An extraordinarily good article (definately one of my top ten favorites
this year) on everything pertaining to life extension. A good summary is
made of the arguments for and against it, the various biological basis for
aging, and the upcoming treatments to help slow or even reverse the aging
process. Were are privy to a minuscule sample of the universe, limited to
our pale blue dot in an infinite sky of unkown for a comparitively infinite
short period of time. The Earth holds beautiful sights enough to keep one
busy for a lifetime, untold wonders await us in new worlds in new parts of
the universe that could keep one busy for millenia. One could spend
lifetimes studying everything and anything that makes it wonderfull to be
alive and to be human, you could learn to play every instrument, learn to
actually make the instruments, learn every type of dance, see every movie,
and read every book, spend lifetimes with our friends and loved ones.... the
possibilities are virtually unlimited. Stick around a little longer and we
may see practicaly immortality in a 20 - 50 years. - Matus
Forever Young

The new scientific search for immortality

http://www.reason.com/0208/fe.rb.forever.shtml

By Ronald Bailey

The End Is Nigh, Again

from - http://reason.com/rb/rb062602.shtml

"Environmentalists insist that humanity really has overshot the earth's
carrying capacity this time.

By Ronald Bailey

The United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development is coming up at the end
of August, so expect to see a spate of news stories warning that humanity is
on an unsustainable economic path. To bolster this notion, environmentalists
are positioning their views to make it easy for the press to echo them.

In an article published this week by the prestigious journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, a group of environmentalists led by Mathis
Wackernagel of Redefining Progress claim that human consumption and waste
production have overshot the earth's capacity to create new resources and
absorb waste. They calculate that "humanity's load corresponded to 70% of
the biosphere's capacity in 1961," and "this percentage grew to 120% in
1999." They explain that "20% overshoot means that it would require 1.2
earths, or one earth 1.2 years, to regenerate what humanity used in 1999."

Such worries about overpopulation and resource scarcity have a long history.
The Roman writer Tertullian warned in 200 A.D. that "we men have actually
become a burden to the earth" and that "the fruits of nature hardly suffice
to support us." In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus published An Essay on
the Principle of Population, in which he claimed that population growth
would always outstrip food supplies, inevitably resulting in famine,
pestilence, and war. Biologist Paul Ehrlich notoriously updated Malthus'
gloomy predictions in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, which predicted
that hundreds of millions of people would die of famine in the 1970s.

Well, are the alarmists right this time around? Is the end finally nigh? No."

Read on, excellent article. - Matus

Here is a survey I came across recently on America and its values. This is an article on its findings and some critique of the survery itself. This particular survey of US college students found some interesting points of view. - Matus
salient points...

70-79 percent disagreed that the American values were superior to those of other nations

U.S. war in Afghanistan - 62.9 percent agreed that it was 'moral' and 72.2 percent called it 'just'

Meanwhile, 70-79 percent disagreed that the American values were superior to those of other nations

Respondents overwhelmingly agreed (83.2 percent) that there "is good and there is evil" and there "is right and there is wrong." While not ready to declare American/Western culture and values to be superior, 62.6 percent of respondents agreed that "Despite its flaws, the United States is the best country in the world."

35.7 percent of the students were Catholic, and 11 percent were either
fundamentalist or born-again Protestants. That might help explain the most perplexing part of the poll. When asked "which do you think is a bigger threat to the United States," 36.1 percent of respondents chose Islam and 41.4 percent chose ... Godless communism?

6- The kids are all wrong?
----------
America's Future Foundation
by Howard Fienberg
"[O]nly 34.3 percent of students would be willing to serve
anywhere if they were drafted into the military, while 20.7
percent would serve only in the U.S. and 37 percent would find
some way to evade the draft no matter what. Meanwhile, 70-79
percent disagreed that the American values were superior to
those of other nations." (07/02)

http://www.americasfuture.org/viewBrainwash.cfm?pubid=142

(On the same note of the values of the western world not being superior to
islamic culture this report attempts to quantify measurments of freedom,
such as liberties, political rights, freedom of press, etc, and it found the
Arab world finished dead last. The study was performed by a team of Arab
Scholars - Matus)

15- Deficits in the Arab world
----------
Empower America
by Jack Kemp
Ranking countries on a widely used freedom index that encompasses
civil liberties, political rights, freedom of the press and
government accountability, the Arab world finished dead last.

http://www.empoweramerica.org/stories/storyReader$561

Deficits in the Arab world

(One of my favorite authors, evolutionary biologist and science popularizer
Matt Ridley writes in Scientific American about his journey creating his own
crop circles. "The whole episode taught me two important lessons" He said
"First, treat all experts with skepticism and look out for their vested
interests--many cerealogists made a pot of money from writing books and
leading weeklong tours of crop circles, some costing more than $2,000 a
person. Second, never underestimate the gullibility of the media. Even the
Wall Street Journal published articles that failed to take the man-made
explanation seriously." - Matus)
August 2002 issue
Crop Circle Confession

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00038B16-ED5F-1D29-97CA809EC588EE
DF

How to get the wheat down in the dead of night
By Matt Ridley

(A superbly written article on the differences between a 'sickness' and a
'crime' I highly recommend taking the time to read it. - Matus)
Excerpts -

"Crimes are acts we commit. Diseases are biological processes that happen to
our bodies. Mixing these two concepts by defining behaviors we disapprove of
as diseases is a bottomless source of confusion and corruption."

"But that doesn't matter, because the purpose of such a pseudomedical claim
is to excuse the actor of moral and legal responsibility. "

"Saying that a priest who takes sexual advantage of a child entrusted to his
care "suffers from pedophilia" implies that there is something wrong with
his sexual functioning, just as saying that he suffers from pernicious
anemia implies that there something wrong with the functioning of his
hematopoietic system. If that were the issue, it would be his problem, not
ours. Our problem is that there is something wrong with him as a moral
agent. We ought to focus on his immorality, and forget about his sexuality"

Sins of the Fathers

http://reason.com/0208/fe.ts.sins.shtml

Is child molestation a sickness or a crime?

By Thomas Szasz

(All, this is an article by science author Ben Bova mainly pertaining to the
upcoming film 'Signs' with Mel Gibson but touching on diverse topics as
'anxiety news' (the tendance for news stories to tell only things that
increase our anxiety), ancient alien civilizations and Nuclear power plants,
a good read - Mike)

Ben Bova: The truth is out there ... but not as far as some would like us to
think

http://www.naplesnews.com/02/07/perspective/d800617a.htm