Thanks to Ulthar for your perspective on Einstein's Relatively.
Yeah Eirik, I completely forgot about ST4: The Voyage Home...they pulled a slingshot maneuver around the sun in an attempt to travel back to earth in the 20th century and collect some hump-backed whales. They needed them to save earth in their own time from a giant alien probe that was trying to make contact with the whales.
Eirik, it's interesting that you brought up cryonics (medical technology aimed at freezing and reviving people). A few nights ago I wrote a long e-mail to the Cryonics Institute that [I believe] is based in Michagan. I requested some information about the process and some of the social implications and consequences of performing the procedure. As far as time travel is concerned, it's true; cryonics is the only way to travel through time and be preserved. The problem is that no one has figured out how to revive a person that is frozen without doing a significant amount of damage to the brain and other tissues in the body. A discovery of that magnitude would be huge. Anyway, there were a couple of movies that I can think of that used the cryonics idea.
DEMOLITION MAN: You know...Stallone...Snipes...Howard Stern...futuristic movie in which Stallone (plays John Spartan) is nailed for a crime he didn't commit and gets thawed out so he can fight a new and improved Snipes (Simon Phoenix) who's out to kill Stern (Edgar Friendly). Snipes ends up rejecting his programming and goes after Stallone instead. Pretty good action movie.
FOREVER YOUNG: Kind of sad...Mel Gibson sees his girlfriend suffer what he thinks is a fatal injury and decides to get himself frozen...wakes up and eventually finds out that she lived and they end up together again in the end.
I'm sure there's a lot of movies and TV shows like this. Are they any others that stick on in anybody's mind?
LATE
You know, B0Sox, you really need to look more closely at the controls in the forum. Two tips:
1.) It is not necessary or desirable to make a new thread in an attempt to respond to something said in a given thread. When you finish reading what you want to respon to, scroll down a bit, type your responce in the space given, and click on"Post". If you want to get fancy, you can "Preview" your post.
2.) You don't need to post something 11 times in different places to get a responce. We all read the forum, and we will respond if we see fit given time. Multiple postings of the same thing - especially when you do it in several places, and start new threads with the post - only serves to irritate.
Just some friendly advice.
In responce to your post:
The original Planet of the Apes, for one. Aliens for another. I can't think of any others that used Cryogenic stasis as a means of time travel, but there have been plenty of others that used stasis as a plot device - Pitch Black, 2001, 2010, etc.
there have been plenty of others that used stasis as a plot device
Just saw (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120187/)"Spoiler" with Gary Daniels this week. Prsioners are put in stasis for years and Gary Daniels keeps trying to break out of prison to see his daughter before she dies of old age
My Grandfather worked with cryonics in the military from the '60s-'80s. Unfortunately he died while I was still too young to understand some of the stories he would tell about the experiments, and things of that nature. This is probably why the idea of cryogenics has amazed me for a good portion of my life. But being as I'm not quite a math wiz; I doubt I'll be following in his footsteps anytime soon.
Cryonics is a pipe dream..I mean they don't even have the technology to revive anyone because it damages the cells. I think they were aiming toward the science in which some frogs and fish come back after a good hard freeze. I have a feeling if they ever invent any technology in the future which someone can be preserved cryonics may not be in, and all those who were frozen will have to miss the bus.
I'm also quite concerned where religion is concerned. One has to wonder, if you truly believe that in death your soul leaves your body....what happens when your body, without the soul, thaws out? You think if you have a soul it freezes in there too?
i think not ;-)
Plus what are the consequences if technology is created where you can essentially live forever? NOBODY would be buried and dead, we'd all be shelling out the bucks so we could have a shot at being cured in the future of what we died of..or having our head put on another body or something. Isn't the world overcrowded enough? not to mention it would become an exclusive club of rich folks only, and why should they get the privelage of extended life over the rest of us? Social anarchy i tell ya....
Post Edited (01-08-04 20:30)
I have a feeling if they ever invent any technology in the future which someone can be preserved cryonics may not be in, and all those who were frozen will have to miss the bus.
I sometimes think about the idea that someday they do learn to that the people out..e.xcept...it requires some step or technique in how people are frozen that nobody thought of so...oh well..
>DEMOLITION MAN: You know...Stallone...Snipes...Howard Stern
Howard Stern??? Dennis Leary.
>I'm sure there's a lot of movies and TV shows like this. Are they any others that
>stick on in anybody's mind?
Vanilla Sky
Genesis II
Planet Earth
Various episodes of The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits etc.
>I'm also quite concerned where religion is concerned. One has to wonder, if you
>truly believe that in death your soul leaves your body....what happens when your
>body, without the soul, thaws out? You think if you have a soul it freezes in there
>too?
This was actually the subject of an episode of the Disney show So Weird; A man is awakened from cryonic suspension, but he has no emotions and refers to himself in the third person. I forget if they ever mentioned the idea of his soul having moved on, but that was clearly the intent. This was one of the second season episodes, before Disney changed the cast and turned the show into kiddie crap. If Disney or some other channel decides to air this show again, the episode to watch for is "James Garr".
Let us not forget that whole Ted Williams fiasco!
That's the latest cryonics story that was in the news that I remember.
And didn't they take his head off or something and lost it?
Anyone?
Ted Williams...as far as I know, one of his relatives had him frozen and is under litagation because it's not what Mr. Williams originally wanted. I read somewhere that genetics was an issue. Unfortunately for Ted, he's dead...usually the people that undergo the process do it because they are suffering from a fatal illness or cancer or something like that.
I don't know anything about a missing head...
As far as religion goes, I wasn't brought up with any religion so it doesn't bother me much. Considering this crap about the population rising to 50 billion is a load of BS, I would probably go for it if we developed the technology. I think a lot of interesting medical technologies are going to be discovered over the next 50 years, and I wouldn't mind being in on them.
Missing head?
LATE
Ted Williams' son had him frozen against the protests of his friends, his less direct relatives, Red Sox fans everywhere and common sense. His whole body was frozen, alhough I have read that in the place where he is stored, there are several frozen heads (it's cheaper to just freeze the head - I wish I was making this s**t up).
What will probably happen is the Cryo-scam people will milk a few millions off of people with more money than sense until such time as it becomes financially untenable to keep the bodies frozen. By that time, relatives who give a s**t will all have died off and they'll just thaw out the bodies and incinerate them. What will have the implications that Susan mentions is when they manage to deactivat the aging gene.
In my opinion, people hould just accept the fact that we all die. Compare the whining cringing millionaire who wants his head frozen so he could live forever to the guys at the Bulge or Stalingrad or the Alamo or Gettysburg who laid out everything they had for a greater cause. Or look at the firefighters on September 11th. Who the hell would choose to be the cowering jerk getting his head frozen. I forget the movie but I love the line: "Death smiles at us all - the best any man can do is smile back." (Anyone know the movie??)
>>Considering this crap about the population rising to 50 billion is a load of BS, <<
Not really, we're already overloaded and we have more medical advances that are prolonging our lives (which 100 years ago life expentancy was almost half that) - the world population is literally booming in comparison to any other age in mankind. With vaccines, cures for diseases that once took many lives we are now living to very old age. Disease exists in nature for a reason...population control. I'm all for population control by natural methods...it is the cycle of life. Plus it's a tiny planet and i don't foresee us building condo's on mars just yet.
Eirik asked, "Death smiles at us all - the best any man can do is smile back." (Anyone know the movie??)
That would be Gladiator.
Marcus Aurelius said that.
There's a problem with the idea that the population will uncontrollably rise because of medical advances and stuff of that kind. The WORLD might be able to sustain billions more, but the global economy really can't. If you put 50 billion people on this rock, a lot of people would starve to death, seeing as how we have the capability of feeding everyone, but distribution flat out sucks.
As far as Stalingrad and 9/11 and other events of the kind are concerned, I think most people would march to their deaths for a cause as worthy as the ones in which A LOT of people have lost their lives. But that doesn't mean that they didn't have a terrible fear of death itself...
I think there's a big difference between getting killed in action in the military or while doing some selfless or righteous and the anticipation of the event itself. There are also those that don't have a God or Gods, and if I were them I think I would be afraid of eternal nothingness with no conciousness too.
LATE
Terrific mid-80's tv movie starring Michael Beck as a young man who is dying from an incurable disease (or maybe it was a form of cancer? I forget), and his mother has him cryogenically frozen until such time as they can find a cure. Many years later, a power error causes hiis cryo-tube to shut down, and they're forced to thaw him out (and they also take care of his medical problem in the process).....Except he's come back to life without a soul! Very good thriller with a great ending, in which we get to see all the tubes in the cryo center starting to malfunction and shut down!