That glitch wasn't digital....It was the shape-shifting capabilities of one of many races of alien life amoung us...

Oh and, cheesy creepy facial reconstruction crapola....reads on the psyche like a wanted poster in a post office. MSNBC ya suck.

I have very mixed feelings about it.

First of all, I do not intend to criticize the OP(s) for being "members" of alcor.

It is a VERY cool idea and I would do it in a HEARTBEAT if I was a bit more confident in their science.

The way I understand it is that yes, there are organisms that can survive being frozen and then reanimated in either simple or complex ways. That said, I do not believe that human beings are built to make this probable.

The questions are ones of time, money, and science. Science right now CANNOT do this. The methods by which Alcor (and the other place) are "preserving" bodies has not been proven to encourage a non-existent procedure of reanimation.

This technology will not be available for a LONG time, if ever. I don't believe it is impossible, but I believe it is the sort of thing which would come FAR in advance of where our medical science is now. I believe that the science involved would have to not only have to unfreeze but reverse certain aspects of decomposition that happen WAY too fast for this to be possible. Unless you are being frozen almost instantly while still alive, which I do not believe is legal since it would be tantamount to euthanasia. So in my mind, we are talking about advanced techniques of cell manipulation and reconstruction which don't remotely exist. This brings me to

Will Alcor still exist in 300-1000 years? What provisions are being made for this?

I hate to say it, but I think the partial answer lies in Alcor's profits. I doubt they would ever release their financial statements, but you can probably tell a LOT by what their financial situation is.

If Alcor is actually legit, and not just to separate the future-minded person with expendable income from their money, they won't exist for long. The money involved in keeping these bodies in suspended animation for hundreds of years will not allow them to stay in business forever and eventually the plug will be pulled on these tubes and that will be that.

That's the best case scenario.

The worse case scenario is that this is a scam. They probably know damned well that they are banking on solutions that don't (and probably won't) exist in their own lifetimes. Therefore they charge money to people who like the idea, enjoy their Ferraris and dump the bodies in about 50 years when there are no living relatives so the inheritors of Alcor can continue the business. Another clue: their staff is volunteer based with little to no medical background... yeah.

I know I'm being a bit pessimistic, but it is very much akin to UFOs... there are lots of people that believe in UFOs and there are lots of people who make product for those who believe in UFOs. Some of them also believe in UFOs, but I suspect a vast majority see a market that is booming and money to be made. Whenever someone is trying to sell you something, you know that they know it is bullshit.

It is like all the 2012 hysteria. Why am I seeing commercials for SUVs and McDonald's tie-ins for a movie about the end of the world? Why do we have major corporations sponsoring shows on the Discovery channel "analyzing" the Mayan predictions about the last few years we have left? Money... it's always about selling me something.

But seriously, I really don't mean to be a debbie downer about this, but it is just a flash in the pan. I just really hope that you aren't spending money that could be better spent elsewhere.

Finally, I REALLY question the idea of preserving just the head. All I can think of is this scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oL7XP0ROvk

Skip to 2:12

Sweet dramatic reconstruction 0:44

From Google: Filmed over three years, the documentary follows Helen Steel and Dave Morris as they are transformed from anonymous campaigners against the fast food giant into unlikely global heroes. Struggling to defend themselves in the longest trial in English history, the pair face infiltration by spies, secret meetings with corporate executives, 40,000 pages of background reading and a visit from Ronald McDonald. Using interviews with witnesses and reconstructions of key moments in court, the film examines the main issues of the trial - nutrition, animals, advertising, employment, the environment - and the implications for freedom of speech.

[redacted]

um...can anybody verify that this is legit? The desert reconstruction set off my bullshit meter.

Photosynth doesn't do this for you because it simply doesn't extract the necessary information. Its internal representation is point clouds. The mapping from point clouds to surfaces is non-trivial (and while it sort of worked in this video, not exactly -- you can see the z-fighting from redundant, overlapped surface reconstructions).

There is research from the same team that made Photosynth (Noah Snavely, Steve Seitz, Rick Szeliski, many others from U Wash.) dealing with explicit surface reconstruction from unorganized photo collections:
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/mvscpc/

But they don't have source code available as far as I can see. You could always try to ask

>> ^scottishmartialarts:
Mithras was a Persian god, not Roman. Although his mystery cult was very, very popular among the Roman Legions. Wherever we have evidence of a Legion presence, we also find evidence of Mithras cult. As I recall Mithras was Ahura Mazda's (the infinitely good god of the Zoroastrian faith) general in his crusade against the devil Ahriman. Darius the Great's conquests were largely motivated out of missionary zeal to spread the Zoroastrian religion.


Well, Mithra was the Persian name. Adding the "s" on the end was just how it was Latinized. But the Roman Mithraic cult doesn't, as far as scholars can tell, have much in common with the Persian cult beyond the name and a few elements of symbolism--a lion-headed "Arrimanus," for instance, a clear Latinization of Ahriman. It's perfectly acceptable to refer to the Roman version of Mithras as a Roman god.

It has to be said, though, that Fry's facts about Mithras are just wrong. In the first place, we don't actually know what the central beliefs about Mithras were. They were Mysteries, not be written down or revealed to outsiders. The doctrines of Mithraism perished with its last follower. Reconstructions of Mithraic doctrine like the ones Fry read are merely speculative interpretations of the images found in the Mithraea--the caves where the Mysteries of Mithras were enacted.

However, some of the things Fry said are just plain wrong even as mere speculation. Mithras is never depicted as being born in a cave or manger, for instance, but emerging from a rock or an egg. He didn't die for anyone's sins or to give people eternal life. The central image of Mithras was instead the tauroctony--Mithras' slaying of a bull, usually assisted by a dog, a serpent, and a crab, clearly astrological symbolism. While there are a few superficial similarities with Christianity--as Fry mentioned, the head of the cult of Mithras was called Papa, just as the Pope is--they do not seem to go very deep.

And finally, it would be very strange for the December 25th date of Christmas to come from the cult of Mithras simply because it was a private mystery religion. Public celebrations just weren't allowed.

However, I'm a little surprised that Fry didn't mention Dies Natalis Solis Invicti--the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. It was celebrated in the late Roman Empire around the same time as Christmas as a public holiday, and so is a prime candidate for being an influence on the date of Christmas.

His quick dismissal of Saturnalia as being only somewhat influential, though, is just plain wrong. Many of the traditions of Christmas clearly come out of Saturnalia--gift-giving, visiting friends, and lavish feasts and celebrations. Many elements of Northern European Christmas celebrations just as clearly come from the pagan holiday "Jol" or "Yule," such as hanging mistletoe as a sign of peace and love, and the ornamenting of an evergreen tree.

His defense of hide the decline is pathetic. The entire thing about Jones and Mann's work is the matching of proxy data like tree rings to the measured temperature record. I can't find the full text of the email anywhere, but if the quote is referring to hiding a decline in temperature reconstructions from tree-rings, then it clearly is a major problem. The reason being that Jones and Mann's most famous contribution to climate study is the hockey stick graph, showing that based on proxy data, like TREE RINGS, the temperatures from 1000 through 1900 show stable temperatures, and from 1900 through to today temperature increasing like never before in the last one thousand years.

Wait you'll say, if that was true it should've been evident in the original study for all to see. The answer is that it in fact is. If you go look at the studies by Jones and Mann on their hockey stick graph, their appendix will link you to graphs of the raw proxy data, including tree rings, that they used. It is plain to see that the proxy data does not change AT ALL after 1900, yet somehow the reconstruction that is made with that data spikes up like mad at that point. The paper and email reference in essence the same thing, the use of the measured temperature record to calibrate select years of the proxy data to get a better result. It's not without reason that there has been a lot of questioning of the statistical methods used to create their reconstruction. In 10 years time this will be a foot note.

Thanks for the boost, Dag!

In reply to this comment by dag:
That was amazing. I recommend full-screen and HD mode. I have never seen the transcript of the off-radio conversation between the pilots. *quality.

Your video, Flight 1549 Computer Reconstruction., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Apparently some flocks are visible on the radar! I've never heard of this before, but the team that put together the computer reconstruction discuss it on their page: http://www.exosphere3d.com/pubwww/pages/project_gallery/cactus_1549_hudson_river.html

Information overload on that page!

I am really surprised how impressive this video is. It's close enough to real, and of course we all know it's a true story, that it really brings home how fast and terrifying that must have been.

Another version with slightly different info is here: http://www.videosift.com/video/Flight-1549-Computer-Reconstruction-more-detail

"In God We Trust" predates the Red Scare by a long time. It was suggested during the Civil War as a way to indicate to future generations that despite the country being "shattered beyond reconstruction", no, we were not a "heathen nation."

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust for the text of the letter making that suggestion.

Not quite related, but it strikes me as funny that the pagan goddess, Libertas, gets so much stage time along side "In God We Trust" given that whole First Commandment (Second in Judaism) deal.

You are quite welcome to interject yourself in the situation with rachel, since besides me and her, you are the most involved in that. I don't think you should do it with the other situation, since you both have no business doing it, and because you cannot have all the facts - even if I and all the rest of the people who were there retell it to the best of our knowledge, you won't have all the facts of that.

I blame it mostly on that incident and bea's lies (which they are) since it clearly culminated whatever had been brewing. What was brewing in the mean time between me and rae, which I was completely oblivious of, is both my own and rae's fault. I was just doing what I had always done for the last fucking year with her, which she seemed to have fun with until after texas (or some time before that, when she got all silent). We are both to blame for that part, me with my incessant messages (don't friends message each other much!?) and her with condoning it until she changed her mind and hated it.

"With all the things you admitted to doing"
1 thing - groping ivy. That's all I've admitted to about what happened in Texas and that is the extent of inappropriateness there were. I've apologized to ivy for it and, for me anyway, that part is over. I expect it to be a done deal for her as well. Nothing else happened while I was there. As I've explained, quite a few times now, the situation we were in did make it less of a big deal - it wasn't completely out of the blue, it wasn't malicious. It was just stupid. To say that "Truth is, you were lucky to escape Texas without any facial reconstruction being needed afterwards." is just bullshit. It's not like I fucking raped her. And again, you were not there, so you're not getting the full picture.

I don't want to drag you into this either, and I'm sorry that you've been dragged into it. But Rasch is not a good friend, he's a complete ass who can't keep his mouth shut and his nose out of other people's business. I feel sorry for you guys if you do consider him a friend.

I'm not just trying to "save face", I'm trying to get rasch to admit that he was in the wrong - maybe knock just a little bit of sense into the fucker. He was ENTIRELY in the wrong in that thread and I'm calling on his bullshit. If it had been rae herself that had posted that, or you perhaps, then I would have been even more baffled, but understanding - if she had posted that in a PM to me, then the entire thing would have gone quite a lot better for all involved.

From Rachel, I had expected at least some form of explanation for why she didn't want to talk. It came out of the blue for me, and since I did consider her a friend, it shocked me when she wrote the "want to get out of the bullshit" PM. I considered her a friend and I thought she did the same with me, so I think she at least owed me that - but as I've said to you privately, what I think I deserve and what others think I deserve are not necessarily the same, so if she didn't feel she owed me an explanation that was that. This was the sole purpose of my messages after she wrote that, because I'm not antagonistic and hate having people not like me, so I tried my damnedest to get her to talk to me, so I could at least walk away knowing what had happened.

I think rachel and I had a good talk on messenger after that whole thing blew up, but I still feel bad the way it turned out. Both for you, for rachel, for cari and for myself. I do not feel sorry for peggedbea and I certainly do not feel sorry for rasch.

In fact, rasch should go the way of the do-do and die out. He deserves all the scorn he gets. He is not "a man of his convictions" he's a witch-hunter, he didn't back you all up, he put himself in the fucking driver's seat and tried to run me over. He should be ashamed of himself far more than I should be ashamed of what I've ever done. When he leaves this site, and hopefully this earth, I will dance a merry jig.

Take care, Jake.

In reply to this comment by evil_disco_man:
Would it be my place to put myself between "other people" when I DO know what was going on? I think so. Doesn't a "shorthanded dismissal" count as "telling you properly"? What more did you need? A five-page essay on why she wanted to stop talking to you? It's hilarious that you blame it all on one incident (accusing peggedbea of being a liar), when it was a culimination of things over time.

You know, with all the things you admitted to doing, which includes groping a married woman, I'd think you would be more humble about it. Truth is, you were lucky to escape Texas without any facial reconstruction being needed afterwards.

Watch what you say. I don't like being brought into this bullshit, but I hate to see a good friend like rasch being placed on the stakes - and when you drag up AC's name, I will inevitably follow. I've told you privately why I had problems with how you handled your "relationship" with Rachel, and I'd rather you not carry it on for the sole purpose of saving face.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
If you are referring to the way me and alien_concept talked to each other, that is none of your business. You don't understand the "relationship" we had - I only ever reciprocated all that talk, if she didn't want it anymore, she could have told me properly, instead of the shorthanded dismissal thing she sent me. It is not your place to put yourself between other people when you don't know what's going on; it's the same that happened with obsidianfire. Maybe you should burn out too, because your presence isn't welcome or appreciated anymore.