REGROWTH
"Science is all lies."
"It is NOT! Why would you say that?"
"Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good things about lies. What I mean is, its all fiction."
"FICTION? Have you lost it? I'm getting the men in white jackets. You need a sedative."
"Wait a minute. Just think about it. They're telling you that their current research results are making lies out of the obsolete results, right?" He swiveled on his stool in the crowded resturant as they had coffee and waited for their name to be called on the list for a table.
"Yeah, okey. So?" She seemed tense.
"So, unless they think that the current research is the last word, with no more research needed, and we're now omnicient, then they know that later research is going to make their stuff obsolete, and so, lies. Or, rather, feasibility studies."
"Feasibility studies. I like that better. Is this leading to anything?" She appeared less tense.
"Yeah. I know a guy who does it backwards. He starts with the lies and works toward the results." He sipped coffee.
"You mean he does wishful thinking and turns it into science?"
"He calls it fiction or planing. He believes we already have the basic understanding of how things work and he says his method gets him past the mental barriers that keep us from seeing HOW they work. At least part of how."
"That sounds like the Tesla technique of talking to imaginary people in an imaginary town."
Their table was ready. The conversation resumed after they ordered.
"Did Tesla talk to imaginary people? Outloud?" A joke was a good way to restart a discussion, in his experience.
"Well, I never heard whether he did it out loud. But that is what fiction is, right? Imaginary people asking and answering questions."
"Exactly. All feasibility studies are essentially imaginary people. At least, we must imagine that we know what they will do, and they may have changed significantly by the time that future activity actually happens."
"So what does your friend do feasibility studies about?"
"Mostly methods of using simple or primative technology to do what the researchers have done."
"Like what?"
"Well you know how they keep coming up with simpler demonstrations of how something in research works?"
"As a researcher I should. As a matter of fact, I recently heard that my first major research project was used for a science project. My God, can you imagine? A SCIENCE PROJECT!"
The man was silent for a moment. "Yes, the gap continually narrows between high-tech and low-tech. Its faster for some fields than others. But imagine the advantages. Suppose you could stretch your research grants by 100 to 1000 times by getting equipment designs that were low-tech, but done by the same engineers who did your high-tech designs. You could do 100 to 1000 times the research work for the same grant money. More, if you figure later advances using the same equipment.
"Anyway, you wanted an example of what my friend has done with primative technology from research work results. Well, one I particularly liked involved that Scientific American article around 20 years ago or so where they regrow the front leg on a frog. My friend heard reports that research had been done with neural network computer circuitry simulating biological material atom by atom from magnetig resonance detector readings. Then he found two low-cost MRD system articles in an electronics engineering journal. So he used a technique from a do-it-yourself 'cookbook' for digital circuits to adjust the voltage requirements on the inputs of a circuit. All it takes is a few resistors."
"He made a neural network computer?"
"Well, the training stage required variable resistors, but a tailored, home-made graphite resistor does nicely if you are done with the learning."
"Impressive. How did he use it with the frog."
"Instead of the nerve-trunk displacement from the back leg to regrow the front leg, he stretched the short nerve and trained a neural net to monitor the electrical impulses from each place and transmit them to the other, along with monitoring brain waves, getting the same end result; a limb regrowth."
"No joke? Can he do this with higher life forms?"
"Well, actually, yes. But he has to train on an actual nerve-trunk displacement, and the animal has to be kept comatose."
"Has he done this on a human?"
"No, only a chimpanzee. One from the zoo escaped and had an accident, and he was a friend of the vet."
The meal was nearly over. Coffee made an acceptable dessert.
"How long did the regrowth take?"
"3 days, plus. The size increase has to finish before the calcium and minerals deposit or else growth slows."
"Could it speeded up?"
"My friend thinks so. His feasibility studies indicate that a mild acidic condition at the end of the time period would average the minerals from the other bones."
"Have you considered colloidal minerals after rejuvenating the digestion?"
"You mean with human growth hormones injections, or megadoses of Beta Carotene? No, but I'll mention it to him."
The bill was paid and they were outside.
"Has your friend done anything else that good?"
"You mean anything else with immortality potential? Does your year-of-birth make you nervous? Forty-nine is not all that bad."
"Thirty-nine to you, mister. But, yeah, immortality potential, that's what I was thinking."
"A few things. Interested in things you, personally, can use; on yourself?"
"Maybe. You don't know of anything like that, then."
"Oh, sure. He's done half-a-brain regrowth, external-energy nanite-substitutes, cylindrical space warps, half-a-limb transplants, holographic control of nucleus-free-cells, shape shifting, frozen-time pocket universes...

Hey, folks, we're not getting any e-mail feedback (3/17/99).
Can you get a free, annonymous ("private-name") e-mail address if you don't want the government putting you in their files? Some college libraries (or...?) have anonmyous terminals.
You could send me Longevity S.F. plots, and I could write them up and publish them on the internet. Like a Ghostwriter. (Hey, yeah...)
You could even get your free Website for that. I could set it up for you. Or I could teach you how.

~ ~ ~ Lou[email protected] ~ ~ ~

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