{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1414",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1414,
    "subject": "monkeying with Gene",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-03-04T21:39:31+00:00",
    "last": "1999-03-04T21:39:31+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0024-0040@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Damien Broderick",
        "address": "damien at ariel.ucs.unimelb.edu.au"
      },
      "date": "1999-03-04T21:39:31+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) monkeying with Gene",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Strictly speaking this should go to the WHORL list except that I'm not\nsubscribed and it might interest some people here.  It's a kind of\nmeta-comment, borrowed from my Swedish friend Anders Sandberg, who recently\nwrote:\n\n< I'm right now reading the Chinese epic \"The Journey to the West\", and\nenjoying the character of Sun Wukong the monkey king immensely. I\nregard good Sun as a kind of transhumanist divinity. He starts out\nmerely as a rather unique monkey, but gathers skills and knowledge so\nthat he can become immortal. Then he uses his new knowledge to help\nhis people, tricks the Dragon of the Eastern sea into giving him an\nimmense magical weapon, descends into the underworld and erases his\nand all the other monkies' names from the Book of Death. As Heaven\ntries to intervene he causes trouble up there, becomes super-immortal\nby eating the Peaches of Immortality *and* the Pills of Immortality,\nis briefly (500 years) trapped by the Buddha under a mountain and for\nthe rest of the epic acts as a traveling companion and enlightened\nadvisor for the buddist monk Tripitaka, becoming a saint in the\nprocess. Talk about a career! Sun manages to become a Taoist immortal\nand a Buddhist saint *and* have a great time too (OK, those 500 years\nunder the mountain might have been boring). >\n\nSome little prickles at the back of the neck at the coincidences between\ngood Sun and certain events in the lifetale of `good Silk' (Son, perhaps,\nof the Long Sun).\n\nI haven't read \"The Journey to the West\" so this might be utterest bogosity.\n\nDamien Broderick"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}