Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coming in hot with news that your chances of dying are much higher in the coming week's

From this morning's paper:

"As a florist for 66 years — starting as a part-timer at age 14 — Herman Heyl knows more people die on and around Christmas and New Year’s Day than at any other time of the year.

“Back then, I’d even have to work on Christmas because people would be laid out [for a funeral] even on Christmas Day,” said Mr. Heyl, owner of his own floral shops in the Pittsburgh area for 59 years. “Undertakers won’t do that now, but there are still more [funerals] after Christmas most years.”

The weeks before Christmas are among the busiest of the year for florists like Mr. Heyl.

But he has long known he would sell more funeral arrangements to friends or family of those who died on or after Christmas — a business reality as well as for many funeral homes, churches and synagogues and hospital emergency rooms that often are busier this time of year.

The fact that more people die on Christmas, as well as the day after Christmas, and New Year’s Day is a long-studied phenomenon. Exactly why it occurs is still not precisely known, though researchers continue to try to pinpoint the cause, examining everything from personal stress, to the levels of staffing in hospitals, to people’s delay in seeking medical treatment."

This is a pretty aggressive topic for a utility that basically only old people use (the newspaper) to be tackling; that said I don't think there's any mystery here. Joe Paterno's legacy is shrouded in controversy but his death is proof of concept for at least one thing: you can will yourself to stay alive for one last milestone, one last Christmas, one last vacated college football season. It's pretty depressing to think about but I think that's what the local journalist Sean D Hammill is trying to tell me here.

Bottom line is, ironically it turns out that the secret to immortality is to tell your body to keep going until the Cleveland Browns win the Super Bowl...