IMMORTALITY

Well -- it's that time of year in Delhirium when all normal people turn their thoughts to the warm and wonderful subject of ... mortality! Yep. The end of the monsoon, that period between the rains and winter, when the atmosphere is soupier than the water in which naive young frogs get boiled to death*(*okay, so you don't know what I'm referring to? It's that old cautionary tale in which you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water and watch it jump right out. But throw it into a pot with room temperature water, then slowly turn up the heat and ... it'll get cooked before it can save itself)(side note: lab experiments have apparently disproved this rather cruel story).

SOoooo okay. Back to mortality. Or, as it turns out, IMmortality. There's a book with this catchy title -- HOW TO LIVE FOREVER OR DIE TRYING by Bryan Appleyard -- which suggests that immortality may not be such a far-fetched idea after all. This review from TIMES ONLINE is what got me thinking that I'd like to read the book.

NOT because I especially want to live forever. But then again ... maybe I'm just saying that coz I KNOW I won't? I mean, the methods discussed in the book are not likely to be available to people of my age and decrepitude but (according to the book's author) there may already be people alive now who will become eligible for the use of new technologies which will enable them to ward off death indefinitely. They wouldn't be immortal in the mystical sense -- i.e., a falling grand piano would put an end to their days as thoroughly as it would anyone else's days -- but at least they would not be succumbing to mere old age 'n' tumours.

I must say, it would be rather horrid to be living alongside jerks who, when you say something like "Well ... after all, all things come to an end .." can riposte with, SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, MICROBE!

But really: can you imagine what it might be like to live for ...oh ... 1000 years? One major casualty, it seems to me, would be temporal vows and promises. I mean, who would want to swear Eternal Love if there was the slightest chance a relationship would really last for more than 50 or 60 years? Imagine being stuck with the same spouse for 10 times the normal life span! Yow.

Diamonds would no longer be anyone's best friend ...

You have just read the article entitled IMMORTALITY. Please read the article from Yes Certaintly About https://yescertaintly.blogspot.com/2007/08/immortality.html