Interesting Links for 22-02-2012

• Scotland, independence and the EU - what are the possibilities?
  (tags: eu scotland independence )
• 10 radical solutions to binge drinking. I like #10 the best.
  (tags: alcohol uk )
• Anticipating the medical care needed by vulnerable people brings benefits to patients and saves money
  (tags: healthcare )
• Ways the singularity could fail to happen
  (tags: Technology thefuture singularity )
• How the Nebula Award nominees are chosen
  (tags: nebula awards scifi )
• This is what is wrong with the TV industry.
  (tags: funny comic gameofthrones copyright piracy )
• Has digital copying killed the music business?
  (tags: music copyright )
• Why You Should Review Books You’ve Bought On Amazon
  (tags: books reviews )
• The Future Is Gender Distributed
  (tags: japan gender thefuture Technology )
• The creators of Doctor Who were a scandal at the BBC
  (tags: history tv bbc drwho )
• On The Market Structure of Football as an Entertainment
  (tags: economics football )
• Tesla Motors’ Battery Has A Devastating Design Problem
  (tags: tesla cars electricity technology )
• Google to Sell Heads-Up Display Glasses by Year's End
  (tags: VirtualReality hud ui google transparentsociety )
• How Mailinator compresses email by 90% - neat coding tricks FTW
  (tags: coding compression email )
• Autodesk 123D - making 3D printing easy - either locally, or through a commercial printer
  (tags: 3dprinting )
• RIAA Insists That, Really, The Music Industry Is Collapsing; Reality Shows It's Just The RIAA That's Collapsing
  (tags: music business copyright technology )
• Doctor who criticised NHS reforms is threatened with disciplinary action
  (tags: healthcare politics uk )

So this is it...we're going to die

I was reading the Hacker News discussion of yesterday's link on death and doctors' views on it, and came across this comment which highlighted how small the gains in lifespan over the last hundred years are.

Basically, if you were 65 in 1900 then on average you had 12 more years to live. In 2007 you had 19 more years to live*. If you were 85 then you've gone from 4 more years to 6 more years.

So that's an addition of 7 years and 2 years. Which doesn't seem like very much, particularly as I keep hearing about how much better modern life expectancy is.

Does anyone have any better stats than that? Or any stats for life extension gains in other countries than the US?




*That has to be an estimate, what with it not being 2026 yet.

It is official. I will be playing Borderlands 2 until my fingers fall off.

And by "my fingers" I mean "Mine and Julie's fingers" as we played Borderlands co-op all the way through like rats clicking their pleasure-electrode-activation-button, and it looks like this is 134% more awesome.