Normally, the brain dies from lack of oxygen to maintain cellular activity. Not only is this not instantaneous, it is the cause of stories of seeing a light at the end of a tunnel that are told by those who have been brought back from legal death. Two observations: You can't have everything. Where would you put it? (S. Wright) It would take an extraordinary ego to believe that anyone would care about your exact time of death. Bill Hawkins

It started as a joke! -John ================ > Normally, the brain dies from lack of oxygen to maintain cellular > activity. Not only is this not instantaneous, it is the cause of > stories of seeing a light at the end of a tunnel that are told by > those who have been brought back from legal death. > > Two observations: > > You can't have everything. Where would you put it? (S. Wright) > > It would take an extraordinary ego to believe that anyone would > care about your exact time of death. > > Bill Hawkins > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > >

On 10/25/2010 11:49 AM, Bill Hawkins wrote: > It would take an extraordinary ego to believe that anyone would > care about your exact time of death. or be sufficiently obsessive-compulsive... Oh. Wait. -- mailto:oz@ozindfw.net Oz POB 93167 Southlake, TX 76092 (Near DFW Airport)

For him we will make an exception.... [?] On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 12:28 PM, <shalimr9@gmail.com> wrote: > "I suspect that at time of death, brain activity doesn't instantly cease, > but decays." > > I suspect that was not the case for the guy who was sucked into the jet > engine :) > > Or it was a pretty fast decay... > > Didier > > Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry > > -----Original Message----- > From: Mike Naruta AA8K <aa8k@comcast.net> > Sender: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com > Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2010 06:26:41 > To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement< > time-nuts@febo.com> > Reply-To: aa8k@comcast.net, > Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement > <time-nuts@febo.com> > Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Determining Time-Nut infection severity > > I suspect that at time of death, brain activity > doesn't instantly cease, but decays. > > Unless we would be able to monitor all brain > activity, we are stuck with a bald man paradox, > perhaps calculating the half-life of brain activity. > > Maybe we could attempt to measure the weight of > the departing soul (Dr. Duncan MacDougall 1907)? > Surely the soul of a time-nut is more substantial > than, say, a politician. > > > Mike (Dead Weight) AA8K > > > > On 10/24/2010 11:26 PM, Steve Rooke wrote: > > > > But isn't the clinical definition of death, brain death, as the heart > > may stop but the person be resuscitated tens of seconds later. In our > > terms, tens of seconds is like a lifetime so heatbeat is out as the > > TOD metric. I would propose we develop a hat with inbuilt electrodes > > that touch the scalp and measure brain activity. Once this has decayed > > to the level as clinically defined as brain dead, a timestamp should > > be made against a standard that is reasonably accurate to the degree > > of uncertainty of the death event, IE. it is likely that the brain > > activity will stop instantly with such a sharp cutoff as to be less > > than a ms, us or whatever. The hat would include an integrated GPSDO > > built upon a flexible PCB board design with integrated path antenna > > positioned at the top. This could easily be powered by solar cells > > charging very thin lithium ion flexible batteries embedded in the hat. > > Of course the hat needs to be worn 24x7 so it would have to be of a > > design that lends itself to sleeping hours as well therefore being a > > sleeping cap so something like a beanie may be a starting point. > > Extensions to the design may be a time display which would, of course, > > double as the TOD display for those concerned with your internment and > > the engraving of your tombstone. A PPS and disciplined oscillator > > connection could also be incorporated as a form of mobile reference > > for the wearer. As for cleaning, two of such hats would be owned by > > the user with one "in the wash" while the other is being worn. Of > > course, careful planning and design needs to be taken in the choice of > > circuitry and construction so as to all the hat to be cleaned. There > > is, of course, the faint possibility of death during the swapping of > > but some careful planning of how to do the hat swap may alleviate this > > window. > > > > Steve > > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. >

On Oct 25, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Bill Hawkins wrote: > Normally, the brain dies from lack of oxygen to maintain cellular > activity. Not only is this not instantaneous, it is the cause of > stories of seeing a light at the end of a tunnel that are told by > those who have been brought back from legal death. > > Two observations: > > You can't have everything. Where would you put it? (S. Wright) > > It would take an extraordinary ego to believe that anyone would > care about your exact time of death. If you want a sub-microsecond time of death, sit on a bomb like Major T. J. "King" Kong in "Dr. Strangelove," and get your friends to time and triangulate the prompt radiation. That should be good to a few 10's of nanoseconds. Regards Marshall Eubanks > > Bill Hawkins > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. >

-----Original Message----- From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of William H. Fite <snip> So.....I see no way in which one could determine with precision when life ends. At least not with the precision that this group would consider even minimally acceptable. <snip> On this list, acceptability is all according to the exponent. Just fix the TOD within an hour and you are certain to be at E-14 on the cosmological scale. Spectacular. Plus you get to use the word "cosmological". Ed, k1ggi

On 26 October 2010 12:07, Ed, k1ggi <k1ggi@comcast.net> wrote: > -----Original Message----- > From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On > Behalf Of William H. Fite > <snip> > So.....I see no way in which one could determine with precision when life > ends.  At least not with the precision that this group would consider even > minimally acceptable. > <snip> > > On this list, acceptability is all according to the exponent. > Just fix the TOD within an hour and you are certain to be at E-14 on the > cosmological scale. > Spectacular. > Plus you get to use the word "cosmological". Ah, the voice of reason! Steve, zl3tuv > Ed, k1ggi > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > -- Steve Rooke - ZL3TUV & G8KVD The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. - Einstein

On 10/25/2010 04:21 PM, William H. Fite wrote: > Mike is correct. Brain activity does not screech to a halt but peters out > over a period of minutes once the heart stops beating. > > When we (I'm in the medical field and not, by any stretch of the imagination > an engineer) speak of someone being "brain dead" or "flat line EEG," we > don't really mean that there is no electrical activity in the brain at all, > only that there is no purposeful activity. > > That is why, in most jurisdictions--not all--death is defined as cessation > of heartbeat. In the eyes of the law, that's a dichotomous variable; it is > or it ain't. Which means, from a legal perspective, at least, that when lay > people say that so-and-so was dead for a time and then brought back, they > are correct, cornball as it sounds. > > Actually, heart beat doesn't cease like snapping a light switch but trails > off into meaningless blips and wiggles that can go on for a while. > > Clinical death, to physicians and other health professionals is when the > machine has quit and it can't be fired up again. Vague, yes, but perfectly > adequate. For several reasons this definition is not usable for all cases anymore. There are cases when the brain can be considered dead, but the rest of the patient is relatively healthy. For the purpose of making organ transplantation possible, brain death is clinically being used, with the good old ticker and breath as a rough indication and subsequent failures of restoring those has failed. There is one case in which a Swedish medical student was out skiing in Norway and went through the ice and was being held there by the strong water. It took them 45 min just to get her out of the water. Her heart had stopped. Her respiration had stopped. She have had no pulse or breath for over an hour when they finally started working on her at the hospital. She survived and is almost completely restored. She works at that very hospital. Cooling patients down causes less brain-damage and is now an established treatment for certain trauma cases. The heart-compressions being done helps a lot to keep brain-damages down. We keep learning more and more about reducing damages on heart attack patients. So that definition has become less and less meaningful for that very reason. Not all legal systems reflect this thought, but as I recall the Swedish legal system did change this a few years back. > So.....I see no way in which one could determine with precision when life > ends. At least not with the precision that this group would consider even > minimally acceptable. Agreed. We might agree on day. Maybe hour. Then it becomes kind of difficult. Cheers, Magnus

On 10/25/2010 10:16 PM, Marshall Eubanks wrote: > > On Oct 25, 2010, at 12:49 PM, Bill Hawkins wrote: > >> Normally, the brain dies from lack of oxygen to maintain cellular >> activity. Not only is this not instantaneous, it is the cause of >> stories of seeing a light at the end of a tunnel that are told by >> those who have been brought back from legal death. >> >> Two observations: >> >> You can't have everything. Where would you put it? (S. Wright) >> >> It would take an extraordinary ego to believe that anyone would >> care about your exact time of death. > > If you want a sub-microsecond time of death, sit on a bomb like Major T. J. "King" Kong in "Dr. Strangelove," and get your friends to time and triangulate the prompt radiation. That should be good to a few 10's of nanoseconds. The GPS satellites NUDET payload does this and then transmit their measurements on the L3 band. They pin down the place of blast to within a few 100 m so it gives a fairly good precision in time-measurement. The L3 band is at 135*10,23 MHz by the way. Radio-astronomers have learned to hate it, despite the filtering being done to keep the radio astronomers happy. There is some interesting papers to be found relating to way of cancelling the L3 signals out of the observations. Cheers, Magnus

In the United States, cessation of heart beat, for all its problems and ambiguities, continues to be recognized as the legal definition of death, cold water resuscitations and the like notwithstanding. The term "brain dead" has no clear legal meaning, as evidenced in the conflicting and ambiguous lawsuits involving Terri Schiavo here in Florida. In the end, Schiavo was not adjudged by the court to be dead because her brain was "dead" but rather beyond any reasonable expectation of improvement or recovery. She did not legally become dead until her heartbeat stopped a number of days after feeding and hydration were terminated. In the case of organ harvesting, the patient is similarly not considered dead because the EEG is isoelectric. Rather, the conclusion is drawn that the individual is without hope of recovery. The organs are not harvested until the heart stops because it is not until that (ambiguous) moment that the person is dead. It is the cold water resuscitations and similar events that lead medical professionals to be comfortable with the extremely vague concept I stated earlier. The lawyers fairly often wrangle after the fact but that discussion takes place over an embalmed or cremated body. For the foreseeable future, this picture will not become any clearer. In the meantime, adopt the posture of the 19th century melodramaticists and have a bell installed in your coffin, just in case... On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 6:40 PM, Magnus Danielson < magnus@rubidium.dyndns.org> wrote: > On 10/25/2010 04:21 PM, William H. Fite wrote: > >> Mike is correct. Brain activity does not screech to a halt but peters out >> over a period of minutes once the heart stops beating. >> >> When we (I'm in the medical field and not, by any stretch of the >> imagination >> an engineer) speak of someone being "brain dead" or "flat line EEG," we >> don't really mean that there is no electrical activity in the brain at >> all, >> only that there is no purposeful activity. >> >> That is why, in most jurisdictions--not all--death is defined as cessation >> of heartbeat. In the eyes of the law, that's a dichotomous variable; it >> is >> or it ain't. Which means, from a legal perspective, at least, that when >> lay >> people say that so-and-so was dead for a time and then brought back, they >> are correct, cornball as it sounds. >> >> Actually, heart beat doesn't cease like snapping a light switch but trails >> off into meaningless blips and wiggles that can go on for a while. >> >> Clinical death, to physicians and other health professionals is when the >> machine has quit and it can't be fired up again. Vague, yes, but >> perfectly >> adequate. >> > > For several reasons this definition is not usable for all cases anymore. > There are cases when the brain can be considered dead, but the rest of the > patient is relatively healthy. For the purpose of making organ > transplantation possible, brain death is clinically being used, with the > good old ticker and breath as a rough indication and subsequent failures of > restoring those has failed. > > There is one case in which a Swedish medical student was out skiing in > Norway and went through the ice and was being held there by the strong > water. It took them 45 min just to get her out of the water. Her heart had > stopped. Her respiration had stopped. She have had no pulse or breath for > over an hour when they finally started working on her at the hospital. She > survived and is almost completely restored. She works at that very hospital. > Cooling patients down causes less brain-damage and is now an established > treatment for certain trauma cases. The heart-compressions being done helps > a lot to keep brain-damages down. We keep learning more and more about > reducing damages on heart attack patients. > > So that definition has become less and less meaningful for that very > reason. Not all legal systems reflect this thought, but as I recall the > Swedish legal system did change this a few years back. > > > So.....I see no way in which one could determine with precision when life >> ends. At least not with the precision that this group would consider even >> minimally acceptable. >> > > Agreed. We might agree on day. Maybe hour. Then it becomes kind of > difficult. > > Cheers, > Magnus > > > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. >