Stapes

immortality already exist dude!!! it's all about freeing yourself from the body and joining your spirit to the infinate life force brah.!

Follow Up

HEADLINE NEWS February 14, 2005

Wal-Mart Canada places ad in Quebec newspapers to vaunt strength of employees

February 14, 2005 - 13:09

MONTREAL (CP) - Wal-Mart Canada took out a full-page ad in several Quebec newspapers Monday, telling its employees they are the "cornerstone" of the company.

The retail giant's move came after its decision last week to close a Quebec store where unionized employees were seeking a first collective agreement.

The company said the store is not profitable but the announcement triggered allegations of union-busting against the U.S.-based company.

Employees at the store in Saguenay, about 250 kilometres north of Quebec City, were awarded union status last summer

Since then, employees at a Wal-Mart store east of Montreal have also been accredited but do not have a contract either.

Wal-Mart's ad says the company has found the last few days "very trying" and seeks to reassure its employees they are its "biggest strength."

"Never let anyone or the Media tell you otherwise," the statement reads.

"You represent the cornerstone of our organization and we believe it is a privilege to have such an exceptional team."

The union representing the 190 employees at the Saguenay store blasted the ad, saying it is insulting to talk about the company finding the last few days hard when workers are losing their job.

"They've been threatening this closure ever since we got the accreditation," said union spokeswoman Marie-Josee Lemieux.

"How can they now say they (employees) are its biggest strength?

"Quebec isn't the Far West where the cowboy with the biggest revolver can do what he wants."

Inventor Kurzweil Aiming to Live Forever

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.

As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity." Adjustments are made as needed.

"I do actually fine-tune my programming," he said.

The famed inventor and computer scientist is serious about his health because if it fails him he might not live long enough to see humanity achieve immortality, a seismic development he predicts in his new book is no more than 20 years away.

It's a blink of an eye in history, but long enough for the 56-year-old Kurzweil to pay close heed to his fitness. He urges others to do the same in "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever."

The book is partly a health guide so people can live to benefit from a coming explosion in technology he predicts will make infinite life spans possible.

Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots," that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded via the Internet. We won't even need a heart.

The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. He's a recipient of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize, which is billed as a sort of Academy Award for inventors, and he won the 1999 National Medal of Technology Award. He has written on the emergence of intelligent machines in publications ranging from Wired to Time magazine. The Christian Science Monitor has called him a "modern Edison." He was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. Perhaps the MIT graduate's most famous inventions is the first reading machine for the blind that could read any typeface.

During a recent interview in his company offices, Kurzweil sipped green tea and spoke of humanity's coming immortality as if it's as good as done. He sees human intelligence not only conquering its biological limits, including death, but completely mastering the natural world.

"In my view, we are not another animal, subject to nature's whim," he said.

Critics say Kurzweil's predictions of immortality are wild fantasies based on unjustifiable leaps from current technology.

"I'm not calling Ray a quack, but I am calling his message about immortality in line with the claims of other quacks that are out there." said Thomas Perls, a Boston University aging specialist who studies the genetics of centenarians.

Sherwin Nuland, a bioethics professor at Yale University's School of Medicine, calls Kurzweil a "genius" but also says he's a product of a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with their longevity.

"They've forgotten they're acting on the basic biological fear of death and extinction, and it distorts their rational approach to the human condition," Nuland said.

Kurzweil says his critics often fail to appreciate the exponential nature of technological advance, with knowledge doubling year by year so that amazing progress eventually occurs in short periods.

His predictions, Kurzweil said, are based on carefully constructed scientific models that have proven accurate. For instance, in his 1990 book, "The Age of Intelligent Machines," Kurzweil predicted the development of a worldwide computer network and of a computer that could beat a chess champion.

"It's not just guesses," he said. "There's a methodology to this."

Kurzweil's been thinking big ever since he was little. At age 8, he developed a miniature theater in which a robotic device moved the scenery. By 16, the Queens, N.Y., native built his own computer and programmed it to compose original melodies.

His interest in health developed out of concern about his own future. Kurzweil's grandfather and father suffered from heart disease, his father dying when Kurzweil was 22. Kurzweil was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his mid-30s.

After insulin treatments were ineffective, Kurzweil devised his own solution, including a drastic cut in fat consumption, allowing him to control his diabetes without insulin.

His rigorous health regimen is not excessive, just effective, he says, adding that his worst sickness in the last several years has been mild nasal congestion.

In the past decade, Kurzweil's interests in technology and health sciences have merged as scientists have discovered similarities.

"All the genes we have, the 20,000 to 30,000 genes, are little software programs," Kurzweil said.

In his latest book, Kurzweil defines what he calls his three bridges to immortality. The "First Bridge" is the health regimen he describes with co-author Dr. Terry Grossman to keep people fit enough to cross the "Second Bridge," a biotechnological revolution.

Kurzweil writes that humanity is on the verge of controlling how genes express themselves and ultimately changing the genes. With such technology, humanity could block disease-causing genes and introduce new ones that would slow or stop the aging process.

The "Third Bridge" is the nanotechnology and artificial intelligence revolution, which Kurzweil predicts will deliver the nanobots that work like repaving crews in our bloodstreams and brains. These intelligent machines will destroy disease, rebuild organs and obliterate known limits on human intelligence, he believes.

Immortality would leave little standing in current society, in which the inevitability of death is foundational to everything from religion to retirement planning. The planet's natural resources would be greatly stressed, and the social order shaken.

Kurzweil says he believes new technology will emerge to meet increasing human needs. And he said society will be able to control the advances he predicts as long as it makes decisions openly and democratically, without excessive government interference.

But there are no guarantees, he adds.

Meanwhile, Kurzweil refuses to concede the inevitably of his own death, even if science doesn't advance as quickly as he predicts.

"Death is a tragedy," a process of suffering that rids the world of its most tested, experienced members - people whose contributions to science and the arts could only multiply with agelessness, he said.

Kurzweil said he's no "cheerleader" for unlimited scientific progress and added he knows science can't answer questions about why eternal lives are worth living. That's left for philosophers and theologians, he said.

But to him there's no question of huge advances in things that make life worth living, such as art, cultural, music and science.

"Biological evolution passed the baton of progress to human cultural and technological development," he said.

Lee Silver, a Princeton biologist, said he'd love to believe in the future as Kurzweil sees it, but the problem is, humans are involved.

The instinct to preserve individuality, and to gain advantage for yourself and children, would survive any breakthrough into biological immortality - which Silver doesn't think is possible. The gap between the haves and have-nots would widen and Kurzweil's vision of a united humanity would become ever more elusive, he said.

"I think it would require a change in human nature," Silver said, "and I don't think people want to do that."

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

Here's a pic

Some Valintines day Trivia

About three percent of pet owners give Valentine's Day gifts to their pets.

One-third of all Valentine's Day cards are accompanied by gifts.

Hallmark has more than 1,330 different cards specifically for Valentine's Day.

About one quarter of Valentine's Day cards have humorous messages.

American women say they'd rather receive chocolate than flowers on Valentine's Day.

Teachers will receive the most Valentine's Day cards, followed by children, mothers, wives, and sweethearts.

About one billion Valentine's Day cards are exchanged each year. The holiday is second only to Christmas in terms of the number of cards sent.

The celebration of Valentine's Day can be traced to the ancient Roman holiday of the Lupercal, which honored Lupercus the Lycaean, who protected flocks of sheep from wolves.

Seventy percent of those celebrating Valentine's Day show their affection by giving a card. Others make a telephone call (49 percent), give a gift (48 percent), plan a special dinner (37 percent), give candy (33 percent), have a meal in a restaurant (30 percent), or give flowers (19 percent).

Pope Gelasius declared February 14 to be Saint Valentine's Day in 498 A.D.

Richard Cadbury invented the first Valentine's Day candy box in the late 1800s.

The Italian city of Verona, where Shakespeare's lovers Romeo and Juliet lived, receives about 1,000 letters addressed to Juliet every Valentine's Day.

The Chocolate Manufacturers Association of America says 36 million boxes of chocolate are sold for Valentine's Day.

About 110 million roses, most of them red, will be sold for Valentine's Day this year.

Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on the telephone, an "improvement in telegraphy," on Valentine's Day, 1876.

Valentine's Day was originally associated with the mating season of birds.

Fifteen percent of women in the United States send themselves flowers on Valentine's Day.

During Abraham Lincoln's campaign for President, a Democrat named Valentine Tapley swore he would never shave again if Abe were elected. Tapley kept his word and his chin whiskers went unshaved from November 1860 until he died in 1910, attaining a length of 12 feet six inches.

Americans spend $655 million each Valentine's Day on candy, making it the fourth biggest holiday of the year for confectionery purchases, after Halloween, Christmas and Easter (in that order).

In the U.S., it's estimated that 64 percent of men do not make plans in advance for Valentine's Day.

During Victorian times, it was considered bad luck to sign a Valentine's Day card.

Eighty percent of all Valentine cards are purchased for relatives.

You are Beast!

You are brilliant and extremely clever. You can

handle almost any problem swiftly and

efficiently. You are devoted to philosophy and

are always up for a good discussion.

Sometimes, though, your anger gets the best of

you and you upset those whom you care about.

Which X-Men character are you most like?

brought to you by Quizilla

Memo warned of Al Qaeda

Clarke wrote to Rice of threat in January 2001

By JoAnne Allen, Reuters | February 12, 2005

WASHINGTON -- A memo warned the White House at the start of the Bush administration that Al Qaeda represented a threat throughout the Islamic world, a warning that critics said went unheeded by President Bush until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The newly released memo, dated Jan. 25, 2001 -- five days after Bush took office -- was an essential feature of last year's hearings into intelligence failures before the attacks in New York and Washington. A copy of the document was posted on the National Security Archive website yesterday.

The memo, from former counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke to Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser at the time, had been described during the hearings, but its full contents had not been disclosed.

Clarke, a holdover from the Clinton administration, had requested an immediate meeting of top national security officials as soon as possible after Bush took office to discuss combating Al Qaeda. He described the network as a threat with broad reach.

''Al Qaeda affects centrally our policies on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia, North Africa, and the [Gulf Arab states]. Leaders in Jordan and Saudi Arabia see Al Qaeda as a direct threat to them," Clarke wrote.

''The strength of the network of organizations limits the scope of support friendly Arab regimes can give to a range of US policies, including Iraq policy and the [israeli-Palestinian] peace process. We would make a major error if we underestimated the challenge Al Qaeda poses."

The memo also warned of overestimating the stability of moderate regional allies threatened by Al Qaeda.

It recommended that the new administration urgently discuss the Al Qaeda network, including the magnitude of the threat it posed and strategy for dealing with it.

Rice has maintained that she never received any specific warning of an attack by the terrorist organization run by Osama bin Laden. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said yesterday the newly released document does not alter the administration's view that it had no specific information on a potential attack and that it was not offered a concrete plan to avert an attack.

The document was declassified April 7, 2004, a day before Rice's testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. It was released recently by the National Security Council to the National Security Archive, a private library of declassified US documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The meeting on Al Qaeda requested by Clarke did not take place until Sept. 4, 2001.

Heady Silver Lining

Touch of grey

Stapes, what's a gil?

Wouldn't you like to know

One more...

I like these ones

Is that where that expression come from?

I've noticed gils saying that more and more over the last couple months and has been bugging the sh!t out of me.

I thought it was just an annoying coincidence.

Since it's year of the cock...

CLICK HERE for the rest of the sight

Thanks for the review.

Looks like an amazing trip.

Crackdown on cannabis cow fodder

The hemp tree is part of the cannabis species

Farmers in Liechtenstein can no longer feed cannabis to their herds under new rules in the small Alpine state.

Traces of the drug found in hashish have been filtering through to the milk of dairy cows fed with the hemp plant.

The levels breach the maximum limit set by the new rules - which say animal feed must be free of any element that could have an ill effect on humans.

The rules to be introduced in March are to bring Liechtenstein in line with standards in neighbouring Switzerland.

Hemp will also be banned from the diets of meat herds, although reports say there is no clear evidence that THC - the active substance found in hashish - can filter through into meat.

The hemp tree is part of the cannabis species, which includes marijuana plants.

BBC link

I think you know me well enough, so I will leave you with this:

Hilarious ::

"stretch out with your feelings"

Happy Birthday.

It was nice putting a face to the name.

Have a good one.

In the Year 2000

Cool link Paisly

RIP