Deadline for FSP vote set for August 15!

Those of you may have been dawdling about signing up for the FSP should sign up now if you wish to have an influence on which state is picked. The 5000 member mark is rapidly approaching, and the deadline for signups has been set for August 15, 2003. Ballots will be due by September 8. Here's the relevant message from Jason:

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Man Not Included

<http://www.thisislondon.com/til/jsp/modules/article/print.jsp?itemid=5515760>


This is
LONDON
27/06/03 - News and city section

Couple to have first 'Internet baby'
By Elaine Galloway, Evening Standard

Britain's first known DIY internet baby will be born next month, it was revealed today. A married couple from the South-East conceived the child using sperm bought from a website.

After paying a fee to browse the site, they were able to check criteria such as race, eye colour, height and weight of prospective donors, as well as details about their background, educational history and artistic ability.

They were then sent a home ovulation kit. When the woman, who is in her twenties, was at her most fertile, the website was alerted. A sample was collected from the donor and rushed to their home by courier. The couple were then left to carry out the procedure themselves.

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Savant for a Day

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/magazine/22SAVANT.html?pagewanted=all&position=

June 22, 2003
New York Times Magazine

By LAWRENCE OSBORNE

n a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting to have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a ''Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator.'' This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro, and it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world's most remarkable scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal lobes (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found that amusing. ''Oh, relax now!'' he said in the thick local accent he has acquired since moving here from America. ''I've done it on myself a hundred times. This is Australia. Legally, it's far more difficult to damage people in Australia than it is in the United States.''

''Damage?'' I groaned.

''You're not going to be damaged,'' he said. ''You're going to be enhanced.''

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