Why People Don't Live Past 114 916
kkleiner writes "Average life expectancy has nearly doubled in developed countries over the 20th century. But a puzzling part to the equation has emerged. While humans are in fact living longer lives on average, the oldest age that the oldest people reach seems to be stubbornly and oddly precisely cemented right at 114. What will it take for humans to live beyond this limit?"
Genesis 6:3 (Score:4, Informative)
And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
Boring, wake me up when there's begetting and pause it for me if you can see tits.
Mod parent up (Score:5, Informative)
I for one love the Bible, and I found this hilarious, not trollish.
Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
The movie will, of course, be a disappointment.
Spoilers: (Score:5, Funny)
Mary was no virgin; Jesus was just a man; it's a horrible tale about deception, greed and lust for power; the taking advantage of people's gullibility, fear and inability to think critically. Jesus catches out Judas using GPS, buttonhole cameras, and bribed Roman constabulary. Three stars; needed more CGI, and story seems at least partially cribbed from the Egyptian Book of the Dead [a Warner Bros. title.]
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
Just fast forward to Song of Solomon. It has plenty of tits for you.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
The chances of a woman on slashdot seem slim
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
that would be 1/2 of leviticus, and if you are not Baptist, the songs of solomon are good old bible porn.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
So he owes us each six years? Can I choose which ones? I want 21-27 again. Thanks.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Sold being the key word.
Matthew 6:4 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
Could have sworn the protestant reformation had something to say about that practice.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
The earth must have rotated faster around the sun 6000 years ago. I guess the earth was more streamlined when it was still flat.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
Job 26:7, 26:10 (Score:5, Interesting)
If you search to the ends of the Earth, I suspect you'll find someone who can elaborate on it.
It could be argued that the ends of the earth are merely the shore.
Until then, I suggest Job 26:7.
You make a good point about this. Some people reading along might not get the Job 26 [watchtower.org] reference. Verse 7 ("hanging the earth upon nothing") suggests that there isn't anything that "holds the earth up", as some cultures' myths about turtles all the way down [wikipedia.org] suggest. Likewise, the shape of the curve between day and night is "a circle [...] where light ends in darkness" (26:10), which along with Isaiah 40:21-22 too shows biblical knowledge of the spherical earth [christiananswers.net].
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:4, Funny)
[shakes fist at moon]
Curse you!!!!!!
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
Lifespans gradually decreased post-flood.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Funny)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Informative)
He died before the limit was imposed. Prior to that, many people lived hundreds of years, such as Adam.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Informative)
Rather than being immortal. So yes, he traded immortality for a sure death in the indeterminate future. Interpretation is fun.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
He traded immortality for sex. Pretty much every man would do this if given the choice.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, he traded immortality for the knowledge of good and evil. Essentially for a loss of innocence. Pretty crappy trade if you ask me.
Also, it is fairly certain that Adam and Eve were banging regularly already. (They were both naked, physically mature, and had all the functional bits as far as we know.)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm.. No. you've got that all pretty much wrong.
1. It was the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil", not the "Tree of Life."
2. He knew it was wrong because God told him so. To Paraphrase: "You can eat anything that grows here in the garden except the fruit from that tree over there. If you eat that fruit you'll die, so don't eat it." Not a good/evil thing so much as a "Hey that's bad stuff, if you're smart you'll obey my instructions and not eat it" kind of thing.
3. Adam and Eve were kicked out AFTER they ate from the tree and were corrupted by sin. It was as punishment for disobeying his instructions. Also, they then started to age and die.
4. He put the tree there as a basic test of obedience. He wanted to be obeyed, but he also wanted people to have the free choice to do it. Not that making the wrong choice would be without consequences, but the choice had to be there or it wasn't ever REALLY a free will. (If you have only one choice, is it really free will to choose it?)
Adam and Eve chose to go their own way, as have most of humanity since that day. Thus we have sin, the fallen state of man, and the need for redemption through Christ. Of course, it is all still free will. You don't HAVE to believe in and obey God, but that doesn't mean there won't be consequences for choosing not to. Every choice has consequences. What sense would it make if they didn't?
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe this is a different interpretation, given my Jewish and not Christian upbringing, but I learned that after Adam and Eve ate the apple, they realized they were naked and clothed themselves. God came walking by (metaphorically speaking) and they hid. He asked where they were not because He didn't know, but because it was a test. Adam and Eve revealed themselves and God asked why they ate the fruit of the tree. Here, He was giving them a chance to repent their sins, but they chose to blame each other. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. (Not sure it's recorded who the snake blamed.) Only after they chose not to repent (especially having now learned good from evil), did they get their punishments.
Like I said, though, this might be different interpretations from different religious perspectives. Christianity is big on the "Fall of Man" in Eden leading up to Jesus sacrificing himself to absolve that sin. Judaism, meanwhile, is big on repenting as a means of absolving sins. (See: Yom Kippur when Jews fast and repent in order to have our sins from the past year forgiven.)
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Informative)
This is like arguing if Superman can beat Spiderman.
Yeah, accepting that superheros are real and superpowers are real and the Marvel universe is real and the D.C. universe is real... ok Superman can beat Spiderman.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
> he traded immortality for the knowledge of good and evil. Essentially for a loss of innocence. Pretty crappy trade if you ask me.
You think that's bad? The Highlander fought and beat every other immortal to gain "the prize". What was "the prize" you ask? He lost his immortality and gained mind-reading. That's like picking the goat behind door number 3.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
and he did... Adam got married.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, my bad, the word is yom, it can mean day or afternoon or age or daily or eternity or entire or lifetime or long or perpetually... the word doesn't translate well to a term we have in English, but in short, it roughly translates as "when you eat from the tree you will die". Also, even if you assume the 24 hour day is the correct translation, in a very real sense, Adam did die at that point even if it took time for him to physically die. The Bible clearly refers to both spiritual death and physical death and the spiritual death was at the time of eating from the tree.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Insightful)
I see. So he might as well have warned them that they would be given a ride in a helicopter if they ate the fruit, for all their understanding of the matter.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Interesting)
When a lion ate a lamb, what happened to it if death didn't exist?
The image I have in my head is horrible, just horrible, if things continued to live after being eaten. Or experienced bone-shattering falls, or drownings.
Are you sure this is a merciful god we're talking about?
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:4, Funny)
That's a little too Torchwood for me.
Before the flood it was easier to be vegan (Score:4, Interesting)
When a lion ate a lamb, what happened to it if death didn't exist?
Before the fall, did animals even eat animals?
Before the flood, which happened 1,656 years later, it was easier to be vegan because there were probably plants with nutritional profiles similar to meat. I'm guessing these plants may have died off in the flood. Notice that God didn't mention eating meat until after the flood: "Every moving animal that is alive may serve as food for YOU. As in the case of green vegetation, I do give it all to YOU. Only flesh with its soul--its blood--YOU must not eat." --Genesis 9:3-4.
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny bit is, back in the days I went to church, there were nutjob answers to everything, and as a kid, that shit was presented as if it made a damn bit of sense (it was grownups telling me, so it HAD to be truth by definition).
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
A Man said to god "What's a million years to you?"
God said "A second."
Then the man said to god "what's a million dollars to you?"
God said "A penny."
So the man said to god, "Would you give me a penny?"
God said "Of course I will. Just a second..."
Re:yet more biblical contradictions (Score:5, Funny)
It is a little known fact that Methuselah exploited the life span mechanics of the Real Life MMO. That and other bugs, hackers, gimmicks, etc. got so bad that God had to nearly completely revamp the game. The new mechanics were firmly put in place after The Flood patch.
Re:lunar counts confused with years (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Bible verse by Anonymous Coward modded Informative... Obviously the Jehovah's Witnesses won the Wheel of Mod spin today.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering Jeanne Calment [wikipedia.org] lived to be 122, I'd say God needs to update his manual.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, signed late-1800s birth certificate > ancient texts of obscure origin.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Interesting)
And the best part:
In 1965, aged 90 years and with no heirs, Calment signed a deal to sell her former apartment to lawyer Andre-Francois Raffray, on a contingency contract. Raffray, then aged 47 years, agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs until she died. Raffray ended up paying Calment the equivalent of more than $180,000, which was more than double the apartment's value. After Raffray's death from cancer at the age of 77, in 1995, his widow continued the payments until Calment's death.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:4, Interesting)
Taken in context of Genesis (as a whole) it would seem that "yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years" means something quite different.
[Source] [bible.cc]
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Informative)
And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.
Which has nothing to do with how long a human may live, but was a prophecy about the coming flood.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
Awesome... I guess I'm going to live for ever then... ... and I was just doing it for fun- didn't even know about that passage in the bible.
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Genesis 6:3 (Score:5, Funny)
The oldest person lived to 122. (Score:4, Informative)
No, I didn't read the article. It really doesn't matter. 114 is not some magic barrier.
Re:The oldest person lived to 122. (Score:5, Interesting)
quote:
“the odds of a person dying in any given year between the ages of 110 and 113 appear to be about one in two. But by age 114, the chances jump to more like two in three.”
Re:The oldest person lived to 122. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. "more like", and the statistical data are tiny, given that the population of people above say 112, is *tiny*.
It makes sense that the odds of living another year, dwindle with mounting age. A 10-year old in the first world has more than 99.9% chance of turning 11, but the same cannot be said about a 110 year olds chances of living to 111.
The question is if there's a "knee" in the curve around 114. Maybe, but I don't think we've even got enough data to say for sure.
That the curve is squarer makes sense; it just means it's (on the average) easier to prevent young people from dying, than it is to prevent old people from dying. It's easier to come up with some treatment that'll make a person who'd otherwise die at 30 live for 4-5 more decades, than it is to do the same for a person who is 80 to begin with.
That's because there's *many* things it's "normal" to die of at 80, and *few* (relatively speaking) at 30. Thus if you've got (say) HIV and are 30, *only* removing HIV (not that we can), would add decades to your life-expectancy.
But if you remove HIV from a 80-year-old, you're left with "something else will still probably kill him soon".
It's nothing magic, and the same for cars. If a single thing is broken in an otherwise new and good car, odds are that fixing that single thing will make the car work for a significant period. Fix the single thing that stops a old-and-worn-down car from working, and odds are *another* problem will show up in short order.
Re:The oldest person lived to 122. (Score:5, Informative)
The question is if there's a "knee" in the curve around 114. Maybe, but I don't think we've even got enough data to say for sure.
More like a crunch where it all really collapses. I have some mortality data [www.ssb.no] from Norway here, "Dødssannsynlighet for alder x" = "Death probability at age x" in parts of 1000, "Begge kjønn" = "Both sexes". Already around 98 years it's up to over 30% per year but it doesn't continue the collapse, it stays in the 30-40% range up until 105 in this table and as I understood it up to 114. Of course with only 60-70% surviving each year the chance of living from 98 to 114 is 0.65^16 = 0.1%, but right now 114 looks very close to a cutoff. That perhaps now it's an additional cause of death, not just the sum of everything that's affected "younger" hundred and something year olds.
Re:The oldest person lived to 122. (Score:5, Insightful)
2/3 / 1/2 = 4/3 = 1/3 increase.
I think we can safely attribute the 33% increase in the chance of dying this year to:
1) The fact that the sample size is so low. Not very many 114 year olds to run data on, and many of them aren't actually 114. A lot of people that old don't have a reliable record of their birth.
2) The fact that they're 114 fucking years old.
I agree, we shall form a line (Score:5, Funny)
You first. Don't worry, the rest will be right behind you. laughing.
Additional information. (Score:5, Informative)
Tell that to Jeanne Calment (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person [wikipedia.org]
Re:Tell that to Jeanne Calment (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person [wikipedia.org]
You would have a job doing that as she is dead. :)
Re:Tell that to Jeanne Calment (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly you would see a LOT of 113's in this list. Instead you see many almost making 115 and a few as high as 120.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Chronological_list_of_the_verified_oldest_living_person_since_1955
It looks like summary is trying to pull in clicks by challenging and making sweeping statements. When it is trivial to prove it wrong. Also the article ends with "Just my two cents for what they’re worth". So this is an opinion piece.
The 99.999% percentile though will probably not make it past 100. Supercenturions are fairly rare...
Go ahead and look at the Wikipedia article. Unsurprisingly, a number of the > 114 yo crowd have their birth dates as 'disputed'. So, no you didn't 'prove it wrong'.
Because, as we all know, the answer to life (Score:5, Funny)
Look a bunny!
what?
Re:Because, as we all know, the answer to life (Score:5, Funny)
If you factor out 114, you get 19, 3, and 2. (19 * 3 * 2 = 114)
If you add these up, you get 24.
Flip the numbers (since death is the opposite of life) and you get 42.
Thus, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.
Re:Because, as we all know, the answer to life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Because, as we all know, the answer to life (Score:5, Insightful)
You sir, have managed to master the art of numerology. And what an art it is. It can find anything relates to any number, and those numbers can relate to other things, to positively prove that any two completely unrelated things are equal and tied through destiny, predetermination, or that some deity has made himself known through an image of a dead guy on your grilled cheese sandwich.
That's also why I stopped eating grilled cheese sandwiches. But they did sell nicely on eBay to religious nuts.
Re:Because, as we all know, the answer to life (Score:4, Funny)
Time travel (Score:5, Funny)
The emphasis is mine.
Re:Time travel (Score:5, Funny)
Ooh, a lesson on not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!
Time for a ethics of dying (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if medicine could keep me alive that long, I'd rather just live a normal lifespan and make space for my sons.
Re:Time for a ethics of dying (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Time for a ethics of dying (Score:4, Funny)
Don't know about you, but I would like to see a mid twenties Sigourney Weaver battle alien monsters. Not grandma. What's she going to do anyway? Stab it with her knitting needles? Make it tea? Relive stories of her neighbors dog 70 years ago?
and also Larry Niven (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Protector [wikipedia.org]
Re:Time for a ethics of dying (Score:5, Funny)
In the beginning, there was nothingness.
Then he brought something from nothingness.
Then he brought order from the chaos.
And he looked upon it, and saw that it was good.
Obviously... (Score:5, Insightful)
...God plays with the same modus operandi than most corporations built to his image; It simply planned obsolescence.
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, because god used a shareware version of Genome Creator.
Re:Obviously... (Score:4, Interesting)
Aside from the god joke, you are right on the money.
Living organisms haven't evolved to survive very long. Passing on your genes to a couple new specimen has turned out to be the superior strategy. Obviously, since eternal life is pretty much the end of evolution in organisms that don't do runtime-mutations very well.
Shapeshifters are about the only imaginable species where eternal life could evolve, and even there I'd say the odds are stacked against the trait for reasons of risk-spread.
A statistical blimp (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A statistical blimp (Score:4, Funny)
So what has the non-rigid dirigible got to do with it?
What will it take for humans... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What will it take for humans... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I would happily be immortal.
To want to die is insanely stupid IMHO.
As for suffering, I suffer every day. I'd still rather live forever suffering those pains, than die.
Even the sort of fairy-tale immortal where I cannot die. Even if I were sucked in to a blackhole and left there for millions of years till it evaporated, I'd still rather exist than UNexist. To become infinitely nothing, lesser even, is the most frightening thing in existence.
Oblig. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tyrell: The facts of life... to make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once it's been established.
Batty: Why not?
Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutation give rise to revertant colonies, like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship... sinks.
Batty: What about EMS-3 recombination?
Tyrell: We've already tried it - ethyl, methane, sulfinate as an alkylating agent and potent mutagen; it created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before it even left the table.
Batty: Then a repressor protein, that would block the operating cells.
Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication; but it does give rise to an error in replication, so that the newly formed DNA strand carries with it a mutation - and you've got a virus again... but this, all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.
Batty: But not to last.
Re:Thank you, thank you... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, this is;
Roy Batty: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die. :)
Has to be watched again. I'm always just utterly gobsmacked when he lets the dove go, then dies on the roof.
quote fail (Score:4, Informative)
The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.
Contractual? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Contractual? (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't things supposed to break down shortly after the warranty expires?
Quality not quantity (Score:5, Insightful)
No one likes the idea of dying, but I think we might be less traumatized by it if we felt our time on earth meant something. Let's face it, working a McJob, fighting with an unfaithful spouse, buying lots of crap on Amazon.com and cheering for corporate football teams just doesn't make us "feel alive."
Re:Quality not quantity (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. One truly need either a thick skin or a dark sense of humor to keep on going these days. And that is for the western world. Hell if i understand how someone in famine or war zone manage to keep going.
Heart rate (Score:5, Funny)
Well according to this post http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/15/2338229/scientists-study-how-little-exercise-you-need?utm_source=feedburnerGoogle+UK&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+(Slashdot)&utm_content=Google+UK [slashdot.org] earlier today. A person's maximum heart rate can be calculated: "very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220".
From these two 'facts' that I have learnt today I conclude that once your maximum heart rate drops to 106 - you die.
Matrix limitation (Score:5, Funny)
Simple: the Matrix has a 4 Yotta bytes limitation for any human memory.
Each lived day stores 150 Peta bytes of sense information in short term memory, which quickly decays in 100 Peta bytes for long term memory (of lot of which is kept for dreams and feelings, only 3% is used by conscience simulation).
This storage limit translates into 114,9 years of life simulation.
Epiphenomena (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't read the article (shock), so I'm not arguing with those who say this isn't interesting, but it reminded me of Douglas Hofstadter in GEB:
"I was talking one day with two systems programmers for the computer I was using. They mentioned that the operating system seemed to be able to handle up to about thirty-five users with great comfort, but at about thirty-five users or so, the response time all of a sudden shot up, getting so slow that you might as well log off and go home and wait until later. Jokingly I said, "Well, that's simple to fix -- just find the place in the operating system where the number '35' is stored, and change it to '60'!" Everyone laughed. The point is, of course, that there is no such place. Where, then, does the critical number -- 35 users -- come from? The answer is: It is a visible consequence of the overall system organization -- an "epiphenomenon".
Similarly, you might ask about a sprinter, "Where is the '9.3' stored, that makes him be able to run 100 yards in 9.3 seconds?" Obviously, it is not stored anywhere. His time is a result of how he is built, what his reaction time is, a million factors all interacting when he runs. The time is quite reproducible, but it is not stored in his body anywhere. It is spread around among all the cells of his body and only manifests itself in the act of the sprint itself.
Epiphenomena abound. In the game of "Go", there is the feature that "two eyes live". It is not built into the rules, but it is a consequence of the rules. In the human brain, there is gullibility. How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation".
Is average lifespan a useful metric? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say the answer here is fairly simple, we haven't put much effort into keeping 100+ year olds alive, relative to the amount of effort to keep, for instance, 5 year olds alive. As I understand it, a huge amount of the gains in average life length have come from squeezing the bottom of the graph, not extending the top of it. Here's an interesting, though somewhat morbid, exercise. Go to a very old graveyard and look at the stones on the family plots. You'll often see a family with 12 children, half of whom died in childhood, and the other half lived to their 90's. So in that family the average life length was around 50, but that doesn't mean that a 50 year old should be looking for the grim reaper around the corner, quite the opposite in fact. As I understand it, the life expectancy of a 25-year old has been fairly stable for a fairly long time. Once you've survived the fragility of youth and the stupidity of adolescence, the following decades are a cake-walk, morbidity-wise.
Re:Is average lifespan a useful metric? (Score:4, Informative)
Here is table backing the above up. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html [infoplease.com] It shows that the average lifespan of someone who survives childhood has increased from 60.1(20 + 40.1) in 1850 to 76.7 (20 + 56.7) in 2004. That is an increase of 16.7 years.
Compare that with a newborn. 38.3 in 1850 to 75.7 in 2004. That is an increase of 37.4 years.
List of Oldest People (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia has a list of the oldest people in the world. [wikipedia.org]. 27 of them got older than 114 (only three of them disputed) and one of them is still alive.
So... "nothing to see here, move along..."
Re:Should we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Should we even live past that age - from a practical perspective?
I'd rather take population control and live to be a thousand years old. The trick here being, of course, to make sure that when you age you don't spend the first 50 of those years healthy and then spend 950 years old and weak.
I suspect most others would feel the same way. I'd gladly sign a contract stating that I would not procreate irresponsibly if it meant I could lead an extremely long and healthy life.
I can see the job ads on monster ..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I find myself thinking it is unfortunate (Score:5, Interesting)
I just spent a couple of years working at a "retirement community" where I was as old as the residents. There were a couple of very healthy residents, such as a Vietnamese doctor (76) who got up every morning and did Tai Chi and an 87-year-old guy who walked two miles around the campus each morning. But most of the residents were rotting away under the burden of a lifetime of bad food and no exercise.
I don't mind the thought of dying, but I want to die reasonably suddenly after a full, active life. Frank Lloyd Wright was brilliant well into his 80's. I just read something about a biotech entrepreneur who started two major companies while in his 70's and 80's.
Exercise may be the fountain of youth.