"It's a $1 billion bet they call "The Great Longevity Wager," and an Alabama scientist is sure he'll win. Or his descendants will, because Dr. Steven Austad doesn't really expect to collect in 2150.
Austad, chairman of the biology department at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, is betting that the first person to reach 150 is alive today. If he proves right, his heirs will collect the earnings of an investment account set up with a $150 wager in 2000."
"Olshansky, a professor of public health, is the other bettor. And while he shares Austad's belief that lifespans will keep growing because of advances in aging science, he's confident, "It can't produce a 150-year old person."
This bet remains current news - even though it was made in 2000. It just is very entertaining.
There are so many ways of considering the 150 year life span. The discussion is about slowing aging - think of it taking 80 years to reach the state of a 50-year-old today. They are looking at drugs to intervene with these results. The ones being considered aremetformin and rapamycin. The scientists predict it will happen "in time to influence the lives of most people today."'
Maybe that also explains the next headline "Why Bryan John son and Jeff Bezos are betting big"...investing in longevity. They have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars towards companies pursuing longer life.
A rusty spring in the Strasbourg Railway repair shop - from a few years ago. It might be even rustier now.
Would you want to know how long you will live? Quantumrun.com - the company that forecasts trends has a service to assess how long a company will last. It is intriguing, isn't it? They say that the trend for companies to survive has dropped from 92% before 1970 to 63% in the 2000s.
It seems to me that corporate survival can be analyzed. It takes a lot of analysis, though, as there are many factors involved - government control, political influence, strategic nature of the industry, R&D budget, patents, access to capital, and many more.
Skip to industry vulnerability to disruption - that's popular and gets my attention. We're tuned in now to emerging technological, scientific, cultural, and politically disruptive trends.
Can a field and industry be primed for disruption? Forbes says that it can be and listed a number of areas that would be disrupted in 2019. These included Doctor's Office Visits, Financial And Legal Services, Healthcare Diagnostics, Education, Automotive Industry, Insurance and so on. Mostly they cover new apps and some of these seem ordinary.
And then there are apps that will really disrupt an industry. Take this one for clothing:
Say hello to sizer. A personalized measuring & size recommendation tool, which simply integrates with any e-commerce site, and recommends to shoppers the best size to buy.
Some have already gone farther with this - there are a few retail offerings of bespoke clothes from designers. What will this app be combined with to really disrupt things? Automated sewing and 3D printing for clothes. Amazon, the personalized clothes retailer, seems to be on the horizon. SizeMe at Amazon.
Today we see a Himalayan Poppy - one of the most beautifully coloured flowers - cerulean blue. Its botanical name is Meconopsis betonicifolia. This one was at Longwood Gardens.
