Tuesday, May 20, 2003 :::
 
A Mind That Suits is off tomorrow afternoon to a highly anticipated week in Palo Alto, CA, visiting the old Alma Mater and doing research. He has a few undergraduate friends (who are actually about to graduate, so they may be working hard, hung over, or both.) He therefore hopes to see something of the modern day pressure cooker life at one of the nation's elite universities. It was a great place to go to school in the 1970's, but by the end the pall of professionalism was beggining to settle. Still, two weeks there researching the same topic two years ago reminded him that it is indeed an idyllic, nearly perfect campus. The only problem is that there is soooooo much of the place that it is easy to feel isolated. I was a gregarious youth, and so did not suffer from that particular problem, but a lot of people do.

The only item from today's papers that really drew his attention this morning was an item in the Personal Journal section of the WSJ called "Finding A Cure for Old Age." (Available only to on-line subscribers.) It detailed continuing efforts to succeed where Ponce de Leon failed. Some of the stuff is cutting edge, and a lot of it sounds like the massive vitamin treatments peddled by clinics for decades. The writer at least pauses to note that an article signed by 51 prominent gerontologists in the Scientific American concluded that most of us are scheduled to die by 90 anyway. That's a fifty percent increase over life expectancy in 1970, but it does not mean that we are going to slip the bonds of created existence any time soon, which means that we should be as careful as ever how we spend the time.

Talk to you tomorrow.

::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 10:15 AM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.