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Subject: Alcor Boston Minutes
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 91 16:15:02 PDT
ALCOR BOSTON MINUTES
Sunday October 13th 3:30 PM - 12:00 AM
Attendees
---------
Linda Chamberlain
Fred Chamberlain
Eric Klien
Walter Vannini
Stephen McCusker
Dave Greenstein
Tony Reno
David Linberg
Robert B. Peterson
David Lubkin
Meeting Dates
-------------
Our next meetings will be on Nov 10th and Dec 8th at 3:00 PM.
Location of the meetings will be at the home of Eric Klien, 28 Kenmar
Dr. #272, Billerica, MA 01821 until further notice. (508) 663-5480
Work, (508) 670-5235 Home, e-mail.
To get to my house take 128 to 3 north, then take the Concord Rd
exit, where you should make a right towards Billerica. The second
right after Saint Theresa's Rectory (also the first right after the
funeral parlor) will be Kenmar Dr, make a right on it. Note that
Kenmar Dr is not marked. Follow Kenmar past building 6 on your left,
building 3 on your right and then building 8 on your left (this
building has a swimming pool) and building 5 on your right and then
make a left. Travel over the million speed bumps until you have
reached the last building on the street. That will be building 28.
If you miss the left turn after building 8, you will find yourself on
a street that has building 27, not building 28. If this happens,
backup and make the correct left which will now be a right for you.
Additional information for those that get lost: Kenmar Dr. is the
first right before the fork of Concord Rd and Charnstaffe. It is
also the fifth right after the Concord exit, about 1.3 miles from the
exit. There are a lot of little rights before Kenmar Dr. If you
take any of them, just travel left until you can't go any further.
You will then be on Kenmar Dr. If you accidently get on Charnstaffe,
make your first two lefts and you will be back on Concord Rd, with
Kenmar being your second left.
Member Recruitment
------------------
This meeting of ten people beat our record of six people pretty
easily. Of course, the founders of Alcor don't show up every day!
Note that for the first time, I managed to recruit one person via
these e-mail postings. It was about time that the postings paid off.
We now have three people in the sign up process plus one more person
who is close to starting the sign up process, so hopefully we will
soon have two Alcor members in Massachusetts, doubling our
Mass membership. Unfortunately, I will be moving out of
Massachusetts before the year ends, reducing Mass membership by one.
Fortunately, we already have one New Hampshire Alcor member in our
group, and a second one is getting ready to sign up.
********************************************************************
By the way, if any Alcor members want roommates and are living in an
income tax free state, they should send me e-mail. Note that any
taxes on capital gains or interest income are also unacceptable.
********************************************************************
Fred and Linda are trying the idea of posting stickers or stickers
attached to index cards to bulletin boards. The sticker says
" CRYONICS INFO
1-800-367-2228
ALCOR LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION"
If you want a copy of the label master to make labels with, send me
e-mail.
If anyone reading this can promote our next meeting I would
appreciate it. I am especially looking for ways to do local mass
mailings. And of course, four of our subscribers publish their own
zines and could mention the dates of my next meetings...
Fred and Linda Chamberlain
--------------------------
I really enjoyed having the two founders of Alcor come to the
meeting. Not only were they important people but they were fun to be
with. I look forward to being their friends over the eons to come.
We learned that they were the ones who pushed for an endowment fund,
about their early dealings with the original cryonics groups, and
about the latest developments in the cryonics world.
Fred and Linda recently retired from the real estate managing
business and are taking a break before they earn degrees in cryonics
related fields. They were the first couple to meet through cryonics,
in fact, there are barely any couples that have met this way because
almost no single women are interested in cryonics. Almost all of the
cryonics women became interested in cryonics through their husbands.
It was interesting that Linda had a pretty male oriented view on life
which could explain why she became interested in a male dominated
field. I actually prefer her viewpoints to the normal female ones,
so I hope there are some single Lindas out there!
We had so much fun talking with them that we learned the hard way
that the Chinese restaurant that I like to go to is open past
midnight. I kept expecting them to throw us out, but a few new
customers came in a short time before we finally left showing that
they weren't about to close.
Finances
--------
I heard from Paul Wakfer that he IS willing to lend money to anyone
who wishes to donate money to Alcor. His only requirement is that
any possible financial gains from the donation should go to Alcor
instead of the people involved in donating the money. I immediately
made an offer to donate $10K based on this but Carlos said that Alcor
has now raised enough money to save the U.K. facility. I said that I
would be willing to be a backup in case some of the expected funding
fell through. Carlos never called me, so I assume that the U.K.
facility HAS been saved! We sure were lucky that the U.K. real
estate market is doing so poorly, giving us time to raise the money
needed before the building could be sold. Once it has been confirmed
that the U.K. facility has been saved, I will check to see if the New
York group still needs more money to achieve Emergency Response
Capability in the Northeast.
Database
--------
It was considered a good idea to build a database of all Alcor
members plus doctors, lawyers, and other people willing to help out
Alcor members. The database would have different levels of privacy,
for example you could pick from the choices 1) tell anyone my name 2)
tell anyone but the media my name 3) only tell Alcor members my name
4) only tell Alcor members who are seriously ill my name. Linda
Chamberlain pointed out that this would be a lot of work and would
take a lot of commitment by one person to get this started. David
Lubkin said he would think about doing this. He just volunteered to
write the New Hampshire Libertarian newsletter, so he may be a little
too busy in the near future.
Life Monitors
-------------
Linda said that she had looked into an apnea monitor for her mother
before she was frozen and found that the apnea monitors were only
made in children's sizes. She did believe that transponders could be
injected into you for tracking purposes, but she didn't know of any
life monitoring devices. If anyone has any info on such devices,
particularly small devices that can either be injected into your body
or can be easily worn all the time, I would appreciate hearing about them.
Congratulations!
----------------
I would like to congratulate former Alcor Boston member, Ralph
Whelan, on being elected to Alcor's board of directors. He replaced
Jerry Leaf who was recently frozen. Ralph began a proud tradition of
Alcor Boston members fleeing Massachusetts. First Ralph left, then
Walter Vannini left (to New Hampshire), and then I will leave before
the year ends. Hopefully, our new libertarian governor, Bill Weld
will eventually make our state livable again. He has been doing a
great job: reducing taxes, reducing spending in both absolute and
real amounts, begun privatizing government functions, and has started
to push for more personal rights in abortion, drug, and speed limit
issues among others. Note that while Weld is officially a
Republican, the Boston Globe calls him a libertarian governor a lot.
Reason and Forbes have both mentioned that Weld may run for president
in 1996 or 2000. (I have invited him to attend one of our meetings,
but don't hold your breath waiting for him to show up.)
FDA
---
Last I checked Saul Kent and Bill Faloon had still not been thrown in
jail by the FDA. They had won one of their five legal cases against
the FDA, getting vitamins and documents stolen from them four and a
half years ago by the FDA. Considering how huge and powerful the FDA
is, I would be surprised if I could say next issue that they still
hadn't been jailed.
Here is an important article on the FDA:
[cryomsg 492.6]
And here is one more article from the Life Extension Foundation:
[cryomsg 492.4]
Bill Gates
----------
David Lubkin mentioned that he knew someone who works for Bill Gates.
Considering that Bill Gates has started to give out money and that he
is the second richest person in the U.S., Bill Gates could be a great
source of money for Alcor. An one million dollar donation, or one
fifth of one thousandth of his net worth, could do wonders for Alcor.
(Alcor is currently trying to raise just $300,000 for their endowment
fund.) If David is successful in getting Gates to donate some money,
perhaps we can simply hire someone to do the database idea that David
had mentioned in our meeting. Note that Gates's recent donation of
$12 million was for biotechnology which is quite related to Alcor's
work. Alcor's research department wouldn't mind a few million!
Alcor -- A Few Basic Facts
--------------------------
If anyone wants a copy of astronomical data about the star Alcor, I
would be glad to send a copy via snail mail. Fred Chamberlain gave
me two pages of information on Alcor.
Eric Drexler
------------
On Thursday, November 21, 1991 at 7:30 PM, K. Eric Drexler will be
speaking at the MIT Nanotechnology Study Group, MIT 54-100,
Cambridge, MA 02139. A decade ago, Eric Drexler initated the field
of molecular nanotechnology with his PNAS paper on molecular
engineering. His book "Engines of Creation" (Anchor/Doubleday, 1986)
was the first in the field.
Washington Ballot on November 5
-------------------------------
In about two weeks, it is EXPECTED that Washington voters will pass a
bill that allows Thomas Donaldson to deanimate himself before the
brain tumor kills him. They will also pass a bill that forces term
limits on politicians, effectively euthanizing the little buggers'
careers.
Questions
---------
If any e-mail people reading these minutes have questions that they
would like answered in future meetings, send me the questions and
they will be answered in the next minutes published.
Mistakes
--------
If any of these minutes reflect mistaken information, let Eric Klien know!.
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