From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Fri Aug 24 2001 - 18:03:44 MDT
> The project IS progressing well. The Timeship is the brainchild
> of Saul Kent and his business partner Will Faloon. They are the
> founders and owners of the Life Extension Foundation, a
> multi-million dollar online health supplement company.
>
> http://www.lef.org
>
> Saul and Will are going to spend $180 million dollars of their
> own money to pay for the construction of the Timeship!! These
> men mean business. :) Somehow, I can't envision the Timeship
> being built if it were dependant on donations from us! :(
Much as I hate commenting on how anyone else spends their money, one can't
help but imagine that this $180 million would create a far greater good for
the life extension movement if it were to be used to create a foundation
with the sole goal of pushing life extension further into the mainstream.
You can look on that as seeding for more money to come back later...
That said, the LEF site claims $2 million in research grants put out each
year, AIR. These two figures seem a little out of order. If they can throw
$180 at what is essentially a symbol filled with some good tech, corpsicles
and laboratories, why can't they have thrown ten times as much at basic
research and publicity over the past few years since the FDA graded their
legal nastiness back down to merely malignant? Back seat driving on my part,
but I'm curious.
>From where I sit, the whole timeship thing carries with it an air of retreat
from the world, lock yourself up, elitism thing. Which is quite possibly a
perception that would be cured by a discussion with any of the people
involved, but there you have it: that's how it comes across to me, the
uninvolved.
So my (biased -- http://www.longevitymeme.org) frustration is that we have
an essentially fringe movement (life extension), an organization that has
made great inroads in de-fringing and making respectable at least the
health-vitamin-supplement-tweaking portion of life extension, and which then
considers the timeship project to be the best foot forward!
Until life extension is a mainstream topic -- as well known and thought
about as AIDs prevention, for example -- then so much of this work all seems
futile. In order to make rapid enough progress for most of us, we are going
to have to engineer a sea change in the way in which the world views aging.
If we don't, then we're going to be dead. Possibly frozen, but nonetheless
frozen and dead and in a society that doesn't have a whole lot of interest
in keeping us frozen, or in reviving us, if that's even possible.
So: cart before horse. Societal engineering first, then you'll have a
society willing to build as many timeships as you like.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
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