Surprise! Live longer - the arithmetical truth
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 26/Aug/2011 13:57, 34 days ago
I haven't heard from my Alter Ego, the Blog, lately. You may ask what an alter ego is. The answer is really quite simple - an alter ego is what you have with alter bacon or alter sausages. If you want to be really sophisticated, alter egos can come scrambled, easy over, poached or sunny side up. In Jamaica though, the proper breakfast is alter ackee and alter salt fish.In the picture, the yellow is the alter ackee, the white is the alter saltfish, and you have some local alter tomatoes and alter onions to add pizzaz and give it alter colour appeal."What!" Blog came charging onto the scene. "Stop messing with me- I always keep an eye on you because you think you're too punny (his pun - not mine) for words!"In my defence, I explained that basically I was concerned about his absence and that I was just checking to see if he was alive and well. "As alive as you, and more mentally well than you" he muttered.Then I went on to propose that while calculus was necessary to be happy, statistics and arithmetic were necessary to live long. These would have a built-in margin of error, but we could head towards being statistically correct 19 times out of 20.When you're talking about your life it's best to be as accurate as possible and not be over-optimistic. "You may or may not be right there," he scowled, "I think I can sort of recall your logic involving calculus, but I'm not sure if it was as I expected it to be. Be careful not to cross me".Not everyone wants to live a long time. Even immortality has its drawbacks. Jonathan Swift described this in Gulliver's Travels. Being immortal is only fun if you are forever young. If you are forever old and forever a vegetable wholly dependant on the care of others, it's less fun.Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;}http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StruldbrugSo to get right to the point, there are 15.8 ways of living longer. I can also say this with certainty that the margin of error is plus or minus 3.8 ways.Readers who are not arithmetically inclined will ask why 15.8 and why 3.8. It's my duty to explain my calculations. A quick Google search showed that the various options on living longer included 5, 10, 12, 14, 15, 25 and 30 ways. The average of these answers is 15.8. It might have been more conclusive if 15.8 was exactly divisible into 42. This magic number was what the HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy stated was the ultimate answer to the ultimate questions of life, the universe and everything. But 15.8 isn't divisible into it, and there's nothing we can do about that.We don't want to downgrade the quality of our lives by wasting time overanalyzing these answers so the average is quite acceptable for all practical purposes. My Google search for "number of ways to live longer"got 51,000,000 hits so I restricted my answers to those hits appearing on the first page.The margin of error is also easy to calculate. I could only recall 10 ways to live longer. This means that I could therefore quite legitimately add the first two ways for a total of 12. How can I live longer if I couldn't again find the website that first interested me, or remember what the ways were if I wasn't methodical? So here are the top 12 reasons. Just do them to live long and let the experts, somebody other than me, explain why numbers 3 to 12 are on the list.1. Be organized and methodical so you don't lose things.2. Have a good memory in case 1 above kicks in.3. Have a positive attitude about life.4. If it's not too late, ask your mother to have you before she is 25 years old.5. Don't drink carbonated beverages. If you need caffeine, drink tea.6. At least get as far as the first year in university.7. Be careful not to have been a fat teenager.8. Have close friends.9. Your close friends have to be healthy too.10. Walk at least 30 minutes daily.11. Eat purple coloured fruit or foods. Be realistic - avoid grape flavoured Jello.12. Have old relatives.So that's it for this time. It's shorter and more easy to digest than the alter food and my other longer blogs. Even Mr. Blog is fairly happy. Thank you Walt Disney Studios.