WORLDWIDE DISCUSSION GROUP ...

June 12, 2007, We currently have 182 members of the LA-GRG Worldwide Discussion Group, including members from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. If you would like to sign up, send an E-mail to scoles@ucla.edu". (If you would like to sign up (or remove yourself) on your own, see the instructions in the Join Us Button below.) As a heads-up, this is a very active group (hosted on a robust server at UCLA) and some days there can be dozens of messages that get circulated in multiple on-going threads seven days a week (We have observed empirically that our most active members do not stop working on weekends). To facilitate categorizing our topics and making efficient use of our time, it is suggested that we adopt one of the following Subject Labels to permit members to skip messages that they may not wish to read (recognizing that we're all operating under severe time pressure, and there's virtually no one who can afford to read everything in the Discussion Group just for amusement.)

The initial 15 labels (with topics in parentheses) are proposed as follows:

1. Local (Monthly Meeting Announcements for LA-GRG Meetings at UCLA, USC, CalTech, etc.; other local meetings in Los Angeles of interest to GRG members);
2. Phil (Philosophy, Ethics, and Social Implications of Extreme Longevity);
3. Book (book reviews/recommendations);
4. NewAbs (New Publications, Abstracts in the scientific literature, etc.);
5. Meeting (Call to attend a future conference or submit an Abstract or Poster);
6. WorldPolitics (UN; Non-US Country);
7. USPolitics (Federal Government, State Governments, City Governments);
8. Cent (Centenarians);
9. SC's (Supercentenarians);
10. SRF (Supercentenarian Research Foundation);
11. SENS (Strategies for Engineering Negligible Senescence);
12. PSR (Physicians for Social Responsibility news or announcements);
13. SciSpec (Scientific Speculation);
14. SF (Science Fiction [not for San Francisco' and specifically not the abbreviation "Sci-Fi," which we hereby define as a form of fiction likely to violate Laws of Physics, Chemistry, or Biology {such as time travel to the past or the future, as frequently occurs in the genre of Star-Trek-style TV episodes moving the script along at Warp 10}, so as to make the stories' realization impossible in principle, most often with the authors ignominiously unaware that this seemingly artificial constraint has any relevance to his or her readers/viewers' appreciation of the SF art form. As long as it sells books/movies/TV to the public, who cares if the special effects play fast and loose with reality?]. Sci-Fi' begs the question of whether SF' can play a role in our society that is greater than mere entertainment, say, by presenting a vision of the future that the public may demand of its leaders.)
15. Meta (Discussions about the list itself, e.g., what the subject labels really ought to be.)

If there is no label then by default it is assumed that the body of the message will focus directly on biogerontology or longevity interventions, which, obviously, are the principal interests of this Discussion Group.

If you have suggestions for new labels, please contact us or send a Meta message to the group with your proposal.