| On Monday, the L.A. Times reported the death of Morrie Markoff, a hundred-and-ten-year-old who had, since January, been the oldest man in the United States. Markoff credited his exceptional longevity in part to taking regular walks and avoiding plastic bottles—fairly common practices that do not often lead, we are sad to report, to living a decade past a hundred. In fact, Michael Kinsley wrote in The New Yorker, in 2008, most of us would make much larger sacrifices if it guaranteed a longer life: “Ask yourself: what do you have now, and what do you covet, that you would not gladly trade for, say, five extra years?” But even though life—and death—can’t be negotiated that way, many of us act otherwise, ascribing a certain justice or injustice to how long someone lives. (Kinsley recounts meeting a former U.S. defense secretary, heavily involved in escalating the Vietnam war, who was in his mid-eighties and headed on a ski trip.) Kinsley, writing in middle age, may have pondered mortality more acutely than his peers: he had been diagnosed with “young onset” Parkinson’s disease at age forty-two. With his own generation—the baby boomers—marching toward senescence, he predicted a “game of competitive longevity,” and urged humility from the eventual winners. “Extending your own life expectancy is the most selfish motive imaginable for doing anything,” he observes. “Do it, by all means. I do. But for heaven’s sake don’t take a bow and expect applause.” | 
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