craschworks

I just go back from Burning Porcupine aka The Porcupine Freedom Festival.

I had a blast.

I missed my initial flight, so by the time I got into town, it was about 1:40 a.m. on Friday morning. I didn't want to wake anyone up, so at first, I tried to park in a nearby hospital parking lot, until the park opened in the morning.

Not ten minutes later, the police were shining a spotlight through the back window. Somebody in the hospital must have called them.

“What are you doing here?”

“I got in late, and didn't want to wake anyone up. So I thought I would rest here until morning.”

“Well, you can't stay here. There's a helipad over there, and if someone came in, you might get in the way.”

So I drove to Roger's campground. I “slept” that night in my car. Boy, that was utterly miserable. I only dozed lightly, even though I had only had 4 hours sleep the night before. At 5:00 a.m., when it was light enough to see, I wandered around the camp.

There was a hike scheduled for 7:45 a.m. that morning. So I sat in the cafe as a people wandered in. There I met and David Mincin, one of the three organizers for the Festival. He looked like an alcoholic bum–bloodshot eyes, bright red face, bulbous nose, fish lips, and shock of white hair.

I got to meet , , , , , , and and others that I'm probably forgetting to mention. is quite the wit — just don't call him bitter.

Via :

Every summer, Metropolis, IL hosts the Superman Celebration. For the past two years, the fine people of Quixotic Crap have captured on film some fine specimens of the “Super-dudes” who attend:

Is anyone aware of studies that have been done on the failure rates in marriages in which one of the partners has undergone a severe disfigurement that left them otherwise mentally and physically intact, i.e. a severe facial burn?

Tim's Essay used to be on the Freestateproject.org's website. After the FSP got some bad publicity from one of the FTP member's

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:onzt4AQv6qcJ:www.freestateproject.org/about/essay_archive/freetown.jsp+free+town+project&hl=en

Finding the Free Town in the Free State

By Tim Condon • 2/18/04

Free State Project Porcupines all support Jason Sorens' excellent idea: Why not geographically concentrate the (relatively) small number of liberty-lovers in the United States, and gain freedom through the power of the vote? It's a great idea, offered at the right time, and is coming to fruition, with the migration already beginning.

But wait! If it's a neat idea to gain political power through choosing a single low-population state for liberty-lovers to call home…why not pick a low-population town in that same state where Porcupines can congregate? Call it an “early demonstration project.” An informal group within the FSP agree: It's another great idea, and one that will make for another excellent adventure. Now, after months of debate, research, and two exploratory trips to New Hampshire, the Free Town has been announced. (NOTE: The “Free Town Project” is an informal group of renegade Porcupines ; ). We don't have any “official” connection with the Free State Project, Inc. other that being members, nor does the Free State Project officially endorse us or our group.)

Preliminary research took the form of searching New Hampshire to find small-population towns without zoning. The lack of zoning was considered to be a crucial attribute, second only to low population itself. Why? Because zoning might be used as a statist weapon by existing local political powers to block any large-scale immigration of Porcupines into the town. In addition, the existence of zoning suggests a “busybody-friendly atmosphere” among the current populace. We wanted no part of any such place.

The initial list had 21 towns without zoning, with populations ranging from 86 in Ellsworth to 4,196 in Haverhill. Other variables were introduced and debated online. Additional subjects included the following, all of which were discussed and argued at great length:
Weather patterns (bitterly cold winters in towns “north of the notches” versus the less rigorous temperatures in the southern part of the Free State).

Ready access to an Interstate highway for quick trips to nearby population centers.

Availability of amenities in or near the town, such as grocery stores, restaurants, department stores, movie theaters, etc.

Distance from larger population centers with their more extensive amenities, as well as employment opportunities.

Availability and cost of land (Ellsworth, for instance, had only one parcel for sale, and it was purchased before we could make our move; other areas, such as Roxbury, had no land for sale at all).

Eventually the potential Free Towns resolved down to a few promising survivors: Dalton (pop. 854), Ellsworth (pop. 86), Grafton (pop. 971), Groton (pop. 341), Lempster (pop 1,036), and Orford (pop. 1,039). In 2003 two adventurous Florida Porcupines, Jay Denonville and Zack Bass, took an “exploratory trip” to New Hampshire, driving all the way to New England and back within a two week period. They were able to visit and examine various potential Free Town sites, including Orford, Dalton, and others.

Another exploratory trip was launched in early February, 2004. This time Porcupines Tim Condon and Zack Bass flew to New Hampshire from Florida, and had help from resident Free Staters in exploring. Also present was Robert Hull, who drove up from New Jersey to join us. Those in New Hampshire who volunteered to help included Bill Alleman, Wade Bartlett, Tom Kershaw (a former NHLP chairman), and Tony Lekas (we ended up spending the entire three days with Tony driving us around—bless you, Tony—while Tom Kershaw also helped with his van on our first day; we failed to make contact with Wade Bartlett and Bill Alleman, but hope to remedy that on our next trip). In addition to the main group of Tim Condon, Zack Bass, Bob Hull, and Tony Lekas, we were able to share time, talk, food, and drink with others, including Tony's wonderful wife Alicia, Keene resident and LP activist Jim Maynard, Connecticut Porcupine Tony Stelik, Texan Chuck Geshlider, NH Porcupine Mike Lorrey, and current New Hampshire LP chairman John Babiarz and his wife Rosalie.

Areas that we looked over as possible Free Town locations over the three-day period (of little sleep and lots of traveling) included the following:

Roxbury (in the southwestern portion of the state, outside Keene, but where there was no land for sale).

Lempster (where we looked over an old stagecoach hotel that came with lots of land, and talked with the town clerk, who said that the locals were “thinking about” instituting zoning).

Grafton (where LP activists John and Rosalie Babiarz moved to after fleeing their home in Connecticut when a state income tax was instituted in the 1980's).

Bristol (which wasn't on our Free Town radar, but which had a large property that was being considered for a freedom-oriented project by FSP member Bruce Hartgers, who asked us to “check it out”).

Ellsworth (where in the last election a total of 39 voted…with four of them voting Libertarian).

In the end, the four of us who spent the entire three days together—Tony Lekas, Bob Hull, Zack Bass, and me—agreed on the choice of the Free Town: It was to be Grafton.

Upon arriving back in Florida we made the announcement to those waiting to hear the results of the “Blue Floridian Tour” (blue because we turned blue in the winter weather…but that's another story). Perhaps predictably, immediately the complaining, moaning, second-guessing, and arguing began. “Why Grafton!?!” was the refrain. “You musta had a sales job done on you by Babiarz!!!” And of course everyone had a favorite Free Town that they were absolutely sure we should have chosen. “We wuz robbed!” some of the disappointed Free Town partisans yelled. It was amazing. It was like a microcosmic replay of the Free State Project vote itself!

Grafton, it must be said, is in the proverbial “middle of nowhere.” It has two general stores and two gas stations, one of which is out of business and for sale. And that's about it. There are no restaurants, no drug stores, no movie theaters, no Wal-Marts, no fast food outlets, no dry cleaners, no doctors, and no dentists. And it's a half hour drive to the nearest Interstate highway. So the “Why Grafton?” question deserves an answer. As it turned out, the decision wasn't hard to make. All four of us to quickly and unanimously agreed on our choice.

The town of Grafton lies in the “town” of Grafton (which is like a county in the rest of the country), which contains about 40 square miles. The population (now, as opposed to the information we originally had on the list above) is about 1,100, with a voting list of 767. It's nicely located, about midway up the state, but “south of the notches” so the winters won't be as cold as they would be in the sparsely settled northern areas. It has some beautiful forested hills, and even a couple of “mountains” of about 2,000 feet. It also has plenty of water, with a number of small streams and brooks meandering through the area, along with a couple of lakes known locally as Grafton Pond and Kilton Pond.

Grafton is about a 40 minute drive from the population center of Lebanon on the Free State's western border (and is designed, apparently, to suck all the money out of heavily-taxed and regulated Vermont next door; we heard about the happy hordes of Vermont citizens who come across the Connecticut River border to eagerly spend their money in a no-sales-tax state). The smaller town of Enfield is a shorter distance to the west from Grafton; and the quaint, slightly larger towns of Danbury and Bristol (which sits on the shores of the beautiful Newfound Lake) are to the east. The state capitol, Concord, is about a 45 minute drive to the south.

One of the things we hoped to measure, as best we could, was the existing “political atmosphere” in the various potential Free Towns. In Lempster, for instance, the town clerk told us (apparently approvingly) that the imposition of zoning is being considered. In Keene, near Roxbury, we talked to Jim Maynard. Former LP Chairman Tom Kershaw filled us in about the parts of the state he was familiar with. And in Grafton we were able to talk to John Babiarz, who had run for Governor on the LP ticket in the last election, and in the process became friends with current Republican Governor Craig Benson (who has appointed Babiarz to several statewide advisory positions).

In Grafton we sat with the Babiarzes in the ambulance/EMT/volunteer fire department building and talked for some time, during which we peppered them with questions about their town. “What's the political atmosphere here?” I asked. People like to be left alone, and they don't like taxes, bureaucracy, big government, or rampant regulations in general, John and Rosalie told us. What about enforcement of victimless crime laws, we wanted to know. Harassing and arresting people who are bothering no one is not high on the list of the town police chief (whom we met, along with his wife, when they came through while we were sitting around talking); in addition, the police chief is an elected position in Grafton, so if power were abused, he could be voted out of office.

What about the town selectmen who politically run the 40 square miles of the “town” of Grafton? Said John and Rosalie, one is somewhat with us, another is not with us at all, and still another is very friendly to our ideas. I asked what they could do with 200 to 400 activist Porcupines moving into the town over the next year or two. “Give me just 25 and we could win some elections,” John predicted. How could that be, you ask? It turns out that John has a base of support of about 125 in the town. With 400 typically voting, it takes about 200 to win an election. If 25 Porcupines were politically active residents, they could be expected to positively influence at least two or three potential voters each…in which case John (or presumably another Porcupine) would be over 200 votes…just about enough to win.

What about the Planning Board that exists in Grafton? we asked. Unlike other venues, it appears the planning board in Grafton isn't out of control. In fact there is no requirement for a certificate of occupancy, the “permission slip” that local bureaucrats in other towns often give out (or withhold, if they don't like you) to let you live in your own structure on your own property. In addition, the Planning Board is an elective body, just like the town selectmen, so that an abusive, busybody board could soon be cleansed of aspiring power-trippers.

What about the relatively long drive—about a half hour either to the east or to the west—to get to an Interstate? Undeniably, this is one of the trade-offs. But John and Rosalie told stories of easily and repeatedly driving the 45 minutes back and forth to the state capitol to the south. “You get used to it,” they told us.

I also peppered them with questions about how long it took to get to the closest doctor, dentist, dry cleaner, movie theater, restaurant, Wal-Mart, and other signs of civilization. The consensus was anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, depending on what you need and where you want to go. Lebanon, 40 minutes to the west, is next to Hanover, the home of Dartmouth University and one of the top medical centers in the world (which is being expanded over the next two years, adding about 3,000 new jobs in the area). Concord, a town of 45,000 to the south, has everything most people could want.

Was there land for sale, we wanted to know, after being disappointed by some of the potential towns that simply had little or nothing available on the market. There's over 40 square miles in the town of Grafton, we were told, and on much of it “there's nothing.” As a result, “there's lots of land for sale around here,” said John.

I also wanted to know about jobs, even though many Porcupines own their own businesses in the computer or Internet industries. As might be expected, there aren't many jobs in Grafton, especially with the small population of 1,100 spread out over 40 square miles. To get to jobs many will need to commute to Lebanon or Concord. Pretty long commutes, admittedly, especially for someone like me who hates to drive…but in the end, doable for liberty in our lifetime.

It was obvious to all of us that we couldn't have everything we desired in potential Free Town: Low population, no zoning, no planning board, no certificates of occupancy, a liberty-oriented populace, existing resident libertarians, economic and cultural amenities, jobs, land for sale, easy access to an Interstate, close-by population centers, etc. We had to make trade-offs. It is a tribute to Grafton that when all four of us put our heads together, it wasn't even close. The presence of John and Rosalie Babiarz, respected long-time residents who are already activists for individual liberty, had much to do with it. But the general feelings of Grafton residents—unsupportive of bureaucracy, desirous of being left alone, live-and-let-live attitudes, hostile toward zoning, increased taxes, and other schemes—also had much to do with it. When we asked if it might be possible to de-fund the local government school system in favor of free market alternatives, John and Rosalie told us there had already been talk about the possibilities. Similarly, for the past several years a resolution making Grafton a “U.N. Free Zone” has been presented during town elections. Each year it fails, but by fewer votes, and will appear on the ballot this year in March. Last year? It failed by only 5 votes.

Finally, I put it to John and Rosalie Babiarz: “Do you have any hesitation about a bunch of wild libertarians invading your quiet town? Would you have any second thoughts about Grafton being named the Free Town within the Free State Project? Should we choose Grafton as the Free Town?” Rosalie answered first, and immediately: “Absolutely!” When the same question was put to John, he smiled and said, “Sure! Why not?”

And so we're off to the races. Join us in Grafton. The Free Town.

— ### —

NOTE: Prior to leaving New Hampshire we asked John Babiarz whether he knew any real estate agents working in Grafton. He said yes, there's a couple who are home-schooling their children (!) who live in Grafton. The father, David Walthour, is a real estate agent in nearby Lebanon. When I called him at home, I spoke to his wife, who said she had heard of the Free State Porcupines. “It's great!” she said, “I can't wait till you get here!” If you're interested in owning property and/or living in liberty in the Free Town, you can contact David at 603-643-2039, extension 19, or email him at [email protected].

Mozbike has some interesting bike designs, including the 150 kg capacity long bike:

…and the tall bike:

From the November 22-29, 2000 issue of Metro Santa Cruz.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/11.22.00/nuz-0047.html

Pedal Powered

For bicycle mechanic Bicycle Bill, riding a stationary bike isn't just exercise–it's a way of life. Bicycle Bill lives downtown in a pedal-powered home he designed and built himself. The structure, which is 15 feet long, 3 feet wide and 8 feet high, can travel at 3 to 4 miles per hour but has been parked all summer at the Hub for Sustainable Transportation on Walnut Avenue, where Bicycle Bill fixes bikes.

Bills points out that all the electrical devices in his home could be powered by a stationary bicycle hooked up to an electric generator–although his home is currently power by converted energy from candles.

Before he moved to Santa Cruz, Bicycle Bill had already built more than seven pedal-powered vehicles. His favorite, “The Spirit of Bucky Fuller” (named after the fuel-efficient car Buckminster Fuller invented in the 1930s), could travel across the city of Sacramento in 30 minutes. Creating a “body shell” for Bucky gave it better aerodynamics and doubled its speed, Bill explains.

But Bicycle Bill's work these days is no longer focused on speed. He would rather spend time teaching people what he has learned from 19 years of experience designing and building pedal-powered vehicles. He provides weekly bike-maintenance classes at the Hub's Bike Church for a group of middle-school students on Mondays, and he fixes bikes at the church Monday through Thursday from 3pm to 7pm.

Bicycle Bill hopes to promote pedal-powered homes in Santa Cruz as an affordable alternative to conventional housing. He figures that spreading the word would be a good way to get the homeless off the street. “There are other alternatives besides ordinary housing when you're cheated out of the [housing] market,” Bill says. “Your best bet would be to build yourself a pedal-powered house.”

But the dilemma for pedal-powered homeowners in Santa Cruz is finding a place to park their rolling residences. Bicycle Bill needs a new parking space. If you would like to learn more about pedal-powered homes, or if you have a space for rent, you can visit Bicycle Bill at the Hub at 224 Walnut Ave., Santa Cruz, or call 425.0665.

http://www.omsi.edu/bikeusa/log/0602.htm

“…After Bike-E, we stopped at a cafe and met this other guy on a house-bike! The most incredible thing I've ever seen on two wheels! This guy, Brian, built a 20 foot house on two wheels. Granted the house part is the size of a two-man tent, but it was still incredible! All styrofoam and aluminum. He had a moped wheel in front and a Nissan wheel in back. The front wheel was attached to a generator which recharged a battery. When he needed to, he could flip a switch and the whole thing would be motorized. He claims to have gone 73 miles an hour on this thing! He's been living out of this house-bike for 5 years now, and this is his 13th model (the last one burned up in a fire). Absolutely amazing!…”

http://pages.areaguides.com/ubuild/TreeHouse.htm

[Note that unless you have an interest in SQL, this post will probably bore you to tears. It probably will even if you do. Beware.]

Suppose you have a table that contains multiple loginnames and email addresses. All loginnames are unique, but two or more loginnames may be associated with the same email address. For example, suppose you have the table “members” populated with the following rows:

loginname | email
—————————–
crash [email protected]
trasch [email protected]
mrasch [email protected]
srasch [email protected]

How would you select all of the rows that contain an email address that appears two or more times in the table? Such that, given the table above, you get the following rows:

loginname | email
crasch [email protected]
mrasch [email protected]

Note that

* I can't use temporary tables or views.

* Each row is unique (they all have different primarykeys).

* I'm using Frontbase on Mac OS X 10.3 which implements most of SQL-92. However, it does not seem to have ROWID's, which precludes a solution like this:

select a.*
   from foo a
   where a.ROWID not in (select min(b.ROWID)
      from foo b
      where a.email = b.email)

Which appears to be a common solution to this problem in Oracle.

This is the solution I've come up with so far:

select loginname, email
   from members
   where email not in (select email
      from members
      group by email
      having count(*) = 1);

I first select all the rows that have a unique email address. Then I select the rows that are not in that set (and therefore must be an email address that is duplicated one or more time). This seems to work, but is quite slow.

Can anyone suggest a more efficient solution?

http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0020187

Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now

Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey

Abbreviations: AEV, actuarial escape velocity

Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey is in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

Published June 15, 2004

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187

Copyright: © 2004 Aubrey D. N. J. de Grey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The biogerontologist David Sinclair and the bioethicist Leon Kass recently locked horns in a radio debate (www.theconnection.org/shows/2004/01/20040106_b_main.asp) on human life extension that was remarkable for one thing: on the key issue, Kass was right and Sinclair wrong. Sinclair suggested, as have other experts, including his mentor Lenny Guarente and the National Institute on Aging advisory council member Elizabeth Blackburn, that Kass and other bioconservatives are creating a false alarm about life extension, because only a modest (say, 30%) increase in human life span is achievable by biomedical intervention, whereas Kass's apprehensions concern extreme or indefinite life extension. Kass retorted that science isn't like that: modest success tends to place the bit between our teeth and can often result in advances far exceeding our expectations.

Coping with Methuselah consists of seven essays, mostly on the economics of life extension but also including one essay surveying the biology of aging and one on the ethics of life extension. The economic issues addressed are wide ranging, including detailed analysis of the balance between wealth creation by the employed and wealth consumption in pensions and health care; most chapters focus on the United States, but the closing chapter discusses these issues in a global context. Each essay is followed by a short commentary by another distinguished author. Within their own scope, all of these contributions are highly informative and rigorous. Dishearteningly, however, all echo Sinclair's views about the limited prospects for life extension in the coming decades. In my opinion, they make three distinct oversights.

The first concerns current science. Sinclair and several other prominent gerontologists are presently seeking human therapies based on the long-standing observation that lifelong restriction of caloric intake considerably extends both the healthy and total life span of nearly all species in which it has been tried, including rodents and dogs. Drugs that elicit the gene expression changes that result from caloric restriction might, these workers assert, extend human life span by something approaching the same proportion as seen in rodents—20% is often predicted—without impacting quality of life, and even when administered starting in middle age. They assiduously stress, however, that anything beyond this degree of life extension is inconceivable.

I agree with these predictions in two respects: that the degree of life extension achieved by first-generation drugs of this sort may well approach the (currently unknown) amount elicitable by caloric restriction itself in humans, and that it is unlikely to be much exceeded by later drugs that work the same way. In two other ways, however, I claim they are incorrect. The first error is the assumption of proportionality: I have recently argued (de Grey 2004), from evolutionary considerations, that longer-lived species will show a smaller maximal proportional life-span extension in response to starvation, probably not much more than the same absolute increase seen in shorter-lived species. The second error is the assertion that no other type of intervention can do better. In concert with other colleagues whose areas of expertise span the relevant fields, I have described (de Grey et al. 2002, 2004) a strategy built around the actual repair (not just retardation of accumulation) of age-related molecular and cellular damage—consisting of just seven major categories of ‘rejuvenation therapy’ (Table 1)—that appears technically feasible and, by its nature, is indefinitely extensible to greater life spans without recourse to further conceptual breakthroughs.

Table 1. Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence

The second oversight made both by the contributors to Coping with Methuselah and by other commentators is demographic. Life expectancy is typically defined in terms of what demographers call a period survival curve, which is a purely artificial construction derived from the proportions of those of each age at the start of a given year who die during that year. The ‘life expectancy’ of the ‘population’ thus described is that of a hypothetical population whose members live all their lives with the mortality risk at each age that the real people of that age experienced in the year of interest. The remaining life expectancy of someone aged N in that year is more than this life expectancy minus N for two reasons: one mathematical (what one actually wants, roughly, is the age to which the probability of survival is half that of survival to N) and one biomedical (mortality rates at each age, especially advanced ages, tend to fall with time). My spirits briefly rose on reading Aaron and Harris's explicit statement (p. 69) of the latter reason. Unfortunately, they didn't discuss what would happen if age-specific mortality rates fell by more than 2% per year. An interesting scenario was thus unexplored: that in which mortality rates fall so fast that people's remaining (not merely total) life expectancy increases with time. Is this unimaginably fast? Not at all: it is simply the ratio of the mortality rates at consecutive ages (in the same year) in the age range where most people die, which is only about 10% per year. I term this rate of reduction of age-specific mortality risk ‘actuarial escape velocity’ (AEV), because an individual's remaining life expectancy is affected by aging and by improvements in life-extending therapy in a way qualitatively very similar to how the remaining life expectancy of someone jumping off a cliff is affected by, respectively, gravity and upward jet propulsion (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Physical and Actuarial Escape Velocities

Remaining life expectancy follows a similar trajectory whether one walks off a cliff or merely ages: the time scales differ, but one's prognosis worsens with time. Mild mitigation of this (whether by jet propulsion or by rejuvenation therapies) merely postpones the outcome, but sufficiently aggressive intervention overcomes the force of gravity or frailty and increasingly distances the individual from a sticky end. Numbers denote plausible ages, at the time first-generation rejuvenation therapies arrive, of people following the respective trajectories.

The escape velocity cusp is closer than you might guess. Since we are already so long lived, even a 30% increase in healthy life span will give the first beneficiaries of rejuvenation therapies another 20 years—an eternity in science—to benefit from second-generation therapies that would give another 30%, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, if first-generation rejuvenation therapies were universally available and this progress in developing rejuvenation therapy could be indefinitely maintained, these advances would put us beyond AEV. Universal availability might be thought economically and sociopolitically implausible (though that conclusion may be premature, as I will summarise below), so it's worth considering the same question in terms of life-span potential (the life span of the luckiest people). Figure 1 again illustrates this: those who get first-generation therapies only just in time will in fact be unlikely to live more than 20–30 years more than their parents, because they will spend many frail years with a short remaining life expectancy (i.e., a high risk of imminent death), whereas those only a little younger will never get that frail and will spend rather few years even in biological middle age. Quantitatively, what this means is that if a 10% per year decline of mortality rates at all ages is achieved and sustained indefinitely, then the first 1000-year-old is probably only 5–10 years younger than the first 150-year-old.

The third oversight that I observe in contemporary commentaries on life extension, among which Coping with Methuselah is representative, is the most significant because of its urgency. First-generation rejuvenation therapies, whenever they arrive, will surely build on a string of prior laboratory achievements. Those achievements, it seems to me, will have progressively worn down humanity's evidently desperate determination to close its eyes to the prospect of defeating its foremost remaining scourge anytime soon. The problem (if we can call it that) is that this wearing-down may have been completed long before the rejuvenation therapies arrive. There will come an advance—probably a single laboratory result—that breaks the camel's back and forces society to abandon that denial: to accept that the risk of getting one's hopes up and seeing them dashed is now outweighed by the risk of missing the AEV boat by inaction. What will that result be? I think a conservative guess is a trebling of the remaining life span of mice of a long-lived strain that have reached two-thirds of their normal life span before treatment begins. This would possess what I claim are the key necessary features: a big life extension, in something furry and not congenitally sick, from treatment begun in middle age.

It is the prospect of AEV, of course, that makes this juncture so pivotal. It seems quite certain to me that the announcement of such mice will cause huge, essentially immediate, society-wide changes in lifestyle and expenditure choices—in a word, pandemonium—resulting from the anticipation that extreme human life extension might arrive soon enough to benefit people already alive. We will probably not have effective rejuvenation therapies for humans for at least 25 years, and it could certainly be 100 years. But given the present status of the therapies listed in Table 1, we have, in my view, a high probability of reaching the mouse life extension milestone just described (which I call ‘robust mouse rejuvenation’) within just ten years, given adequate and focused funding (perhaps $100 million per year). And nobody in Coping with Methuselah said so. This timeframe could be way off, of course, but as Wade notes (p. 57), big advances often occur much sooner than most experts expect. Even the most obvious of these lifestyle changes—greater expenditure on traditional medical care, avoidance of socially vital but risky professions—could severely destabilise the global economy; those better versed in economics and sociology than I would doubtless be even more pessimistic about our ability to negotiate this period smoothly. Overpopulation, probably the most frequently cited drawback of curing aging, could not result for many decades, but the same cannot be said for breadth of access irrespective of ability to pay: in a post-9/11 world, restricted availability of rejuvenation therapies resembling that seen today with AIDS drugs would invite violence on a scale that, shall we say, might be worth trying to avoid.

Am I, then, resigned to a future in which countless millions are denied many decades of life by our studied reluctance to plan ahead today? Not quite. The way out is pointed to in Lee and Tuljapurkar's (1997) graph of the average wealth consumed and generated by an individual as a function of age, reproduced in Coping with Methuselah (p. 143). Once AEV is achieved, there will be no going back: rejuvenation research will be intense forever thereafter and will anticipate and remedy the life-threatening degenerative changes appearing at newly achieved ages with ever-increasing efficacy and lead time. This will bring about the greatest economic change of all in society: the elimination of retirement benefits. Retirement benefits are for frail people, and there won't be any frail people. The graph just mentioned amply illustrates how much wealth will be released by this. My hope, therefore, is that once policy makers begin to realise what's coming they will factor in this eventual windfall and allocate sufficient short-term resources to make the period of limited availability of rejuvenation therapies brief enough to prevent mayhem. This will, however, be possible only if such resources begin to be set aside long enough in advance—and we don't know how long we have.

References

Alzheimer A (1907) Uber eine eigneartige Ehrankung der Himrinde. Allg Z Psychiatr Psychish-Gerichtliche Med 64: 146–148. Find this article online

Barzilai N, She L, Liu BQ, Vuguin P, Cohen P, et al. (1999) Surgical removal of visceral fat reverses hepatic insulin resistance. Diabetes 48: 94–98. Find this article online

Brody H (1955) Organization of the cerebral cortex III. J Comp Neurol 102: 511–556. Find this article online

Cutler RG (1982) The dysdifferentiation hypothesis of mammalian aging and longevity. In: Giacobini E, editor The aging brain: Cellular and molecular mechanisms of aging in the nervous system New York: Raven Press. pp 1–19.

de Grey ADNJ (2002) Bioremediation meets biomedicine: Therapeutic translation of microbial catabolism to the lysosome. Trends Biotechnol 20: 452–455. Find this article online

de Grey ADNJ (2004) The unfortunate influence of the weather on the rate of aging. Gerontology In press.

de Grey ADNJ, Ames BN, Andersen JK, Bartke A, Campisi J, et al. (2002) Time to talk SENS: Critiquing the immutability of human aging. Ann N Y Acad Sci 959: 452–462. Find this article online

de Grey ADNJ, Campbell FC, Dokal I, Fairbairn LJ, Graham GJ, et al. (2004) Total deletion of in vivo telomere elongation capacity: An ambitious but possibly ultimate cure for all age-related human cancers. Ann N Y Acad Sci In press.

Harman D (1972) The biologic clock: The mitochondria? J Am Geriatr Soc 20: 145–147. Find this article online

Hayflick L (1965) The limited in vitro lifetime of human diploid cell strains. Exp Cell Res 37: 614–636. Find this article online

Kass DA, Shapiro EP, Kawaguchi M, Capriotti AR, Scuteri A, et al. (2001) Improved arterial compliance by a novel advanced glycation endproduct crosslink breaker. Circulation 104: 1464–1470. Find this article online

Lee R, Tuljapurkar S (1997) Death and taxes: Longer life, consumption, and social security. Demography 34: 67–81. Find this article online

Manfredi G, Fu J, Ojaimi J, Sadlock JE, Kwong JQ, et al. (2002) Rescue of a deficiency in ATP synthesis by transfer of MTATP6, a mitochondrial DNA-encoded gene, to the nucleus. Nat Genet 30: 394–399. Find this article online

Monnier VM, Cerami A (1981) Nonenzymatic browning in vivo: Possible process for aging of long-lived proteins. Science 211: 491–493. Find this article online

Rao MS, Mattson MP (2001) Stem cells and aging: Expanding the possibilities. Mech Ageing Dev 122: 713–734. Find this article online

Schenk D, Barbour R, Dunn W, Gordon G, Grajeda H, et al. (1999) Immunization with amyloid-beta attenuates Alzheimer-disease-like pathology in the PDAPP mouse. Nature 400: 173–177. Find this article online

Strehler BL, Mark DD, Mildvan AS, Gee MV (1959) Rate and magnitude of age pigment accumulation in the human myocardium. J Gerontol 14: 430–439. Find this article online

Szilard L (1959) On the nature of the ageing process. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 45: 35–45. Find this article online

Book Reviewed
Aaron HJ, Schwartz WB, editors (2004) Coping with methuselah. Washington (District of Columbia): Brookings Institution Press. 296 pp. ISBN (paperback) 0-8157-0039-3. US$19.95.