LifeGem offers mourners the opportunity to carry on their deceased loved ones' legacies within a man-made diamond crafted from the carbon captured from a lock of hair. The diamond does not necessarily have to come from a corpse--LifeGem also suggests this process for those who "purely want to create a symbol of [their] precious bond with someone [they] love." Let's leave this post with a sampling of their mush-mush vocab-filled sales pitch:

Love. Life's single greatest risk. Life's single greatest reward. Intangible and unexplainable, yet ever so real and powerful. Love captures your heart in a second and holds it for eternity...To desire a LifeGem diamond can mean only one thing. You have experienced a love without equal. You have had someone truly special in your life and mere words simply will not do.

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I think this is a little before it's time, but when computer graphics and haptic technology is so good that virtual reality is better than reality... there will be an entire subculture of people who will live in these things and stay "jacked in" 100% of the time.

The Oculas is a new multi-sensory, multi-purpose, & multi-tainment isolation pod where you can go to work, play, relax, sleep, hide or get your Darth Vader helmet changed (maybe not). Would you pay $45,000, for a luxury pod with the latest technology, comfort and audio-visual wizardry? click the pic to buy one from Hammacher Schlemmer. Read More...

Eiwa Industry Co., a Japanese metal processing firm, has begun marketing silver pendants that contain the DNA of loved ones. The company sees demand for the new service from people who want to have a memento of the dearly departed.

A researcher at the medical faculty of Nagoya University extracts the DNA from hair or other body parts provided by customers, attaches it to a 1mm bead and then encases it in a plastic capsule before putting it in a pendant.

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An essay that introduces the notion of transhumanist religions: their rationale, their context within the history of religions, and some fundamental constraints on their design and definition.

click the pic to read the article.


Transhumanism definition From Wikipedia:

"Transhumanism (sometimes abbreviated >H or H+) is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human cognitive and physical abilities and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as disease and aging. Transhumanist thinkers study the possibilities and consequences of developing and using human enhancement techniques and other emerging technologies for these purposes. Possible dangers, as well as benefits, of powerful new technologies that might radically change the conditions of human life are also of concern to the transhumanist movement.

Although the first known use of the term "transhumanism" dates from 1957, the contemporary meaning is a product of the 1980s, when a group of scientists, artists, and futurists based in California began to organize what has since grown into the transhumanist movement. Transhumanist thinkers postulate that human beings will eventually be transformed into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman".

The transhumanist vision of a profoundly transformed future humanity has attracted many supporters as well as critics from a wide range of perspectives. Transhumanism has been described by a proponent as the "movement that epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity,"while according to a prominent critic, it is the world's most dangerous idea" Read More...