Read Part 8 . In 1921, amid the early tumult of prohibition, a remarkable study took shape in Palo Alto, California. Stanford psychologist Lewis Madison Terman—as serious-looking a man as one is apt to find, with hi s specs, upright bearing and unsmiling mien—would one day be remembered most ly for designing and publishing the final accepted version of the Stanford-Binet IQ test. In '21, however, Terman began work on another project that may have more lasting import for humankind, despite being known today to just a small circle of “longevity wonks.” Terman proposed to track th e lives of 1528 American children from that point on. His subjects, encountered in the course of his study of intelligence, were all 10 years old. Terman himself was 44; he would follow them and their families for the rest of his life, and he obtained from his younger associates a pledge to do the same after he was gone. The goal was to note what kind of longevity the 10-year-olds achieved, and try to deduc
Not far from where I write this is a very nice park, a true urban oasis: one of those elongated greenbelts that, together with the sweeping peripheral roads on either side, particularly lends itself to the description "parkway." For the past quarter-century, the park has been inhabited by a gentleman named Earl. It follows th at this gentleman, now nearing 70, bears the whimsical/romantic labe l "Ea r l of the P a rkway." Earl's exploits have been much-chronicled , such that he is today something of a f olk hero, albeit a melancholic one, among those who live in areas adjacent to the park. Strictly speaking, Earl doesn't have to live in the park. He has options. Many would thus say he chooses to live there. (Or, if we prefer not to use terminology that evokes issues of free will vs. determinism, we could posit simply and neutrally that Earl continues to live there, regardl ess of whether alternatives objectively exist.) You might say that based on that de