On this past week's McLaughlin Group, domestic gadfly Eleanor Clift all but said the words "mission accomplished" with reference to the recent death of international gadfly Gaddafi, now resting in pace in a Libyan produce freezer. The latest is that Gaddafi may have been the richest man in the world, worth some US$200bn. Two-hundred-billion-dollars. $200,000,000,000. Wow.
With all the discussion of the international, financial, and other public interests of the Gaddafi case, I would like to draw attention to a different aspect of his life. You can't buy longevity.
No, I don't mean that he couldn't buy his way out of his murder. So what? What I'm referring to is the fact that he looked like a muppet for much of the last years of his life. Or maybe a cross between a muppet and that moment at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Germans' faces begin to melt off.
The various paths to longevity taken by people like Ray Kurzweil, Jeff Life, or Art DeVany require certain degrees of leisure time, financial support, and medical expertise. However, in the end, the richest man in the world still wasn't able to buy the fountain of youth.
Someday, scientists will crack the code of aging and Goldman-Sachs bankers will simply outlive the Occupiers of Wall Street. However, until that time, the best you can do is work, work, work at staying fit, agile, and nimble-minded.