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Age +1
Today I stept into my 28th year, why call my age 27? | |
It's like I'm denying that I'm 27 for a year, and than
suddenly becoming 27 at the last day of my 27th
year of living... Got it?
Age =/= the year you left behind
Age = which year you're living in
2012 and all that
http://www.levity.c.../finalillusion.html
[lubbit, Aug 20 2001, last modified Oct 04 2004]
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Annotation:
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Because you have not yet completed your 28th year. |
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The day you were born is a convenient yet arbitrary yardstick anyway. If you want to count how long you've been alive, you could go back as far as your date of conception. |
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-alx: There are some who would argue that you were not
actually alive at conception. <dons flameproof suit and
stands back to watch> |
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[UnaBubba &PotatoStew] Hence the 'could' in my previous annotation...birth is good because it draws a line in the sand, but it'd be hard to argue a good case that you only become alive at that point. |
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-alx: I understand, and I personally think the line should
be drawn much earlier than most other people would
draw it. But UB is right, this is a sensitive subject, and I'm
sure there's probably no point in trying to figure it out
here. |
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Yeah...I hadn't actually thought ahead to the issues which my original annotation would lead to until the responses were posted...was just commenting on the arbitrary nature of all dating... |
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Ask a C programmer why it makes perfect sense.
a[0] represents the 1st element of array a, a[1] the 2nd, etc.
Or, Mathematically, the simplest way to express your age, which is a real number, as an integer number of years, is to simply truncate it; if you've lived 27.9 years, why not just say you're 27?
Until, that is, you've stept (sic.) into your 29th year, after having lived 28 years. |
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Well as long as we're being arbitrary, why not just pick a date in the future and measure the amount of years 'till that date. Then subtract 3. I choose 21st December 2012, when a mushroom apparantly predicts the world will... ooh, it won't say (see link). |
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The world will Enter A New Age |
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Thnx [Mephista], I will keep your comment in mind this year... So [waugsqueke], my age today is |
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27,007239726027397 >>>> Hurray! |
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Rounding down to the nearest integer is purely voluntary. When I think of (or am asked) my own age, I always round to the nearest integer (although these days, I tend to forget precisely how old I am). Rounding to the nearest integer also helps alleviate the "shock" of reaching milestone ages, as I have time to increment my age gradually, around six months away from my birthday. |
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I'm gonna try using this excuse to buy alcohol when I turn 20 next year
--OFF TOPIC-- Last month, at my grandma's 78(?)th birthday dinner, the waiters/waitresses sang the following song:
I don't know but I've been told
Someone here is gettin' old
We all tried not to laugh, but damn it was funny. |
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If it included womb time we'd celebrate your conception day and not your birth day. |
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Another problem with celebrating conception: do you go for the sexual act, or the fertilisation, or the implantation of the fetus in the womb? I think it takes several hours till fertilisation, and a couple of days till implantation, but don't quote me if you got a biology exam coming up. |
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GeorgeTheRobin: Never mind leap years; I was going to say it wasn't true because of leap SECONDS. |
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Yez, I'm in my 112th season... |
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I'm inclined to agree with Lemon and others. After all, as kids we are very careful to ensure that if we are six-and-3-quarters we correct anyone who mistakenly describes us as six. I have never quite fathomed how or exactly when this perfectly reasonable system of age measurement gets replaced with the once-a-year renumbering. After all, if at some stage in life we regard the overall scale of things as requiring that we recalibrate in that way, should there not be some later threshold beyond which we recalibrate in decades rather than years? Some people, I realise, do come close to doing so in preferring to be categorised within parts-of-decades, eg "I'm in my early fifties" rather than saying 53. |
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Mygo, I suspect the threshold is - for those of us who grew up on Logan's Run, anyway - thirty. That's when you have enough decades to count as wholes and any extra years are just to be quietly brushed under the carpet. It's when you're officially 'old' as one of my dear friends keeps so kindly reminding me, as my own Last Day approaches (Four days and counting). |
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Ah, well. "There is no sanctuary." |
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Happy birthday in advance, Guy.
"Officially old"? Hmm, there are people in their 60's and early 70's these days who sat they're middle aged rather than old. On that basis, 30 is positively adolescent. It's still an uncomfortable milestone to reach, mind.
(Lemon - in his thirties, but refuses to round to the nearest decade). |
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When a female contestant on the game show he was hosting told Groucho Marx that she was "approaching thirty", he asked "From which direction?"
(angel - approaching forty, but see profile for disclaimer.) |
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To sort of summarize the above discussion; |
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0-4 age = not important to you or known |
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5-16 age = years + months |
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65- ? age = not important to you or known| — | Pleez,
Oct 17 2001, last modified Oct 18 2001 |
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"How old are you"
"I was born in 19xx, how old does that make me, by your reckoning?" |
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'I'm pushing 40.'
"You're not pushing it, you're dragging it behind you on a trailer hitch." |
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Guy Fox: you can get away. They haven't caught me yet. |
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It's never too early for a second childhood; I went straight from my first into it. |
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<Yes, it's an old joke. Deal.> |
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I'm officially 'on the run' as of Saturday. If the sandmen can track me down through the haze of hash-smoke in Amsterdam, I'll be well impressed. |
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[blissmiss] Hi Mom! Gotcha ;o) |
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[Guy Fox] You know how to tribute to the smokey image of Amsterdam... BTW, coffeeshop's 'De Rokery' and 'Paradox' are my neighbourhood favourites. |
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Hey, Pleez. Just back from your neck of the woods. Congratulations on having such an excellent city. Thoroughly nice people, the Amsterdamers, putting up with us wasted tourists; a great time was had by all. (Missed your post on the 20th so I didn't get a chance to check out De Rokery or Paradox, but I certainly found some ambient places to get mellow - I'm sure I'll be going back soon, anyway). |
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I have a korean friend who says that her grandmother used to measure age from approximate date of conception. |
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I'd agree, but who wants to give pro-lifers that kind of ammuntion. |
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go back to sleep, Brett. firstly, this thread is pretty old to be adding new comments. secondly, the korean grandmother thing is interesting enough to warrant reopening an old thread (imho) but the second comment was unnecessarily inflammatory (at least that's how it came across to me, maybe you didn't intend it). follow the old folks' lead and have that argument somewhere else. |
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//I have a korean friend who says that her grandmother used to measure age from approximate date of conception.// |
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Yes, the Koreans generally add one to their age. Even the women! ... I wonder how that affects the age of consent? |
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