CryoNet #22683 - #22689

CryoNet - Fri 17 Oct 2003

    #22683: Population concerns [John de Rivaz]
    #22684: Re: CryoNet #22680 - #22682 [Randall Burns]
    #22685: NBIC document new home [James Swayze]
    #22686: Re: CryoNet #22680 - #22682 [WalkerBill]
    #22687: Lou Dobbs transcript about American food security [Mark Plus]
    #22688: CNN: Ted Williams' son diagnosed with leukemia [Mark Plus]
    #22689: Military Jets Shake Alcor Up [Flavonoid]

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Message #22683
From: "John de Rivaz" <John@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Population concerns
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:40:40 +0100

There seems to be a confusion between overall population of the planet
(prognosis good) and
voluntary concentrations of people in places considered by the majority to
be desirable (prognosis bad)

The latter problem results in various areas starting out being desirable,
people flock in and they eventually start to exhibit the environmental and
economic problems that Mark Plus mentions . The latter have started to
appear here in Cornwall (eg restaurant owners unable to get waitresses
because they can't afford accommodation on the wages the restaurant can
support)

However the problem of concentration will surely reduce when technology
makes it possible to make more desirable areas  economically feasible to
populate. This will also reduce the cost of accommodation. This cost is
often high because of planning or zoning laws rather than a genuine scarcity
of building land.

People like to live on the edge of bodies of water, lakes oceans etc. There
are many areas in the world where this is totally impracticable at the
moment. But this need not always be the case with improved technology.
Existing proposals for artificial island and so on will become more
economically feasible as technology advances.

-- 
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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Message #22684
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:12:23 -0700 (PDT)
From: Randall Burns <randall_burns@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22680 - #22682

Charles Platt wrote:
>the US is listed with 2.07 children per female 
>lifetime. This is near replacement level. 
>Therefore the population growth that still 
>exists in the US is caused almost entirely by
>immigration. If an agricultural crisis develops 
>(which I find totally implausible) obviously
>immigration quotas will be revised downward.
Well, since the overwhelming portion of immigration at
this point is illegal immigration, the quotas aren't
especially relevant(see numbersusa.org).

I don't like the term "overpopulation". IMHO the
proper term might be something more like
"under-pioneering". The question is what portion of
the agricultural and industrial activities are of a
purely extractive nature and what portion are by some
measure sustainable. When I look at stuff like
salinization of the soil in California-I tend to class
that as extractive agriculture. The big failure
though: there exist technologies to substantially
increase yield of the oceans (seeding areas with iron
for example). The main barriers to that technology is
essentially legal-noone wants to seed an area they are
unlikely to harvest.

Another important factor. While the birth rates of
Americans as a whole are stable, they vary accross
various groups. What that means is that US
demographics are changing profoundly. In 1900, the US
was about 60% of British descent. By 1970, that group
had dropped in absolute numbers by about 1.5-3
Million-despite the surrounding population
boom(basically if you look at the US census figures on
ethnicity and factor in  immigration from Britain.

Also, the US used to be more or less isolated from
diseases like leporasy-which isn't the case now
largely due to uncontrolled borders. The basic science
necessary to understand the health impact of
immigration in the US is basically taboo. Open borders
advocates in major foundations-both places like Cato
and Brookings work in unison on this issue. It is
quite plausible that at some point, the US will
experience a serious and visible epidemic related to
open borders.

The US now has about a quarter of the world's prison
population.

These factors combine to make me question the long
term political stability of the United States-they
strike me as the type of thing that could lead
eventually to another incident like the Civil War. We
have never yet seen a Civil War fought in a country
with a high tech infrastructure and nuclear weapons.

A while back, I wrote a claim, USgn that is hosted on
www.ideosphere.com

That claim was an attempt to project the chance of
major destabilization in the US by 2025. 
(Hyperinflation at the level no government has
survived, civil war, breakup)
At present it trades at 20-25%

If we assume these are realistic odds, then the chance
of the US maintainnig its present form in 66 years, is
only 42% or so.




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Message #22685
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:11:49 -0700
From: James Swayze <swayzej@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: NBIC document new home

A while back I gave a URL for the beta document for NBIC, Nano, Bio, 
Info, Cogno, regarding Converging Technologies and how the government 
favorably views them. It's a document commissioned by the NSF and DOC, 
National Science Foundation and Dept. of Commerce and it covers a lot of 
what we immortalists see coming in the future. The URL I then gave is no 
longer valid. If one wishes to view or share this document, to prove 
even the government gets the idea what we see coming, then here is where 
to find it:

http://www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies/

It is 5 mgs long. I downloaded it because who knows it might disappear 
again. I have yet to compare the pre published document and this final 
draft. It's a lot of reading.

James

-- 
Member:
Cryonics Institute of Michigan  http://www.cryonics.org
The Immortalist Society         http://www.cryonics.org/info.html
The Society for Venturism       http://www.venturist.org
Immortality Institute           http://www.imminst.org

MY WEBSITE: http://www.davidpascal.com/swayze/
Signature Memetic Virus--The worst enemy of those who now or will need medical 
care is the uninformed politician or moral fanatic who proscribe what doctors 
are allowed to prescribe and research, with the consent of their patients. 
Those who understand this are strongly encouraged to modify this to fit their 
personality, and add this to their signature file, and organize to recover our 
freedom from Big Brother. For those who wait until they are sick, it will be 
too late. Those who suffer from diseases which might have been cured by 
advanced medical research or schedule 1 drugs banned by Big Brother, have the 
right to hold accountable those who sat on their hands or worse, deferred their 
responsibility for personal and humanity's survival to unseen mystical agents, 
while they remained ill and dying.

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Message #22686
From: WalkerBill@xxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:37:55 EDT
Subject: Re: CryoNet #22680 - #22682

>No doubt Lou used the present yields per acre for his predictions and did 
not take into consideration that in 2030 we will be able to produce much more 
per acre then we do now.

See, you're just counting on a "technical fix". As we all know, technology 
never changes, which is why Smilodon bite is still the #1 cause of teenage 
death 
in the US.


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Message #22687
From: "Mark Plus" <markplus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Lou Dobbs transcript about American food security
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:50:31 -0700

Broadcast on CNN on Thursday, 10-16-2003. From:

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0310/16/ldt.00.html

DOBBS: Tonight, in our special report "A Crowded Nation," a national crisis 
looms, caused in part by a rapidly growing population. The problem is the 
food supply. Because of our population growth and other factors, including 
far too much commercial fishing, to the overdevelopment of our farmland, 
this nation is clearly headed for trouble.

Peter Viles is here know now and has the report -- Pete.

PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lou, we grow up in this country somehow 
believing we have this inexhaustible supply of farmland and of food. But 
that's simply not the case. The truth is, current policies and practices are 
unsustainable.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) VILES (voice-over): For seafood chef Rick Moonen, money is 
no object. But for years, he has been boycotting certain popular fish, from 
Atlantic swordfish to Chilean sea bass, in a crusade against aggressive 
fishing techniques that threat to wipe out entire stocks.

RICK MOONEN, CHEF: If we sit around and wait for the government to do 
something about it, we're going to be eating canned tofu, flavored with tuna 
or something, because there won't be any left. Seriously, we're going to be 
loving fish to death. It's going to be gone.

VILES: Commercial fishing is now so ruthlessly effective that 86 different 
stocks monitored by the federal government are so depleted, so threatened, 
the government classifies them as overfished, including haddock, cod, 
Atlantic sea scallops, and bluefish. Researches believe the ocean looked 
like this 40 years ago, and now this, after too much fishing. That excessive 
fishing and pollution have created giant dead zones in the ocean.

RANDY OLSON, MARINE BIOLOGIST: One of the biggest of which is in the Gulf of 
Mexico that is the result of the waste coming out of the Mississippi River 
that has caused a region, they say, that's larger than the size of the state 
of New Jersey in which there's little more than jellyfish and bacteria there 
and none of the original marine life.

VILES: Still, this is a nation that takes fresh seafood for granted and 
fresh meats and produce, a land of plenty on a collision course with crisis, 
because the nation's main source of food, its oceans of farmland, is always 
at risk.

It takes an acre, slightly more of cropland, to feed one person per year. 
But from 1982 to 2001, cropland available to feed Americans declined, from 
420 million acres to 370 million, while the nation's population rose by 60 
million. That means the point at which America can no longer feed its 
population is fast approaching.

RALPH GROSSI, AMERICAN FARMLAND TRUST: We have been losing about 1.2 Million 
acres of farmland each year. And much of this is the very best, most 
productive land near our metropolitan areas, because our ancestors were 
pretty bright people. They settled where the best farmland was.

VILES: Farmland has been disappearing most rapidly on the far edges of 
sprawling cities, in Texas, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, and Illinois.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VILES: The coming crisis in food in this country has huge ramifications. It 
threatens $50 billion a year in U.S. agricultural exports. And that means, 
Lou, that it also threatens the people who receive those exports, people all 
around the world who are fed by the American farmer.

DOBBS: Not only is it a crisis for this country. But those countries who are 
taking over $50 billion of our foodstuffs now, their populations are also 
rising dramatically.

VILES: In some cases, even more rapidly.

DOBBS: Pete, thank you very much -- Peter Viles.

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Message #22688
From: "Mark Plus" <markplus@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: CNN: Ted Williams' son diagnosed with leukemia
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:30:17 -0700

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/baseball/mlb/10/16/ted.williams.son.ap/


Ted Williams' son diagnosed with leukemia
Posted: Thursday October 16, 2003 8:34PM; Updated: Thursday October 16, 2003 
8:45PM

INVERNESS, Fla. (AP) -- The son of Hall of Famer Ted Williams has been 
diagnosed with leukemia.

John Henry Williams, 35, was diagnosed with leukemia earlier this month, 
Eric Abel, Williams' attorney, said Thursday.

Abel would not discuss any other aspects of Williams' condition.

John Henry Williams told the Citrus County Chronicle on Thursday that he was 
diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia at UCLA Medical Center and that he 
has already started chemotherapy.

"The whole goal is get the leukemia in remission," Williams told the 
newspaper from Los Angeles for a story to be published Friday.

Attempts made by The Associated Press to reach Williams were unsuccessful.

After Ted Williams died July 5, 2002, John Henry Williams was at the center 
of a controversy surrounding his father's remains. Williams had his father's 
body taken to an Arizona cryonics lab, setting off a battle with his 
half-sister, who said her father had wanted to be cremated.

The matter was settled in December, when Bobby Jo Ferrell, Ted Williams' 
oldest daughter, dropped her objections. A telephone call to Bobby Jo 
Ferrell's home on Thursday evening was not answered.

John Henry Williams' other sister, Claudia Williams, told the newspaper she 
is in Los Angeles for tests to determine if she is a match for a possible 
bone marrow transplant.

"It's not good, not good at all, considering his age," Claudia Williams 
said.

About 10,500 new cases of acute myelogenous leukemia are diagnosed each year 
in the United States, with remission occurring in 70-80 percent of those 
patients.

Ted Williams finished with a .344 career average and was the last major 
league to bat over .400, when he hit .406 in 1941.

John Henry Williams made an attempt over the past two seasons to follow in 
his father's footsteps, playing for some low-level minor league and 
independent baseball teams.

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Message #22689
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 22:27:49 -0400
From: Flavonoid@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Military Jets Shake Alcor Up

Hopefully it didn't pop the lids off the dewars ...

http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/1016jets16-ON.html

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End of CryoNet Digest
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