From: Danny Sichel Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: [rec.arts.sf.composition] Re: Questions on Reincarnation. Date: 12 Sep 1999 15:08:30 -0000 Subject: Re: Questions on Reincarnation. From: justinf@ugcs.caltech.edu (Justin Fang) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.composition In article <7qqvd0$4qt@newsops.execpc.com>, Kristopher/EOS wrote: >A) At any time in the history of earth, there was a time in > the past where the total number of people who have ever > lived does not total the number of people alive at the > present moment. >B) Why is it that everyone was Cleopatra, or Byron, or... > you get the idea. No one was ever a chambermaid or a > pig farmer. Popular souls get copied. In theory this requires the payment of a franchising fee, but this is widely ignored due to the ease of distributing binaries of Cleopatra 3.1 over the Net, and the difficulty of enforcing existing copyright regulations. Among the improvements suggested for the next version of the soul standard is effective copy-protection, but as the debate over said standard has been going on since 4004 BC, I wouldn't hold my breath. So anyway, that's why the population had been going up so dramatically lately, any why everyone you meet seems to be a reincarnation of the same few people.