AdamSmith

Baylor is closely associated with the Baptist church (specifically the Baptist General Convention of Texas) and doubtless much alumni giving depends on keeping the faith, as it were. Or, rather, being seen to do so.

Too lazy to cook much today, think I'll just watch this instead... http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BldO4OFoA8U

I want to do this. Embracing the Void The profound, ecstatic state of nothingness I achieved while floating naked in a sensory deprivation tank. By Seth Stevenson|Posted Wednesday, May 15, 2013, at 5:20 AM|Slate Sensory deprivation is as close as you can get to a drug-induced experience without the drugs. lllustration by Robert Neubecker How did I end up naked in a stranger’s apartment—floating in a saltwater tub, surrounded by darkness and silence—realizing that for the first time in my life I had achieved total mindfulness? Let’s begin our story in 1961, when Peter Suedfeld was a first-year psychology graduate student at Princeton. Another scholar in the department was running a “sensory deprivation” study that offered $20 to volunteer subjects. Suedfeld wanted the cash, so he agreed to be shut inside a pitch-black, soundproofed room for 24 hours, with only a bit of sustenance and a toilet to keep him company. He couldn’t handle it. “I was nervous, and I got itchy and jumpy,” he says now. So he left early. He wasn’t the only one. Many subjects panicked, and some even reported they’d had hallucinations. Though (or perhaps because) he’d gotten spooked, Suedfeld became intrigued by isolation chambers. Sensory deprivation was a sexy field of study in the ’50s and ’60s, and Suedfeld began to organize chamber experiments of his own. Soon enough, he became aware of another isolation technique. A man named John C. Lilly—first at the Naval Institute, later at the National Institute of Mental Health—had pioneered the use of an immersion water tank. In early trials, the subject was completely submerged, wearing a breathing mask, with an air hose connected to a pump. In a later iteration, the subject simply floated in saltwater, on his back, in a coffin-like tank that was completely dark and silent. Lilly became a cultish, Timothy Leary-like figure as his experiments grew more outlandish. He made attempts to communicate with animals (later dramatized in the Mike Nichols film The Day of the Dolphin) and became famously fond of entering his flotation tanks only after he’d dosed himself with powerful hallucinogens (later dramatized in the Ken Russell film Altered States). Suedfeld met Lilly and was impressed with his tanks—but not his methods. “He started out as a straight scientist,” says Suedfeld. “But he got into taking drugs and thought he’d made contact with some sphere of consciousness beyond the normal. Thought he’d had conversations with Shakespeare and such. We didn’t see eye to eye on how the tanks should be used. I always ran standard experiments with control groups and data and objective tests.” I had long ago seen Altered States, in which William Hurt devolves into a glowing, primordial beast after he indulges in a little too much tank time. But until I read a trend story about floating in the Wall Street Journal this February, I’d never realized it was possible to float in a non-scientific setting. Nor had it occurred to me that anyone would want to. I was suddenly intrigued: What could sensory deprivation do for me? There are only a few places to float in New York City. I first tried La Casa, a day spa near Union Square, which features a tank in large part because co-owner Jane Goldberg loves to float.* On a weekday morning, I climbed the stairs to La Casa, took off all my clothes, and, after showering, stepped into a large tub inside an enclosed chamber. I slid the blackout door closed behind me, eased down into the water, and touched a button that switched off the lights. I was floating in total darkness and silence. The saturation of Epsom salts in the water made me unnaturally buoyant—my face, stomach, and knees an archipelago of islands amid the tub’s ocean. For what must have been the first 15 minutes, I wondered what I was doing there. I thought about my plans for that evening, stories I was working on, whether there was any food in the fridge back at my apartment. I felt bored. I felt silly. Like Peter Suedfeld in that chamber in Princeton, I even got jumpy. I had a brief urge to stand up, water dripping everywhere, and walk out. Then a transformation began. If you’ve ever taken psychedelic mushrooms (and come on, who hasn’t?) you might recall a certain feeling that arises as the drugs take hold. “Something is happening, something is happening,” your body says to your brain, with mild urgency. I got a feeling akin to that while floating. My brain went a little haywire. When the storm passed, I found myself in a new and unfamiliar state of mind. * * * Suedfeld’s studies have, over the years, shown that tank sessions can be used to treat autonomic nervous system problems like chronic pain, high blood pressure, and motion disorders. They can improve perceptual and motor skills in athletes, and creativity in artists. Suedfeld also claims that the tank shifts our brain’s focus from its dominant to its nondominant hemisphere, which has various benefits. “But God only knows why hemisphere balance is affected,” says Suedfeld. “We can’t yet fit a brain scanner in a tank, or get the scanner wet for that matter.” For a tank newbie like me, not looking to cure physical disorders or win an Olympic medal, the more intriguing aspects of floating include 1) its possibly imagined, Lilly-esque potential to reveal hidden layers of consciousness within, and 2) its proven capacity to chill people out. Suedfeld happily acknowledges point two. “Anything related to psychological stress,” says Suedfeld, “whether it’s chronic tension headaches, insomnia, things with no known physical cause … after several floats, they really seem to improve.” It’s the meditative, relaxing qualities of floating—even non-hallucinogen-enhanced floating—that eventually moved the practice beyond academia and into retail. Glenn Perry is perhaps the forefather of recreational tank use. Perry was a computer programmer in 1972 when he read Lilly’s book The Center of the Cyclone and, soon after, saw an ad for a Lilly-backed floating workshop. “The first time I floated,” says Perry, “I got out and I found that time had changed and my senses were totally different. I instantly knew I had to build my own tank. By the end of the week, I decided to build tanks not just for myself but for other people. John gave me the name Samadhi—which is a Sanskrit word meaning the state in which a meditator becomes one with the object of meditation.” After trying out several models, Perry settled on a tank that used 10-inch-deep water saturated with Epsom salts. He and his wife Lee opened a float center in Beverly Hills in 1979, renting out their five tanks largely to entertainment industry types. Michael Crichton came in to float when he had writer’s block. Eventually, Crichton bought a tank of his own. Between the Perrys’ float center, John Lilly’s 1977 book on the joys of floating titled The Deep Self, and the 1980 release of Altered States, flotation entered the popular consciousness. A November 1981 New York Times trend story was titled “Relaxation Tanks: A Market Develops.” It quoted representatives from Samadhi and other tank companies, noting that the industry was raking in $4 million a year on sales and rentals. It reported that new float centers were opening across the country. It also listed a few notable private tank owners: Robin Williams, Yoko Ono, and the training staffs of the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles. One happy “tanker” the Times spoke to described the practice as “a self-development kind of thing that allows you to get in tune with yourself.” In the mid-1980s, the AIDS scare changed everything. People were frightened of contracting HIV from infected water in float tank centers. The business dried up. New Agers switched to yoga. Even the academic work fell out of favor. “Radical students began to equate isolation studies with torture and brainwashing,” says Suedfeld. “People got hassled out of the field.” By the time John Lilly died in 2001, it seemed that floating was over and done. Turns out it was unsinkable. The February story in the Journal that caught my eye—titled “Float Centers Gaining Steam”—is pretty much a wormhole straight back to that Times trend piece from 30 years before. It notes a new wave of tank enthusiasm, crediting comedian Joe Rogan (a ) and stressed out, chillaxation-hungry Bay Area techies for spreading the word. Further evidence of floating’s resurgence: a float center in Portland, Ore., has inaugurated an annual float conference. Peter Suedfeld—who, after receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton, headed the psychology departments at Rutgers and the University of British Columbia and ran tank studies for years in his own labs—was a featured speaker. And now I’m part of the movement. Once I’d settled into my first tank session at La Casa, I understood why all these people get jazzed about floating. For the first time in my waking life, I had zero thoughts. It was a mental quietude I’d never known existed. * * * “We had a Zen master who visited my lab once,” says Suedfeld, “and he asked to go in the tank for an hour. Most of his life he had meditated every day for four or five hours or more. And he thought the depth of meditation he reached in the tank was on par with a level he reached maybe once a year in his normal meditation environment—which was not exactly the middle of Times Square. He was amazed.” The water and air in the float chamber are skin temperature, the darkness is identical with eyes open or closed, and there is no sound—thus there is no external input. In turn, my brain decelerated until its output also slowed, and then stopped. I was suspended in a place with no space, or time, or purpose. Once in a while, some quotidian thought would begin to surface at the edges—did I respond to that email?—and then bounce around in the lonely void of my skull for a moment or two. But it would soon melt away as my brain realized it didn’t care. Back to the void. When my one-hour La Casa session ended with a gentle tapping on the wall—the prearranged signal from the spa—I emerged in a profound daze. I spoke slowly and quietly, like a smooth-jazz DJ, to the person at the spa desk who inquired how my session had gone. I felt more rested than if I’d slept for 16 hours on a pile of tranquilized chinchillas. Outside, colors were saturated; sounds were vivid. I had to try this again, as soon as possible. For my second session, I went to Blue Light Floatation, on 25th Street in Chelsea. This turned out to be a loft apartment belonging to a tank owner named Sam Zeiger. But the setup was not nearly as weird as you might imagine: Zeiger cordons off a private area in which you float, shower, and change. Having floated before, my transition happened more quickly this time. It took just a few minutes before I felt my brain and my body slowing, my restless thoughts fading out. If I chose to, I could purposefully focus on one idea at a time, roll it around in isolation, examine some part of my life with no distractions. Or I could just revel in the strangely exhilarating emptiness. At one point, I nodded off in the tank. The only way I knew this was that my limbs lightly spasmed—making a small splash—in that way limbs do when you’re at the edge of sleep. There was no clear line between consciousness and unconsciousness. (I had no fear of drowning, as my buoyancy was such that it would be nearly impossible to roll over accidentally.) Afterward, as Zeiger handed me a cup of herbal tea, he recounted his own conversion story. “My first time was supposed to be a one-hour session,” he told me, “but the guy forgot about me and left me in the tank for several hours. I had a life-altering experience. I can’t describe it to you now in a way that wouldn’t devalue its meaning.” Zeiger eventually felt compelled to get his own tank and install it in his apartment. Floating in this tank—and maintaining the tank in perfect order, and renting the tank out to other people for $80 an hour—is now his full-time passion. I went back to La Casa for a final tank session and I knew, as I emerged, that I was hooked. (Disclosure: La Casa gave me my two sessions on the house; Slate paid for the one in Zeiger’s apartment.) This is the closest you will ever come to having a drug-like experience without taking drugs. Though you will have no crazy hallucinations (at least, I didn’t have any—your hallucinatory mileage may vary), you will understand your brain in an entirely new way. Consider: Right now there are dozens of thoughts pinballing through your mind. When’s lunch? This monitor is too bright. Should I ask her on a second date? My crotch itches. What is the person in the next cubicle saying on the phone? I should be more assertive. I’ll get a burrito at lunch. Am I a good person? These thoughts are all occurring more or less simultaneously. There is a cacophony—a noisy din—in your head. The absence of the din is a genuine revelation. I highly recommend you find that out for yourself. Peter Suedfeld is now using his accrued wisdom about isolation to consult with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency regarding the effects of long-duration space flight in confined, monotonous environments. Glenn Perry still sells his Samadhi tanks, and says sales are on the rise—you can buy your own starting at about $8,900. The annual float conference is running again this August (motto: “Looking Forward to a Whole Lot More Nothing”). As for me, I plan to climb back in a tank at least three or four times a year. Just thinking about the feeling I get from floating makes me crave it. I’m not sure I can fully explain why—but I’d love to ponder that question while buoyed by a tub full of warm, salty water. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/anything_once/2013/05/sensory_deprivation_flotation_tanks_i_floated_naked_in_a_pitch_black_tank.single.html

Having your cake and eating it too.

Yes. The screwdriver, however...

I will conduct a large-scale trial pro bono.

It all started when I was seven and stuck a screwdriver into a live lamp socket. True story. Thus adding to the evidence about electroshock therapy. Pro or con -- you decide.

ROFL We have all been to a wedding or two like that!

D'ou venon nous? Que sommes nous? Ou allons nous? Comment pouvons-nous nous le permettre?

Isn't Perry Anal chief counsel for the Sterling Cooper agency in 'Mad Men'?

Not here -- out in the world... Majority of pools are contaminated by poop, CDC says http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/16/poop-prevalent-in-public-pools-cdc-says/?intcmp=obnetwork

We live to serve. I got stymied the same way some time ago. I think I was rescued when Oz (?) posted an explanation of that toggle switch, whose function is to expose the HTML formatting of a post in the event one wishes to format something at that level. I do find it easier to mess around inside quoted matter from a previous post (say, deleting parts not relevant to my reply post) with the HTML exposed. The other way -- working in WYSIWYG -- I tend to overrun the end-tags and corrupt the thing. Which I already do enough of in real life!

Is your toggle-switch in the upper left corner NOT gray? That button toggles all the other formatting buttons off, if it is on. Click it to toggle it off, if it is on, and the other formatting buttons should re-expose. If that's not it, time to send in the geeks.

Oh my!

As with most all things Latinate!

http://www.palantir.net/2001/tma1/wav/foolprf.wav

Oh, I don't think our hitoall would go that far...

You could channel Samantha -- "Oh my stars!"

Regrettably not. Other than day-to-day life here in the so-called New South. But yes, DC published an intermittent series "Imaginary Adventures of..." both Superman and Superboy. Both usually with rather more pathos than allowed in the "real" series. E.g., in one of the Imaginary Superboy episodes, he touches gold kryptonite, which robs him of his super-powers permanently, and the story goes on to look at what life might have been like had he lived out his days as a small-town stock-clerk schlemiel. I loved those Imaginary series. And of course the very concept! ...A profound oversight never to have regaled New Haven with an undergrad lit paper on same.

What hacker would care to bother?

Actually in one of DC Comics' "Imaginary Adventures of Superman" issues in the early 1970s, the story picked up with Superman at one million years old. All his friends gone, himself grey at the temples, nonetheless he still had every bit of his super-powers. In fact they had increased with age. (Not an uncommon trope in mythology.) The story line was something else. In one single comic book it followed him through the end of human civilization, end of life on earth itself ... Then Supe had to fight off two gigantic planet-size robots that had come as galactic garbage collectors to haul away the dead planet. Then, lonely and bereft, Our Hero gets the bright idea to ... Split the earth in two, re-mate the two halves with their clean insides facing out, re-sculpt it into a ball, wait around several billion years for lower evolution to recreate Eden, then fly off to some other life-bearing planet from whence he imports two humanoids to earth. They breed, nature takes its slow course ... And in the final frame, what do you know -- space and time being curved, and all -- the arc of Time has at last come back round to where Superman is once more dressed as Clark, in the Daily Planet newsroom, with Perry White yelling something, there's Jimmy Olsen, ah Lois Lois... Truly mind-bending, for its time.

Regarding the recent threads in which was considered whether or not one would desire Superman as a lover... Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex By Larry Niven* Things of the form (*text*) are footnotes in the original text. He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl? At the ripe old age of thirty-one (*Superman first appeared in Action Comics, June 1938*), Kal-El (alias Superman, alias Clark Kent) is still unmarried. Almost certainly he is still a virgin. This is a serious matter. The species itself is in danger! An unwed Superman is a mobile Superman. Thus it has been alleged that those who chronicle the Man of Steel's adventures are responsible for his condition. But the cartoonists are not to blame. Nor is Superman handicapped by psychological problems. Granted that the poor oaf is not entirely sane. How could he be? He is an orphan, a refugee, and an alien. His homeland no longer exists in any form, save for gigatons upon gigatons of dangerous, prettily colored rocks. As a child and young adult, Kal-El must have been hard put to find an adequate father-figure. What human could control his antisocial behavior? What human would dare try to punish him? His actual, highly social behavior during this period indicates an inhuman self-restraint. What wonder if Superman drifted gradually into schizophrenia? Torn between his human and kryptonian identities, he chose to be both, keeping his split personalities rigidly separate. A psychotic desperation is evident in his defense of his "secret identity." But Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real. The purpose of this article is to point out some medical drawbacks to being a kryptonian among human beings, and to suggest possible solutions. The kryptonian humanoid must not be allowed to go the way of the pterodactyl and the passenger pigeon. I What turns on a kryptonian? Superman is an alien, an extraterrestrial. His humanoid frame is doubtless the result of parallel evolution, as the marsupials of Australia resemble their mammalian counterparts. A specific niche in the ecology calls for a certain shape, a certain size, certain capabilities, certain eating habits. Be not deceived by appearances. Superman is no relative to homo sapiens. What arouses Kal-El's mating urge? Did kryptonian women carry some subtle mating cue at appropriate times of the year? Whatever it is, Lois Lane probably didn't have it. We may speculate that she smells wrong, less like a kryptonian woman than like a terrestrial monkey. A mating between Superman and Lois Lane would feel like sodomy-and would be, of course, by church and common law. II Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience. Either Superman has gone completely schizo and believes himself to be Clark Kent; or he knows what he's doing, but no longer gives a damn. Thirty-one years is a long time. For Superman it has been even longer. He has X-ray vision; he knows just what he's missing. (*One should not think of Superman as a Peeping Tom. A biological ability must be used. As a child Superman may never have known that things had surfaces, until he learned to suppress his X-ray vision. If millions of people tend shamelessly to wear clothing with no lead in the weave, that is hardly Superman's fault.*) The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles. Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit? III Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles. Superman would literally crush LL's body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout. IV Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head. Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*) In view of the foregoing, normal sex is impossible between LL and Superman. Artificial insemination may give us better results. V First we must collect the semen. The globules will emerge at transsonic speeds. Superman must first ejaculate, then fly frantically after the stuff to catch it in a test tube. We assume that he is on the Moon, both for privacy and to prevent the semen from exploding into vapor on hitting the air at such speeds. He can catch the semen, of course, before it evaporates in vacuum. He's faster than a speeding bullet. But can he keep it? All known forms of kryptonian life have superpowers. The same must hold true of living kryptonian sperm. We may reasonably assume that kryptonian sperm are vulnerable only to starvation and to green kryptonite; that they can travel with equal ease through water, air, vacuum, glass, brick, boiling steel, solid steel, liquid helium, or the core of a star; and that they are capable of translight velocities. What kind of a test tube will hold such beasties? Kryptonian sperm and their unusual powers will give us further trouble. For the moment we will assume (because we must) that they tend to stay in the seminal fluid, which tends to stay in a simple glass tube. Thus Superman and LL can perform artificial insemination. At least there will be another generation of kryptonians. Or will there? VI A ripened but unfertilized egg leaves LL's ovary, begins its voyage down her Fallopian tube. Some time later, tens of millions of sperm, released from a test tube, begin their own voyage up LL's Fallopian tube. The magic moment approaches... Can human breed with kryptonian? Do we even use the same genetic code? On the face of it, LL could more easily breed with an ear of corn than with Kal-El. But coincidence does happen. If the genes match... One sperm arrives before the others. It penetrates the egg, forms a lump on it's surface, the cell wall now thickens to prevent other sperm From entering. Within the now-fertilized egg, changes take place... And ten million kryptonian sperm arrive slightly late. Were they human sperm, they would be out of luck. But these tiny blind things are more powerful than a locomotive. A thickened cell wall won't stop them. They will *all* enter the egg, obliterating it entirely in an orgy of microscopic gang rape. So much for artificial insemination. But LL's problems are just beginning. VII Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter. They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the open air. That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of intestine. Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill. Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis. VIII This is more serious than it looks. Consider: these sperm are virtually indestructible. Within days or weeks they will die for lack of nourishment. Meanwhile they cannot be affected by heat, cold, vacuum, toxins, or anything short of green kryptonite. (*And other forms of kryptonite. For instance, there are chunks of red kryptonite that make giants of kryptonians. Imagine ten million earthworm size spermatozoa swarming over a Metropolis beach, diving to fertilize the beach balls... but I digress.*) There they are, minuscule but dangerous; for each has supernormal powers. Metropolis is shaken by tiny sonic booms. Wormholes, charred by meteoric heat, sprout magically in all kinds of things: plate glass, masonry, antique ceramics, electric mixers, wood, household pets, and citizens. Some of the sperm will crack lightspeed. The Metropolis night comes alive with a network of narrow, eerie blue lines of Cherenkov radiation. And women whom Superman has never met find themselves in a delicate condition. Consider: LL won't get pregnant because there were too many of the blind mindless beasts. But whenever one sperm approaches an unfertilized human egg in its panic flight, it will attack. How close is close enough? A few centimeters? Are sperm attracted by chemical cues? It seems likely. Metropolis had a population of millions; and kryptonian sperm could travel a long and crooked path, billions of miles, before it gives up and dies. Several thousand blessed events seem not unlikely. (*If the pubescent Superboy plays with himself, we have the same problem over Smallville.*) Several thousand lawsuits would follow. Not that Superman can't afford to pay. There's a trick where you squeeze a lump of coal into its allotropic diamond form... IX The above analysis gives us part of the answer. In our experiment in artificial insemination, we must use a single sperm. This presents no difficulty. Superman may use his microscopic vision and a pair of tiny tweezers to pluck a sperm from the swarm. X In its eagerness the single sperm may crash through LL's abdomen at transsonic speeds, wreaking havoc. Is there any way to slow it down? There is. We can expose it to gold kryptonite. Gold kryptonite, we remember, robs a kryptonian of all of his supernormal powers, permanently. Were we to expose Superman himself to gold kryptonite, we would solve all his sex problems, but he would be Clark Kent forever. We may regard this solution as somewhat drastic. But we can expose the test tube of seminal fluid to gold kryptonite, then use standard techniques for artificial insemination. By any of these methods we can get LL pregnant, without killing her. Are we out of the woods yet? XI Though exposed to gold kryptonite, the sperm still carries kryptonian genes. If these are recessive, then LL carries a developing human foetus. There will be no more Supermen; but at least we need not worry about the mother's health. But if some or all of the kryptonian genes are dominant... Can the infant use his X-ray vision before birth? After all, with such a power he can probably see through his own closed eyelids. That would leave LL sterile. If the kid starts using heat vision, things get even worse. But when he starts to kick, it's all over. He will kick his way out into open air, killing himself and his mother. XII Is there a solution? There are several. Each has drawbacks. We can make LL wear a kryptonite (*For our purposes, all forms of kryptonite are available in unlimited quantities. It has been estimated, from the startling tonnage of kryptonite fallen to Earth since the explosion of Krypton, that the planet must have outweighed our entire solar system. Doubtless the "planet" Krypton was a cooling black dwarf star, one of a binary pair, the other member being a red giant.*) belt around her waist. But too little kryptonite may allow the child to damage her, while too much may damage or kill the child. Intermediate amounts may do both! And there is no safe way to experiment. A better solution is to find a host-mother. We have not yet considered the existence of a Supergirl. (*She can't mate with Superman because she's his first cousin. And only a cad would suggest differently.*) She could carry the child without harm. But Supergirl has a secret identity, and her secret identity is no more married than Supergirl herself. If she turned up pregnant, she would probably be thrown out of school. A better solution may be to implant the growing foetus in Superman himself. There are places in a man's abdomen where a foetus could draw adequate nourishment, growing as a parasite, and where it would not cause undue harm to surrounding organs. Presumably Clark Kent can take a leave of absence more easily than Supergirl's schoolgirl alter ego. When the time comes, the child would be removed by Caesarian section. It would have to be removed early, but there would be no problem with incubators as long as it was fed. I leave the problem of cutting through Superman's invulnerable skin as an exercise for the alert reader. The mind boggles at the image of a pregnant Superman cruising the skies of Metropolis. Batman would refuse to be seen with him; strange new jokes would circulate the prisons...and the race of Krypton would be safe at last. http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html