Maximizing life expectancy/enjoyment

In article ,
DRS wrote:
Bill Lumberg wrote in message


I think the japanese have the highest longevity now. Perhaps we need
to sit down next to one of those 114 year old guys and write down
everything he does.

Been tried, doesn't work. For every one who says their longevity is due to
moderation and clean living there's another who'll swear it's due to a
bottle of gin a day. All other things being equal, genetics is clearly very
important here.

Mostly it's due to lying about their age, often taking their
grandfather's identity in order to avoid the draft.

Seth
--
Of course, common logic fails to hold up here on mfw, as a general rule
of thumb. -- Lyle McDonald

In article ,
William Sakovich wrote:

I described one of the
exercises in the book to a doctor, and he said, "If you do that,
you're going to lose weight."

Really? What's this magic exercise that guarantees weight loss?

Seth
--
Sometimes we have to forget studies and theories and just lift like a
****er! -- George UK

In article et,
David Cohen wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote
Ignoramus20526 writes:

Does anyone have any comments or book suggestions?

Moderation in all things.

Really? Moderately happy? Moderately healthy? Moderately wealthy?
Moderately intelligent? Moderately attractive?

No, that's too much moderation. You should have only a moderate
amount of moderation.

Seth
--
This is mfw, nobody wants to raise the quality of the
discourse. -- Lyle McDonald

On Fri, 10 Oct 2003 19:18:10 -0400, Seth Breidbart wrote:

In article , William Sakovich
wrote:

I described one of the
exercises in the book to a doctor, and he said, "If you do that, you're
going to lose weight."

Really? What's this magic exercise that guarantees weight loss?

Seth

Table push-aways.

Anna
--
Bottom line: ignore your body, it's most likely doing you harm.

Lyle McDonald, mfw

DRS wrote:
John M. Williams wrote in message

"DRS" wrote:

Religious liars like you just make me hate religion more than ever.

They're no worse than dogmatic atheists.

I prefer agnostics, who are intellectually honest enough
to admit that they don't know any universal truths.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the entire history of our species we have
found exactly zero credible evidence of any supernatural being who
created the universe. Moreover, the more we learn about the
universe the less necessary we find any such creator.

We're like ants exploring the kitchen. At this point in our
unsupervised brain evolution we know ZERO about what it is we're
exploring, and worse, unable to understand the picture even after
collecting the facts. Appealing to looking and not finding is quite
naive.

DZ

Why then should I or anyone else give theism so much as the time of
day? The only dogmatic thing about my position is an absolute
insistence on credible, reliable evidence. If you've got a problem
with that we've got nothing to talk about.

--
Wheel discovery department

Julianne wrote:

"DRS" wrote...

Since larger animals tend to live longer than tiny animals
anyway I want to see the research done on elephants.

This is not true of dogs. Irritating little chihahuas and
poodles live for like 20 years and really good dogs like
great danes only live for 6 or 8.

There are very good reasons for this. For one, Danes have been
bred for size, and their hearts aren't commensurately larger.
For another (speaking of hearts), hearts below a threshold size
basically can't fibrillate, eliminating one source of sudden
death. Large dogs (and humans) are on one side of this
threshold, and small dogs on the other.

Really, there are so many differences between humans and other
mammals that I'm leary of extrapolating CR research on small
mammals to humans. For example, many mammals are strongly
predisposed to gain/retain muscle mass compared to humans, and
few mammals develop the problems with mobility that elderly
humans do.

--
-Wayne

"John M. Williams" wrote in
:

Well, according to the reference which Chung cites, God IS The
Word. And The Word has been around since the beginning.

But that invites the question, "What is The Word?"

Chung would probably say that The Word is the reference from
which he cites. However, that reference, particularly that part
which describes God as The Word and The Word being
around in the beginning, was written a few centuries after the
death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Coupla quibbles: Latest research has John being written towards the end of
the first century. So within living memory of Jesus' death (barely).

And Jesus lived, even according
to The Word, at least a couple of millennia after The Beginning.
And the exact parameters of The Word weren't determined
until the Council of Rome, about 350 years after Jesus died,
and even then, The Word didn't become immutable until the
Council of Trent, less than 500 years ago.

So how is it that The Word been around since The Beginning,
in a form that is "expressed in apt words and with infallible
truth"? (Pope Leo XIII, 1893) The circularity of that
reasoning is almost staggering.

Of course, none if this precludes a belief in God; it just
makes it nearly impossible to believe in the infallible
accuracy of The Book, which seems to be the standard
definition for The Word.

Not even the fundamentalists would agree with that. The Word's the Word;
the Book is the history of the Word's action in time. Infallable if you're
into that; but not the same as the Word.

dogsbody

"DRS" wrote in
:

DZ wrote in message

...
makes everything more complicated). There are smart and well adjusted
people who do genetics using evolutionary models and believe in
Creation of species at the same time. Depends on which hat you're
wearing at a time. This is neither contradictory nor dishonest.

It is absolutely both! Science starts from the evidence. Creationism
starts from an unquestionable premise and ignores all of the
overwhelming evidence against it. Creationism is a pack of lies from
start to finish. You cannot be a scientist and a Creationist at the same
time because believing in Creationism forces you to contradict the
fundamentals of science itself.

Read the post you're replying to. It says "Creation of species". It doesn't
say "creationism". Believing God created the world is a statement about why
the world exists. It doesn't say anything about how it was made, what tools
were used. A religious person can beleive that natural selection and genetic
variation are the tools of Creation and are also available to rational
analysis.

Creationism, on the other hand, is bunk by any rational analysis.

dogsbody

Andi B. wrote ...
Luna wrote:

One rule of thumb I read for determining if you
are getting enough sleep is if can you wake up on time without an alarm
clock.

I guess it doesn't count if you have a wakeful night and are awake well
before the alarm goes off ...


That is easily archiveable for some friends of mine with 200-400mg
SAMe plus a B complex late in the evening. Not too much B, though, as
this will get you quite vivid dreams otherwise.

I've been taking extra magnesium for muscle cramps, but it also seems to
help me to sleep - I have no idea why.

But I wonder if a person can have too much magnesium, and if so what would
the effect be - I've had a squishy tummy all week and I've been taking two
magnesium pills at night for bad lower leg cramps.

I'd still rather have the squishy tummy than the cramps though. Easier to
take an imodium than to be up and down every half hour throughout the night
walking off cramp.


Rachel
(New Zealand)

"DRS" wrote in
:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the entire history of our species we have found
exactly zero credible evidence of any supernatural being who created the
universe. Moreover, the more we learn about the universe the less
necessary we find any such creator. Why then should I or anyone else
give theism so much as the time of day? The only dogmatic thing about
my position is an absolute insistence on credible, reliable evidence.
If you've got a problem with that we've got nothing to talk about.


Actually, various people nowadays are willing to argue from evidence. The
precision with which the fundamental constants of the universe are tuned to
support life--analysis of near-death experiences--the study showing that sick
people who were prayed for did better than a control group, even though they
didn't know they were being prayed for.

I view all this with deep suspicion, because I think having no proof for
God's existance is the whole point of our existance. If you don't *know* he
exists, you have to be responsible for your own behavior.

And yes, I realize that an argument that says by its own terms it cannot be
proved is unfalsifiable, and therefore scientific reasoning cannot be used to
examine it. Which means that if that's the only grounds you'll base the
discussion on we do indeed have nothing to talk about. But there are other
grounds for rational beings to have a discussion.

dogsbody