Earlier this month I drove down to Houston and attended the Veterans Day ceremony hosted by the Galveston Naval Museum. I was especially interested in touring the World War II submarine preserved there because my maternal grandfather Morris Stischer served as a U.S. Navy Fireman First Class on a submarine back in the early 1930s. By coincidence on that same road trip, I was given an old photograph of him standing between two of his fellow sailors.
Congratulations to my daughter Ada and my son-in-law Coleman on the birth of their daughter Skylar. Skylar is my second grandchild. The joke that I tell my friends is that all of that investment in my children is finally paying off.
Since 2020, I have been adding to my website Papa's Anthology of Paternal Advice (PAPA). From listening to the audiobook First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living by Richard Bode, I was inspired to go through my tips for living that I have been collecting in my notes over the last year and publish them to the PAPA website. The new updates include the following:
I recently watched the presentation "The Ark Before Noah: A Great Adventure" by Irving Finkel. When he described the extreme reaction of George Smith upon discovering that the story of Noah's Ark was an adaptation from a much older Babylonian mythology, I recalled how I had also immediately spotted the obvious similarities when I was first introduced to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Dr. Finkel has a number of other good presentations on related subjects available on YouTube.
As a youth being raised as a Southern Baptist in a city which was said to have had the most churches per capita in the Bible Belt and in which all three of the universities in town represented different shades of Christianity, I was not cognizant of world religions. The 1980 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) book Deities & Demigods, which included a section on the "Babylonian Mythos", might have been my first introduction to religions beyond Judeo-Christian. When you are first introduced to the idea that many different peoples in many different places have had many different religions over many millennia, you start to realize that your assignment to the religion that you were taught to believe in as a child is a circumstance of when and where you were born.
I remember that the late Daniel Dennett, my favorite philosopher, proposed teaching world religions in public schools. The Unitarian Universalists (UUs), which teach their children about different religions in Sunday school, recognized that their children, upon adulthood, often adopt the religion of their spouses rather than continuing on with UU. The joke about this is that when the children are taught about the different varieties of religion outside of UU, they then think that they are expected to pick one.
It is clear to me that Dennett's proposal to teach world religions in taxpayer-funded schools, if enacted, would upset many parents. My thinking on this has been influenced by my new understanding of Terror Management Theory from listening to the audiobook The Worm at the Core. By providing entertaining illustrated books about ancient myths from other cultures, parents can inoculate their children against subjugation by modern myth-based religions.
In a Christian church, deacons assist the pastor with the duties required to keep the church running. They might not be paid but their status is recognized by the honorific "Deacon".
"Beacon" might be a recognizable title for the equivalent position in a Religious Humanist or Religious Transhumanist organization. Since a beacon is a guide in the dark such as a lighthouse, this term fits nicely with the theme of the Brights, those who identify as having a naturalistic worldview free of supernatural or mystical elements.
Since 2023 October, I have been helping out with the Organs for Life website. This effort is sponsored by the non-profit Immortalist Society and championed by Joseph Kowalsky. The goal of the project is to promote the advancement of an emerging medical technology that will enable donated organs to be preserved indefinitely until needed for transplantation.
Similar to the XPRIZE, Organs for Life is offering a cash award, a CryoPrize, for a successful implementation of the organ preservation technology. As stated in the rules, this requires the successful demonstration of a cryopreservation, rewarming, and transplantation of an organ. It might not be long before the CryoPrize is awarded as many researchers have been having recent success with nanowarming.
I want to warn everyone about sulfite sensitivity. It is an allergy-like reaction to sulfites, also spelled sulphites, which are found in many foods and drinks. Sulfite sensitivity affects about one percent of the population and is more prevalent in those with asthma.
In my twenties, I quickly learned that I did not do well with drinking beer but I tended to be just fine with mixed drinks. As I got older, I started having unusually strong reactions to drinking red wine and hard cider. I was also showing symptoms after eating certain foods such as shrimp but not consistently.
In my forties, I finally figured out that the problem was caused by sulfites. Sulfites are sometimes used to preserve the coloring in foods. It is also part of the process of creating beer, hard cider, and wine.
Margaritas are generally safe for me since sulfites are not present in distilled drinks such as tequila. Once, however, I ordered a margarita at a restaurant and I started suffering the symptoms almost immediately. I later learned that the restaurant had substituted the tequila in my margarita with tequila-flavored wine because of a legal restriction on serving hard liquor in that county.
Now whenever I start to get a particular type of headache, I know to retrieve the food packaging for whatever I had just eaten. Oftentimes I will find the warning "Contains sulfites" in bold print just below the list of ingredients. Sometimes, however, I will have to scan the ingredients to find the sulfites included using one of many different terms:
I have learned to check the ingredients before I buy a new food or drink. Recently I have been disappointed to find sulfites in bottled lemon juice, canned fava beans, onion powder, and sushi. Fortunately, I am able to find brands of frozen shrimp that do not contain sulfites.
It seems odd to me that food and drink distributors knowingly add a preservative which effectively acts as a poison against one percent of their customers. I guess they assume that most of those with sulfite sensitivity both know that they have it and know to avoid consuming their products. Obviously, I wish I had learned about my sulfite sensitivity decades earlier.
At a Church of Perpetual Life discussion, Cairn Erfreuliche Idun shared something pithy with us that she had originated. She said she once ran it by B.F. Skinner and it resonated with him:
The better you understand the controls that control you,
the better you can control the controls that control you.
It made me think of the "Odyssean bargain". I read about this on the Web some years ago but when I search now I cannot find that phrase used in the same context that I remember. Here is what it might mean:
In Greek mythology, sirens are man-eating monsters that entice sailors to their deaths through alluring song. Odysseus wanted to be able to listen to the siren song without being drawn in and consumed. He achieved this by having himself bound to a mast while the rest of the crew was protected by plugging their ears with beeswax.
So what he was doing here was taking steps while he was in control to prevent self-destructive behavior later when he knew he would be out of control. I have heard that people who are addicted to a drug sometimes deliberately put themselves in a situation where they cannot possibly access the drug for many days so that they can make it through to the other side of withdrawal. An example of this might be an addict throwing away their cigarettes just before launching for a sail across the Pacific.
There is a trend where people will motivate themselves by vowing to donate funds to an organization that they hate unless they achieve a goal by a given deadline. These cases might not be Odyssean bargains because the actors are still in control, not out of control, as they are highly motivated to take steps to avoid the self-imposed negative consequences. This will not work with sailors under the siren spell nor with addicts to whom all negative consequences are secondary.
Something
else that sounds similar but is probably different is the advice that one
should not go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. If you postpone heading out until just after a meal, you are ensuring that you staying in control during the period of temptation instead of making it physically impossible to load your shopping cart with junk food. An Odyssean bargain might instead be to choose to go to a health food store where that option is not available.
The word "bargain" implies that something is freely given in exchange for something else. For the opportunity to hear the siren song, Odysseus made a conscious decision while he still had free will to restrict his freedom of movement in the future when he would not. When I was finally able to quit smoking some decades ago after being bedridden for three days, that was more of a happy accident than a bargain struck.
Update 2024-04-29
Today I discovered the Wikipedia article Ulysses pact.
W. Scott Badger, Ph.D,
is the author of the research paper "An Exploratory Survey Examining
the Familiarity with and Attitudes toward Cryonic Preservation"
published in the 1999 Q1
issue of the Alcor magazine "Cryonics". About two decades ago, he and I
were discussing the possibility of a Cryonics Community website. I
registered a domain name back then for that purpose.
Today I finally got around to launching a website using that domain name CryonicsCommunity.org. The website includes a link to a Google Groups discussion mailing list. Please join the list if you want to help shape the future of the Cryonics Community website.
I think what we originally envisioned for the website was a forum where cryonauts associated with any cryonics organization could come together to discuss the topic. I see that need being met today by the Cryosphere server on Discord. I also know that there has been some discussion on the Cryosphere about forming local Meetup groups for face-to-face meetings.
I think the new website could instead focus on a different kind of "Cryonics Community". R. Michael Perry, Ph.D, is the author of the article "A Look Back: Attempts to Establish a Cryonics Community" in the 2021 Q2 issue of "Cryonics". Dr. Perry documents previous efforts to create places where cryonauts could live together to maximize their chances of a successful suspension.
These communities could include retirement homes where members could check on each other daily such as at mealtimes. Nearby there could be a cryonics suspension and storage service, a hospice, and maybe even a transhumanist church. Ideally the communities would also be in places where cryothanasia is legal.
To support these efforts, the website could list local Meetup groups
where those interested in forming such a community could connect.
Another idea is that website members could opt into a service in which
other members would check on them if they suddenly stop logging in.
Online job listings could encourage migration.
Eventually the website might evolve into a non-profit corporation. The mission of the non-profit might include encouraging the growth of related for-profit ventures such as real estate development and monitoring services. A goal might be to establish a cryonics community in every major metropolitan area.
Congratulations to my son Thomas Edward Croft and my new daughter-in-law Katherine "Kate" Ann Pinkerton on their marriage last month.
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