I searched but did not find any discussion comparing the merits of the two major cryonics providers in the US, so I figured it might be productive to start such a discussion myself by posing the question to the community: which provider would you choose, all things being equal: Alcor or the Cryonics Institute?
From my research, Alcor comes across as the flasher, higher-end option, while CI seems more like a Mom-and-Pop operation, having only two full-time employees. Alcor also costs substantially more, with its neurosuspension option alone running ~$80k, compared with CI's whole-body preservation cost of ~$30k. While Alcor has received far more publicity than CI, much of it has been negative.... (read 428 more words →)
A sample of Alternet headlines from the front page:
The Supreme Court Is Ruled by Right-Wing Extremists -- Can the Court's Moderate Women Counteract Their Radical Bent?
Politicians Swallow Pink Slime to Prove Their Allegiance to Corporations.
Voter Suppression 101: How Conservatives Are Conspiring to Disenfranchise Millions of Americans
And, from Campaign for Change's About section:
"We live in a remarkable political moment: precarious, yet potentially transforming. At the Campaign for America’s Future, our daily work is to bring about the progressive transformation.
After three decades of conservative dominance in American politics, we Americans are threatened with economic disintegration, environmental devastation and international isolation."
When I tried to read the first article, a widget complaining about wolves caught in inhumane... (read more)
What about the work of Lera Boroditsky?
So after years of denying Sapir–Whorf, have the linguists finally admitted their error, and have they begun to back away from the strong version of their beloved Universal Grammar hypothesis?
From the first article:
"The Chomskyan school also holds the belief that linguistic structures are largely innate and that what are perceived as differences between specific languages – the knowledge acquired by learning a language – are merely surface phenomena and do not affect cognitive processes that are universal to all human beings. This theory became the dominant paradigm in American linguistics from the 1960s through the 1980s and the notion of linguistic relativity fell out of favor and became even the object of ridicule."
Thanks for your reply, Max. It does seem that Darwin is a bit harder on Alcor, but perhaps some of that is just because it's closer and more personal to him from having worked there and being signed up with them.