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Why People Don't Live Past 114
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?"
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.
The iPad 4. Fanbois only of course...
No, I didn't read the article. It really doesn't matter. 114 is not some magic barrier.
Actual understanding of the causes for the limit and development of a solution?
...proper verb conjugation.
For behold, thy God is a jealous and angry grammar nazi! Honor thy noun clause and verb clause, that thy days may be numbered long upon the Earth.
This has been noticed before. Here is another article on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
is 42. And 114 is 42 backwards if you add the 1's together. The opposite of life is death - metaphysically speaking of course.
Look a bunny!
what?
A lifetime of healthy food (fruits, vegetables, nuts and algae), regular exercise, no stress, meditation, happiness and joy. Achievable, but not easy.
The article mentions that many of the records of the oldest living people, in particular people over the age of 100, come from Japan. The problem with this is that it was recently found in Japan that many of the "reported" post-100 people actually died many years ago, and were merely being reported as still alive by their families in order to continue collecting their pensions. Home visits to verify the people's living status were rebuffed with "He's not feeling well today, and isn't accepting visitors", which the government agents were to polite to object to.
The emphasis is mine.
No I'm in no way trying to start a religious discussion or argument, but in the book of Genesis, God says "man's days shall be limited to 120 years." For me, rather than extend my life to a point where my body is broken down and tired, I'd rather live less years and enjoy them.
Even if medicine could keep me alive that long, I'd rather just live a normal lifespan and make space for my sons.
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...God plays with the same modus operandi than most corporations built to his image; It simply planned obsolescence.
Football Odds
...by eating Dannon Yogurt.
Turn me into a machine, then I'll live past 114!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
...to live beyond that limit? Cryogenic freezing, I guess. But seriously, the problem is not the ability, but purpose. It's one thing to be able to survive into 100+, and completely another to enjoy your time on this planet. If you survive for 150 years, but enjoy the first 50 and suffer for the next 100, that sounds more like a Doom episode: Hell on Earth. All people are measuring when it comes to age is heart beating. But what they should be focusing on are different questions. Like: "do you enjoy getting up in the morning?" "how fast can you read?" "and write?" "do you hear me well enough?" "can you describe me what you see outside the window?" Can people over 80 on this forum add to this discussion, if they are interested to live another 34 years, until the "current limit" of 114?
there is no issue with my network
You first. Don't worry, the rest will be right behind you. laughing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The depressing part of this is that within a couple of years all people who were born in the 1800's will be dead.
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.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
There's no chance for us, it's all decided for us. This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us. Who wants to live forever? Who dares to love forever when love must die?
Cuz they don't want to
there is no issue with my network
So if the lord limited humans to 120, why did Methuselah get 8 times that much time?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm betting there is some warranty clause that kicks in at 115.
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."
We just need to figure out what is keeping Professor Farnsworth alive and we will be set! Although it will likely involve growing many things in jars and several sins against nature... but it would be for science!!!
Practice Static Safety - Hack Naked
Should we even live past that age - from a practical perspective?
We're already overpopulating the planet, not from a space to live perspective, but from a resources perspective.
We're already using resources faster than the planet can sustain them, and we will need the equivalent of two earths to sustain us in 2050.
And that's only talking about food. We've reached peak oil, and tar sands will only sustain us for so long (and pollute much more than crude oil ever did).
Starting to wonder if population control programs may not be our future. You can't have both old age and increasing amounts of births per person.
10 minutes of boobs a day keeps the doctors away.. old fogies need to find the interwebs.. Our generations will live till 150 easily..
We are not extending the potential life span of humans, only reducing the impact of disease and physical/mental problems that are the usual causes of a reduced life span, with the use of drugs and lifestyle.
"A person born in the US at the turn of the 20th century could expect to live 49.2 years. Their ancestor born in 2003 could reasonably expect to see their 77th birthday".
Wow. Just wow. Any article involving the violation of the known laws of physics is a waste of the electrons it was written in.
The rest is crap, too.
until the quality of life over age 60 is as good as at age 30 it's completely irrelevant how long over 100 we live.
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
Whatever happened to, "Hope I die before I get old"?
Here ya go folks: http://youtu.be/EdbZEXfPwmg
I find myself thinking it is unfortunate that we keep people alive for so long. My grandmother who is 84 is living in an assisted living facility. It's one thing to live into your hundreds if you can actually do things that make living life worthwhile, but it seems the elderly I've seen living in those facilities are miserable. It's a horrible place to live. You can play board games with other strange elderly people that you may not like, or you can watch tv, or you can stare at the walls and wish for death.
Maybe I'm not your standard issue human, but I sincerely hope I don't live anywhere close to 114.
just dont stop breathing
I remember when smart people commented on slashdot.
Unless your name be Methuselah or Jared or Noah or Eve or Adam or Seth or Kenan or Enos or Mahalalel or Lamech or Shem or Eber of Cainan or Arpachshad or Salah or Enoch or Peleg or Reu or Seruq or Job or Terah or Isaac or Abraham or Nahor or Jacob or Esau or Ishmael or...
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
There is actually one quite well known reason why we would have a limit to our lifespan and that comes from the fact that on a cellular level we cannot live forever. The ends of each of our chromosomes have regions called telomeres which basically act to protect the chomosomes from deterioration and end to end fusion. They are made up of repetitive sequences of DNA. With each round of cell division, the telomeres become shorter until they reach a length called the Hayflick limit where the cell will no longer be able to divide. No more new cells can be created and hence the organism can't go on. Of course there are circumstances where the telomeres are lengthened, for example in sperm and egg cells and to a certain extent with stem cells. This also happens in cancer cells, if they weren't able to lengthen their telomeres, the cancers would effectively die of old age, which is why finding ways to block the lengthening of telomeres is a pretty active area of research in cancer biology.
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 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.
Your real name doesn't happen to be Josephus, by any chance?
Why People Don't Live Past 114 - Answer
Why Don't People Live Past 114 - Question
The submitter/editor would do well to learn the difference
The one that you DIDN'T use ot thrown the man in who raped her.
Is it that hard to figure out?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Is this not the greatest bit of dialog in the history of cinema?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Incidentally, the article we're using about says that scientists don't really understand why 114 seems to be the end of the curve.
Do I need to bother reading the article, since the oldest person ever alive was 122 ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Oh, SingularityHub is the great big circle jerk set up by Ray 'Nerd Rapture' Kurzweil for these sad basement dwellers to jack off in public about turning into Gods by sticking our brains in jars or something.
Those cranks, loonies and weirdoes lost credibility long ago. I stopped reading as soon as I saw the URL bar.
Jeanne Calment lived 122 years...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
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.
There fixed that for you.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
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".
In the article there is a link to yet another article here
It states that at least 2 people have made it to 115 and the oldest person lived to 122. From the article:
The longest-living person ever, a French woman named Jeanne Calment, died at age 122 in August 1997; no one since 2000 has come within five years of matching her longevity.
So although it seems MOST people can only live until 114, there are some exceptions. Too bad Jeanne Calment died in 1997 because it would be interesting to see her DNA and how it compares or differs from all of the other people that live that long.
I'm with the article it must be genetics, and I think that GE(yes genetic engineering), will push that number even higher...
Frankly I cannot believe that many people live past 100 years old, let alone 114.
114 doens't live past you!
I for one love the Bible, and I found this hilarious, not trollish.
This is no mystery. It is due to the Hayflick Limit and scientists have known about this for 50 years. Every time cells divide the telomeres (DNA sequences at the ends of each chromosome) get a little bit shorter. There is a hard limit to the number of times they can do this before the telomeres are gone and the chromosomes no longer are viable, resulting in the death of the cells and therefore the organism.
Context is your friend. Each of those lived before the general limitation set in Gen 6.
It is informative and interesting, and germane to the topic. Even if you don't hold the book in high regard.
Then shall we ask the Voodoo priests in Haiti their opinion as well, or will a newspaper horoscope writer do? Or are only nomadic desert tribes allowed?
Seeing as it's so informative and germane to this topic, as it is the topic of global warming, birth control, paleontology, and astrophysics, we'd better get all the information we can from a random book above reproach and "teach the controversy" on this as well.
I8-D
there's no reason to live in the first place, so once scientists find a way to stop our bodies natural breakdown beginning in our 30s (mentally), and into our 50s and 60s (physically), it'll be just another stupid law that forces us to stay alive that much longer. You all realize, there is no prize at the end of this, right?
At the bottom of the page that displays this article is a link to another article about the oldest person in the world dying...at the age of 115. Hehe.
Actually, the bible doesn't say you should be punishing the man who raped her, just that if she was a virgin he has to marry her and pay a higher than average bride price to her father for "sampling" the goods before he bought them. (Also, no divorce allowed, so she's permanently stuck as the effective slave of her rapist. Such justice!) If she wasn't a virgin, it's not any of his problem at all, and there's no punishment for him, but she gets the stoning. Isn't the bible just full of wonderful moral lessons and goodness?
At the bottom of this article was a link to someone dying at 115. Oh Well, guess the limit was already broken.
http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/15/gertrude-baines-dies-at-age-115/
Mid-Eastern Pennsylvania Gaming Convention
Yeah, but the people who wrote the article were full of it, and demonstrably incorrect. Thus, science does already have the answer to the question of "Why don't people live past 114?" - the answer is "They do - here are some examples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_people#Oldest_people_ever "
The actual research in question of course, was likely nothing even resembling this, but since it was filtered through the screen of low quality pseudo-science journalism that was more interested in getting web page hits than accurately reporting the state of scientific research on the matter. Once you've got a few good quotes to sling at the masses, who cares if it's accurate?
because if life goes on and on you can forget retiring at 65.... if that is even a valid age for some people today. I know family who worked till 70 because they wanted to. I have known pilots who want to fly but aren't allowed because of mandatory retirement rules.
As a people we will have to make many adjustments, the big one is what do we do with the time. Truly one cannot expect to live in Vacation mode forever either. We will have to learn that being a contributing member of society is not something you do for a while and never again, it is something you do, take a break, the do again. This might mean adjusting expectations of employers, having people being allowed sabbaticals for a dozen years and having methods to catch back up and go another ten or twenty.
Most of all, how to have fun all those years....
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
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.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Now I have to write up the bug report. Who do I submit it to again?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
We don't know if such a limit exists, and if so, we don't know what causes it. Man, that article was a waste of time.
We haven't prolonged life in any way in the past hundred years, we've simply prevented premature death.
We live about 1000 moons (82 years).
Telomeres. As we age, telomeres break down, until our cells cannot reproduce correctly any more, leaving us ... well ... dead.
Now, if we could find why they break down, it could be stopped. If, provided with an earlier sample, they could be repaired to an earlier state, we may be young again.
The questions are then, do we want to find a mechanism for eternal life? If we did, who is to say who lives forever and who doesn't? As we've made improvements to extend the lifespan of humans, we've inadvertently caused the population to explode. Say we extend it from 100 years to 200 years. With the natural attrition reduced, we would overtax our required natural resources (food, water, etc). We're already pretty close to that now.
If anyone ever did discover how to do it, would they ever admit it? That person would be both the person who saved humanity from old age, and the person who doomed humanity.
There are some brilliant people out there. I'd be willing to bet that someone already found the solution, and summarily destroyed the work and evidence. If they're smart enough to do it, they're also smart enough to know what it would do to us.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Some Christian denominations have become more sane about this. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, don't "pass the hat". Instead, people discreetly put their donations in a slot in a box outside the auditorium so that only the Father needs to see (Matthew 6:4).
What I find more interesting (and perhaps there's already a perfectly good explanation known for this) is why women generally live so much longer than men?
Several people have lived past 114 in recent history, including a woman, Besse Cooper, who is 115 and still alive today. So, where did the idea of a 114 limit come from? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_person
200 or 2000 years ago, man didn't have the knowledge about the human body and how to fix it the way we do today. Besides modern medicine, the population of the world has exponentially grown so that there are a lot more chances for people to live longer lives. Further, with the dawn of technology, and record keeping, man has documented life spans.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Uh, yeah, thanks for that. I always look to religion for the correct answer to question science already has the answer for, Remind me again, which which hand should I throw stones when I'm murdering women for having been raped?
Well, according the Christian religion, you don't throw stones at all unless you are without sin yourself.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Actually, the Bible doesn't say anything about the man in the case of the non-virgin. Editor's omission perhaps. Not excused however, see the commandments...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
more episodes of "Lost"
I found one statement (take 220-age = heart rate) andanother (interesting that when your expected heart rate drops to 106 you die, i.e. 220-114=106)
And then started googling 106 and heart rate and found this very interesting article on pacemaker design:
http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/106/3/434.full
Discovering that there is a mutation that affects heart rate....
Also very interesting how many times the number "106" appears in the References...
Im just saying its weird.
The Clans in Battletech sent their old warriors out as foot soldiers (cannon fodder, essentially).
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
It all comes down to the exact meaning of the word "year" ...
sigs are hazardous to your health
The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
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 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 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.
at the UK Life Assurer I work at, there is a prediction originating from actuaries (not medics!) that the first british woman to live to 120 has just retired (at 60 years old). Actuaries spend all their time working with this data in order to price annuities and are pretty good at it.
The difficult political statement is that this anecdoral women, working for 38 to 40 years, has to fund 60 years of retirement (+ care etc). i.e. the current retirement ages are just too young; especially the gold plated final year salary pensions offered to government staff over the last 30 years (although, these are not generally available now).
"What will it takes for humans to live beyond this limit?"
Another 12 months.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
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.
It only takes enough people to reach 114 years, then you see also people that will get older.
Actually, the bible doesn't say you should be punishing the man who raped her, just that if she was a virgin he has to marry her and pay a higher than average bride price to her father for "sampling" the goods before he bought them.
Only if she's not a fiancée (and must be noted that at the time weddings were arranged when girls were prepubescent):
But if out in the country a man happens to meet a young woman pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die. Do nothing to the woman; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders a neighbor, for the man found the young woman out in the country, and though the betrothed woman screamed, there was no one to rescue her.
Deuteronomy 22:25-27
Also, no divorce allowed, so she's permanently stuck as the effective slave of her rapist. Such justice!
At the time a divorced woman had no means to survive by herself. That's why in India women were burned with their husbands at their death, or in modern day Afghanistan: "A divorced woman cannot return to her parents' family and, in an impoverished country with widespread unemployment, she cannot rebuild her life on her own, either. Some women seek escape by self-immolation, resulting in death or disfigurement. Last year, at least 30 women committed suicide in the western Farah Province alone, most of them by setting themselves on fire, according to Afghan media reports." Actually the no divorce allowed was a great social advancement for the time.
If she wasn't a virgin, it's not any of his problem at all, and there's no punishment for him, but she gets the stoning.
This is pure bullshit:
If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.
Deuteronomy 22:22
If a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or given her freedom, there must be due punishment. Yet they are not to be put to death, because she had not been freed.
Leviticus 19:20
If she committed adultery, she is punished, otherwise she is not.
Just because you don't excuse it doesn't mean the bible prescribes a punishment, or even cares that it happened.
Exactly which commandment would he be violating? She's not dead (that's why the stoning is required), so he didn't kill her. He didn't steal anything, Adultery would require that he (and/or she) be married, as would coveting the property of his neighbor. Heck, that would require that she be property of (ie: married to) his neighbor. None of the rest even come close. Unless he put a lot of work into it on a Sunday, or said something like "God damn, that's a fine ass I'm raping!", or lied about it and said "No man, she totally raped me, not the other way around!" (in which case, he'd be the one believed, and she'd be stoned for it while he was not punished. Remember, in the bible, women are not actually _people_, and their word doesn't count.) he's totally in the clear on that set of rules. Even if you've made up your own crazy-ass version that includes "thou shalt not have sex without consent of the other partner" (which would run counter to several other sections of the bible which insist that women don't get to make that decision), there are also no punishments proscribed for violating any of them. Usually it's left to mob rule, because followers of that book of horrors don't trust their own supposedly all knowing and all powerful giver of supreme morality to be able to handle punishments on his own.
Uh, yeah, thanks for that. I always look to religion for the correct answer to question science already has the answer for, Remind me again, which which hand should I throw stones when I'm murdering women for having been raped?
Well, according the Christian religion, you don't throw stones at all unless you are without sin yourself.
Neither. It's far easier (and kinder) to not read a single verse out of context and completely misunderstand history, religion, morals, ethics and reality.
That's not a problem. You confess, get absolution and your sins vanish. If you do it early in a morning you have whole day for a good stoning..
Shorter years. We're working on getting rid of the leap second: that'll help.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I found this from the article:
"During our last Google+ Hangout we got a chance"
I guess Google paid for this one.
On the food thing before anyone asks
What food thing?"
As for oil... plenty of energy around, we just need to harvest it more efficiently.
Wikipedia has a list of the oldest people in the world.. 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..."
Because that thing on their hand starts blinking at 35....and then you know what happens
Funny enough, On the bottom of the article, there is a "related article" that mentions a women dying at 115.
"What will it take for humans to live beyond this limit?"
Simple:
Cyborg Technology.
..."must have 435 years of experience with C++, Objective-C and XML. At LEAST 145 years of scripting and linux experience...." "... please forward your resume with work history, titles, salaries and referrals "
Isn't the first 80 years of watching suffering in the world enough? You need another 30?
Are you a sick man who gets off watching the 99% starve and try to make ends meet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pak_Protector
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Eventually we will hit the point where everyone is healthy up to 114... then drop dead.
the longest lifespans will not get longer but the period of age-related disease and frailty would be shortened.
End-of-life parties would be the new must-attend events. What incentive would I have to save my money? If I know I will die within 1 or 2 years, then I can blow all of my savings and party like royalty for my last 2 years.
The new official retirement age has been raised to 112. Enjoy those last two years at home on us... you've earned them.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
e x "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" = 114
Explaining why is another thing...
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
It seems when someone has challenges in life (no, not fighting unfriendly people at home or at McJobs) but on new gadgets or architecture or ballroom dance competition (even open amateur takes as much work as open pro). There are some that keep working on a endeavour until they are dead of old age but it was that passion that kept them going. As opposed to someone that retires, is financially secure but simply "coasting" which statistically they will be dead six months after they retire. OK so I didn't RTFA (was it biological limitations?) but I've read and seen people that work on something passionate and it keeps them going, but not everyone is immortal, and they leave their endeavour "feet first."
mfwright@batnet.com
An average human male is at his peak physical fitness at age 26. After that you lose approx 1% of fitness per year of life.
Assuming the above is correct, we can do the maths.
At age 114 you are 100 - (114 - 26) percent fit.
100 - 88 => 12% fit.
Perhaps anyone that is 12% fit is at the edge of viability.
Figures for females will differ slightly.
Where did I get the above figures? From listening to physical coaching experts commentating on various world championship swimming and athletics programs.
His innocence died and he became aware of actual death as his fate, so it'd kind of be like the movie DOA. You have been posioned and you are as good as dead, now is just the waiting. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Ah, so in your fantasy world, all women are either virgins, married, or slaves who have been promised to another man but not ransomed or given their freedom. Also, enslaving victims to the vermin who raped them apparently is "protecting" them. Right. You're a delusional freak, and I sincerely hope that you are not actually allowed to interact with society, as you are clearly a threat to it.
That was 120 years until the flood were to come, not 120 years for people's length of life.
Basically, it means "120 years from now, the flood will come"
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.]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
We don't live past that age because we have no clue why we don't. The religious conversation here on Slashdot just proves it.
If we knew why then we could do something about it. Since we don't, we won't.
Chuck Norris would win.
No brain, no pain.
I don't know, but I'm sure it has something to do with Cialis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment
If you're not reading the Bible carefully, no surprise you can't find any prohibition on rape. So long as you're not being disingenuous about it, i'll put it down as lack of effort.
It, however, you actually don't consider the Bible to be what it purports to be, then this discussion is pointless.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Remind me again, which which hand should I throw stones when I'm murdering women for having been raped?
Whichever hand you don't sin with.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
True, Jesus gave this sermon before what amounts to an IOU became a common payment method. But still, local congregation officials don't need to look closely at the front of the check to endorse it on the back.
Jesus was talking about donating publicly. I don't think he was talking about donations confidentially reported to Caesar.
Also there must have been no carnivorous plants before the fall. Venus flytraps must have been designed to catch... uh, flying plants?
That might be so. Plants in the sundew family (Droseraceae) may have been designed to catch flying seeds.
This is an extreme-value theory situation. The maximum of a collection of random variables is much more finely defined than any given variable. It's not unusual or mysterious.
general note - There was a Chan master that died in 1959, named Xu Yun that lived until 119
You could hook them up to a life support machine and force them to break that barrier,
although that would be no quality of life,
it would shut up anyone wasting tax payers money on testing why we cant live past this age,
other then just accepting that we do get old and will perish eventually.
I like to live until I am 150 if they can make me with machines, by then who knows, we can have robotic torsos,
and transfer the cognitive functions and brain over from the old body to the robotic one...
And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.
"World’s Oldest Person Gertrude Baines Dies at Age 115"
http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/15/gertrude-baines-dies-at-age-115/
I believe it was by John Scalzi.
Basically when you're old, you have two choice: Die and go into the group, or sign up for the military, be 'juved, and possibly die in war.
Somewhere, in our DNA, is the equivalent to a 32-bit unsigned-integer...
considering if you wrote this article a century ago, you'd be asking why people don't live past X (where X is less than 114).
heck, go back a 1000 years and you'd probably be asking why people don't live past 50
I thought it was a 10% tithe.
The Jewish calendar goes by Lunar cycles, roughly 12 to 13 per year. That would have made Methuselah:
969 / 12 = 80.75
Unless he was from Numenor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BAmenor
"And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."
This verse is a countdown to the great flood and Noah's ark and all that. Not a proscription on the number of years an individual may live. Context, my friend, context.
And I'm an evangelical. This is referring to 120 years until Noah's flood, not a hard limit for humanity. There are some people in the Bible who live past 120 years after this.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Ray Kurzweil predicts that in the coming decades the term “life expectancy” will become irrelevant. By then medical advances and nanotechnology will be such effective tools with which to repair our bodies as they break down with age it will be as simple as car repair, changing out old parts for new and getting us back on the road again. Indefinitely. Even without the breakthrough technologies that allow us to regrow organs or reprogram faulty genes technological advances are making their imprint on our longevity.
If several organs, bones, etc. are in need of replacement of unnatural, man-made parts by the time I hit 100 years or older, then why the hell would I want to live to be that age in the first place? The way the article talks, you'll get quick tune-ups every so often as needed, replacing even more aging, natural body parts with man-made ones, to the point where you might as well consider yourself some weird, unnatural Frankenstein thing, not a human being. I'm sorry, but I couldn't live that way. Give me death any day.
Medical bills already cost a shitload; they're just trying to extract as many extra years of them from people that they possibly can by doing this. Suffer a stroke and go completely retarded? Oh, don't worry--we can "fix" any major (ie. life-threatening) problems, prevent you from getting another one with regular tune-ups, and extend your life much further than it would otherwise be. Oh, and your mental retardation from the stroke? Well, sorry, but you'll just have to continue for the rest of your life living that way--but at least you'll continue to be dependent on us for a longer period of time than you otherwise would have been. Enjoy many extra years stuck in a nursing home.
Might as well pay for death and get it over with.
Men could only live to 120. Says so right in Genesis after the sons of God mated with the daughters of men.
Genesis
6:1 When humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 6:2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were beautiful. Thus they took wives for themselves from any they chose. 6:3 So the Lord said, “My spirit will not remain in humankind indefinitely, since they are mortal. They will remain for 120 more years.”
The first paragraph is (almost) exactly how I have heard it explained, so there isn't a difference (I'm Christian).
(Almost because just about every commentary that really goes into it says that the fruit of knowledge was not an apple, but something which can't be identified today. The apple comes from how that was the only fruit around in winter, when they did the plays.)
On the second part, the Christian explanation (Rom. 5, I Cor 15) is that Adam, the first man, was given life, then brought death to all men; Jesus (the "last Adam") "became a quickening spirit", and brought the offer of life to all men.
This was made available by Jesus' sacrifice, but can only be accessed by faith and repentance.
The main difference is that Jews today don't see a need for blood sacrifice.
If you had to live with 10/10 pain 24/7/365.24, there is very little that you wouldn't consider to end the pain.
Consider yourself fortunate that you've never met anyone who suffered that much. It's a terrible thing to see. Those people become shells of their former selves, unable to do their favorite activities, and constantly living from pain pill to pain pill. Life becomes a waiting game until you can take your next dosage.
I honestly hope you and those you know and love never have to experience that kind of thing.
There's a related story showing up at the bottom of the article that is titled "World’s Oldest Person Gertrude Baines Dies at Age 115".
Says it all, I guess. :)
Here's the link: http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/15/gertrude-baines-dies-at-age-115/
114 year olds must be quaking in their boots now!
Which is pretty damn funny, considering the whole Christian rutual thing is based around eating the Flesh and Blood of Jesus.
It's not the only time the Catholics have deviated from what the Bible teaches, misinterpreting "this cup represents the new covenant in my blood" as "this cup becomes my blood".
Was that intended as a snarky comment along the lines "if Jehovah's Witnesses are Christian, then Muslims are Christian too"? What Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, and JWs have in common is that they all believe Jesus was the Son of God who was put to death as a payment for the sin of humanity. Muslims deny that Jesus died. This is how "Barack Obama is a closet Muslim" is more damning among certain groups than, say, "Mitt Romney is an out Mormon".
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.
I loved it when in Terminator II Arnold explains to John Connor that he has internal battery which will last for 120 years. I don't think that amount is a coincidence.
http://codeandlife.com
I am sorry they VERY WELL knew what a sphere was at the time. The fact that they used CIRCLE instead of sphere sink your itnerpretation as "modern". Anyway the greek knew also the earth was round without the bible by a few logic step and long before the bible was written, probably other folks using the same logic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Also, as you probably know, Jeanne Calment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment) was the oldest human being, at 122 years. And she died in 1997. 15 years ago. 15 years of continuous medical improvement and discoveries, and we still haven't beat the record.
I'm 91 years young .. I cyber with three different "regulars" every day -- YES every day .. a gal who thinks I am 20-something and two guys, one of whom loves his "daddy". Orgasms are nature's way of renewing the body, not the mention the nurtritional substances contained within the Body's Most Precious and Delectible Essences.
what you gain in knowledge you lose in innocence; what you gain in knowledge of the consequences of your own behavior you lose by guilt over the negative consequences; what you gain in knowledge of your own future demise you lose by fear of that end; etc. etc. etc. And all that mental baggage distinguishes us from the critters, and even any humanoids who may still exist in an uncivilized natural state.
this might be just a trifle much to make part of the general philosophical background of an illiterate bronze age nomadic tribe of sheepherders, so it would probably make sense to weave it into a story that gets remembered and repeated, so at least the clever ones could be inspired to reason out the implications and deeper meanings of this tale, rather than take it verbatim.
plus, for my money, the middle east in general is still not a place where you can count on all the stuff you hear being true, nor is it a place where people expect that everything they hear will be true. The whole concept of history textbooks, etc. is pretty recent and not exactly backwards compatible with legends, myths, fables, parables, etc.
Just think how much fun you'll have.
If you look at an actuarial table from the USA: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html and plot the probability of death versus age, on a semi-log graph, you get a straight line after age 30. This means that the probability of death rises exponentially with time. It reaches 100% probability at age 121. Hence that's the hard limit. Interestingly, there's a slight change in slope around age 97: maybe some other aging mechanism takes over. Nevertheless, the change is slight, and the probability continues its lethal rise to 100%.
Your concept of "retirement ages too young" is flawed.
There are only so much jobs. No matter how willing to work peoples are, the overall amount of money employees can get per population won't increase, except by inflation. Elders retire later, young getting jobs harder. Upon more and more automation, jobs that actually produce products for necessary consumptions decrease. Riches that control natural resources drip less and less water down to the public.
Therefore, telling people to retire later helps nothing. Really nothing. It's about resources distributions and redistributions.
By discrete
"Discrete" means not continuous, like a signal that has been sampled. Assuming you meant "discreet":
you mean inserting checks in the box. That way the "elders" see who is paying the bills.
See what I wrote about checks in my reply to Anonymous Coward. Replies to previous Slashdot stories express incredulity that people still carry a checkbook. Instead, a growing number of people carry a debit card or an auto-paying credit card to make retail purchases, and they pay their utility bills with ACH and pay cash in person-to-person transactions. Say I choose to contribute to the local congregation's fund in twenties instead of with a check. What in the Bible encourages the elders to discriminate against me?
All it will take is a google search: https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=age+115
or else!