The benefits of extending the human life-span

Student SGH's blog post from last month about longevity has stayed with me for a while, I've been mulling over the concept in my mind... With current advances in medical science, it is not impossible that a child born today could attain the age of 300. Towards the end of this century, medical knowledge would be such that the human lifespan could stretch to 150, and by the middle of the 22nd Century this could be extended well beyond that.

Science is unravelling the genetics of aging; one experiment (on a small group of subject admittedly) has shown that it is actually possible to reverse the aging process (meditation has a part to play as well as diet and exercise). We now know the role of telomeres in aging (did you know lobsters don't die of old age?) The possibility of engineering or bioengineering human organs as replacement parts is also getting tantalisingly closer. Obviously, the brain needs to be in good shape - there's little point of artificially extending the life of a person with irreversible senile dementia.

But let's assume then, that in the year 2314, a child born this very day will be celebrating their three hundredth birthday.

What will have been the point?

We tend to be born - and then raised - as either generalists or specialists. As young people, they will tend to scorn one another. "Jack of all trades, master of none" says the specialist of the generalist. "Restricted and boring" says the generalist of the specialist.

But with age, the knowledge of the generalist deepens, while the knowledge of the specialist widens. Specialists learns how to place their area of focused expertise into a broader context - social, historical, artistic, while generalists gains deeper insights across the spectrum of their interests. And respect for Truth in its truest sense. As I get older, I find I'm always trying to nuance what I'm saying, to move away from bold generalisation to a statement with more finesse, more accuracy, on the way to a truer synthesis, based on experience and wisdom. I reject inflammatory statements, the idea of winning an argument for the its own sake.

Genius often manifests itself in youth - from Mozart to Orson Welles, while wisdom required from a great political or legal mind takes many decades of scrupulous observation of mankind.

Critical to the growth of both types of mind is self-awareness, being able to think, to reason on the meta-level - to think about how you think, what you think and why you think it. An active mind, constantly thinking things over yet not ruminating obsessively, is forming new neural connections, new ideas flowing along newly created pathways...

I often found as a young man that I could perfectly assess a given situation, though I found great difficulty in articulating my assessment to anywhere outside my brain. (I can see on our cat's face a similar case - high awareness locked into a skull) I lacked the tools of expression, verbal or written, to synthesise my thoughts. Over the years, these skills have grown within me, mainly because I wanted them to grow within me. And practice.

Now - assuming the human brain can continue to function properly into extreme old age with the help of advances in medical science - imagine how wiser mankind could become if healthy super-centenarians became the norm. The key thing obviously is extending the healthy portion of human life, when one can function unaided and still enjoy life fully. Which is why healthy life expectancy is a more important indicator than life expectancy.

Imagine Albert Einstein - born 1879 - still alive today, aged 134, his mind as sharp as it was at his peak, getting to grips with Higgs bosons and baryonic dark matter, contributing to modern cosmology and - maybe - coming up with a unified field theory that held together.

I believe the greatest benefit of extending human lifespan is the incremental knowledge and wisdom that could be within the grasp of mankind. It is worth noting that ageing populations are less prone to war; older people less inclined towards criminality or reckless behaviour that puts others at risk.

It's easier sending a 20 year-old to war if, on the basis of his observation, he can only expect another 20 years of healthy life ahead him, than if he could envisage, say, another 100 years of healthy (and happy) life in the future.

Living longer would also give humans a greater stake in environmental protection. The thought that one's great-grandchildren could still be alive towards the middle of this millennium - makes one pause and think before burning fossil fuel.

Even stripping out the effects of infant mortality on lifespan, humans used to live 70-75 years. Today life expectancy is nudging 80-90 years in advanced societies. The benefits are clear. As our technology advances, so our lifespan extends, so our technology will advance - not because I expect super-centenarians to dream up new inventions, but because innovators will have a greater personal stake in the improved society their inventions will bring.

This time three years ago:
New Year's stocktaking

This time last four years ago:
A walk in the wild winter woods

This time five years ago:
Now that's what I call winter vol. 12

This time six years ago:
When the day starts getting longer

Nation building - my wishes for Poland in 2014

I've long wanted Poland to be a pleasant place to live, a normal country, Scandinavianly boring, prosperous, without islands of glaring poverty, without ignorance or hatred. And to my delight, it's moving in that direction, albeit at a slow pace. To be able to find Poland's place in the world. one really needs to compare a wide selection of indicators across many countries - from wealth to health to happiness - and track these over time. In general, Poland is getting better, in many international rankings. But there's still lots more to do, a long way to travel before Poland can be as great a place as say Norway or Denmark to live.

So then, my fellow nation-builders - what do we need?

• A Plain Polish campaign. Polish government authorities - and private companies (in particular the utilities) should communicate with citizens and customers clearly. No more gobbledegook! No more sentences of 100 or more words! No more irrelevant references to the chapter and verse of the law! It really is high time that Polish bureaucrats appreciated that it is their responsibility to write clearly - not the citizen's responsibility to attempt to understand their convoluted texts.


• Safer roads. As I write, another BMW (why is it always BMWs?) driven by a drunken driver, ploughed into a group of people at a level crossing, killing six. Dangerous driving results in mass slaughter, several thousand Poles are killed needlessly by idiot drivers, and it occurs to few to SLOW DOWN. 50kmh means 50kmh, not 85. As I pointed out this time last year, more than six times as many Poles have been killed in road-accidents in modern Poland than were killed by Stalin at Katyń. Road safety must become a top priority for government. The cost of keeping several thousand people alive each year is minimal.


• Polish universities need a shake-up. There are still way too many old-era professors blocking the advance of younger academics, who are multilingual, who have experience living and working abroad, who have a vision of how things can be. Poland's poor standing in research and development, in collaboration between business and academia, in creating science parks that can turn the fruits of academic study into profitable products or services, is mainly down to the heavy blanket of blinkered profs in their 60s and 70s. Time for them to shuffle off.


• More civil society. By which I mean charities, volunteering, more public-spirited behaviour. No, putting a few zlotys into a collecting-tin for Wielka Orkiestra Świątecznej Pomocy once a year and allowing the government to give 1% of the tax it's taking from you to the charity of your choice is not enough. If Poland is to catch up in terms of the individual's attitude towards society, we need to move towards an understanding that we're all in it together, for one another's benefit. This message needs to be appreciated by every individual, not forced into them as communist-style collectivism was.
  
• Let's be nicer to one another. Let's stop treating shop staff, security guys and office cleaners with cold disdain, bury that supercilious arrogance that comes with being financially better-off. We're all here together, so we should try to get along, with a smile, a dzień dobry, a dziękuję, a do widzenia as we go through our day.


• A focus on economic sustainability. As Poland becomes more wealthy, there is the opportunity to stop obsessing about short-term gain and start looking ahead with a more long-term perspective. The economy is likely to accelerate this year - may the owners of the businesses that are making this happen also think long-term about their companies' competitiveness, investing in R&D, in new technologies, in their employees, in growth, in sustainability, in making their companies more resilient to external shocks. Government needs to cut borrowing, spend less on current costs (a smaller bureaucracy please, and invest more in capital projects to enhance the nation's infrastructure.

Less intolerance, less selfishness, less sense of entitlement, more kindness, more patience, more self-reliance and responsibility. In the next ten years, Poland really can become a much, much better place to live than it is today - which is a whole lot better than it was in 2004 or in 1989...

This time last year:
LOT's second Dreamliner over Jeziorki
(before the batteries started catching fire)

This time two years ag0:
New Year's coal train

This time six years ago:
Winter train

Jeziorki welcomes in 2014

Beautiful firework display illuminates ul. Trombity. 00:12, 1 January 2014.

This year's hellos - from Review of 2013

As years go, not one to match 2012 in terms of progress (measured in things concrete, like roads). The biggest 'hello' of the year goes to the S2 expressway, linking Ursynów to the A2 motorway and thence westwards to Poznań, Berlin and Lisbon. Below: the section of the S2 between the Węzeł Warszawa Południe  and Puławska. The viaduct carrying ul. Poloneza over the S2 is now connected with asphalt to ul. Ludwinowska, putting an end to the beastly muddiness that locals have had to contend with. Next year - asphalt from ul. Krasnowolska to Poleczki, please.

The eastern end of the S2, yesterday

The S2 took over four years to build, and it still fails to do what it was meant to do - namely, to act as Warsaw's southern bypass. By 2020 maybe. Right now the expressway comes to an abrupt end in scrubland south of the King Cross shopping mall (top left of this picture, click to enlarge).

Another partial hello to the sewers on ul. Trombity. The main sewer is now in place, and checked over by MPWiK (the Urban Enterprise of Waterpullings and Canalisation), but our houses have yet to be connected to the lateral sewer that now runs into our estate. A big big thanks to our neighbour Tomek for all his work on making this all happen. The final connection will have to wait until the end of winter (may it be a relatively snow-free one). Once that's done, we can bid farewell to the septic tank lorry that pays us a visit every other week to take away all our waste-water.

A big hello to Czester the orange tomcat, born on 10 May this year, everybody loves Czester. "He's the chief/He's the king/But above everything/He's the most tip-top/Top Cat".

On the food front, the appearance at our local Lidl (and indeed larger Lidls across Warsaw) of decent beefsteak (Beefmaster by Biernacki) at a decent price (85zl a kilo) has made a welcome addition as an occasional treat. If 2013 was the Year of Steak, it was also the Year of Cider and Shandy, both of these beverages, well-known to UK consumers, making a welcome appearance on Warsaw's supermarket shelves. My favourite Polish tipples here - Warka Perry and Cydr Lubelski. I'd drink Cydr Ignaców (the leading high-end Polish cider), but it's not readily available.

Hello also to hipster bars where craft-brewed real ales bring a multiplicity of taste to Polish beer drinking. The days when Lech, Tyskie and Żywiec was the full extent of one's choice are over - hurrah! My favourite Polish artisan beers - Atak Chmielu and King of Hop.

2013 was also the year of the Rubbish Revolution - the Capital City of Warsaw, along with local authorities across Poland - has been tasked with taking responsibility from householders and businesses for waste disposal. The fear was that the whole thing would go off at half-cock - at least here in Jeziorki it's functioning OK (though the road closure necessitated by the building of the sewers meant that no one came to collect the rubbish in November, but the bills came through anyway).

Hullo in Poland to the world's largest ship, the container vessel Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller which sailed in to Gdańsk's Deepwater Container Terminal in August. The Polish port is one of only five in Europe capable of handling the new Triple-E class ships, which can carry up to 18,000 20ft containers.

Warsaw gained another shopping mall, Plac Unii, situated where ul. Marszałkowska (the city's main north-south thoroughfare) meets ul. Puławska (the main southbound artery out of the city centre). Sadly, a bit disappointing - most of the same shops encountered in any other Warsaw mall.

Surviving a no-confidence referendum (too few Varsovians could be bothered to vote on what was clearly a party-politically motivated poll), Warsaw's mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz launched a one-stop website and phone line through which citizens could report urban shortcomings. The new service, Warszawa 19115, worked OK the first time I used it (the mess left on ul. Kórnicka by the builders responsible for the flood-retention ponds) but not the second time (about a road sign warning motorists of a pedestrian crossing by ul. Buszycka that had been knocked over by a car).

From the New Year, Varsovians who live and pay their taxes in the capital, can get a special hologram to affix to their urban travel card, entitling them to lower-priced public transport. Though controversial, this new scheme does mean I can carry on paying just 250 złotys (£50) a quarter for full use of buses, trams, Metro and local rail services within the city limits (roughly the equivalent in area to Postal London, or Zone 3 on TfL). That's less than £4 a week. Superb, eh, Londoners?

And just before Christmas, I got my first smartphone, enabling me to go truly mobile. I've yet to grapple with the new technology, but at first sight it seems ready to revolutionise my travel time. Blogging is difficult with the small keyboard, but tweeting is easy - we'll see how things develop in 2014.

And one farewell I must publish here - the Ikarus buses that have served Warsaw for the past 35 years finally disappear from the streets of Our City this month. Belatedly, since the old buses were slated for obsolescence in time for last year's Euro 2012 football finals in June. (See this post, from a quarter of a decade ago.)

So - all the very best to my readers around the world. This year, 36,385 people have visited my blog, of whom 22,754 are returning visitors, reading on average 1.54 pages per visit. 31% of my readers are from Poland, 18% are from the UK, 14% from the US, 5% from Canada and 4% from Germany.

May 2014 prove to be an interesting year that brings us much new insight and inspiration.

Economic predictions for 2014

Time now to engage in crystal-ball gazing and make public my macroeconomic predictions* for 2014. Given that I was too cautious 12 months ago about the prospects for 2013... I will continue to be so into next year. Optimism bias can be more dangerous than erring on the side of caution, whether you are planning a national budget or a personal one. This time last year, JP Morgan forecast that 2013 would be the first post-crisis year; I begged to differ. JP Morgan was right, I was wrong (although much of the eurozone has continued to shrink).

Poland, then, will continue to see economic growth accelerating, though not enough to make a major dent on the unemployment figures nor to create dangerous inflationary pressure.

Key economic indicators: Poland
	2013 (latest data)	2014 (same time this year)
GDP growth	1.9% (Q3 y-o-y)	3.1% (Q3 y-o-y)
Unemployment	13.2% (Nov)	11.0% (Nov)
Inflation	0.6% (Nov)	2.4% (Nov)

I cannot see any great appetite on the part of the Polish government to fix things that are not working too well, rather I predict continued small improvements in the way government works brought about by generation shift. This has been happening at the micro level, but there's still a long way to go before Poland's bureaucrats become civil servants and serve the nation accordingly. Neither left nor right, liberal or statist, can campaign on a platform of poor-quality public services, so let's see the quality of government - and governance - improve further in 2014.

Turning to the UK, its bounce-back has been one of the surprises of 2013. Let us hope that the impetus behind this renewed economic vigour proves to be sustainable, and not just the result of a bubble in one asset class - residential property in South East England. In particular, I'd very much like to see a manufacturing renaissance - George Osborne's 'march of the makers'.

Key economic indicators: UK
	2013 (latest data)	2014 (same time this year)
GDP growth	1.5% (Q3, y-o-y)	-0.3% (Q3 y-o-y)
Unemployment	7.6% (Aug for Q2)	6.8% (Aug for Q2)
Inflation	2.1% (Nov)	3.5% (Nov)

The eurozone - increased tomorrow by tiny Latvia - will continue to perform erratically with a soft south and resurgent north. All in all, it will balance out into a positive picture (just), though structural problems will continue largely unresolved in Italy, Spain and Greece. Two years ago, Greece was on the verge of leaving the eurozone - tomorrow it will expand to 18 countries, four of which were once part of the communist bloc (indeed, two were part of the USSR).

Key economic indicators: Eurozone
	2013 (latest data)	2014 (same time this year)
GDP growth	-0.4% (Q3)	0.8% (Q3)
Unemployment	12.1% (Oct)	10.0% (Oct)
Inflation	0.9% (Nov)	1.8% (Nov)

The zloty continued to demonstrate remarkably stable in 2013. Against the pound, it moved from 5.00 this time last year to 4.98.  Against the euro, the Polish currency it moved from 4.10 to 4.14). The euro to the pound also remained stable this year (from 1.22 to 1.20).

And currencies - on 31 December 2014, barring any major shocks such as Scotland voting to leave the United Kingdom, I predict 1 GBP will be 5.10 PLN, 1 EUR will be 4.25 PLN, and 1 GBP will be 1.20 EUR.

Weatherwise - I predict the weather globally and here in Poland will continue to get stranger and stranger. Here we are - December2013  in Warsaw - and there's only been one day of snowfall... Can't remember that happening before.

* I wrote "macroeconomic predictions" here on purpose. Interestingly, Google's Blogger underlined the word with a green squiggle, helpfully suggesting that I change the word 'predictions' to 'projections'. Thanks Google - but these are mere predictions. Another one is that Google will get cleverer and cleverer (Google Translate is learning to get better each year).

This time last year:
Economic predictions for 2013

This time two years ago:
Economic predictions for 2012

This time three years ago:
Classic cars, West Ealing

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki 2009, another view

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki 2008, another view

This time six years ago:
Final thoughts for 2007

Our Progress around the Sceptr'd Isle - Part 3

Another beautiful sunny day in England, from dawn to dusk. Time to take camera, lenses and stroll from my parents' house to Pitshanger Park and back.
 

Looking down Bellevue Road, Horsenden Hill in the distance

Pine tree outside North Ealing Primary School, decorated with old school ties.

Late Victorian decoration above an arcade of shops, Pitshanger Lane

St Barnabas Church, at the eastern end of Pitshanger Lane

The River Brent forms the northern boundary of Pitshanger Lane

Left: St Stephen's Church spire looms over Cleveland Park. The grass is sodden, so walkers keep to the footpaths that cross the park. Surprising, since the River Brent is a long way from flood levels. 

Seven days in England, four of which were gloriously sunny. Warsaw's weather has been similar, even reaching double digits. It's likely that with the exception of two snowy days early on in the month, Warsaw will have had a snow-free December.

This time four years ago:
Miserable, grey, wet London

This time five years ago:
Parrots in Ealing

This time six years ago:
Heathrow to Okęcie

New Yuletide pastime

My brother, Wujek Marek, has come up with an ingenious combination of Scrabble and Monopoly. Scrabopoly is played without dice; instead the number of spaces your counter moves around the Monopoly board is determined by your score on the Scrabble board. The two games are thus connected. Instead of your progress being decided by fate, it's decided by your strategy - you choose where you want to land and find a word that can get you there - or a second-best word if you've not got the right letters. You can, of course, buy, sell or swap letters (and property titles). This is the perfect antidote to boardom caused by over-playing one's favourite board games!

Above, from left: Eddie, Cousin Hoavis and Moni sit around the Scrabopoly boards. Family history in the making.

Wujek Marek also hand-painted a giant Scrabble board on a large piece of cardboard (four times the regular size) using several sets of Scrabble letters, this has also proved popular at this festive time.

Is Britain over-golfed?

My stroll today around Duffield was diverted when I came to this notice, which has not been here in past years. The Chevin golf club has put up signs preventing walkers from crossing its land, though for decades there has been a public right of way. Health and Safety, the new god that must be obeyed - one stray ball, one pedestrian struck in the head (or maybe a near-miss) and the walking public is now barred from this path. What was particularly annoying was that this path was dry, unlike the alternative, which would have involved me getting ankle-deep in mud.

SAFETY STRICTLY NO ADMITTANCE GOLFERS ONLY

On the plane to England, I read in BA's High Life magazine about how much of England is now covered in golf-course. The English county of Surrey (1,663km2), the article said, is now home to 420 golf courses. (Poland, by contrast, a country of 312,679km2 - the size of 188 Surreys - can boast only 20 full-size golf courses and maybe another ten or so nine-hole ones.)

But Surrey is not the most intensively golfed English county. The record holder here is Merseyside, where over 2.5% of its surface is actually covered in golf course. Although the High Life article did not have access to data from all English counties (Scotland, home of the sport, was not included), the conclusion was that around 1% of England lies under fairway, bunker or green.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Golf courses are well-maintained, their groundsmen stewards of the countryside, ensuring the grassland, hedgerows, coppices, ponds and streams thrive sustainably, buttresses against the onward march of housing, shopping malls, roads and assorted eyesores. Golf courses offer the chance of exercise to large numbers of middle-aged people who'd otherwise be flopped out in front of the telly and thus burden the health service.

On the other hand, golf courses are aesthetically unnatural; they can deprive walkers of access to the countryside, they are haunts of middle-class folk who drive miles in their SUVs around narrow country lanes to enjoy the privilege of knocking a golf-ball about. Badly needed housing cannot be developed because so much land is owned by golf clubs.

On balance then... taking all the above factors into consideration... (and speaking as someone who's obviously not a golfer, who's not swung a club for over 16 years)... a good thing. I would certainly like to see far more golf courses appear across Poland - and not just exclusive clubs, but ones set up and run by local authorities, as in England, where the sport is far less elitist than in Poland.

Before swapping London's suburbia for Warsaw, our house found itself within 5km of no fewer than eight golf courses, public and private, 9- and 18-hole (Perivale Park, Ealing, Brent Valley, West Middlesex, Horsenden Hill, Sudbury, Northolt and Hangar Hill).

If Poland were to have the same saturation of golf courses as Surrey, it would need another 80,000 golf courses. Having said that, half of Surrey's golf courses are under water as I write...

As I turned back into Duffield to walk along urban pavements rather than rural footpaths, a fluorescent-yellow golf ball whizzed past my ear, sailing over the wall of an adjacent house, then rolling down the lawn into the flower bed. I decided not to tell the golfer where his ball had landed and continued with my walk. "You're obviously not a golfer..."

This time two years:
Everybody's out on the road today

This time three years ago:
50% off and nothing to pay till June 2016