Category Archives: Transhuman News

Forty years ago, on October 30, 1974, two American heavyweights slugged it out in Zaire - today's Democratic Republic of Congo in a historic boxing match.

The Rumble in the Jungle, as the fight was advertised in the U.S. and abroad, matched former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali against the reigning champ, George Foreman. Ali knocked Foreman out to regain the crown, which he had lost seven years earlier when the U.S. government accused him of draft-dodging and boxing officials revoked his license.

Ali had traveled a long road to reach this point. After a three-and-a-half-year exile from boxing, he was reinstated in 1970. But he lost a heavyweight title fight in 1971 to Joe Frazier, who later succumbed to Foreman.

American sportswriter Jerry Izenberg said the impact of Alis victory in Zaire may be the greatest ever for a heavyweight bout. Alis legacy as a fighter, he said, would have been different had he lost.

It was a fairy tale," Izenberg said. "This guy was chasing a golden fleece and when he finally got within inches of it, someone else held the golden fleece. Frazier was out. It was fits and starts. It was like a morality play.

Ali made news not only by winning the fight, but also in the days leading up to it. Training in Zaire, he tried to endear himself to the country's people. He jogged with fans and spoke to the crowds, and he painted Foreman as the bad guy.

'Ali Bomaye'

Zaire was a Belgian colony before gaining independence in 1960. Knowing that Zaireans disliked Belgians, Ali told the media that the Texas-born Foreman was actually Belgian. Fans started chanting Ali Bomaye, or Ali, kill him!"

So Ali got off the plane, puts his hands in the air and he yells, `I hereby declare George a Belgian," Izenberg said.

"Well, the place went nuts," he added. "Beyond that, then that chant started, and they asked the interpreter what that meant and he said it meant `Ali, kill him. For the rest of the time that he was there, he was leading those chants all over town and all over the compound that we lived in.

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'Rumble in the Jungle' Turns 40

Man is probably the only animal who consciously knows he has to die.

Death happens to all living things. Nothing eschew from this phenomenon. Man could postpone, but ultimately must succumb to it. God gave no exceptions.

We can define death in myriad ways, yet none seems definite. It can mean differently from different individuals, epochs and cultures. Since time immemorial, the idea of death has posed eternal mystery, becoming the core of our religious, philosophical and scientific systems of thoughts.

We can perhaps deduce death into two traditional assumptions: continuity into the beyond that could be from heaven to hell into another state or being lead to eternity; or, simply the final exit toward nothingness.

Belief

Death has various schools of thoughts. In both primitive and sophisticate societies, death equates to a variety of beliefs from divine to the supernatural and to fictive-ephemeral statetoward a significant existence to another, or again, simply a final exit

Modern statistic however shows that humans rarely die because of old age per se. Death invariably follows some ailments, accident, shock or strain which the body is unable to overcome. Not very many die naturally.

The traditional definition of death by Blacks Law Dictionary was simple, stoppage of the circulation of the blood, and a cessation of the animal and vital function consequent thereupon, such as respiration and pulsation.

Death simply means the stoppage of breathing and heartbeat. Experts called this the clinical death; when one loses breath and heartbeat, one is dead and simply buriedseems like a mere biological event, a mere disintegration of organic into inorganic matter. Circulatory death is its current name.

Changing concept

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Death: Only Lazarus can refute