Over at his Human Exceptionalism blog, Wesley is on the case of the three Oxford academics who are going to be cryopreserved after their (hopefully temporary) deaths. Wesley might disagree, but I thought that at least one of them had succeeded in identifying a key challenge that lay, so to speak, ahead. He and another, frugal sorts clearly, will take the economical option and only (the Independent reports) their heads will be preserved (actually, unless things have changed, the budget plan also includes the spinal column), a prospect that produced this bracing comment:

Sandberg said that life with just a head would be limited . . .

I’m sorry, Wesley, but you just can’t argue with that.

The third member of the team is going “full body,” coming up with this splendidly lazy justification:

It costs me £25 a month in premiums to cover the cost of getting cryo-preserved, and that seems a good bet…It’s a lot cheaper than joining a gym, which is most people’s way of trying to prolong life.

That makes me think of Peter O’Toole’s comment (or at least it is attributed to him) that the only exercise he took was at funerals – following the coffins of his friends who liked to exercise.

As it happens, I went to visit Alcor (the cryonics firm that will be hosting the two heads) for NRODT, oh, an eternity ago (1996). If you are interested, you can see what I found here.