I reached the chapter on criticisms in Ray's book, read through a few sections, and came to the assumption I understood very little of what I had read. So, I just stopped. That is a debate that belongs to Ray and the critics. I would as soon deal with the information in the previous chapters as it applies to me and the future of me.

I read some reviews of the companion book, Fantastic Voyage, from Amazon.com. Lots of raves, which I had expected.

To me, the social phenomenon of vitamin supplements, "healthy eating," whatever that term means, goes back a few decades. Certainly these social movements are rooted in scientific understandings.

However, it is my view that, as an individual, I should undertake a scientific study of myself as as a distinct biological unit, as opposed to relying upon findings of experts, and then applying them in some kind of random, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, and hope for the best, methodology.

I am convinced that, with the publication of Fantastic Voyage, certain and specific really smart and motivated people, imbued with an entrepreneurial bent of mind, will come up products that will enable individual humans to evaluate themselves, from a hard science point of view, that ultimately will bring about longetivities in individuals beyond the current statistical norm, much less good health, with good health being defined as freedom from the ravages of age-related diseases, age-related physiological conditions.

What I find fascinating, as it pertains to media, that there is just about squat on cable or satellite TV, that focuses on the future, with a specific emphasis on just what the future will be like, and why it makes sense to do something about it, as distinct individuals.

Our choices define who we are.

I emailed the His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama with an invitation to go fishing in the Mitchell River in Surry County, NC USA.

Obviously I like the Dalai Lama.

Here is a Q&A from his website:

Question: What are your commitments?

Answer: In general, I always state that I have three commitments in life. Firstly, on the level of a human being, my first commitment is the promotion of human values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self-discipline. All human beings are the same. We all want happiness and do not want suffering. Even people who do not believe in religion recognize the importance of these human values in making their life more happier. I remain committed to talk about the importance of these human values and share them with everyone I meet. Secondly, on the level of a religious practitioner, my second commitment is the promotion of religious harmony and understanding amongst different religious traditions. Despite philosophical differences, all major world religions have the same potential to create better human beings. It is therefore important for all religious traditions to respect one another and recognize the value of each other?s respective traditions. Thirdly, I am a Tibetan and carry the name of the Dalai Lama. Tibetans place their trust in me. Therefore, my third commitment is to the Tibetan issue. I have a responsibility to act the free spokesperson of the Tibetans in their struggle for justice. As far as this third commitment, it will cease to exist once a mutually beneficial solution is reached between the Tibetans and Chinese. However, my first two commitments I will carry on till my last breath.

Not to decide, is to decide.

Translation: A fool who knows he's fool, is no great fool.

From Joseph Heller's Catch 22 and the 107-year-old man: "Anything worth dying for is worth living for."

It is this passage from Heller's novel that I most deeply understand Kurzweil's concept of the Singularity.

Faulkner was awarded the Nobel in literature in 1950. I was born in 1952. He, as Hemmingway, who said, "The solidiers in the next war return home wrapped in cellophane," deeply understood its utter and complete futilty.

His speech: feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work--a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, and victories without hope and worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

From Monksdream: Stop the war. Stop the war. Stop the war.

The Once and Future Weird Amemedment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.