Thursday, December 08, 2005

Longevity increases again

Dot-matrix organs aside (see previous post), AP says that typical longevity has increased to 77.6 years. Of course, there are problems, such as widespread obesity amongs the Baby Boomers, that will seriously affect their qol, in particular blood pressure, which is more and more known to be a severe health danger. (dynamic tension exercises BAD, aka, why don't Goju-ryu practitioners ever live to 70?)

The other side of this, as the article notes, is that longevity keeps increasing. Whoopy-do, old news. However, they give a basic figure, w/o a shred of underlying statistics, that the typical lifespan was 75.4 years in 1990. A 2.5 year improvement over fifteen years equates pretty much exactly to longevity improving at a rate of two months per year (2.5/15=0.16=1/6th*12mos).

That's not too shabby. Not where *I'd* like it to be, with my dreams of immortality, but hey... let's run some numbers. I'm 34. That means that, dropping months, assuming that I'm butt-average and live like it, and not getting hit by a bus, that I *theoretically* have got 43 years left, before medical advances. At our current rate of improvement, though, and not counting improvements in the rate of improvement, I don't get 43, but rather just under 50 years more.

Whee! You know what this means? It means that by the time I'm getting to kick off, we'll only be 20 years away from seeing viable fusion power and a balanced budget!

UPDATE: Here's the source data.

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