Lisa Nowak has been given an “other-than-honorable” discharge from the Navy.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
The Man Who Fights Death
I have more thoughts on Bob Ettinger’s deanimation over at Pajamas Media.
More Ettinger Thoughts
I’ll have my own obituary up at Pajamas Media tomorrow, but he’s an interesting example of a man who lived (and perhaps continues to live) by his own beliefs, never relinquishing them even as he approached deanimation.
Many more men are interested in cryonics than women (though there are many of the latter as well), and generally the explanation for this is that women tend to be less individualistic, and define themselves in terms of their relationships, particularly family. I recall, almost forty years ago, when a friend of mine and I were discussing this, and his mother said, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to live forever, or wake up in a future in which I didn’t know anyone.” That has never bothered me, and I have never had trouble meeting new people and establishing new relationships. I’d rather do that than give up my individuality and memories. But Ettinger got around it partially by persuading his loved ones to get aboard the ambulance with him (though as he noted himself, it will be interesting times if he gets revived with both wives).
Time To Raise Taxes
Distressingly, neither the president nor the Democrats offer any rigorous account of the optimal level of tax progressivity. Rather, the president seems to think that no matter how high the current marginal tax rates, the correct social policy is to move them upward. As such, he cannot explain why the top marginal tax rate for the rich should not approach 100 percent as they accumulate more and more wealth. After all, why not push the limits if efforts to redistribute wealth do not at some point impede its creation?
My view is the polar opposite of Obama’s. I believe, now more than ever, that the optimal level of progressivity in the system is zero, so that today’s marginal adjustments in taxes should increase taxes on those on the bottom half of the income distribution. To explain why, let us start with the premise that the defenders of any progressive tax have to give some principled account of the optimal degree of tax progressivity. They have to identify which of the infinite number of progressive tax schedules they embrace, and then explain why it is best.
They can’t. It’s all about “fairness,” not rationality or revenue. Or preventing the country from going into a tipping point of entitlement.
[Update a while later]
Are we having a Gettysburg moment in the long cold civil war?
If so, I hope that the Republicans continue to press their advantage, as Meade didn’t.
Exploring The Uncanny Valley
Some interesting brain research at UCSD.
The Father Of Transhumanism
…has deanimated:
In 1947 Ettinger wrote a short story elucidating the concept of human cryopreservation as a pathway to more sophisticated future medical technology: in effect, a form of “one-way medical time travel.” The story, “The Penultimate Trump”, was published in the March, 1948 issue of Startling Stories and definitively establishes Ettinger’s priority as the first person to have promulgated the cryonics paradigm: principally, that contemporary medico-legal definitions of death are relative, not absolute, and are critically dependent upon the sophistication of available medical technology. Thus, a person apparently dead of a heart attack in a tribal village in the Amazon Rainforest will soon become unequivocally so, whereas the same person, with the same condition, in the emergency department of large, industrialized city’s hospital, might well be resuscitated and continue a long and healthy life. Ettinger’s genius lay in realizing that criteria for death will vary not just from place-to-place, but from time-to-time. Today’s corpse may well be tomorrow’s patient.
Ettinger waited for prominent scientists or physicians to come to the same conclusion he had, and to take a position of public advocacy. By 1960, Ettinger realized that no one else seemed to have grasped an idea which, to him, had seemed obvious. Ettinger was 42 years old and undoubtedly increasingly aware of his own mortality. In what may be characterized as one of the most important midlife crisis in history, Ettinger reflected on his life and achievements, and decided it was time to take action. He summarized the idea of cryonics in a few pages, with the emphasis on life insurance as a mechanism of affordable funding for the procedure, and sent this to approximately 200 people whom he selected from Who’s Who In America. The response was meager, and it was clear that a much longer exposition was needed. Ettinger observed that people, even the intellectually, financially and socially distinguished, would have to be educated that dying is (usually) a gradual and reversible process, and that freezing damage is so limited (even though lethal by present criteria) that its reversibility demands relatively little in future progress. Ettinger soon made an even more problematic discovery, principally that, “…a great many people have to be coaxed into admitting that life is better than death, healthy is better than sick, smart is better than stupid, and immortality might be worth the trouble!”
I’ve never understood the resistance, either.
Rest in peace, but not in perpetuity.
[Update early afternoon]
Adam Keiper has a link roundup over at The New Atlantis, with a promise of more to come.
[Another update a few minutes later]
This is the first time I became aware that Mike Darwin (long-time cryonics pioneer) has a blog. I’ll have to add it to the blogroll.
Time To Start Up The Trials Again
A Salem witch is causing problems.
What Is Wrong With This Guy?
The more one learns about the Oslo terrorist, the less it makes sense. A “right-wing fundamentalist Christian” who supports gay rights? I’d also like to know what he’s been writing since October, and if he’s changed.
I’m wondering if they were to give him an exam, they might find some kind of brain abnormality. It’s possible that it could be a case like Charles Whitman, the man who committed the University of Texas clock tower massacre. Upon autopsy, he turned out to have glioblastoma, which some speculated may have led to his snapping.
A Brief Spelling Lesson
Remembering Borders
Like Ann Arbor native Jay Nordlinger, I remember when there was just one Borders, and what an amazing place it was in the seventies. I wasn’t shocked that it became a chain, though I wondered why such a chain would have just happened to have started in the town where I went to school. But the owners didn’t have the foresight of Jeff Bezos, and anticipate the future. But even if they had, it’s not clear that they could have saved the brick and mortar. Even the best buggy-whip manufacturers didn’t survive the advent of the automobile. Like, Jay, though, I wonder how we will be able to browse on the Internet, and how to capture the scents and the social experience of discovering a wonderful book for which you hadn’t been looking.
Michigan native (and resident once again) John Miller has more thoughts, as does Rich Lowry, with some relevant commentary on creative destruction and the moribund stasis of government bureaucracies.
[Update a while later]
Many commenters note, both here and at the links, that Borders committed suicide by losing touch with what made it attractive in the first place, so it wasn’t even one of the better buggy-whip makers. It’s also worth noting that some of the carriage makers survived into the auto age by adapting (e.g., Fisher Body in Flint and later other places as part of GM, and Studebaker).