SeniorJunior

It All Started (for me) in 1975 "Old/New" is kind of perfect for a blog called "SeniorJunior," don't you think? As a new - two years in - entrepreneur, I had a vision. It was 1975. I and my partner Sebastian Stone were working twelve-hour days, flying all over the country seeking and serving clients, developing our systems, speaking at conferences, etc. In general we were doing the start-up boogie. AR&D (Audience Research & Development) was starting to pop. Visions are hard to come by under those circumstances, except all that time on airplanes allowed a lot of reading.  I read a book by Louis Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler, The Capitalist Manifesto , and boom! vision time. I felt an epiphany wrapped up in the term ESOT. We were planning expansion of staff, and we wanted the absolute best people in the radio research biz, mostly people who had impressive gigs.  Even though business was picking up, we couldn't afford them.  A

The Mice Were Right * NR (Nicotinamide Rhiboside) is the current star supplement in the Longer-Healthier-Life category (see piece below), but the vast majority of actual scientific testing of the vitamin has been on mice (and yeast, but hey...). Now real scientists have tested it on real people and reported in a real, peer reviewed journal, Nature Communications , part of the British behemoth, Nature . It's a small-sample study, but impressive nonetheless.  It is a part safety/side effects study and part proof-of-concept one. The news is all good. Even at four times what was thought to be the "regular" dosage, there are zero short term side effects.  And the presumed effect (seen in mice and yeast) of boosting the helpful NAD+ is clearly proven in humans. If you are into reading incomprehensible biochemistry, check it out here . You can read a less intimidating summary of what NAD+ does  here . BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Next up in aging fixes is Senes

OK, now you've made me mad. (Again) I 've said a few times in this collection of mini-commentaries that the Right seems to be nastier than the Left. Check this out. And since Ann Coulter is the cause of my current madness, be advised I said this about her over a decade ago: The Mother Superior of demonizers on the right is Ann Coulter. Her new book "The Church of Liberalism - Godless" paints all "Libs" with one tar soaked brush. She could have worked for any of the great Demonizers of the past. She would have been a star of the Inquisition or - need I say it - she would have been a fine lieutenant for Joseph Goebbels. She gets the right wing Medal of Honor for slimy propaganda. She is the Big Lie boogie queen. I.e., there isn't much new for me to add except to double down on the "big lie" part. It's the same kind of lie she (and Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, et al) tell all the time, puking untruthful generalities about at least h

Boom O ver on me humble book blog , I needed to illustrate The Apocalypse. Searching the Net, I found hundreds of pictures. (My favorite was of the Four Horsemen was an  1887 painting by   Viktor Vasnetsov , but decided it was too religiocentric (I thought I made up that word, but nooo. Bing it.) So an H-bomb blast would have to do. Cliched, but it moved!   Thus the very first GIF for this old blogger. No big, but I celebrate small stuff all the time.  Here's the GIF: Check this old-guy-sci-fi book blog here.

Nicotinamide Riboside, Etc., Etc. Etc..... In the longevity extender greyhound race (the real rabbit is healthy life extension), there are a few contenders running around the track. We don't realize the rabbit we're chasing is fake.  But hey...* Those in the race There's resveratrol from red wine grapes, peanuts, blueberries and a bunch more foods. There's trans-resveratrol from Japanese knotweed. (Not weed!) And  Pterostilbene , a variant on resveratrol. And Metformin, the well tolerated treatment for diabetes. Plus  Rapamycin (prescription), the  immunosuppressant used in organ transplants. (This one's kind of scary to me - side effects and all.  Now COMING UP FROM BEHIND is  Nicotinamide Riboside.  This one sprang into general awareness thanks to the entrepreneur's magazine Fast Company . They had a youthifying headline: One Of The World's Top Aging Researchers Has A Pill To Keep You Feeling Young The top resea

What's a "Pro-Lifer" to do? Thanks in part to slow thinking House Republicans, the zika virus is about to invade the U.S. South and bring  a plague of Biblical proportions. Every pregnant woman's baby-to-be will be threatened with horrible birth defects, life destroying defects. Without massive intervention, a whole generation of children and their families will be deeply scarred.  Microcephaly  is but the most obvious, and there are more and more discoveries of tragic impacts of this mosquito-borne disease. What is the obvious response to, say, an ultrasound examination that reveals a badly damaged fetus? Pro-Life What would you do? Especially what would you do if you are a profound pro-lifer? What do you expect your religious and political pro-life leaders to say? Pro-choice A pro-choice person will undoubtedly suffer the deep pain anyone experiences at this horrible decision, then she will go ahead and get the abortion (

"Comments" For several years, most of my opinionating happened on this blog.  Lately, my time at the keyboard has been mostly devoted to fictionalizing.  However, the opinions keep storming up out of my deeper brain centers and are impossible to repress.  So my efforts have moved to making "comments" on various articles, columns and op-eds. I have a sneaking feeling that these tidbits get more readership than they would if they appeared only on this blog. And since they are in response to something (sometimes to other commenters commenting on the column), I don't really have to establish a context, thus I can be pithier.  I love pithy. ANYWAY.... Here are my recent efforts.  Granted they might not make any sense if you didn't read the piece I'm commenting on. But at least you can see I haven't entirely abandoned reality for sci-fi. NEW SEQUENCING   From this point, the latest comments will be here first, rather than at the ever-retreating