Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

  Puppy: off
  Phrase of the day: planned obsolescence

I forgot to mention one other book I read to avoid Blue Mars, a popular science book about immortality. I won’t mention the title, since it has nothing to recommend it. We die, the authors informed me, of planned obsolescence–but I knew that already. I’m not sure how I found or came up with the theory, but it seems obvious to me that people die because we’re designed to, not because of any particular disease. Cancer, especially, is not a true disease but a sign that the body is wearing out.

The book did mention one interesting piece of evidence that was new to me: Gompertz’ Law of Mortality (1825), which states that after puberty, your chances of dying double every seven years. Only recently has research confirmed this. (See http://www.anl.gov/OPA/Frontiers97/SL3.html.) Don’t worry, though–it takes a while to add up.