Vampire Youth Secrets! Big Scientific Heathen Discount!

It's Fathers' Day. I get to do what I want. So I sat down and looked at my stats page to see how stagnant it is. It is. Last time this happened I retitled an old essay, "Presque Vu", and reposted it as "Ten Things You Should Always Buy In Bulk". It did a lot better. One of my sons called and I told him I might take an old essay on telomere research that got no response and re-title it with vampires in it. He said it's important to have the right picture too.

"Like Lynda Carter?"

"No," he said. "Justin Bieber is even more popular than vampires right now."

Wonder Woman is an Amazon, not a vampire but this was good advice anyway. I'd make a quiz out of it. Aren't quizzes popular too?

Still, I hesitated. Then my daughter called and we talked about theater, popular fiction, and I brought up vampires. We remembered enjoying a few tv episodes a while back about vampires in the American south --Confederate vampires. I couldn't recall the name of it but she did, "True Blood". Said it was very popular. That decided me. I invite everyone to take this very popular quiz that I worked on real hard today:


Question: IS JUSTIN BIEBER A TWO HUNDRED YEAR-OLD CONFEDERATE VAMPIRE?

Answer: No, he is an 18 year-old Canadian.
(To calculate your score, consult an atlas, a calendar and go clean your room.)

I doubt the above will bring many hits from people interested in research on aging, but here is the essay:

Friday, November 27, 2009
Old vs. New Aging Research
Re: Nobel prize for medicine awarded for work on aging. Three scientists win the most prestigious prize in medicine for work on telomeres---

I have worked privately on aging for a long time and considered my work successful. I'm way older now. But this development stunned me. Let me get this straight, the idea is to STOP aging? Nobel Foundation should really have made that clearer.

However, I am impressed with the idea of chromosomes wearing "caps" to avert degradation. I find a broad-brimmed hat useful too, especially while gardening. For hatless students of age-abatement there are other reports.

I recommend Stoker's research. He found aging could be managed by modifying some social interactions, but there were side effects. His subjects complained of dental malocclusion, leathery wing growth and invisibility in mirrors. MRS --missing reflection syndrome-- is of philological interest as it forever linked vampires with the phrase, "Is my hair alright?"
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Now if these improvements fail to take hold and the stats page remains stagnant, I'll replace the stick in the middle of the essay and put it back where I got it. But on a slightly different subject, I will wish all the fathers out there a happy Fathers' Day. We may not be as popular as vampires, Amazons or incredibly talented young performers but, if it weren't for fathers...well, there wouldn't be any, would there?