Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

JOHANNA QAAS - 86 YEAR OLD GYMNAST DOING HER THING

Amazing. (HT: HotAir)

 

 

This gives us all something to shoot for.  Forget the rocking chairs!

IT'S NOT ALWAYS EASY TO LEAVE OLD HABITS

"RIGHT TO DIE" CAN BECOME A "DUTY TO DIE"

Wesley J. Smith has written an article which should serve as a warning:

Imagine that you have lung cancer. It has been in remission, but tests show the cancer has returned and is likely to be terminal. Still, there is some hope. Chemotherapy could extend your life, if not save it. You ask to begin treatment. But you soon receive more devastating news. A letter from the government informs you that the cost of chemotherapy is deemed an unjustified expense for the limited extra time it would provide. However, the government is not without compassion. You are informed that whenever you are ready, it will gladly pay for your assisted suicide. . .   That is exactly what happened last year to two cancer patients in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal.  (more . . .)

WHO WATCHES MORE TV? THE YOUNG OR THE OLD?

Older folk watch much more TV.   Paul Bond writes:

The older you get, the more you watch, according to a report due out today from Deloitte indicating that "Millennials," the generation of 14- to 25-year-olds, watches just 10.5 hours of TV a week.

That compares to 15.1 hours for those belonging to Generation X (ages 26-42), 19.2 hours for Baby Boomers (43-61) and 21.5 hours for Matures (62-75).

. . . But while Millennials are watching the least amount of TV, they are spending the most time with media in general, making that up with video games, music and the Internet.

Just don't expect them to spend too much time worrying about such things as news and current events, according to the Deloitte study dubbed "The State of the Media Democracy.  [more...]

Me: These findings are about what I would have expected.

OLD AGE: EAST AND WEST TAKE OPPOSITE VIEWS

Mark Skousen tells of the great Chinese-American philosopher Lin Yutang, who wrote the following about “Growing Old Gracefully” in his classic libertarian work The Importance of Living.

“In my efforts to compare and contrast Eastern and Western life, I have found no differences that are absolute except in this matter of the attitude toward age….The East and the West take exactly opposite points of view. 

“This is clearest in the matter of asking about a person’s age or telling one’s own.  In China, the first question a person asks the other on an official call, after asking