The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

kabayiri

Well, Mrs Kab is travelling beyond London this morn to pick up her next car.

I still don't get why you wouldn't buy something from the local dealership, but....not my car, so I keep out

Pretty much every dealership we visited has bent my ear about the regressive vehicle excise duty changes which came in back in April. I agree with them. Why on earth can't the government introduce taxation based on formula rather than bands? You stop people playing the system at the boundaries for a start.

Perhaps they haven't realised computers are quite good at processing formulae!

zagubov

kabayiri wrote: »

Feels very much like part of the script to Children of Men, zag

Wasn't it the death of the last 18 year old which kicked off the storyline?

I wonder if the survivors of the Great War in the UK will be a greater landmark when the last one passes away, particularly those who fought.

I think everybody who took part in the great war either in combat or a supporting role has passed away; the last participant was Florence Green almost six years ago, and actual combatants much earlier than that.

kabayiri

zagubov wrote: »

I think everybody who took part in the great war either in combat or a supporting role has passed away; the last participant was Florence Green almost six years ago, and actual combatants much earlier than that.

Thanks. I didn't research, clearly.

Is it a bigger landmark though? For me I would have said so. Dates are just constructs.

There will be a focus on 11-11-2018 here I would imagine, not sure if it will be echoed on the continent.

Pyxis

zagubov wrote: »

It was Nabi Tajima who was born in August 1900 which was the last year of the 19th century (although the original twitter meme assumed, wrongly, it was 1899). I don't think anybody else born later that year is still alive.

So, technically, we should have had the millennium celebrations on the night of 31/12/2000! :eek:

Actually, that does ring a bell..... I think there was some discussion on the T.v about it, at the time!





The last combatant of WW1 was Harry Patch, The Last Tommy. He was 111 when he died.

I was in Wells (Somerset) on the day of his funeral in 2009. Unwittingly. There was an exhibition about him in the Bishop's Palace, which was very interesting.

zagubov

Pyxis wrote: »

So, technically, we should have had the millennium celebrations on the night of 31/12/2000! :eek:

Actually, that does ring a bell..... I think there was some discussion on the T.v about it, at the time!





The last combatant of WW1 was Harry Patch, The Last Tommy. He was 111 when he died.

I was in Wells (Somerset) on the day of his funeral in 2009. Unwittingly. There was an exhibition about him in the Bishop's Palace, which was very interesting.

It's to with the fact that there was no year 0 in western calendars (or number 0 for that matter). Year 1 AD was the first year of the first century and AD100 was the 100th, and so on.

This is all a bit contrived anyway, in the sense that this is only true within your own timezone, as each day (and month and year) starts at least 24 different times around the globe.

kabayiri

zagubov wrote: »

It's to with the fact that there was no year 0 in western calendars (or number 0 for that matter). Year 1 AD was the first year of the first century and AD100 was the 100th, and so on.

This is all a bit contrived anyway, in the sense that this is only true within your own timezone, as each day (and month and year) starts at least 24 different times around the globe.

Well, I go by the official reference point ...

2000 AD the comic !!!

Anything else is just lightweight.

vivatifosi

I wonder if there is an older person somewhere in the world that we don't know about. Jeanne Calment lived to 122 and a half. Would we know if there is someone who has achieved extreme longevity but doesn't want the attention?

She is such an extreme yet verifiable outlier, it's surprising that nobody else comes close, particularly as we are supposedly living longer. Maybe the Japanese person who is still alive at 117 will carry n for a couple of years.

Looking at the table on Wikipedia

One person (Calment) lived to 122
One lived to 119
Six lived to 117 (one of whom is still alive)
Ten lived to 116 (one of whom is still alive). The oldest man was 116, everyone living longer was female.
Twenty five lived to 115 (one of whom is still alive)
All of the remaining 100 oldest people are 114 and a number of those are still alive. There are probably a significant number of 114 year olds outside of the top 100.

Only 6 of the top 100 were male. A significant number of the top 100 are from the USA and Japan.

Interesting, thanks for mentioning zag!

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

The last combatant of WW1 who served in the trenches was Harry Patch, The Last Tommy. He was 111 when he died.

The last combatant was Claude Choules, who died in 2011 aged 110.

He served in the Royal Navy from 1915 to 1926 and then in the Royal Australian Navy until 1956. As well as being the last surviving combatant from both world wars, he was the last surviving military witness to the scuttling of the German Fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919.

kabayiri

Speaking of WW1, I was shocked at how little I knew of the few years following the end of the war, particularly what happened in Germany with the Kaiser etc.

Only by researching DS's GCSE did I realise what happened. I don't think we focus enough on how major events change dynamics in society. History can inform us about the rise of populism, but the "Hitler" card seems to shut down rational discussion at times.

vivatifosi

kabayiri wrote: »

Speaking of WW1, I was shocked at how little I knew of the few years following the end of the war, particularly what happened in Germany with the Kaiser etc.

Only by researching DS's GCSE did I realise what happened. I don't think we focus enough on how major events change dynamics in society. History can inform us about the rise of populism, but the "Hitler" card seems to shut down rational discussion at times.

Interesting, I shall have to try and find a book on that period. I also want to get round to reading 1913 by Charles Emmerson about the period leading up to. There seemed to be so much hope and enthusiasm in those early Edwardian times, yet things changed pretty rapidly.