X-Message-Number: 14319
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 21:19:11 -0400
Subject: Wakfer's Thunderous Reply
From: Rudy Matic <>

I began reading Mr. Paul Wakfer's post -- installment #1 -- but after
hearing about my 'many snide remarks and devious methods', etc., in the
very first third of the very first sentence, and browsing down several
pages further to see 'unethical', 'distortion', 'defamation', etc., I
kind of sensed myself being pulled into a recurring sort of discussion I
see quite often on Cryonet -- ie, two screeching fishwives lashing each
other with wet sheets.  Very stimulating for the masochists involved, I'm
sure, but doing no good for cryonics generally or the people involved
personally.  This seems to me not very productive.  Certain that there is
gold amid the dross, I shall courteously read all Mr. Wakfer's remarks in
a few weeks or so after he pumps all his installments out and calms down.
 If there is anything in them worth making a point about, I ll do so
then, trying not to boost his adrenalin levels by mentioning the source
or quoting him directly.

Paul Wakfer is to be praised and admired for having put together INC and
headed the hippocampal project, not to mention other well-intentioned
projects, such as morelife.org.   I think it is fair to say that the
realm of diplomacy is not Paul's natural fief, however.  Well, no one is
perfect   me, I m snide, devious, and unethical, myself.  Hey:  as Mao
says, 'let a hundred flowers bloom.'  I suggest we all give Paul a round
of hearty and well-deserved applause and compliment him on his productive
efforts in the one field, and pass over his efforts in the other with
silence.  I hope that at the end of Mr. Wakfer's second installment -- or
third, or fourth, or seventeenth -- he pops some Mantovani in his CD
player, sits back in his easy chair with a glass of port, 'calm of mind /
all passion spent', and devotes his not inconsiderable thinking abilities
back to the task of making cryonics scientifically and socially viable. 
And I also hope that he recalls that you can't do the former if you
ignore the latter.

Speaking of which -- at the moment it appears that INC is funded through
the rest of the year, and should it be in trouble then, Robert Ettinger
has said that he personally will kick in $10,000 to save it, and ask CI
and IS directors for a corporate contibution.  I did not see the words
'thank you' in the sections of Mr. Wakfer's post which I browsed; so on
behalf of everyone interested in pushing scientific brain
cryopreservation research forward -- thank you, Bob.

David Pascal
www.cryonics.org

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