In my prime!


Today’s my birthday! Guess how old I am.


Old ’67 what a time it was
What a time of innocence, what a time we’ve lost
Raise a glass and have a laugh, have a laugh or two
Here’s to old ’67 and an older me and you

It was very nice of Elton to write that song just for me.

It is also the first day of spring break, so I should probably do something fun, like take a nap.

We’re also having a grand get-together of the gang at FtB, throwing a podcast to celebrate.

Whoa, that’s the worst party theme ever. I think maybe it’s not going to be about me at all. At least, I hope not.

Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    1967… that was a year before Nixon became president. MLK was still alive. So was Walt Disney (we didn’t know about his bad sides then). De Gaulle was in power in France.
    In Russia, the politburo wanted Soyuz 1 to be launched in time for the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Union, and never mind the development problems. This caused the death of the cosmonaut Komarov. -I think this was also the year Apollo 1 burned but it could have been 1966.
    A lady discovered a pulsar, so her male boss got the Nobel prize. British comedy films were usually better than US comedies, and musicals were still made by Hollywood. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” was an unexpected hit from Africa.
    Suharto continued his mass murder of 800 000 alleged communists in Indonesia.

  2. birgerjohansson says

    BTW happy birthday PZ
    You have 5 years on me, but a much better BMI so you will certainly make it to your eighties.

  3. zygoptera says

    Happy Birthday, PZ, and many more!!! The world is a better place with you.

  4. StevoR says

    Happy Birthday PZ! Hope you have a great one and many more happy days to come.

    @birgerjohansson : 1967 was indeed the year of the Apollo 1 fire. Itwa salso the only year that a Kiwi won the F1 drivers championship with Denny Hulme being the man to do so driving fro Brabham, the famous Aussie team. Plus yes, the year Jocelyn Bell-Burnell discovered pulsars :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

    Incidentally, she’s still alive so could – hopefully will still get the Nobel prize she deserves. I’ve actually met her myself -well attended a talk she gave anyhow.

  5. says

    The number one song for the year 1967 was “The Letter” by the Box Tops.
    Super Bowl I was played in January, won by the evil Green Bay Packers empire over the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10.
    Happy birthday, young whippersnapper. Don’t even think about getting on my lawn.

  6. robro says

    When you have a bio in Wikipedia, no one has to guess how old you are. It gives your birth year and age. And…assuming that’s right…your age is 67, your birth year is 1957.

    So what was going on that year?

    I use to be mentioned in Wikipedia for a role I played. I got my name expunged. Spam went down.

  7. siwuloki says

    Interesting facts about 1957:
    Alaska and Hawaii were still territories
    No artificial satellites in earh orbit
    Human population of earth was 2.8 billion; 8 billion today
    Yes, I do feel old.

  8. siwuloki says

    Interesting facts about 1957:
    Alaska and Hawaii were still territories
    No artificial satellites in earth orbit
    Human population of earth was 2.8 billion; 8 billion today
    Yes, I do feel old.

  9. cates says

    Happy Birthday to us, happy birthday to us …
    But 10 years apart. To feel really old describe yourself as being born in the first half of the last century.
    I believe our wedding anniversaries are also 10 years apart, but not to the day.

  10. says

    #14: Ugh. Hated it. Dune is a work of fiction, the sandworms were made up, just accept it.

    I don’t see how such creatures could realistically exist in defiance of thermodynamics, and in the absence of a complex food web. I also don’t see how giant people could exist without collapsing under the weight of allometric constraints, or how dragons could fly and breath fire, or how mermaids could support a human-like physiology on gills.

  11. birgerjohansson says

    The sandworms, like the rock-boring alien worms in “The Luminous Dead” (much recommended) have some alien ability to compactify or liquefy the medium they are tunneling through.
    Trying to make sense of it is like trying to make sense of the arrangement of suns around the planet in Pitch Black.

  12. birgerjohansson says

    PZ Mysers @ 21
    In The Laundry narrative universe such energy shortcomings are compensated for by bleeding energy from an energetically adjacent universe. And maybe the sand worms dump the sand in front of them into the Total Perspective Vortex.

  13. birgerjohansson says

    Marcus Ranum @ 19
    If I am correct, PZ has moved at an average of 30 km/second the whole time. More, if you take into account the movement relative the stars.

  14. outis says

    Many happy returns, professor! (In your prime, as in a prime number).
    And don’t get het up about the sandworms, at least they got a decent couple of movies out of ’em…

  15. nomdeplume says

    Hey, a very happy birthday old fellow – I’m afraid it’s all downhill from now.

    But we’re with you all the way down.

  16. hillaryrettig1 says

    What zygoptera #6 said: “Happy Birthday, PZ, and many more!!! The world is a better place with you.”

  17. raven says

    Happy Birthday PZ.

    I just checked the expected life span tables at Social Security.gov.
    An American male who is 67 can expect to live an average of 16 more years.

    This is an average but still, you should have a long time ahead of you.

  18. magistramarla says

    I’m a bit late, but Happy Birthday, PZ.
    I’ll catch up to you in six months.

  19. Hemidactylus says

    burgerjohnson @25
    By referring to him as PZ Mysers that was all the belated birthday present I needed. Meirz is traditionally misspelled and we like it! Old school talk.origen daze reloaded.

  20. Silentbob says

    @ 33 raven

    You and I have very different ideas of “a long time”. 16 years ago Marvel released Iron Man.

    Happy Birthday poopyhead, we love your blog.

    And you’re ok too.

  21. Pierre Le Fou says

    Happy birthday! I rarely post here, but I do follow the blog almost daily.
    Marcus Ranum @ 19 and birgerjohansson @26 : speed in space must be measured relative to something you chose. So it’s about 30 km/s for the earth going around the sun, but the sun goes around the galaxy at about 250 km/s too. And then the galaxy is moving towards Andromeda, and with respect to the cosmic microwave background (it gets complicated from what I understand). Anyway PZ and all of us are on one gigantic roller coaster. (I guess that’s true both about astronomy and about life in general)

  22. birgerjohansson says

    Hemidactylus @ 25
    Mysers is apparently the result of spell check trying to find a Swedish word instead of the unfamiliar Myers. Not that I don’t make speling erryls on my ovn.
    Yours Byrger Johnhassnon

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