X-Message-Number: 559
From: 
Subject: Alcor Boston Minutes
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 91 19:35:06 PST

                         ALCOR BOSTON MINUTES
                 Sunday November 10th 3:30 PM - 8:30 PM
                             
Attendees
---------
Eric Klien
Walter Vannini
Stephen McCusker
Dave Greenstein
Howard Katz

Meeting Dates
-------------
Our next meetings will probably be on Jan 12th.  Walter Vannini will
send out a mailing to this list before then and set the exact date and
time.  I should be in Nevada by that time.  If I'm not, we may have
a meeting at my house.

Member Recruitment
------------------
No one new showed up so there will be no December meeting.  Amazingly,
one person who wasn't at our last meeting of ten people did show up.
I thought I had recruited everyone possible for the meeting with Alcor's
founders.  Looks like I was wrong.

********************************************************************
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.  
********************************************************************

Member Updates
--------------
Walter is planning on violating the Alcor Boston tradition of fleeing
the state.  He plans on moving from New Hampshire back to Boston.  This
is why we can't set the exact location of the next meeting at this time.
At the moment, Walter is the only Alcor member in the area but three of
our Alcor Boston members are very close to finishing their sign up process.
Tony Reno, one of those close to being signed up, has volunteered to have
all future meetings at his place in Boston.  Once he has finished getting
signed up, his offer will probably be accepted.  (Alcor Boston Rule #2:
You must be a member to have meetings at your home.)

Update on Me
------------
I finally told my boss I'm ready to retire!  Luckily, the job market 
is the pits thanks to our Socialist President, so we will probably 
find a replacement for me before the year ends.  As of this writing, 
it looks like I have found a qualified person from my ad on the net, 
I hope he works out!  (I received 12 resumes within 24 hours from my 
ad on the net.)

I'm looking forward to not paying any more stinking state income
taxes, state interest taxes, and state dividend taxes!  Nevada raises
its revenues the right way, from gambling and prostitution.  At least
the public gets screwed voluntarily, your income isn't stolen from
you at gun point.  By the way, in Nevada you even have the option of
voting for None Of The Above, so you still have a reason to vote when
all the candidates stink!  (This would have been real useful in the
recent Louisiana race.)

Oh, talking about Socialism, if you want a candidate who doesn't
favor the platform that the Socialist Party promoted in the '20s, you
may want to support the Libertarians.  Send donations or ask for
information at The Marrou/Lord Campaign, P.O. 12417, Las Vegas, NV
89195-5848.  Neat that they are exactly where I will be going to this
January!  (I'll be crashing at Alcor member Jerry Searcy's place
there before I pick which area of Nevada that I want to move to.)

Big Alcor New York Meeting
--------------------------
Despite the fact that I didn't show up, I heard that FIVE Alcor
Boston members did show up!  They were Walter Vannini, Stephen 
McCusker, Dave Greenstein, Howard Katz, and Tony Reno.  I think
this shows that the non Alcor members in our group are showing 
some real interest in Alcor.  I think there is a lot of potential
in our group and I hope it takes off over the next year.

Alcor Florida
-------------
Based on my conversations with Alcor members in Florida, it looks
like they have a lot of members yet haven't organized themselves
as much as they could have.  I almost moved to this income taxfree
state but since I couldn't find an Alcor roommate and since the local 
politics are anti-Libertarian, I didn't.  But if anyone is interested
in organizing an Alcor discussion group, Florida is the place to do it.

Rules
-----
Since I will be leaving Boston, I should list the rules that I have
found improve the group:

Rule #1:  If no one new shows up, the next meeting should be in two
months instead of one.
Rule #2:  Meetings should be held at an Alcor member's home.

Medical Training
----------------
Once the Alcor Boston group reaches three members, I would suggest
that EMT training and getting medical equipment be looked into.  It
is quite possible that we will have four members within a few months,
so I thought it was important to mention this.

Finances
--------
Stephen McCusker donated $20 for our postage costs which was great
because I just spent a little less than that on an Objectivist ad for
the last meeting.  I'll match this donation and send $20 to Alcor's
Endowment fund.  Stephen also made a big donation of $100 to Alcor
New York for medical equipment which was a very good idea of him.
I'll match this donation and send $100 to Alcor New York.  And soon
Stephen will become a full fledged Alcor member.  Hip, hip, hurrah!

Advertising
-----------
Linda and Fred found that posting stickers wasn't too effective.
Alcor got just 1-2 calls from their massive posting of 50-60 stickers
at MIT.  But the following idea got Alcor 5 calls in one day.

They posted the following half sheet at the Princeton dormitories:

"          Life extension through cryonics suspension...

               Safety net for incurrable diseases.

                    A doorway into the future.

                    For free information call
                         1-800-367-2228
                 ALCOR LIFE EXTENSION FOUNDATION"

If you want one or more laser copies of this text, send me 
e-mail.  (Fred and Linda just used a dot matrix printer for
their half sheet so they didn't bother to send it to me.)

Linda and Fred Chamberlain
--------------------------
In addition to the phone call that I mentioned above, Linda
and Fred sent our group a postcard.  It was real nice and
it mentioned that they asked Ralph Whelan to be sure that
all inquires received info about our meetings.

FDA Update
----------
Last issue I said, "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."

Well, guess what...
 
        VITAMINS DEALERS IN THE TANK WITH COCAINE DEALERS? 
                               
Last week, Saul Kent and Bill Faloon who run The Life Extension
Foundation were arrested...

[The rest of this article can be found in message #545]

More FDA Stuff
--------------
Among the many recent negative articles about the FDA, Barron's
recently published an article called "FDA's Newspeak:  Only
U.S.-Approved 'Descriptors' Are Fit for Consumers."  This article
mentioned that when the FDA says that a cholesterol-free product
is not allowed to mention this, the government is clamping down on
free speech.  It also pointed out that health claims backed by
scientists that the FDA didn't like were also being prohibited by the
FDA.  Barron's said "In several notable cases, the court has
indicated that commercial speech is unquestionably protected under
the First Amendment when it involves matters of public interest.
What could be of greater interest than health?"

This FDA position that even foods are drugs and therefore can't
make health claims without passing the FDA's two hundred million
dollar, ten year testing period, could make it real difficult for
Alcor members to even find out which foods may help us live longer,
let alone buy them.

Bill Gates
----------
I've dug up his phone number but would prefer to find his e-mail address
and contact him that way.  I'm a better writer than a talker.  I'll
continue my research into his e-mail address.

Washington Ballot on November 5 
-------------------------------
Unfortunately, none of the exciting Washington Ballots passed with
the possible exception of the abortion vote.  (Last I heard they were
still doing a recount on the abortion vote.)  This was very surprising.
Oh well.  It would save Alcor a fortune if any state allowed terminally
ill patients to die instead of the torturing to death method that is
currently favored for humans, although pets are treated better.

PowerStar
---------
This monthly fanzine is doing a fiction story about cryonics.  They
contacted me for information based on my letter in the issue 168 of
StarLog.  I sent then reprints of articles about Alcor suspensions from
recent issues of Cryonics.  I also gave them Alcor's toll free number.
I will be getting free copies of the PowerStar issues that contain this
multi-part story.

This will be the second fanzine that I have promoted cryonics through.

Weld
----
Even though I will be fleeing this state, I should point out that
Weld is gradually improving conditions in the state.  Recently he
unveiled 140 proposals to eliminate "needless and counterproductive"
state regulations.  One of the regulations being repealed is one that
said only nurses or doctors could dispense medication.  Another
regulation being repealed stopped funeral directors from engaging in
other businesses at their offices.  Oh, I should point out that one
of Weld's 140 proposals was anti-Libertarian so he dropped it within
24 hours.

Suspension Funding
------------------
Howard Katz, author of the article "Funding Cryonic Suspension - A
Critique" in Cryonics handed out copies of his letter to President
Carlos Mondragon arguing that the current method of funding does not
take into account the depreciation of the currency.  Basically he
points out that the Fed's continous pumping of money into our economy
hurts bond holders and helps equity holders.  With all of Alcor's
money in bonds, it will be hurt over the long term.  Howard believes
that the current bond yields offer a real negative rate of return.
He is also interested in managing Alcor members money using the
Austrian method that goes in the bond market when the Fed tightens
and into the stock market when the Fed loosens.  Any Alcor members
that are interested in Howard managing their money should send me
e-mail or use the address above if you are getting a postal copy of
this issue which includes addresses.

Ben Best recently wrote an article "A Plea for Inflation-Proof Cryonic
Funding" in Cryonics which said that the Ibbotson-Sinquefield study
showed a .5% annual real return on Treasury bills.  (Compared to the
2-3% that Alcor needs to fund patients.)  Howard pointed out that
this study included the years 1926-1933 when the U.S. was on a gold
standard and so these years should be thrown out of the study.

I believe that it would be far better for Howard Katz to manage
Alcor's money than the current method of throwing nearly all of our
money into bonds.  Alcor has and continues to lose a fortune by using
this strategy that only worked when we didn't have a Fed continously
cheapening our money.  Unless Alcor predicts that we will go back to
a gold standard in the very near future, it MUST change its
investment strategy!

Supercomputers
--------------
Thinking Machines has come out with a SPARC based computer that can
do 2 trillion floating point operations per second!  While this
machine has been too expensive for anyone to order yet, their $25
million 128 billion floating point operations/second machine has been
ordered.  Thinking Machine's line of machines is now over ten times
as fast as Cray's thanks to massive parallel processing.  Intel has
released some machines nearly as fast and it looks like the massive
parallel market is starting to finally takeoff.  We'll need such fast
computers in the future if any of us want to upload!  (Or simply do
simulations of nanomachines unfreezing people.)

Alcor Life Extension Foundation Chapter Certification Rules
-----------------------------------------------------------
I received a [draft - KQB] document related to these rules which are
being drawn up.

The best idea in this document was:

"[ Bank account details removed - KQB ] . . .  In the future,
Alcor NY will incorporate separately as a tax-exempt corporation
and will therefore use its own tax-exempt number [ ... ]"

I think it is really a good idea for Alcor to eventually be
more than one organization legally.  This way even if the government
shut down one part of Alcor, it would be hard to shut down all of
Alcor's parts.  Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if Alcor UK was
already a separate organization legally.

My favorite idea in the document was:

"All certified personnel must carry with them at all times wallet
sized photos of Michael Darwin (glossies)."

Good to see that we haven't lost our sense of humor!

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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