Richard J Schueler

Tribute to the dying veterans of the Great War (WWI)

admin — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:04:03 +0000

Tribute to the many veterans of the first world war who are dying from old age now. Very touching.

See how very few are left: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_veterans_of_World_War_I

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30 years of family photos show what aging looks like.

admin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 04:07:33 +0000

The goldberg family’s 30 years of portraits

I always thought it would be a great way to show how aging sucks by showing people we care about that are no longer with us, and their progression from their prime, to their near forgottenness, to their absense. I don’t think these folks are famous, so the emotional impact won’t be as great, and they’re not exactly ancient yet…but it was quite good luck to have happened upon them I think.

If you remember once in a while how aging sucks, and what’s in store for us all (in the absence of scientific progress).

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Want to survive? It pays, literally, to be wealthy.

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 19:05:13 +0000

In the New York Times
Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, but the affluent have made greater gains, researchers said.

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If you’re fat, and you don’t exercise, you’ve got 1 hope…technology.

admin — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:55:32 +0000

For most people I know, including my self, dieting sucks , exercising sucks. If you want to be around to see your 80th birthday, you’ve only got one hope, and it’s tech.
Take a look at the progression of obesity in the USA, I’ve got good company

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Aubrey de Grey on the Colbert Report!

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:29:04 +0000

Aubrey de Grey on the Colbert Report! 4 minutes of great stuff

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The pain of aging, and wishing for death.

admin — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 19:37:47 +0000

It’s interesting…When you bring up the subject of longer lifespans, peoples minds do what they so often do in a conversation, they search for novelty. After a few thousand conversations, you find that regardless of the subject, the person you’re speaking to wants to sound good, and be respected. Quite often in order to feel respected they look for a novel way to look at something, mention something you might not know about it, or talk about something else they know about that’s related. It’s a great way to show value I think. Sadly, whenever you talk about slowing aging, the most common near enevitable novel concept they arrive at is: “Why it’s bad” and if you get past that you get to “Why it can’t happen.” You rarely get to the hows because the why’s are insurrmountable. It’s more important for the other participant of the conversation to appear novel, above all else.

The next time you’re in a conversation with someone, watch where the exchange gets taken, and count the number of times you or the person you’re speaking to tries to rack up “novelty” points.

Folks that have talked among friends and acquaintances enough have well memorized the novel ideas people come up with when first exposed to slowing aging as a good idea. They’ve even named some of them. I’ll talk about this one, “the Tithonus error.” In short, there was a greek god who punished a man with eternal life, but didn’t slow down his aging, so he lived on a very very long time in a very very poor condition wishing for death. The good news is, longevicists have little desire to prolong agony, and the abiltiy to create such prolonged agony as far as anti aging interventions go, is much much harder than it is to keep young people young.

Here’s an example of a person living one of these “novel” ideas of being kept alive against her will. This is an example of what you get from NOT achieving goals in the slowing of aging. To support aging is to support this: New York times

I’ll spend the time to show the other common novel and erroneous ideas I hear, like “boredom” in the future.

If you want a very in depth explantion of the “Tithonus error” go to Longevity Meme or shorter at Fight Aging

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I got the youtube Nonprofit channel up finally.

admin — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:48:39 +0000

http://youtube.com/richardjschueler I’ve contacted them to fix the url to use the username “methuselah foundation.” We’ll see if they get back to me.

We’ve already got a google checkout setup to accept donations, though we don’t have it plugged in yet. It will be interesting to see how often they rotate the non-profit videos through the “sponsored videos” area. I’m keeping my expectations very low.

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World Life Expectancy Map: Mouseover every country to see the average lifespan

admin — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:35:38 +0000

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com

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Who would have thought movies made 30 years ago would be so relevent today.

admin — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:08:57 +0000

I watched “Network” made in 1976, right after watching “aliens vs predator 2.” Wow. Aliens vs predator 2 was terrible. Characters you couldn’t care less about, bad soundtrack, worse plot. They screwed up what had to be the easiest home run possible. Aliens from 1986 was amazing. Predator from 1987 was amazing.

There’s a flaw I’ve noticed where our perception of movies we saw a long time ago is far better than our perception of them now upon 2nd viewing. The imdb top 200 is a good example of this. What was cutting edge 50 years ago is often far more refined today. When I say Aliens and Predator were amazing, they are STILL AMAZING.

Back to “Network.” Take everything that made Aliens vs Predator 2 horrible, reverse it, and you’ve got “Network.” Real characters, real dialogue, and a real message. No special effects. I guess that’s why it won 4 oscars and tons of other awards when it came out.

The movie shocked me, as it was made before I was born, yet the dealt with some of the most important issues facing us today. Adultry, middle age crisis, madness, outrage, the corporatization of mankind, sneaking around federal media ownership guidelines, a portrait of masculine women..and I’m not even done watching. There’s still 5 minutes left. There’s a lot of corporate profit from promoting terrorism too. And this was 30 years ago.

Wow, it looks like they’re ending it with…..I wont’ ruin it. I’ve had little good luck finding movies from the 70’s I really enjoyed. By the way, take notice that the leader of the terrorist group was not apprehended.

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What was president Eisenhower talking about, this “military industrial complex”?

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:57:47 +0000

Eisenhower on the military industrial complex

Why did he choose this as his final address to the nation as president? What inside knowledge did being a 5 star general before becoming president give him?

If he was so concerned about it, what would he think about where we are as a nation today? If his worst fears regarding this complex were to come true, what would it look like?

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