Category Archives: Society

Why is Everyone Dying?

Arts & Humanities, Health, Lifestyles, News & Current Events, Society,

In 2016 there have been a spate of celebrity deaths that actually kicked off just after Christmas of 2015 with Lemmy of Motorhead.

Obviously the big death that shocked everyone initially was David Bowie on 4th January 2016 but then it seems like a lot of high profile people have followed over the past few months.

So why are so many people dying you may ask? Well one theory is that popular culture really started kicking off in the 1950s and 60s and that is when television became much more widespread. By the beginning of the 1960s around 3/4 of the population had a television in their homes and so you could say that celebrity became much more common and accessible at that stage.

This enabled not only TV celebrities but also musicians to gain much more notoriety and in much larger numbers.

So those people who were becoming well known in the 50s and 60s were likely to be born in the 30s and 40s, which would make a lot of them in their 70s right now.

With life expectancy for men being in the 70s it becomes logical for many of the popular figures in the 60s to now be hitting that kind of milestone.

Obviously there are other factors involved too and in particular it seems that a lot of the deaths in 2016 have been from cancer including Bowie, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Johan Cruyff,  Victoria Wood and Billy Paul, but cancer is a big killer. Currently 44% of the population are expected to get cancer in their lifetime (in the UK) and of those 50% will survive for 10 or more years.

So really we have to think that maybe it is not a case of lots of well known people dying in 2016, but maybe more of the case that there are more well known people around so we are likely to hear about more celebrity deaths in the coming years as the generation that became celebrities in the 60s and beyond become part of the older generation.

It does seem that 2016 has started pretty badly, but overall life expectancy is getting higher each year and women in particular can expect to live until they are around 83 years old in the UK and 81 in the US. Men are a little behind with an average life expectancy of 79 in the UK, 76 in the US.

Life expectancy is rising continually so anyone born now could have a life expectancy in their 90s and by 2050-60, anyone born around that time may be expected to live until 100!

Trump 7/11 Gaffe

Lifestyles, News & Current Events, Society

So a few days ago Donald Trump was making a speech at a campaign rally in Buffalo, New York when he made a terrible gaffe when speaking about the 9/11 disaster and instead referred to 7-Eleven (a chain store of convenience shops).

Instead of calling the event the 9/11 disaster – he called it ‘7-Eleven’ – in fact he said: “I watched our police and our firemen down at 7-Eleven – down at the World Trade Center”.

He didn’t even seem to realize this mistake at the time he made it but no doubt it was pointed out to him very soon afterwards.

However, even so he has yet to apologize for the gaffe, two days later, even after a social media outburst that means there is no way he doesn’t realize the mistake he made.

Trump does seem to be prone to not thinking before he speaks but possibly this is his worst gaffe…yet. We will wait and see what else he has to offer the media.

Check out the video from CNN for the speech that  he made here:

 

What Are the Chances of Winning the Lottery?

Entertainment, Finance & Insurance, Fun Stuff, Games, General, Lifestyles, Money, Recreation, Society

What are the chances of winning the lottery with 59 balls?

In October 2015 the national lottery in the UK increased the number of balls in the draw from 49 to 59, thus making it much harder to actually win the jackpot.

Previously, choosing 6 numbers from 49 would give you a 1 in 14 million chance of winning the lottery but now with the extra 10 numbers to pick your 6 numbers from, the chances have massively decreased to 1 in 45 million.

This increase in the number of balls and decrease in the chance of winning have been proven with the fact that the jackpot has continued to be an elusive prize that has not been won since the changes were made, contributing to a massive jackpot of £50 million + which could go on for a couple of weeks.

Tonight’s draw (6th January 2016) will be the 14th rollover jackpot – continuous rollovers since the new rules were introduced. This could trigger more people to buy tickets just because of the size of the jackpot which could then mean that more of the number combinations are covered.

The national lottery website says the following about the limit on the size of any rollover jackpot:

The jackpot can only stand at £50 million for two draws. If no one wins in the second draw, the full amount rolls down and is shared between the players in the next winning prize tier.

So it might be worth waiting to see if anyone wins the jackpot this time and if they don’t then there might be a great chance of winning more money with lower odds in the draw where the jackpot will be filtered down if no-one wins. This would be next Saturday 9th January 2016.

If no-one wins the jackpot on Saturday then the chances of winning with 5 numbers and the bonus ball are around 1 in 7.5 million which is almost twice the odds as winning the jackpot before the numbers were expanded to 59!

So if you want to know what are the chances of winning the lottery with 59 balls then I would say much better if you wait until the jackpot has to filter down!

How Can You Tell a Facebook Competition is Fake?

Fun Stuff, Internet, Social Networks & Online Communities, Society,

There are so many fake facebook pages out there trying to get us to click the like and share buttons with competitions and giveaways. So many of these facebook competitions are actually fake sadly.

There are a number of reasons why someone would set up a fake facebook page and competition even though sometimes they seem a bit unfathomable! But mostly they want us to like and share stuff so that more people like their page and maybe they can get hold of all our details and that of our friends to spam us with stuff or do even worse. Continue reading How Can You Tell a Facebook Competition is Fake? →

Upside Down Union Jack?

Society, ,

There was a man on Radio 4 this morning from some kind of official flag society who was going on about how often the Union Jack flag had been shown upside down in the Olympics. Now you would think that someone like this would know better but I have to say I think he is wrong. Unless all of the flags that you find through sources on the internet have been recreated unsuccessfully.

I have taken the wikipedia flag as the example I will use, as I hope it would be the correct one. You can find it here, but I have posted a copy below to prove my point.

Right way round Union Jack Flag

With the Union Flag, if you look at the top right section then the wider white bit is nearer the middle, agreed? And when you go round the flag, each wide white section is positioned like the sails of a windmill, with the wide white bit in the same place (to the left of the narrow red bit as you look from outside the flag). So if you flip the flag upside down it looks exactly the same (I have put the word flag in so that you can see that I have flipped it).

Upside down Union Jack flag.

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However, if you flip the flag round horizontally then you will see that the thick white on the top right hand side is in the wrong position.

Union Jack flag flipped around

 

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So, unless wikipedia (and plenty of other sources) have got their flag wrong then I can’t see how the flag can be upside down at all – if it was you would not be able to tell.