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from the do-not-store-all-your-seeds-in-one-basket dept.
When civil war broke out in Syria, scientist Ahmed Amri immediately thought to rescue the seed bank that sat in cold storage in Aleppo:
Specifically, 141,000 packets of them sitting in cold storage 19 miles south of Aleppo. They included ancient varieties of wheat and durum dating back nearly to the dawn of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent, and one of the world’s largest collections of lentil, barley, and faba bean varieties—crops that feed millions of people worldwide every day. If these seeds were decimated, humanity could lose precious genetic resources developed over hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of years. And suddenly, with the outbreak of violence, their destruction seemed imminent.
It's rare that people consider stores of human knowledge more precious than their own lives. What knowledge would Soylentils sacrifice their own lives to save?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday April 18 2015, @06:52PM
I have lived much more than any mortal ought to
You've lived almost 2400 years. That's not very long. I think the problem here isn't the duration, but the mortal status. True immortality is probably impractical, but we should be able to make so that 2400 year life spans are not so unusual. It isn't that no one should live to 2400 years, but rather no one should be mortal in the current sense. If they want to commit suicide by old age, there ought to be better ways to do that than the current nasty and humiliating way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 18 2015, @09:34PM
A number of people do it each year by accident.
Some think that they have discovered a more affordable method of heating their living space and some think that cooking indoors using outdoors equipment is a brilliant idea that no one has thought of before.
carbon.monoxide+grill [google.com]
Those who want to end it all on purpose can use that painless non-messy method by initiating the method before going to sleep.
They will simply not awaken.
To assure that the corpse is discovered before it decomposes|is found by scavengers, it is important to leave something in the environment in an an unusual state that will cause people to investigate after sunrise.
-- gewg_