a critic of strong AI, quite the reverse. I have no argument with > >Ray in that respect. > > Well, I just wanted to make the point that Ray likes to publicly debate > with his critics, whether it be about AI , His "Laws" or whatever. o, why Ray Kurzweil is not original. He does good work in publicising the ideas, though. I have at times problems with his style, but that's a personal opinion. (Young Chang makes damn good instruments, though. Does anyone know a better budget stage piano than SP88X? I'm hearing the samples are good, but not great. I'm looking for possible alternatives). > don't you debate about the "Law" direclty with him? I am sure that it would > be of great interest to every extropian! I'm not at all sure that would be the case. > >`?The Singularity is Near? is Not That Near' :) > > Maybe next week? :-) -- Eugen* Leitl leitl ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: not available URL: From scerir at libero.it Fri Oct 31 12:54:19 2003 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:54:19 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> <019801c39f5f$3c63f880$b0994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <001401c39fae$1a290e50$22b21b97@administxl09yj> > But what about a *real* mouse? > Damien Broderick Baldock, R.A., Bard J. , Kaufman M.H. and Davidson D, "A real mouse for your computer", BioEssays 14 (1992) pp 501-502 (But the title was wrong, something like "A real computer for your mouse" would be much better) From natasha at natasha.cc Fri Oct 31 15:33:19 2003 From: natasha at natasha.cc (Natasha Vita-More) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:33:19 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Boing-boing ? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.0.20031031073217.032949f0@pop.earthlink.net> At 11:10 AM 10/31/03 +0200, you wrote: >Something has happened to boing-boing: http://www.boingboing.net/ Carla and Mark are living on a Island in the South Pacific. They are doing very well. They sent me a dozen pictures of their life there a month ago. I offered to be their nanny :-) Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc ---------- President, Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Founder, Transhumanist Arts & Culture http://www.transhumanist.biz http://www.transhuman.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asa at nada.kth.se Fri Oct 31 14:38:48 2003 From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:38:48 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up In-Reply-To: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE028@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE028@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <200310311538.48310.asa@nada.kth.se> torsdagen den 30 oktober 2003 23.45 wrote Emlyn O'regan: > Wow... nice work Anders! Thanks! From amara at amara.com Fri Oct 31 13:45:55 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:45:55 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Boing-boing Message-ID: Dear Natasha: >Carla and Mark are living on a Island in the South Pacific. >They are doing very well. Yes, Among the many offerings of the boing-boing site, was/is/was Mark and Carla's chronology of their life on that island. No, this development is something different. Boing-boing was down (their domain was not even recognized) during the last few days, and now this. ( http://www.boingboing.net/) ... Thanks for the info Eugen and James Hughes. So they are experiencing server problems. (Natasha: you can go here: http://216.126.84.59/) -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "In my opinion, television validates existence." --Calvin From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 15:11:45 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:11:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Brian Shores wrote: > I've heard some ideas a while back about making some form of concrete > with the regolith... maybe they could mix some nice polymers in with it > and also make it sprayable and just spray it over the module shells? Why not a simple production plant to crank out either sheet silicon or titanium -- plenty of both up there. Welding titanium is a bit tricky but ought to eliminate the loss of gas problem Eugen was discussing. Since you have to separate O2 from the Si/Ti anyway, it isn't going to be the problem. Its N2 that is going to be the problem. Now of course one could substitute He3 which there is a fair amount of and one wants to mine anyway for its use in fusion reactors. Downsides would be that the astronauts would talk funny and He3 is moderately radioactive. > Would some kind of electromagnetic shielding help in any way versus > radiation, assuming one could be developed that was powerful enough? Is > it really just high energy emissions people are most worried about? This > is a bit out of my experience here, any ideas? :) I'm reasonably certain that normal plasma coming off the sun (the solar wind) as well as coronal mass ejections (which have been in the news of late) are largely positively charged ions (solar surface temperatures are more than hot enough to remove a significant number of the outermost electrons from most elements). Whether or not the electrons get thrown off too and they effectively recombine to form neutral atoms I'm a bit unsure of (I would suspect the probability is low). So it seems probable that with a big enough electromagnetic shield one should be able to deflect many of the particles. [Seems to me like the Earth's magnetic field functions in this way for us.] Amara might know more. How difficult it would be to produce such a magnetic field I don't know. While effective against charged particles I don't think a magnetic shield isn't going to help you with gamma rays -- but I don't think the sun emits many of those. Worth noting is that I believe the best radiation shields require the greatest neucleon density -- that means most probably either hydrogen or better yet deuterium. So one is going to want to separate them from any ice that is available and put the habitats underneath liquid H2 lakes. R. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 15:13:56 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:13:56 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers In-Reply-To: <019801c39f5f$3c63f880$b0994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Damien Broderick wrote: > But what about a *real* mouse? Especially if its one of the ones that has been engineered to glow in the dark. R. From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 15:32:35 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:32:35 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up Message-ID: <63340-2200310531153235900@M2W042.mail2web.com> >>torsdagen den 30 oktober 2003 23.45 wrote Emlyn O'regan: >>Wow... nice work Anders! >Thanks! Fantastic! ! -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 15:34:47 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:34:47 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike"- Ray Kurzweil In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Exaclty! My point is to state that you profoundly diagree with Ray's > timeline predictions because, in your own words, science is radically > unpredictable. Scientific "discovery" might be unpredictable -- but engineering based on known physical laws is less so. Once one has a few data points to go on (e.g. Moore's Law, or the progress in computers understanding human speech, or gradual improvements in software that does everything from face recognition to driving cars, etc.) then things start to become somewhat predictable. > But when one reads Ray's books one gets the feeling that > future science/technology IS predictable, or at the very least broadly > predictable. It depends very much on how many data points one is dealing with. Moore's Law tends to be very predictable -- signifcant investments are made in making sure it will happen and where the problems lie and how to solve them. Now, the human genome project was much less so say 10-12 years ago. The general consensus circa 1990 was that the HGP could *never* be accomplished. The science for DNA sequencing was well established but there had to be breakthroughs in the technology. So a few hundred million $ were spent funding the research to produce those breakthroughs. Result - the HGP was finished early and under budget (there is your unpredictability cropping up). Though it might well have gone the other way (as projects at NASA involving putting humans in space seem to do... :-(). The interesting question about the singularity is whether it requires a certain number of breakthroughs in engineering -- or science -- that we cannot easily predict right now -- or whether it will result from the aggregate set of trends in the world (which it is perhaps equally hard to grasp as a whole). R. From asa at nada.kth.se Fri Oct 31 15:49:32 2003 From: asa at nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:49:32 +0100 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up In-Reply-To: <63340-2200310531153235900@M2W042.mail2web.com> References: <63340-2200310531153235900@M2W042.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <200310311649.32689.asa@nada.kth.se> I like being an illustrator; it is a fun complement to my other projects. So if anybody needs some images for your projects I might be able to help. fredagen den 31 oktober 2003 16.32 wrote natashavita at earthlink.net: > >>torsdagen den 30 oktober 2003 23.45 wrote Emlyn O'regan: > >>Wow... nice work Anders! > > > >Thanks! > > Fantastic! ! From amara at amara.com Fri Oct 31 14:46:41 2003 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:46:41 +0200 Subject: [extropy-chat] Reporters without Borders: Freedom Index 2003 Message-ID: A updated index is out.. Reporters without Borders: Freedom Index 2003 http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=8247 It is useful to compare with : Reporters without Borders: Freedom Index 2002 http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=4118 The press for the Baltic and Central European countries are rapidly becoming more free. (Note Latvia, Estonia, Czech Republic). Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Netherlands are still at the top. Italy's index keeps going down. [... gee, what a surprise. maybe, just maybeeeeeeeee, Berlusconi's continual new media laws protecting his vast media enterprise, and maybe, just maybeeeeeeee, Berlusconi suing The Economist a second time, has something to do with this low index ....] The US has dropped a whopping 17 points from last year too (now at number 31). Amara ===================================================================== From Kuro5hin. But hey, look at the bright side: GDP growth is hot! ;-) -- US falls 14 spots in press freedom ranking (MLP) By jjayson Thu Oct 30th, 2003 at 12:50:31 PM EST Freedom Reporters Without Borders recently released its second world press freedom ranking. [1] With North Korea and Cuba forming the bottom two rungs and Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Norway all tied in the lead, the European countries did considerably better than the rest of the world, especially the Arab world. While the US, despite no major domestic changes affecting reporters in the last year, fell to a 31st place tie with Greece, down from 17th. The ranking was compiled by asking "journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists to fill out a questionnaire evaluating respect for press freedom in a particular country" from September 1, 2002, to September 1, 2003. The study "does not look at human rights violations in general, just press freedom violations" and is not a ranking of the quality of the press, just its freedom. The Arab world was the largest concern. In 2002, 56th ranked Lebanon was top of all Arab countries in press freedom, but fell to 106th, and Kuwait, even though dropping from 78th to 102nd, took over the lead. Israel was placed at 44th, the highest of any Middle East country. However, this year, the US and Israel were give two separate rankings, at home and abroad where Iraq and the Occupied Territories are also examined. The Occupied Territories under Israel and Iraq under American control ranked 146th and 135th respectively, far lower than both the Palestinian Authority, 130th, and Saddam's Iraq, 124th. The report cited the death of reporters during the war and Israeli abuses as the reasons for such low placement: The Israeli army's repeated abuses against journalists in the occupied territories and the US army's responsibility in the death of several reporters during the war in Iraq constitute unacceptable behaviour by two nations that never stop stressing their commitment to freedom of expression. The 2002 report gave slightly more information on both the US and Israel: The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings. ? The attitude of Israel (92nd) towards press freedom is ambivalent. Despite strong pressure on state-owned TV and radio, the government respects the local media's freedom of expression. However, in the West Bank and Gaza, Reporters Without Borders has recorded a large number of violations of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which guarantees press freedom and which Israel has signed. Since the start of the Israeli army's incursions into Palestinian towns and cities in March 2002, very many journalists have been roughed up, threatened, arrested, banned from moving around, targeted by gunfire, wounded or injured, had their press cards withdrawn or been deported. Europe was consistently ranked in the top fifth. The only two countries falling out of that bracket, and the only two European countries placing below the US, were Spain at 42nd and Italy at 53rd. Full discussion: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/10/29/172532/53 -- -- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara at amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "In my opinion, television validates existence." --Calvin From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 15:58:41 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:58:41 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] finally amazon has the Anders cover up Message-ID: <54360-2200310531155841472@M2W070.mail2web.com> Anders wrote: >I like being an illustrator; it is a fun complement to my other projects. >So if anybody needs some images for your projects I might be able to help. Yes! ** Transhumanist Arts & Culture needs an illustration/logo for its 2004 exhibition. Your work, of course, will be inclused in the exhbition, but we'd love your logo design help! ** ExI could use an illustration for its "Solutions". ** I am speaking with a person in Russia that needs help with their transhumanist logo. Are you interested? Thanks Anders, Natsha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From naddy at mips.inka.de Fri Oct 31 15:41:31 2003 From: naddy at mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:41:31 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: antique computers References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: Emlyn O'regan wrote: > That's an excellent idea, Mike; long overdue. Beautiful polished wood cases > for desktops should have a nice niche amongst the beige-hating tasteful Not to rain on anybody's parade, but wooden and marble cases have been around for years. It's just that most people who spend extravagant amounts of money on a computer prefer that money to go into the computing part rather than the case. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy at mips.inka.de From test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu Fri Oct 31 17:33:12 2003 From: test at demedici.ssec.wisc.edu (Bill Hibbard) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:33:12 -0600 (CST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 22 In-Reply-To: <200310311014.h9VAE8M17202@tick.javien.com> Message-ID: > But what about a *real* mouse? One made nest inside my old IBM PC. We detected it when our fox terrier started growling at the computer. Being used as a mouse toilet had a bad effect on the mother board. From duggerj1 at charter.net Fri Oct 31 17:52:24 2003 From: duggerj1 at charter.net (JAY DUGGER) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 12:52:24 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 07:11:45 -0800 (PST) "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: >Why not a simple production plant to crank out either >sheet silicon >or titanium -- plenty of both up there. Welding titanium >is a bit >tricky but ought to eliminate the loss of gas problem >Eugen was >discussing. Since you have to separate O2 from the Si/Ti Will either of those two vacuum-weld? Plenty of vacuum on the Moon. Jay Dugger : Til Eulenspiegel http://www.owlmirror.net/~duggerj Sometimes delete serves best. From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 17:57:10 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:57:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] True justice? Message-ID: I'm not quite sure how to react to this. Apparently a known sexual predator exposed himself to a number of Catholic high school girls in Philadelphia and they decided to chase him down and assault him. Guess one has to be careful who one offends with ones behavior. URL: http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/31/crime.girls.reut/ R. From naddy at mips.inka.de Fri Oct 31 18:58:31 2003 From: naddy at mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 18:58:31 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) References: <001101c39f67$61268c70$9865fea9@bjsmain2> Message-ID: Robert J. Bradbury wrote: > Why not a simple production plant to crank out either sheet silicon > or titanium -- plenty of both up there. Welding titanium is a bit > tricky but ought to eliminate the loss of gas problem Eugen was > discussing. What's tricky about welding titanium other than that you can't do it in an Earth-style atmosphere? (Titanium burns with both oxygen and nitrogen.) > Since you have to separate O2 from the Si/Ti anyway, > it isn't going to be the problem. Its N2 that is going to be the > problem. Now of course one could substitute He3 which there is > a fair amount of and one wants to mine anyway for its use in fusion > reactors. Downsides would be that the astronauts would talk funny > and He3 is moderately radioactive. He3 is a stable isotope, check WebElements. (Maybe you are confusing it with tritium which decays into He3?) Helium has a much higher thermal conductivity than plain air (approx. nitrogen). You'll have to ask a deep-sea diver whether this is actually as much a problem as Michael Crichton makes it out to be in _Sphere_. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy at mips.inka.de From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Oct 31 19:52:40 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:52:40 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] database of professional plaintiffs In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000201c39fe8$8aee06b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Information wants to be free. Someone should start a database of those who make their living suing people or businesses. When someone takes a dive in your yard or office, it would be helpful to be able to google how many previous suits in which they have been the plaintiffs, and how much they want in order to go away, and what are your chances of beating them in court. How would such a database be organized? spike From megao at sasktel.net Fri Oct 31 20:05:23 2003 From: megao at sasktel.net (Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:05:23 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] database of professional plaintiffs References: <000201c39fe8$8aee06b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> Message-ID: <3FA2C082.32A2EB@sasktel.net> Do an exhaustive search for the term "vexacious litigant" which is what a serial lawsuit initiator can be labelled by a court.... as a starting point and see how many names come up? Spike wrote: > Information wants to be free. Someone should start > a database of those who make their living suing > people or businesses. When someone takes a dive > in your yard or office, it would be helpful to be > able to google how many previous suits in which > they have been the plaintiffs, and how much they > want in order to go away, and what are your chances > of beating them in court. How would such a database > be organized? > > spike > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat From Karen at smigrodzki.org Fri Oct 31 20:35:29 2003 From: Karen at smigrodzki.org (Karen Rand Smigrodzki) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:35:29 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] database of professional plaintiffs References: <000201c39fe8$8aee06b0$6501a8c0@SHELLY> <3FA2C082.32A2EB@sasktel.net> Message-ID: <00eb01c39fee$860eb710$6501a8c0@DogHouse> if you are sued, one way of finding out if you might have been targeted by a serial plaintiff is by searching for their name as plaintiff in databases such as Westlaw or LexisNexis (both expensive). You can also search local case names (case name includes plaintiff and defendant) in local law libraries (just ask one of the law librarians to help; or even a student). The obvious problem is that the plaintiff may try to vary his name, and/or the locale: lowest level courts (magistrates, eg) aren't found on the pay databases I mentioned; however, there are search options on those databases which my school doesn't buy access to for students. Those extra databases may allow finding more info about a person by soc sec or address which may lead you to discover other locales/suits/names used. k > Do an exhaustive search for the term "vexacious litigant" which is what > a serial lawsuit initiator can be labelled by a court.... as a starting > point and see how many names come up? > > > Spike wrote: > > > Information wants to be free. Someone should start > > a database of those who make their living suing > > people or businesses. When someone takes a dive > > in your yard or office, it would be helpful to be > > able to google how many previous suits in which > > they have been the plaintiffs, and how much they > > want in order to go away, and what are your chances > > of beating them in court. How would such a database > > be organized? > > > > spike > > > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From megao at sasktel.net Fri Oct 31 20:29:50 2003 From: megao at sasktel.net (Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:29:50 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] vexatious litigant lists Message-ID: <3FA2C63D.64CF0C2C@sasktel.net> Got the spelling wrong on the first reply ..... not vexacious but vexatious. http://www.google.ca/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=vexatious+litigant&spell=1 From kilroy at hush.ai Fri Oct 31 18:09:52 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:09:52 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Hal Clement dead Message-ID: <200310311809.h9VI9qYU079372@mailserver2.hushmail.com> Hal wasn't one of my favorite authors, but he was one of my favorite people. You couldn't find a nicer guy. Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From kilroy at hush.ai Thu Oct 30 23:29:26 2003 From: kilroy at hush.ai (Kilroy) Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2003 15:29:26 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] "The Spike" - Raymond Kurzweil Message-ID: <200310302329.h9UNTQeq054104@mailserver2.hushmail.com> On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 11:10:27 -0800 "Robert J. Bradbury" wrote: > >On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, Kilroy wrote: > >> The health risks of a_steroids have been vastly >> overstated by the medical establishment. The >> resulting "violent tendencies" are in my experience >> not as dramatic as those you get from drinking coffee, >> or (for other people) alcohol. > >Well, I may be wrong, but what I have read suggest that >the violent tendencies are real. Though I would certainly >agree that alcohol can lead to similar problems -- though >the causes are quite different. Some people are more violent when using a-steroids. Some people are less violent when using a-steroids. The press has been highly selective in seeking out negative cases to write about, out of the millions of users in America. They have also always lumped all a-steroids together. Nobody has ever had "roid rage" off of Anav_ar, Primo_bolan, or Win_strol. Most of those cases come from people using Ana_drol, Fina_plix, or Halo_testin. >> Once the basic risks are assessed and the remaining >> problems addressed, why not? > >But much of your note suggested that it will be difficult >to address those problems (at least with respect to HGH). Don't know yet. The risks I talked about are with injected HGH. HGH production has already been increased in mice by turning on genes for it only in skeletal muscle tissue and not in smooth muscle tissue (like the heart). This solves some of the problems. >The most basic risk I see is that problem with people who >are not well informed about potential risks and simply do >not understand that "more" is not always "better". But that takes us back into the whole "protect people from themselves" argument that gave us the FDA and social security and prohibition and other things most of us here don't like. kilroy was here Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Free, ultra-private instant messaging with Hush Messenger https://www.hushmail.com/services.php?subloc=messenger&l=434 Promote security and make money with the Hushmail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliate&l=427 From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 20:49:48 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:49:48 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com> Recently, I was reviewing some essays on Transhumanism. I thought about how ideas come together and who have been the catalytic thinkers of our transhumanist ideas. Many essays on Transhumanism have skimmed over critical information about transhumanism, and plugged in well known literary figures which to claim an association. Some of the associations are inescapable, some we favor, and others we do not. Yet some associations can be very confusing by and through the contradictory nature of hum[man]. One such provoking and erudite thinker is Teilhard de Chardin. As a role model, and even "hero," for an entire generation of younger priests and theologians, he believed strongly in God, even when he wrote careful critiques of traditional science and of traditional religion. I also suggested his contributions to "Transhumanism" in my book _Create/Recreate: the 3rd Millennial Culture." Was Teilhard de Chardin's bottom line a fervid attempt to realize a reunion of research and religion? "Henceforth science recognized itself as a means of extending and completing in [hu]man a world still incompletely formed. It assumed the shape and grandeur of a sacred duty. It became charged with futurity. In the great body, already coming to birth, of a humanity grouped by the act of discovery, a soul was at last released: a mysticism of discovery." (de Chardin) Or, is what Stephen Jay Gould states a more vivid interpretation of Teilhard de Chardin, which would allow for some questioning of our own thinking. "It is perhaps not surprising that a leading advocate of Darwinism, Stephen Jay Gould, has gone to work on Teilhard. Writing vehemently and dogmatically, like the guardian of an established religion, Gould asserts that Teilhard's whole enterprise is illegitimate: Teilhard's essential insights are incompatible with science. In addition to that, Gould has made it his personal mission to expose Teilhard as being guilty of the most outrageous scientific fraud of modern times." (Charles P. Henderson) Most transhumanists are spirited toward life and learning, but leave the soul on the bottom of our shoes. Indeed a sense of compassion and understand is often veiled by a strong desire to push forward out of humanity's womb, but it is deeply rooted in transhumanism nonetheless. It this enough in itself, or do we need to leave an open place for religious views, or are they really a throw back to ingrained defaults? I don't think we need it. I think we need more love and understanding, story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not not religious mysticism? Natasha Natasha Vita-More http://www.natasha.cc -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 21:32:42 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:32:42 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <018301c39ff6$8761a340$a1994a43@texas.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 2:49 PM > One such provoking and erudite thinker is Teilhard de Chardin. I, for one, was moved by his Omega Point notion in the early 1960s, when I was still a fervent if unorthodox Catholic. I must have been one of the first people to read THE PHENOMENON OF MAN in English. However... > (de Chardin) [BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] > "It is perhaps not surprising that a leading advocate of Darwinism, Stephen > Jay Gould, has gone to work on Teilhard. Writing vehemently and > dogmatically, like the guardian of an established religion, Gould asserts > that Teilhard's whole enterprise is illegitimate: Teilhard's essential > insights are incompatible with science. `Guardian of established religion' my foot. Gould, and more impressively still Sir Peter Medawar, showed why Teilhard's teleological and God-dragged model of evolution is just plain incompatible with random mutation and natural selection. It's a form of divine Lamarckism. It *could* have been true, in some other universe; it might even be true to some extent in a Tiplerian Omega Point universe. But it doesn't jibe with what science has learned to date about how evolution works. > I don't think we need [religious dogma]. I think we need more love and understanding, > story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not > religious mysticism? Right on, as we said back then, or a decade later. :) Damien Broderick From bradbury at aeiveos.com Fri Oct 31 21:44:23 2003 From: bradbury at aeiveos.com (Robert J. Bradbury) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 13:44:23 -0800 (PST) Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: SPACE: Back to the Moon (?) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > What's tricky about welding titanium other than that you can't do > it in an Earth-style atmosphere? (Titanium burns with both oxygen > and nitrogen.) Well then vacuum welding ought to work fairly well. One source: http://www.welding-advisers.com/Welding-titanium.html Google has lots more sources (Google is god...) > He3 is a stable isotope, check WebElements. (Maybe you are confusing > it with tritium which decays into He3?) Christian is right. I mistakenly was looking at 3H rather than 3He in The Handbook of Chemistry & Physics. So scratch the radioactivity problem. R. From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 21:50:00 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:50:00 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> From: Damien Broderick From: Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 2:49 PM >> One such provoking and erudite thinker is Teilhard de Chardin. >I, for one, was moved by his Omega Point notion in the early 1960s, when I >was still a fervent if unorthodox Catholic. I must have been one of the >first people to read THE PHENOMENON OF MAN in English. However... >>(de Chardin) >[BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly >shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] I was thinking along the line of da Vinci. Well, not exactly thinking along the same line, but you know what I mean :-) >>"It is perhaps not surprising that a leading advocate of Darwinism, Stephen >>Jay Gould, has gone to work on Teilhard. Writing vehemently and >>dogmatically, like the guardian of an established religion, Gould asserts >>that Teilhard's whole enterprise is illegitimate: Teilhard's essential >>insights are incompatible with science. >`Guardian of established religion' my foot. Gould, and more impressively >still Sir Peter Medawar, showed why Teilhard's teleological and God-dragged >model of evolution is just plain incompatible with random mutation and >natural selection. It's a form of divine Lamarckism. It *could* have been >true, in some other universe; it might even be true to some extent in a >Tiplerian Omega Point universe. But it doesn't jibe with what science has >learned to date about how evolution works. >>I don't think we need [religious dogma]. I think we need more love and understanding, >>story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not >>religious mysticism[.] >Right on, as we said back then, or a decade later. :) If Chardin's "God-dragged" model of evolution is the "bottom line," then we need to step back a bit and reframe transhumanist thinking: In that Transhumanism is a term that emerged rather recently in the cultural "language" and is sometimes demeaned because it often used loosely. But when used properly, it is a term that can provide valuable insight into culture. Whereas humanism has been used primarily to reflect the potential and good conscious of society, transhumanism's strategy is to embrace the forward thinking of humanity. Not fully recognizing the ideas and concept of transhumanism, many people, including journalistic writer, confuse transhumanism with outdated model usage of the term. The outdated models applied have been in reference to Teilhard de Chardin and T.S. Elliot. Both Teilhard de Chardin and T.S. Elliot were not technologically adept, nor were they futurists. Their vision of future humans was highly provocative during their lifetimes, but more dependent on either religious or mystical inference. Transhumanism is not a religious or mystical term. Nor is it a political term. It is a term used to express the ideas about evolution in regards to the biology and psychology of humans. As such, transhumanism has become a movement based on the advancement of the human?s lifespan and intellectual and creative abilities. I noticed that many transhumanist organizations use Teilhard de Chardin's name. Some of it was quoted from my writing, I believe in my explanation of the history of transhumanism. I'm annoyed at myself for not being more careful, but more disengaged from anyone who uses Chardin as a leading transhumannist thinker and/or the original core of transhumanity. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From gregburch at gregburch.net Fri Oct 31 21:54:52 2003 From: gregburch at gregburch.net (Greg Burch) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:54:52 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <018301c39ff6$8761a340$a1994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: Scientific trivia contest: With what famous scientific hoax was Tielhard assocated? BTW, I agree that TdC's take on evolutionary theory was wrong, wrong, wrong, but, like Damien, I was always struck by how similar to my own thinking the Omega Point idea was. He just took it for metaphysical reality, when he should have left it at an aspirational goal. My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 22:27:02 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:27:02 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <67290-220031053122272717@M2W035.mail2web.com> From: Greg Burch >Scientific trivia contest: With what famous scientific hoax was Tielhard > >assocated? "Piltdown Man Hoax" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53pi.html (I googled it.) >BTW, I agree that TdC's take on evolutionary theory was wrong, wrong, >wrong, but, like Damien, I was always struck by how similar to my own >thinking the Omega Point idea was. He just took it for metaphysical >reality, when he should have left it at an aspirational goal. Yes. I think we need to let the cat out of the bag.:-) Natasha My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From jcorb at iol.ie Fri Oct 31 22:44:31 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:44:31 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 22 Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031031224123.027915c0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 3 >Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 11:33:12 -0600 (CST) > >From: Bill Hibbard >Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: extropy-chat Digest, Vol 1, Issue 22 >To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org >Message-ID: > >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > But what about a *real* mouse? >One made nest inside my old IBM PC. We detected it >when our fox terrier started growling at the computer. >Being used as a mouse toilet had a bad effect on the >mother board. Reminds me of the old Commodore I saw once in a pigeon shed. It was hinged open using the attached metal bar (the whole top flops back) Bird nest material and mouse droppings everywhere. Well, it was a Commodore PET.... James... From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 22:46:10 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:46:10 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Omega Pointists' high-spirit, soft-tech Message-ID: <323910-220031053122461090@M2W056.mail2web.com> Here's something else I just read: "'Teilhard & Omega' yields 2300 hits. I have to take issue with Teilhard de Chardin's (1888-1955) mind-matter dualism. At the Omega Point the transcending human spirit leaves the earth behind, rather like a used-up cinder. His spiritual Omega was simply appended to the scientific cosmology without regard for coherence, and so we are left with this unfortunate disposal or perhaps recycling problem. Nonetheless, half an eschaton is probably better than no eschaton at all. Let us see how well the word has gotten out. "All too well, it might seem! It appears that Teilhard's Omega has been hijacked by the technophiles, not a very difficult feat considering Teilhard's infatuation (or was it just a flirtation?) with matter and cosmic evolution. Dualism always threatens to revert to materialism. "The theme of accelerating biological and technological evolution converging on a singularity of some kind is widely entertained: Frank Tipler, Ray Kurzweil, Terrance McKenna, transhumanism, etc. "Just to give you a flavor of our coming attractions I quote from one of my favorite singularity sites: "We are at far more of a 'urning point'than even the one Capra envisions; in possession of far more of a 'web of reinforcement' than Baines could hope for; the morphogenetic-field potential is far higher than Sheldrake predicts; the groundswell documented by Ferguson is about to become a tsunami, with a capability to take the planet off hold and close the 'vision gap' in a way that is perhaps more comprehensive than conceived by Barbara Marx Hubbard.' "It is Terrance's view that the singularity involves the spawning of the psychedelic mushrooms who just use our brains to help them build intergalactic transportation for their own fungal genes, a decidedly comic twist of fate from Dawkin's selfish gene. No doubt the fungi have a more generous complement of DNA than do our own, recently discovered to be, impoverished chromosomes. "Our technotopians have less sense of humor. These cosmic Spinmeisters have taken our worst dystopian nightmare of a mechanized future and given it a sugar, or is that a silicon, coating. Our computers steal our souls and take off for the big Omega in the sky. Quite frankly I would prefer to have my DNA hijacked by a toadstool, than to have my soul stolen by an adding machine on steroids. The former is much more romantic, not to say, psychedelic. The mushrooms are more likely to keep us around for company, and at least we share a carboniferous ancestry." (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/dantsmith/next86.htm) Okay, so the Omega Pointists want their mysticism, and don't want high-spirit, soft-tech. Natasha -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From thespike at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 22:48:10 2003 From: thespike at earthlink.net (Damien Broderick) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:48:10 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <114780-220031053121500734@M2W071.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <01ba01c3a001$12a4af60$a1994a43@texas.net> > >[BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly > >shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] > I was thinking along the line of da Vinci. Teilhard was his *surname*. His given name was Pierre. Damien Broderick de Melbourne From jcorb at iol.ie Fri Oct 31 22:55:34 2003 From: jcorb at iol.ie (J Corbally) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 22:55:34 +0000 Subject: [extropy-chat] True justice? Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.1.20031031225339.027947c0@pop.iol.ie> >Message: 5 >Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 09:57:10 -0800 (PST) > >From: "Robert J. Bradbury" >Subject: [extropy-chat] True justice? >To: Extropy Chat >Message-ID: > >Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > >I'm not quite sure how to react to this. Apparently a known sexual >predator exposed himself to a number of Catholic high school girls >in Philadelphia and they decided to chase him down and assault him. >Guess one has to be careful who one offends with ones behavior. >URL: >http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/31/crime.girls.reut/ >R. > > >------------------------------ And they charged him with "corrupting the morals of a minor"??? Reminds me of Irish schoolgirls. Not to be messed with. I'd bet he wasn't expecting that :) James... From natashavita at earthlink.net Fri Oct 31 22:54:01 2003 From: natashavita at earthlink.net (natashavita at earthlink.net) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:54:01 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare Message-ID: <39020-220031053122541126@M2W042.mail2web.com> From: Damien Broderick >>>[BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly >>>shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] >>I was thinking along the line of da Vinci. >Teilhard was his *surname*. His given name was Pierre. >Damien Broderick de Melbourne I just received a gift of Pierre Cardin luggage. Think it will take me to the Omega Point? Natasha Vita-More de Spiral Galaxy -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From spike66 at comcast.net Fri Oct 31 23:11:11 2003 From: spike66 at comcast.net (Spike) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 15:11:11 -0800 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000601c3a004$46647d50$6501a8c0@SHELLY> > Scientific trivia contest: With what famous scientific hoax > was Tielhard assocated? Piltdown man. But he didn't do it. He was fooled by it. See S.J. Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes, p. 213ff. From max at maxmore.com Fri Oct 31 23:33:47 2003 From: max at maxmore.com (Max More) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 17:33:47 -0600 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare In-Reply-To: <39020-220031053122541126@M2W042.mail2web.com> Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.2.20031031173225.0191ab68@mail.earthlink.net> At 04:54 PM 10/31/2003, Natasha wrote: >From: Damien Broderick > > >>>[BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly > >>>shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] > > >>I was thinking along the line of da Vinci. > > >Teilhard was his *surname*. His given name was Pierre. > > >Damien Broderick de Melbourne > >I just received a gift of Pierre Cardin luggage. Think it will take me to >the Omega Point? > >Natasha Vita-More de Spiral Galaxy Darling, I will look on Expedia for tickets to the Omega Point. I believe it lies somewhere between the Twilight Zone and that country where the one-eyed man is king. Max Duh More _______________________________________________________ Max More, Ph.D. max at maxmore.com or more at extropy.org http://www.maxmore.com Strategic Philosopher Chairman, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org _______________________________________________________ From cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 24 22:40:29 2003 From: cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net (cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net) Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 17:40:29 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare References: <57050-2200310531204948353@M2W081.mail2web.com> <018301c39ff6$8761a340$a1994a43@texas.net> Message-ID: <009e01c39a7f$d4adf440$12ecfea9@kevin> I read a book titled "The Omega Point" so long ago I don;t even remember the author. It often left me wondering if religions weren't created by our post-human descendents who were capable of manipulating the past. Granted, time would have to be linear which I don't believe to be the case. Still, the idea that religion was created to keep us from reaching singularity faster than we are capable of handling socially is a bit alluring. Maybe it could make for some decent fiction. I am close to finishing "The Spike" and I am searching for my next book to purchase. I have a long way to go before I feel I am up to speed with many of the conversations on this list. Should I read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" or "THE PHENOMENON OF MAN " next? Or should I read something else entirely? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Damien Broderick" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 4:32 PM Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > Sent: Friday, October 31, 2003 2:49 PM > > > One such provoking and erudite thinker is Teilhard de Chardin. > > I, for one, was moved by his Omega Point notion in the early 1960s, when I > was still a fervent if unorthodox Catholic. I must have been one of the > first people to read THE PHENOMENON OF MAN in English. However... > > > (de Chardin) > > [BTW, that's NOT his name, as the other citations show. It's properly > shortened to Teilhard, not to de Chardin or Chardin.] > > > "It is perhaps not surprising that a leading advocate of Darwinism, > Stephen > > Jay Gould, has gone to work on Teilhard. Writing vehemently and > > dogmatically, like the guardian of an established religion, Gould asserts > > that Teilhard's whole enterprise is illegitimate: Teilhard's essential > > insights are incompatible with science. > > `Guardian of established religion' my foot. Gould, and more impressively > still Sir Peter Medawar, showed why Teilhard's teleological and God-dragged > model of evolution is just plain incompatible with random mutation and > natural selection. It's a form of divine Lamarckism. It *could* have been > true, in some other universe; it might even be true to some extent in a > Tiplerian Omega Point universe. But it doesn't jibe with what science has > learned to date about how evolution works. > > > I don't think we need [religious dogma]. I think we need more love and > understanding, > > story-telling, poetry, imagination, laughter, fun and companionship, not > > religious mysticism? > > Right on, as we said back then, or a decade later. :) > > Damien Broderick > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > From cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net Fri Oct 24 22:50:17 2003 From: cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net (cmcmortgage at sbcglobal.net) Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2003 17:50:17 -0500 Subject: [extropy-chat] antique computers References: <7A2B25F8EB070940996FA543A70A217BBFE02E@adlexsv02.protech.com.au> Message-ID: <00b201c39a81$33355de0$12ecfea9@kevin> Oh. Here's one on ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3438677641&category=3669 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Emlyn O'regan" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2003 8:46 PM Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] antique computers > That's an excellent idea, Mike; long overdue. Beautiful polished wood cases > for desktops should have a nice niche amongst the beige-hating tasteful > (count me in :-) > > Have you thought about a wooden keyboard? Finicky, but I would think it was > doable. Also, maybe a wooden mouse; with both of these you should be able to > replace the plastic casing & keys I would think. > > Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Mike Lorrey [mailto:mlorrey at yahoo.com] > > Sent: Friday, 31 October 2003 7:19 AM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [extropy-chat] antique computers > > > > > > I am working on several designs for hardwood computer cases, to make > > the PC box more aesthetically acceptable for executive desktops, as > > well as for those seeking an organic look vs the cheap appliance look. > > > > Anyone for a woody? > > > > --- Spike wrote: > > > > > > Altho no one will argue that a model T Ford works > > > as well as a modern car by any measure imaginable, > > > it is considered cool to own and drive one. Same > > > with many items: antiques are chic. How about > > > computers? Are there any antique computer users > > > groups or clubs? Rallies? Competitions? > > > > > > spike > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > extropy-chat mailing list > > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > > > ===== > > Mike Lorrey > > "Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils." > > - Gen. John Stark > > Blog: Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com > > Flight sims: http://www.x-plane.org/users/greendragon/ > > Pro-tech freedom discussion: > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exi-freedom > > > > __________________________________ > > Do you Yahoo!? > > Exclusive Video Premiere - Britney Spears > > http://launch.yahoo.com/promos/britneyspears/ > > _______________________________________________ > > extropy-chat mailing list > > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo/extropy-chat >