DEATH and IMMORTALITY, meeting 1 (out of 2)

• Ubik (Philip K. Dick)
  • compare: News from Nepal (Victor Pelevin)
• NDE articles (a),(b) from The Lancet:
  • van Lommel et al.
  • commentary by French

not yet...

slide 2

attire, Buñuel

"... Stanton Mick perambulated towards them. He wore fuchsia pedal-pushers, pink yakfur slippers, a snakeskin sleeveless blouse, and a ribbon in his waist-length dyed white hair."

beer, Bardo

"I was dreaming," Ella said. "I saw a smoky red light, a horrible light. And yet I kept moving toward it. I couldn't stop." "Yeah," Runciter said, nodding. "The Bardo Thödol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells about that. You remember reading that; the doctors made you read it when you were —" He hesitated. "Dying," he said then.
	The best way to ask for beer is to sing out Ubik. Made from select hops, choice water, slow-aged for perfect flavor, Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland.

slide 4

MICK HITS WORLD BANK FOR TWO TRIL (AP) London. What could Stanton Mick, the reclusive, interplanetary known speculator and financier be up to? the business community asked itself as rumor leaked out of Whitehall that the dashing but peculiar industrial magnate, who once offered to build free of charge a fleet by which Israel could colonize and make fertile otherwise desert areas of Mars, had asked for and may possibly receive a staggering and unprecedented loan of "This isn't gossip," Joe Chip said to the 'pape machine. "This is speculation about financial transactions. Today I want to read about which TV star slept with whose drug-addicted wife." The 'pape machine said, "Set the dial for low gossip." He did so and a second scroll, excreted by the 'pape machine emerged; he zommed in on an excellent caricature drawing of Lola Herzburg-Wright, licked his lips with satisfaction at the naughty exposure of her entire right ear, then feasted on the text. Accosted by a cutpurse in a fancy N.Y. after-hours mowl the other night, LOLA HERZBURG-WRIGHT bounced a swift jab off the chops of the do-badder which sent him reeling onto the table where KING EGON GROAT OF SWEDEN and an unidentified miss with astonishingly large

Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, Christ, Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow! Safe when taken as directed.

slide 5

"we can do without your kind"

"Coffee," he said. "Cream or sugar?" the speaker of the shop's ruling monad turret asked. "Both." The little window opened; a cup of coffee, two tiny paper-wrapped sacks of sugar and a test-tube-like container of cream slid forward and came to rest before him on the counter. One international poscred, please," the speaker said. Joe said, "Charge this to the account of Glen Runciter of Runciter Associates, New York." "Insert the proper credit card," the speaker said. "They haven't let me carry a card in five years," Joe said. "I'm still paying off what I charged back in —" "One poscred, please," the speaker said. It began to tick ominously. "Or in ten seconds I will notify the police." He passed the poscred over. The ticking stopped. "We can do without your kind," the speaker said.

Taken as directed, Ubik provides uninterrupted sleep without morning-after grogginess. You awaken fresh, ready to tackle all those little problems facing you. Do not exceed recommended dosage.

slide 6

Brazil

"So you're not maintaining any New York or Zürich or —"

"Why should I? No one's there. Wherever you and the others of the group went, I constructed a tangible reality corresponding to their minimal expectations. When you flew here from New York I created hundreds of miles of countryside, town after town — I found that very exhausting."

slide 7

the demiurge

slide 8

the demiurge

demiourgos (the maker) — in philosophy, a subordinate god who fashions and arranges the physical world to make it conform to a rational and eternal ideal.

See Plato's Timaeus and the Gnostic literature.

slide 9

Time out of Joint

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right! Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5
Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root That takes the reason prisoner? Macbeth, Act I, Scene 2

slide 10

play it again, Sam

"What's the matter, Sam?" Al said. He felt himself tense up inwardly; he foresaw another happening.

"Isn't Walt Disney's head supposed to be on the fifty-cent piece?" Sammy said.

"Either Disney's," Al said, "or if it's an older one, then Fidel Castro's. Let's see it."

"Another obsolete coin," Pat Conley said, as Sammy carried the fifty-cent piece to Al.

slide 11

entropy

...is here.

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• entropy and information theory [an online textbook]
• entropy, death and techgnosis [a high-entropy heap of buzzwords... the part on "neurology" especially silly... the link is provided here only because of the statement "Death is the extinguishing of information". ]

slide 12

a boy and his bear

"But this old theory — didn't Plato think that something survived the decline, something inner not able to decay? The ancient dualism: body separated from soul. The body ending as Wendy did, and the soul — out of its nest the bird, flown elsewhere. Maybe so, he thought. To be reborn again, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead says.

It really is true. Christ, I hope so. Because in that case we all can meet again. In, as in Winnie-the-Pooh, another part of the forest, where a boy and his bear will always be playing... a category, he thought, imperishable. Like all of us. We will all wind up with Pooh, in a clearer, more durable new place."

slide 13

...in the Enchanted Forest

slide 14

science of half-life?

slide 15

science of half-life?

1. clinical death established by ECG, not EEG
2. NDE defined as a "special" state of consciousness — in what sense?
3. life-change inventory: self-assessed, not objective; also explicitly asks about change
4. CPR nurse account of patient ESP — not corroborated with the patient
5. "Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE" — see the fnord?
6. "Psychological factors are unlikely to be important as fear was not associated with NDE" — see the fnord?
7. "It is remarkable that people could recall their NDE almost exactly after 2 and 8 years" — see the fnord?
8. "The longlasting transformational effects of an experience that lasts for only a few minutes of cardiac arrest is a surprising and unexpected finding — see the fnord?
9. similar experiences induced by
   • electrical stimulation of temporal lobe
   • hypercarbia
   • local cerebral hypoxia under acceleration
   • mushrooms
   [cf. Passage]

slide 16

Dies irae

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Tuba mirum

slide 18

supplementary material

true names and life-or-death power:

• True Names (Vernor Vinge)
• The Iron Dragon's Daughter (Michael Swanwick)