X-Message-Number: 5043 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #5037 - #5040 Date: Mon, 23 Oct 1995 10:22:51 -0700 (PDT) Hi! This is Thomas Donaldson again. Some comments on the messages in the latest Cryonet: 1. Ralph Merkle and Steve Harris may well be right about whether or not turbulence occurs in the classical mathematical sense. BUT when I pointed out that Mike Darwin's observations deserved respect AS OBSERVATIONS I was not sayiing that I agreed with his INTERPRETATION of them. If we wish for continued progress in suspension, arguing about interpretations while paying no attention to the observations themselves is a sure path toward stasis -- not, however, the kind of stasis we really want. All those who try to disprove the presence of turbulence would do much better to try and explain Mike's OBSERVATIONS. And if no one comes up with a good explanation, so be it ... many things in the world still have not been explained. But don't delude yourselves and others by simply saying that since we can't explain it it therefore cannot exist. 2. Bob Ettinger's comments about use of morticians are actually very well taken, and deserve attention by every cryonics group. One of the things we did in Australia when I was living there was to involve a mortician, who became quite helpful even though he never joined. This has continued. In fact, cryonicists in Australia have recently hooked up with a large chain of funeral parlors over all of eastern Australia. Not only that, but if morticians learn to do the preliminary steps of a suspension then their community standing will increase as cryonics spreads. Doctors presently risk their reputations to be involved with cryonics. For morticians it is almost exactly the opposite: their reputations will become enhanced. And just because morticians presently aren't ranked socially up there with doctors emphatically does NOT mean that they cannot learn the required procedures. 3. As I understand it, assisted suicide is tolerated in the Netherlands --- not strictly legal, but tolerated. HOWEVER this privelege is available only to Dutch citizens. As I am sure almost everyone on Cryonet knows, a fair number of political ATTEMPTS to allow it has been going on for some time. One of them will likely succeed in the near future. Whether this will really help us depends on lots of other factors, of course. Best and long long life, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5043