Intergenerational Money Grumps

Numerous articles in news and commentary sites lately have reported the difficulties Millennials and Zoomers are facing in their attempts to establish independent lives. High rents and college debt are cited as serious drags on them. A minority is very successful indeed almost directly out of college, but the majority struggle. I recall similar articles in past decades about Boomers and Xers, but that is not to deny actual changes in the challenges faced by the young in the 80 years since World War 2. At this stage in my life, the issue in a personal way is largely academic, but I do see friends and relatives affected by it.
 
The immediate post-war period was a remarkable anomaly. After a decade and a half of desperate times, members of the GI and Silent Generations created for themselves a civilian economic boom in the US and most of the rest of the West that set an unprecedented standard of widespread (not universal by any means, but widespread) middle class prosperity. They started adulting (a word that didn’t exist at the time) early; it doesn’t seem to have occurred to them to do anything else. My parents were typical: my dad was discharged from the service in 1946, he and my mom married at ages 21 and 19 in 1947, and they built their first house (a suburban ranch) in 1949. A loose regulatory environment for land development resulted in a construction boom that made housing 1945-65 as affordable as it ever had been or has been since.

My parents at work on their house. 1949.

Each generation since then has launched a little later than the one before. (They are Boomers 1946-64, Xers 1965-79, Millennials 1980-94, and Zoomers 1995-2012; the oldest of the upcoming Alphas won’t be legal adults for another 6 years.) Each generation blames the one before for shutting economic doors on them (e.g. through zoning and licensing) and each in turn blames the one after it for being laggards. There always is some truth in both accusations, but just some: the matter looks more complex, unsurprisingly, in detail.
 
Millennials and Zoomers have had particular trouble affording housing in the 2020s. In consequence, according to RentCafe, 68% of adult Zoomers live with parents or some other relative. 20% of Millennials still do. Of those, nearly half have no plans to move in the next two years. Of those that do move out, roommates are a commonplace way to afford rental units. Some even opt for alternative housing such as RVs. News sites are rife with stories about how most live paycheck to paycheck without so much as $1000 for emergency expenses; they rely on credit card debt for those. Yet, Millennials and Zoomers are not in as bad shape as all the stories suggest. Every generation takes time to build net worth and savings. The current crop of young people are a few years behind, but not by all that much. Housing for purchase was actually less affordable in the early 1980s (when mortgage interest rates were in double digits) than today. To be fair, rents and (especially) education costs really are significantly higher today in inflation adjusted terms than in previous decades. However, a windfall is coming.
 
Baby Boomers have capital – much of it is in home values rather than liquid but it nonetheless adds up to a lot. (To be sure, there are plenty of broke Boomers, especially among those needing long term health care, but we are talking about the center line of the bell curve.) According to the Federal Reserve’s 2023 Survey of Consumer Finances, the median US household net worth (i.e. 50% have more and 50% have less) in 2023 was $409,000 for those aged 65-74 and $335,600 for those over 75. This gives a falsely low impression of how much is in this generation’s hands. Thanks to the millionaires among them, the average (not the median) net worth for Boomers is closer to $2,000,000; most of those wealthy people will have multiple heirs. So, an unprecedented transfer of wealth, mostly to Millennials and Zoomers, is set to take place as the Boomer generation passes: some 84 trillion dollars. Together with their own earnings, the kids should be alright – again, talking about the generation collectively. Individually, every person’s story will be different. At least half of Zoomers shouldn’t count on any rescue by inheritance – especially if health care saps Boomers’ bottom lines in the years ahead – but this was the case for earlier generations too.  
 
The generation in most immediate trouble is X. According to a 1000-person survey by Clever Real Estate, 56% of Xers said they had less than $100,000 in savings and 22% said they had none at all. Two thirds said recent inflation has seriously harmed them financially and 40% don’t think they ever can afford to retire. The windfall from Boomers will largely pass over them. The oldest of the Xers turn 59 this year, so they are not entirely out of time to repair their finances, but it is getting short.
 
No one wants to be old and broke. (No one wants to be young and broke either, but one can recover from that easier.) So, it is natural to worry about these things. But there are limits to the value of worry too. We do what we can with what cards we have at each point in life. We can do no more.

 

Ray Charles – Busted

 

Attachment to Music

It is not uncommon for friends on Facebook or other social media to post links to music videos for the sake of nostalgia, or because the artist is in the news (possibly deceased), or just to express the poster’s current state of mind. Unless I have some history with or personal connection to the song or artist (such as my Bobby Darin story), I seldom comment on the post whether I like the song or not. It means something to the poster, and that is enough: de gustibus and all that. However, it is well known (and a subject of recurrent research) that our musical tastes say much about our personalities, so perhaps we reveal more than we intend when we post music vids.
 
An acquaintance (the actual face-to-face kind) who is also is a frequenter of my posts on this blogsite (and thereby one of a smallish but I like to think discerning readership) asked me the other day whether the music videos attached to most of them reflect my personal taste. (I sensed a bit of judgment in the question, but didn’t pursue that aspect of it.) The answer is by-and-large yes. Not always. Sometimes the title or lyrics of a song are just apt for the topic of the blog, so I’ll attach it even if I personally don’t like it much. But 9 times out of 10 I like the attachment at least a little. Occasionally a lot. I’m not sure what that reveals, but an online test purports to do so.
 
Research over the past 30 years (confirming what was already obvious to casual observers) has shown that the overwhelming majority of people form their musical tastes between the ages of 10 and 30, with 14 being the peak year. People remember notes and lyrics of songs from this stage of life better than any they heard before or hear later. The songs typically remain a core preference for life with ever deepening nostalgia value. Our tastes as we grow older and more experienced may well expand far beyond what we liked in youth, of course, (mine did) but usually in ways that are unsurprising if you know the core. For example, heavy metal enthusiasts if and when they explore classical tend to like Wagner. I get this completely. Wagner is definitely the most metal of the classical composers.
 
For this reason the most recent studies on musical preferences and personality traits have focused less on broad genres per se (e.g. country, rap, folk, classical, etc.) and more on musical attributes within and across genres, such as arousal, valence and depth. David M. Greenberg at Bar-Ilan University and the University of Cambridge in a 2021 study, also found that listeners tended to like artists who appeared to express in their music personality traits similar to their own according to the Big 5 model. (The Big Five traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN). “The match between the [personality of the] listener and the artist was predictive of the musical preferences for the artist beyond just the attributes from the music,” Greenberg said according to the Washington Post.
 
Anyway, I took his 35-question test on personality and musical taste. It can be found at https://musicaluniverse.io/ – if you take it, note the warning to save the results manually. My first page results:
 
Score Summary
 
Below is a summary of your scores based on comparisons to 350,000 people worldwide. To learn details and get personalized recommendations based on your scores, download your 15-page eReport on the next page.
 
Personality Traits:
Openness | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Conscientiousness | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Extraversion | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Agreeableness | High (76 to 91st Percentile)
Emotional Stability | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
 
Musical Preferences:
Mellow | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Unpretentious | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Sophisticated | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Intense | Average (25 to 75th Percentile)
Contemporary | Low (9 to 24th percentile)
 
Those are disturbingly normal results. So much for being eccentric. An agreeable average Joe who doesn’t get newfangled stuff? I’ve been called worse.
 
I’m not sure how any of that relates to the musical attachments on this site – well OK, you’d be hard-pressed to find much newfangled pop, I suppose. You’ll find new rock (e.g. Dorothy, Rival Sons, The Pretty Reckless), though admittedly the style of these groups is much like the rock of my 10-30 youth.
 
When I started blogging on this site on a whim in 2009 (Yikes! That’s 15 years ago) the posts were just prose – even photos were rare. The videos came along later to add a bit more… well… pretension – and perhaps to inspire in the reader the question “Why THAT song? My pick would have been much better.” You’re probably right, too. Hey, what do you expect? I’m just an agreeable average Joe who doesn’t get newfangled stuff.
 

Nostalgia Post: I first heard this number by Janis (when she was with Big Brother and the Holding Company) on the radio in 1968 at age 15 – right in that 10-30 sweet spot. I like several of her other numbers better but the first counts for something. It ultimately prompted me to buy 4 albums between 1968 and 1971 including the posthumous Pearl. Janis Joplin – Piece of My Heart

Brrr

It is cold outside. In NJ in late January that is no surprise, but it is cold outside… and snowing. As a kid I rather liked living in a region with four distinct seasons: each one had its own opportunities for play. (There was also a comfortable home to which to retreat, for which I didn’t have to pay.) Each season brought its own labors too, but my parents didn’t drive me and sister too hard on those. Nowadays the winter labors far outweigh the joys. Winter sports are not my thing: skiing is physically dangerous for me at this point in life, skating is plausible but at my skill level will result in some thumps on my butt, while the appeal of snowmobiling (icy particles blasting one’s face at 60kph) always has escaped me. I am left with snow shovels and snowblowers, which are not nearly so fun. I understand more with each passing year why so many retirees relocate to places like Sarasota or Tucson: let the sunshine in. I won’t be joining them, but only because I am too rooted to where I live. All my stuff is here – and I don’t mean just material possessions.
 
My own personal inertia aside, humans, like all great apes, evolved as tropical creatures. All the ones besides humans had the good sense to remain in warm environments. (I’ll modify that statement if a Yeti specimen ever turns up.) Our direct ancestors lacked that level of sanity. 500,000 years ago Homo heidelbergensis (a species predating both Neanderthal and modern humans) lived in an England far colder than the one of today. There is no evidence they had clothes and no physical evidence (such as ancient hearths) they had fire. (I suspect they did, but only because of the difficulties of being so far north without it.) They must have been cold. By 30,000 years ago migrating anatomically modern humans occupied pretty much every environment up to the arctic. Why go so far north? Riches – at least by the standards of hunter-gatherers. While not ideal environments for vegans the cold North hosts abundant wildlife, including fish and herds of caribou and reindeer. Scoring a meal was easy – but damn it was still cold.
 
There are numerous health benefits to living in colder regions. Despite annual flu season, cold weather actually reduces exposure to communicable diseases overall. (You’re not likely to be bit by a malaria-carrying mosquito when it’s -20C.) It reduces common infections. It rejuvenates skin. It improves sleep. It reduces inflammations and allergies. It even boosts brain function: people in cool rooms do better on cognitive tests than when in warm rooms. Nor are humans the only beneficiaries. According to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences latitude and lifespan were correlated in 85% of examined animal species.

 
All that may be so, but I’d rather be warm. If I cannot bring myself to the heat, I’ll bring the heat to me. That’s what fireplaces are for.
 

The Rolling Stones – Winter

The Fall of the House of Bell-Usher

Simplified, the first two laws of thermodynamics are 1) you can’t win and 2) you can’t break even. Said Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time, “The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction to time.” Though he was not the first to notice the effect, Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) is credited with formalizing the concept of entropy (ΔS=∫[dq/T]) in the 1850s. In a closed system spontaneous change is always in the direction of a reduction of energy available for useful work. This is another way of saying net disorder always increases overall; an increase of order in some corner of the system is always bought with a greater decrease in the system as a whole. Things decay. We decay. We can fight decay selectively, but we use up limited resources in the process. Our ability to combat decay decays. Entropy wins in the end.

 
This doesn’t happen right away. We have our glory days when we exploit our surroundings effectively to make our particular corner of the system splendid and strong. As Roderick Usher sings in allusion to his family home in Poe’s story,
 
“Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)...”
 
But of course the good times don’t last forever for either his estate or his family. (He and his twin sister Madeline are the last of the family lineage.) So,
 
“And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed...”
 
Like Roderick, I (also the last of a lineage) feel somehow connected almost physically to my home (built decades ago by my dad in sunnier times), and both of us are falling apart. The roof leaks, my teeth rot. The plumbing has problems, so does mine. The house visibly ages, so do I. Its furnaces cough, so do my lungs. Its minor systems (e.g. garage door openers) wear out, my physical abilities wane. Carpets fray, hair thins. The house more easily suffers damage from use, my stamina is much diminished. Both of us have become very expensive to maintain even in far less than ideal condition.

Back when order was still increasing on what is now my plot of land. The
house was not yet built, I had a Donny Osmund haircut, and area codes were 
unnecessary on local calls.

 
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not giving up on either of us quite yet. I’ll continue to invest time, energy, and money to keep us both functional, but in both our cases some realism is in order about what effects of entropy are reversible and what are not. Unlike a human being, a house in principle can be rebuilt totally of course, but that usually is not a pragmatic course of action for owners with limited funds – it is not a pragmatic course of action for me. Still, I’ll not yet let either the house or me just split in two and sink into the tarn.
 
Nonetheless, I’m acutely aware that neither of my parents lived past 74. Entropy caught up with them. My intention is to exceed that benchmark (not a very high bar nowadays), but entropy might play the prankster with me by then, too. One never knows.
 
I don’t hold a grudge, though of course I miss being 18, at least in terms of youthful vigor. (It and youthful foolishness were a package deal.) Entropy is a condition of existence. Without it there could be no life at all. Better some than none. So on balance I’d call it a positive. Meanwhile, there even may remain time to float yet another yellow, glorious, golden banner or two on the roof. I’ll get on that.
 

Kelly Osborne – Entropy

Giving Vice Its Due

This being the first week of 2024, some readers might have had some experience with alcohol sometime in the past seven days. Some may regret it. Others not. Some might even be participating in Dry January, though I suspect most of those doing so are non-drinkers anyway. We all know the health risks of alcohol overindulgence. I blogged on this not long ago: The Booze Bin. Those affected directly and indirectly by alcohol abuse are not few. As many as 1 in 8 drinkers may qualify as alcoholics and (according to the CDC) as many as 1 in 3 (while not necessarily meeting criteria for alcoholism) drink excessively. Nonetheless, these are still minorities – sizable ones, but minorities. For the moderate majority of drinkers are there benefits besides (possibly dubious) health ones? They obviously think so or they wouldn’t do it. First let’s first dabble in statistics, some of which are counterintuitive.

Per capita consumption of alcohol in the U.S. (counting only alcohol content itself, whether in beer, wine, cider, or spirits) peaked in the 1970s, which is pretty much as I remember the decade. It declined through the 1980s and 1990s and then started to rise again after 2000. It spiked in 2020. Though it fell back a little in 2021, it remained higher than pre-pandemic levels. In 2022-23 it again trended slowly upward. 62% of adults (over 18) say they drink at least sometimes; the number is 65% of those over 21, the legal age in the U.S. This compares to 71% back in the 1970s. The average annual per capita consumption for Americans over 21 (abstainers included in the total) currently is 2.83 gallons [10.71 liters] of pure alcohol or 603 standard drinks. Oddly, alcohol consumption is positively correlated with income: 79% of those with incomes over $100,000 are regular drinkers, 58% of those earning over $40,000 but less than $100,000 are drinkers, and 53% of those earning under $40,000 are drinkers. College graduates are more likely to drink (74%) than non-grads (56%). Unsurprisingly, weekly attendees of religious services are less likely to drink (48%) than non-attendees (67%). Non-Hispanic whites are more likely to drink (68%) than either Hispanics (59%) or non-Hispanic blacks (50%) according to the Pew Research Center. The differences among adult age groups are significant but not massive, though there is considerable variance by age of beverage choices, with older Americans preferring more traditional spirits, beers, and wines; the percentage of drinkers 18-34 is 58%, 35-54 is 66%, and over 55 is 61%. Among older Americans, health issues might affect the percentages.
 
Getting back to the matter of non-health benefits, are there any? For moderate – and only for moderate – consumers of alcohol the answer is a qualified yes. (“Moderate” according to the CDC is no more than 2 drinks per day for a man, 1, for a woman, and no more than 14 in any one week; “binge drinking” is more than 4 in a day. I haven’t had 14 in any one week in at least a decade… maybe 2 decades… maybe 3.) An article on the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health site states, “The social and psychological benefits of alcohol can’t be ignored. A drink before a meal can improve digestion or offer a soothing respite at the end of a stressful day; the occasional drink with friends can be a social tonic. These physical and social effects may also contribute to health and well-being.” Professor Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford’s Experimental Psychology department agrees. He says, “Our social networks provide us with the single most important buffer against mental and physical illness. While pubs traditionally have a role as a place for community socialising, alcohol’s role appears to be in triggering the endorphin system, which promotes social bonding.” A more detailed analysis can be found in the study Functional Benefits of (Modest) Alcohol Consumption, which states in the Abstract, “We combine data from a national survey with data from more detailed behavioural and observational studies to show that social drinkers have more friends on whom they can depend for emotional and other support, and feel more engaged with, and trusting of, their local community."

It turns out that even just bending the long-suffering bartender's ear can be as therapeutic as cliché would have it.
 
Note, however, the social aspect of the tippling mentioned above. Drinking alone, with all due respect to GeorgeThorogood, misses much of the point. Maybe one to unwind upon arriving home alone is OK, but think twice before pouring a second. Skip the third, and maybe join the sober minority if you find that hard to do. They have a point to make, too.
 

Ida Lupino - One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)

[One trusts that it’s the metaphorical road back to happiness]

Auld Times

Auld Lang Syne will fill the airwaves in a couple days. The song itself is part of the nostalgia it is intended to evoke. We resist updating the old-fashioned Scots lyrics because that is not the way we heard it in our youths. Besides, we get the gist of it as is.
 
We all know how a song can stimulate the memory of a special place, person or event. Most of us can experience that not just from a few but from hundreds of songs. There are several though (besides the Robert Burns ditty) that might come to my mind on New Year’s Eve but seldom anytime else. Oddly, most of the ones of that sort on my list I don’t even like very much, if at all. But they pop into my head as the clock runs out in the current year. A non-exhaustive sample:
 
In the Mood  performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. My mom loved to dance (especially after a scotch and soda, but without one as well) and my dad wasn’t bad at it. (I did not inherit this trait: I dance like a wounded buffalo.) She had little trouble talking him into it, commonly in the living room in the presence of company. They had dated during WW2, so my mom’s most frequently (but non-exclusively) preferred dance was the jitterbug. Her record of choice was typically a Glenn Miller album, and In the Mood was the first track. She never skipped it. It is actually a pretty good number, but I heard it so many times growing up that I was sick of it as an adult – until recent years and only on New Year’s Eve. It transports me back to when my parents were half my current age and dancing in our living room.
 
In October 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. On a clear night it was visible from the ground. My dad thought this was the start of something important so he made a point of taking my sister, my mom, and I (and the dog for some reason) out to the driveway on a very clear night. I’m guessing a local radio station must have mentioned what time the satellite would pass overhead. It came and went on schedule. Just to impress upon us further the memory of this (I was not yet 5) my dad announced firmly, “OK, we’ve seen Sputnik.” In 1958 the novelty song The Purple People Eater  about a space alien playing rock’n’roll became a hit; at age 5 I loved it and played a 45 of it repeatedly. Even though this was months after the driveway viewing, the song and that event are tangled in my head somehow; I cannot think of one without the other. The song is silly and I seldom think of it except at the very end of a year.
 
Having a sister two years older was a huge advantage in matters of pop culture right up through high school. This was especially so because Sharon was pretty hip for her entire life. She was always in step with the times, which I by nature was not. Because of her, I nonetheless was introduced to social trends and artists (Bob Dylan, for instance) when they were still cutting edge. Left to myself I would have missed them until they were passé. This started early. Sharon (b. 1950) loved the Everly Brothers for a few years straddling 1960. I would play her 45s of them, and particularly liked the 1962 Crying in the Rain. Once again, it is not a song I play as an adult at any other time, but I might just do so on the 31^st. It reminds me of my sister. Hi Sharon.
 
Janis Joplin’s I Need a Man to Love is the second track on the Cheap Thrills album, which came out in 1968. I liked Janis from the get-go, and still do, but she grew on me more and more between 1968 and 1970. (Our psyches and tastes often evolve a lot between age 15 and 18 – mine did.) Initially, I Need a Man to Love was not one of my favorite tracks on the album. A prep school buddy named George (a troubled young man, but surprisingly insightful at times) told me to give it a deeper listen. He said it was undefensively soulful. I did. He was right. All of Janis evokes an extended era in my mind, but of course that track also reminds me of George. He died of HIV related illnesses two decades ago.
 
The Commodores – Easy. This is a song about which I had and have no strong feelings as a song. I neither like it nor dislike it. In the 70s I never played it on purpose but didn’t change the station if it came on the car radio either. I would react the same today, though one seldom hears this number anymore even on an oldies station. The reason it is memorable for me is that my 70s girlfriend Angela once sang it (with radio accompaniment) in the passenger seat of my car as we drove to NYC. I don’t know why. I didn’t interrupt or ask afterward. We all sometimes do things that are hard to explain. That memory sticks with me and makes the tune a possible New Year’s Eve play.
 
Time after Time by Cyndi Lauper. In 1984 I owned a property on Schoolhouse Lane with two small houses on it. I moved into the smaller cottage and rented out the other. It was the first real estate actually in my own name. The first home that is really yours tends to be special in a way that later ones are not, and I accordingly put a lot of work into it – not all at once but steadily. The grounds in particular got attention: I installed decorative 2-rail fencing, reworked the driveway, and planted blue spruce to delineate the northern boundary line. On the cottage itself I replaced exterior trim and repaired the back deck, which had seriously dry rotted in places. I recall Cyndi Lauper’s song playing on the radio while I worked on the deck; I cannot hear the song without remembering feeling at home in that home. Incidentally, the official video of that song was filmed nearby; the train station scene is in the NJ Transit train station in Morristown. Am I a Lauper fan? No, not really though I don’t dislike her either.

My old Schoolhouse Lane cottage

Frank Sinatra Fly Me to the Moon. A night club in the 1990s, where someone important to my life worked, closed every night playing this number on the sound system. The relationship that this song evokes would require a book rather than a paragraph to begin to describe. So let’s just call it intense rather than characterize it any other way here.
 
That’s one per decade (OK, two in the 1960s -- three counting when I most commonly heard In the Mood) up to the 21^st century. I’ll leave the next three for another blog someday – maybe.
 
Once again, not one of these is a favorite song on its own terms (though I do like the Joplin number). My general taste tends more to bluesier and/or harder rock. But that is not the point, is it? The point is a memory – maybe a good one, maybe a bad one, but a poignant one either way.
 
There are also entire genres of music with a nostalgia factor. I’ve grown to like much 1940s fare far more than I did when my parents played it on the stereo for instance. I see I’m not alone in that with groups such as the Postmodern Jukebox covering songs such as What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve, charted by Kay Kyser in 1947. In the case of people as young as that, they are nostalgic for an era they never experienced. True, I wasn’t around in the 40s either, but the music definitely was in the house when I grew up.
 
So, December 31 – on which I plan a quiet evening – I may not only hear Auld Lang Syne but some unfavorite yet special tunes from my youth. Perhaps also, some Kitty Kallen and Harry James. Then on January 1 to welcome the new year I’ll try something new.
 

Postmodern Jukebox – What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

Creaky

Some days I feel my age and others not. If there is a reason for the day to day differences (sleep length, diet, exercise, or whatever) I haven’t been able to discern it. The creaky days occur more frequently with each passing year, but the first hints of them appeared surprisingly early: soon after 30. That is a time of life when the innate sense of invulnerability of the 18-y.o. fades and mortality starts feeling real. This is evident in much of the pop culture content aimed at thirtysomethings. It accounts, for example, for the success of the movie The Big Chill among my fellow Boomers in 1983. Strangely enough, Barbie, directed and co-written by 40-y.o. Millennial mom Greta Gerwig, likewise speaks to the sense of aging among today’s Millennials (e.g. the bus stop bench scene). Thirtysomething (sometimes fortysomething) is an age when many folks adopt exercise regimens and start taking megavitamins to try to slow the hands of the clock. It’s when entrepreneurs with the wherewithal start businesses that take on the Grim Reaper himself.
 
One such company is Altos Labs, formed by Jeff Bezos and Yuri Milner, which seeks to extend life through a variety of methods, but in particular through cellular reprogramming. The credentials of its researchers are impressive. Calico Life Sciences, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google), is similarly dedicated to combat aging. The company’s home page is worth a look. BioSplice Therapeutics reveals its approach in its name. Juvenescence reveals its goal in its name. If none of these or competing labs produce sufficient results in time for you to dodge the scythe, there is always Alcor.
 
The notion of suspended animation has been around in science fiction for more than a century. So, too, the similar notion of deliberately freezing a body in hopes it can be thawed out and reanimated at some future date when medical science has advanced to the point to make that possible. Alcor, located in very unchilly Scottsdale Arizona, was founded in 1972 in order to do just that. When a “patient” (who, of course, must be legally dead) arrives at the facility, s/he is injected with chemicals to prevent the formation of damaging ice crystals. The body is lowered to a temperature of -196 Celsius and then deposited in a tank of liquid nitrogen. There are presently 224 patients plus about 100 pets. Among the patients are baseball great Ted Williams and Bitcoin entrepreneur Hal Finney. You can reserve a spot for yourself at a cost of over $200,000, though you can save some money if you just preserve the head.

 
It would be tempting to prank someone with an Alcor reservation who awakes after some minor surgery: say the operation didn’t go well, but not to worry because you’ve been thawed out, cured, and it is now the year 2324. You can pay the bill at the desk. The temptation probably should be suppressed.
 
Meantime, I’ll just deal with my creaks and aches as best I can and hope that tomorrow is one of those days with a more youthful spring in my step.
 
 

Neil Young – Frozen Man