Department Of How To Take Advantage Of The Something Else
So much in life we feel is out of our control, and certainly a lot of it is. But a recent TED Talk podcast shares the good news that your fate is not sealed by your genetic lottery.
If you’re lucky enough, i.e. if you don’t die before age 65, you will become part of a demographic often referred to as the elderly. The good news is that you have options and choices when it comes to whether you will be part of the ill-derly or the well-derly.
Doctors and scientists investigating so-called Super Agers [1] (those who at age 80 were on no medication, had never had cancer or dementia-related issues) studied genomes of Super agers, and noted that it was lifestyle choices and preventive measures that extended the Super Agers wellspan (aka healthspan [2] ).
“Eric (Topol, Cardiologist and professor and executive vice president at Scripps Research) and the Scripps Research team looked for the longevity secrets in the DNA of wellderly Super Agers. And what they found changed everything they thought they knew about how humans age.
Eric Topol:
The stunning result was…there was not much to be able to say, ‘this was a genetic story’. So, this was either due to luck, which seems that’s farfetched to say all these people were so lucky, or something else. And I think that something else is what we’ve learned so much about in the last couple of years…”
( excerpts, my emphases, How to be a “Super Ager” (it’s not your genes);
5-1-26, TED Radio Hour )
Translation: There ain’t no, TPAGTLLAHL ( These People Are Guaranteed To Live Long And Healthy Lives ) genes.
Lifespan refers to the quantity of years a person lives; wellspan refers to the quality of those years; i.e., the number of years a person lives in good health, free from chronic disease and cognitive and physical disability. You want a long wellspan, right (no use in having a lengthy lifespan if you’re sick and miserable)?
Listen to the talk/read the transcript for some good tips. (Spoiler alert: ignore the Increase your protein! Inject Peptides! And Plasma! …and other snake oil hypes, and get the shingles vaccination.
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Department Of The Good Advice I’m Currently Pondering
*Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. [3]
* Accepting reality is not the same thing as endorsing reality.
* We are born on one day. We die on one day. We can change on one day.
We can fall in love on one day. Anything can happen in one day. [4]
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Department Of After All These Years, There IS Still
Room For Improvement In My Social Skills
Dateline: several days ago. This (imaginary) exchange takes place on social media:
FB Reminder:
” _____(name of FB friend) has a birthday today.
Let him know you are thinking of him.”
Moiself :
“But, I’m not….”
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Department Of A Blast From The Past
Dateline: January 2025. A new year; a new project: taking an excerpt from a past blog, from the same time frame (the second Friday of whatever month). My thought at the time: Perhaps moiself will like this enough that it will turn out to be a regular blog feature. So far it has, but time, and my capacity for reruns, will tell.
This journey down memory lane is related to the most convincing reason a YOU-of-all-people-should-write-a-blog-why-aren’t-you-writing-a-blog?!?!?! [5] friend gave me, all those years ago, [6] as to why I should be writing a blog: a blog would serve as a journal of sorts for my life. Thus, journal/diary-resistant moiself would have some sort of a record, or at least a random sampling, of what was on my mind – and possibly what was on the nation’s mind – during a certain period of time.
Now I can, for example, look back to the second Friday of a years-ago May to see what I was thinking. (or as MH put it, What was I thinking!?!? )
Here is an excerpt from my blog of May 12, 2017 ( The Phone Call I’m Not Returning ).
Department Of Things That Frost My Butt
Installment 621 in a series
(Pre-rant background information: I volunteer for a feline-specific animal adoption organization, at one of their offsite locations. The majority of the cats and kittens are housed at the mother ship, aka the main shelter in south Washington County city. Kittys are also housed at several offsite adoption centers – generally, pet supplies stores which have special cat kennel section which they lease to the shelter.)
To the Guy (and it’s always a guy) who walks his dog (it can be any breed, from the 5 lb yippies to the 80 lb Dobermans) up and down the aisles of the PetOpia store: Dude, you hold your dog up to the glass wall of an animal’s kennel/habitat and encourage your canine to bark/growl/otherwise harass the animal (usually a cat, but I’ve seen it happen to rabbits, gerbils and other rodents, reptiles, birds, other/smaller dogs) housed on the other side of the glass. Anyway, you know who you are…
On second thought, you probably don’t. Your actions indicate that there is nary an introspective bone in your body, only a thick mass of bone-like tissue where your brain should be housed.
Every time it happens, a part of me is surprised as well as disgusted. Apparently, because you have an animal with you and you are in a pet supplies store, I hold the (obviously mistaken) assumption that you are fond of animals. And yet you engage in this behavior as if it were playful, and persist in encouraging your dog to bark at the other animal despite [9] seeing obvious signs of distress in that animal.
And I, a volunteer for an organization which depends upon the goodwill of the pet supplies store in order to have that adoption space at the store, have been explicitly instructed that I am forbidden from confronting you. I can only “redirect” your behavior and attempt to educate you; I can’t kick your sorry sadistic ass to the curb.
If only for a taser gun with a heat-seeking, genital-specific probe….
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [10]
” ‘The original sin was eating from the tree of knowledge.’ That line, whether read as theology or metaphor, contains a quiet irony: the foundational story of much of Western religion begins with a punishment for seeking knowledge. Not violence. Not theft. Curiosity.
That narrative sets a tone that echoes through history. When church signs declare that education distances people from God, or that faith thrives where common sense falters, they are not anomalies—they are symptoms. They reflect a long-standing tension between authority and inquiry, between certainty and doubt….
… The pattern is not anti-knowledge per se; it is selective acceptance of knowledge that does not destabilize belief systems.
That selectivity matters.
Modern research consistently shows a measurable—though nuanced—negative correlation between religiosity and scientific literacy…. This does not mean religious individuals are unintelligent…. It means that when beliefs are tied to identity, community, and perceived moral order, contradictory evidence is often filtered or resisted.
So the issue is not stupidity. It is insulation….
…the sharper question is not, “Does religion need people to be stupid?” That framing misses the mark.
A better question is:
Does religion function best when people stop asking certain questions?
Another:
If a belief is true, why should it fear scrutiny?
And another:
What kind of truth requires protection from education?…
Religion does not require stupidity. It often thrives on something more subtle: the prioritization of belief over verification.
That distinction matters, because it shifts responsibility. The problem is not that people are incapable of thinking critically—it is that many are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that certain ideas should not be critically examined….”
(excerpts; my emphases; Religion: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, 5-4-26 )
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May you never be One Of Those People whose ass other people want to kick to the curb;
May you take advantage of the Something Else;
May you eat from the tree of knowledge at every opportunity;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] A Super Ager is someone age 80 or older who exhibits cognitive function that is comparable to an average person who is middle-aged and/or who has never had cancer nor is on medication for chronic conditions (heart disease, Type 2 diabetes….)
[2] Referring to increasing lifespan, people are trying to add years to life, vs. wellspan or healthspan,where the emphasis is “adding life to your years.”
[3] Attributed to US tennis star Arthur Ashe.
[4] From a Calm daily meditation.
[5] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.
[6] Was it really over twelve years ago?
[7] I was adamant about not writing a blog…thus, the title of the blog I eventually decided to write.
[8] Was it really over twelve years ago?
[9] Or because of…bullies apparently do not limit their torments to their own species.
[10] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
