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Sex in heaven

In a previous commentary, I offered my personal view as to the recipient-as-reproductive-being issue. I quote: “The fact that the gonads belong to the body donor is actually a facilitator for the whole enterprise. Imagine the parents of the brain dead body donor – racked by sorrow and despair for their loss – who are told that, once the new being will start reproducing, his or her offspring wil...

HEAVEN: The Frankenstein effect

The HEAVEN head transplant initiative needs human data concerning the acute restoration of motor transmission after application of fusogens to the severed cord in man. Data from two centuries ago prove that a fresh cadaver, after hanging or decapitation, can be mobilized by electrical stimulation for up to 3 hours. By administering spinal cord stimulation by applied paddles to the cord or trans...

Heaven on Earth

T he Test Storage Ring (TSR) has been in operation at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics for some 20 years now. It is a racetrack of sorts, with a 55-meter circumference, on which charged particles race around, guided by magnets. Compared with its big brothers, such as the new super-accelerator LHC at the European particle physics lab in Geneva, the TSR is quite modest. But by no mean...

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A Marriage Made in Heaven

The latest fad in Continental philosophy is an unexpected one. Goodbye to Lacan and Derrida and even Deleuze. Hello to the Apostle Paul. Atheist philosophers like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek have coopted Paul to their own agendas, and in their wake Jewish thinkers like Jacob Taubes and radically orthodox Christian theologians (the usual suspects) have given fresh attention to the apostle. Of ...