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What is Love?
Love, and emotion for that matter (in a healthy brain) is our response to our highest values. Love is the emotional price you pay for *valuing* something and seeing it expressed in another human being. All of our emotions are responses to the things we value most being expressed. When we value the health and well being of ourselves and our loved ones, we are happy to see things perpetuate those values. If you value honesty, sincerity, kindness, integrity, productiveness, etc, deeply, and you see that expressed in another person, your emotions respond properly. (read more)

Reflections on the Iraq War
As three years and a few months have passed since the start of the Iraq war, I want to take a moment to reflect on it. The Iraq war has seen about 2,500 combat deaths of American Soldiers, and probably some 40,000 deaths of Iraqi Civilians, foreigners and combatants. The number of US Soldiers killed per year averages at around 780, and the number of Iraqi citizens and foreigners is around 12,000 / year. Compare these numbers to World War II, where around 100,000 America soldiers were killed per year, or Korea where 20,000 were killed per year, or Vietnam, where 5,000 were killed per year. Additionally, during his reign, Saddam Hussein is estimated to have killed 2 million people over the course of 30 years, which is an astonishing 67,000 people per year, or 3,000 per month. Two million is 1/3rd the number of Jews killed in the holocaust. Saddam Hussein was perpetuating his own patient holocaust, and indeed his Anfal Campaign was a blatant systemic effort to kill all Kurds. Compared with the 10,000 people per year killed by the violence from the war, and the violence from insurgents and local terrorists, the US led Iraq war could be considered to be saving 50,000 lives per year (read more)

Communism and Moral Ambiguity
Most people react with vile disdain when they see a Nazi flag, and rightly so. Nazism has killed 20 million people, an estimated 6 million Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and physically deformed people intentionally in prison camps.  However, how many people share the same disdain for Communism?  Even though it has killed almost ten times as many people as Nazism did, it still it is looked on by most people in a favorable light, taught by history professors with an unbiased account, considered good in theory (is Nazism good in theory?) and as of yet just incorrectly implemented.  Communism has killed 170 million people this century, according to Political Scientist, Nobel Peace Prize runner up and author of the most cited historical book, R.J Rummel. By 1950 alone that number was in the dozens of millions, many millions in China and may millions in the Soviet Union; so it was right to be very weary of it and any communist political officer of influence. (read more)

Letter to Eliezer
Thank you for your words, and I am sorry for the tragic event which has brought them out. You have captured what makes me an extropian and I think you capture the motivating principle behind each of us here. We love life, and we want to live it. Whatever we all may disagree on, it is only the means to achieve this end. We love life, and we hate its cessation. There is no greater horror or travesty of justice than the death of someone. All the intricacies of the universe can not compare to the beauty and value of a single sentient being. I have seen enough death of friends and loved ones myself. Everyone who will listen I try to convince them to be cryogenically suspended, on the premise that they want to live. But most grope for excuses not to, disguising their disregard for their own existence with appeals to mysticism or dystopian futures. All ideologies prescribe these self delusional condolences and practices, it can be no more clear than what Adrian said: a terror so deep and profound that most people can't even acknowledge it, but just go ever so slowly insane trying to deal with it. (read more)

Stem Cell Research and Advocacy
A list of major institutions and organizations dedicated to research and advocacy. Because I care more about actual research than advocacy, I tried to find information from these organizations on how the money you donated is used, surprisingly it was difficult to ascertain that information, the American Diabetes Association did state it explicitly, but this information appears difficult to find (read more)

 

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"Stars are the sources of Life. Enormous engines of nuclear fusion, they pour light out into the cosmos, warming the dead cold of space, and provide the antientropic power needed for the self-organization of matter. Starry nights have a mystic beauty, but when consndered from a scientific standpoint they are even more beautiful then they look. For the million specks of light that adorn the black velvet of a dark night sky are, in fact, nothing less that a million fountains of life." - Robert Zubrin, Founder of the Mars Society

Site Updates

11/03/06 - Major site update in progress

04/04/05 - Updated "Free Vietnam" page

Added local blog, updated daily on politics, science, philosophy, invention, motorcycles..

Matus1976 Blog

08/31/04 - Updated 'About Me'

05/04/04 Updated Akira Bike Project Updated Matus1976 Riding corner

03/02/04 Updated Akira Bike Project, added quotes from Po Bronsons What Should I Do With My Life?

02/17/04 - Updated / Redesigned web site

02/17/04 - Added local Blog

01/12/04 - Values in pursuit of Happiness added to EUDAEMONISTS

11/25/03 - Added 'Free Vietnam' site

09/23/03 - Published for the first time Matus1976's Riding Corner

09/23/03 - Published Eudaemonists web site

09/13/03 - Updated Akira Bike project, added FAQ and Research images

08/10/03 - Thanks to markvegeta@yahoo.com for redesigning the front page of www.matus1976.com, I know you will all miss the two text only columns.

05/30/03 - Added - A Cure For Aging, Updated Akira Bike Project site

02/20/03 - Added - Nuclear Isomer energy storage and Quantum Nucleaonic Reactors to features

02/10/03 - Updated Akira Bike Project site, slightly modified layout of site. Keeping blog more updated now.

12/17/02 - Updated Akira Bike Project site

07/29/02 - Added new original article The Cost of Bias

07/23/02 - Web site went down for a while, switched hosts to Phpwebhosting.com, excellent site. Still fixing some broken links

05/07/02 - Added new Article "Interesting things in Science"

04/18/02 - added Tie Fighter 3D images

03/27/02 - Added local mirror of Mars Direct plan, added some articles to mailing list articles archive, updated Akira Bike page, and added some links

03/02/02 - Added two additional quotations on D-T fusion and D-He3 fusion in Entering Space quotes

02/28/02 - Updated Akira Bike project site