Comments on: Poisoning the Well: Measuring the Cultural Penetration of Cryonics Using Google Ngram Technology

By: Abelard Lindsey

Abelard Lindsey — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:40:42 +0000

Actually, I first learned of the “.406″ batting average from a movie – “Righteous Kill” – featuring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, who play two NYPD detectives trying to catch a serial killer. At one point in the movie, Al Pacino says “406 captain, 406″, then preceded to explain it to the captain.

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:29:18 +0000

Jimmy Stewart plays a character based on Ted Williams in the film “Strategic Air Command” (1955), about a professional baseball player and World War II veteran recalled to duty in the U.S. Air Force.

Another interesting fact: Williams had franchised his name to Sears-brand sporting goods in the 1960′s. A couple years ago I handled a used .30-30 Winchester rifle for sale in a gun shop which had Williams’s signature engraved on the barrel. The original owner had apparently bought it from Sears decades ago.

By: Fundie

Fundie — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:38:35 +0000

Awesome, Abelard; I knew you were my kind of person. :)

I had to look up .406 just now to find out what it meant, though I did guess correctly without help.

Of course, I also find this fact about Ted Williams significant: -196C.

By: Abelard Lindsey

Abelard Lindsey — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:53:56 +0000

.406

The most significant fact about Ted Williams.

Since I’m not a MLB fan, I also did not know who Ted Williams was until his cryo-suspension.

By: Fundie

Fundie — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:17:11 +0000

I grew up with the same lack of interest in sports (it was out and out hatred for years, but I mellowed), and the first I ever knew about Ted Williams was that he was a cryopreserved celebrity.

By: admin

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 10:50:50 +0000

Mark, the points you make, and the questions you indirectly raise, merit a whole article. When I was first introduced to John Henry Williams, I had no idea who he or his father were. Not surprisingly, I have never had any interest in competitive sports, and truth to tell, I am still in the process of understanding who Ted Williams was. I got a bit of a feel for who Ted Williams the man was when I turned on the TV in the “business hotel,” wherever they had parked me in Scottsdale/Phoenix, the day after his cryopreservation. The TV had been tuned to a sports channel by the previous guest, and of course, the announcement that Williams had died was big news. Whatever this channel was, it did nothing but run back-to-back episodes of a fishing travelogue program Williams did some years before. One of the episodes was in Russia and, as much as it was about fishing, it was also about Williams’ views on life and philosophy. I remember thinking, “People must really dislike this guy.” He was very blunt, opinionated, and made no bones about not only being an atheist, but about not thinking much of the cognitive capacity of people who weren’t. I was bone tired, and I just lay there with my eyes mostly closed and listened, but my impression was that the program had been made before the fall of the Soviet Union. Very recently, in trying to understand the Ngram plots of his celebrity, I’ve had to get a better understanding of his influence on the culture. Williams was a very unusual sportsman and his approach to sport was pretty much antithetical to that of the time in which he lived. I haven’t read his autobiography, but I have looked over his 1970 book, The Science of Hitting (or more properly the 1986 revision). If he hadn’t been a baseball player, he would have made a fine scientist, or an engineer. If you a do a plot of articles about Williams in the New York Times, and then you look at those articles, you get an idea of why his Ngram curve is shaped as it is. He was a very, very unusual and contrary man. He was also very lucky the world never really understood him. His career was huge triumph of fame over personality.

The cryonics issues need to treated elsewhere, as I said before. — Mike Darwin

By: Mark Plus

Mark Plus — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 15:50:54 +0000

I had a bad feeling about the Ted Williams affair from the beginning. One, it looks as if Alcor bent or broke its own rules in the gamble of cryosuspending a celebrity. Two, I haven’t seen unambiguous evidence that Williams wanted cryonics for himself. Three, the children from Williams’s two marriages brought their dispute about his wishes for the disposition of his body into public view. Four, Williams’s son already had a bad reputation among sports writers who cover baseball, so they tended to side with the cryonics-hostile daughter. And five, people who idolize sports figures tend to fall into the lower end of the IQ curve, making them unreceptive to cryonics’ reasoning any way.