Olympinonsense

[amateur51]

Only if it rains.........

[amateur51]

I have a lovely vision in my minds eye, of MrGongGong enjoying a quiet vin blanc in some sleepy rural bar in france, as someone puts the telly on, and the locals ask him to explain the unfolding events.....

Bless!

[amateur51]

The thing that really pleased me was that in the historical section they especially remembered the NHS.

The other pleasing moment was seeing where my public sector job went. It was the 204th orange firework. I recognised it immediately.

Lovely stuff, Lats

[Nick Armstrong]

oh, fair enough. I shall pack away my cynicism.

It certainly was broadcast live in the U.S. It was on NBC but interrupted by constant annoying commentary which apparently made our lot look like models of restraint and discretion.

[Nick Armstrong]

Composed 1896 by by Greek opera composer Spyridon Samaras.
Night all.

Truly awful...

Yes - that and the silly GB kit the low points! But lots of highs!

[Don Petter]

It all looked terribly noisy to me - rather like I imagine a pop concert to be.

[Rolmill]

Can I borrow a tenner till the end of the week...

No, but you can borrow a calculator....

2 x 2 x 2 = 6.

[mangerton]

Sadly the Queen's attitude was not as healthy as you suggest Scotty. She'd been given the news that there has already been three applications for asylum before the first note of the ceremony and she was wondering how, with so many foreigners who can run very fast and jump high, we'd catch them if they didn't want to go back

It might very well be worse. They could be here with weapons for the archery or shooting.

[Nick Armstrong]

Far too many foreigners there for my liking ... send all the blighters home and give us English a bit of peace, for goodness sake.

Thought Queenie was brilliant, though ... her obvious contempt for the whole she-bang was truly breathtaking ... what a star!

Comments please, scotty (and mangerton) - just had this in from a friend by email (from Hong Kong in fact): "I just loved the whole creative vision - Shakespeare esp Tempest, Blake, Milton, Brunel, the NHS, Poppins, Potter, Beatles, Bowie, Berners-Lee - I found myself wondering what Alex Salmond was thinking, squatting in some little tartan nook of the stadium, necking canapés and plotting to dismantle the union..."

Discuss

[Pabmusic]

Pabmusic, thank you for your dissertation on the NA. Points noted. What I dislike most about it is its inaccurate use of the words "rebellious Scots". They were of course Jacobites, and many Scots were aginst the rebellion. My own ancestors were by that time probably living in Ireland, whither they had been expelled when the borders were forcibly cleared after the union of the crowns.

Your post on ancestors is most interesting. I was aware of the population number around 1000 years ago, but not of the dates for common ancestry.

But no, sorry, you can't borrow a tenner.

I actually agree with you wholeheartedly about 'rebellious Scots".

Apparently, most of Cumberland's army at Culloden were Scots - not many English at all.

[John Wright]

If there are descendants of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Owain Gwynedd ap Gruffydd, Brian Boru or Macbeth living today, I am one of them. So are you.

Yes, and our family archivist put this sort of idea to the test, searched for an ancestral link to aristocracy and found in our Scottish branch a blood link to an Earl of Crawford in the 18thC, a well-documented family, and he was able to fast-track back to Robert II of Scotland, and then of course to Robert de Bruce, who apparently was an ancestor of David 1 who was related to Edward the Confessor.....

[Mary Chambers]

Who was the boy who sang the solo in Jerusalem? I can't find out.

[Pabmusic]

Indeed Pab- there's always this for people who want to pursue the matter further.

Am a bit skint meself .

I always find relatives are the most tight-fisted.

[Pegleg]

That only begins to scratch the surface. The number of direct ancestors you have (meaning only those whose genes contributed to your being you - parents, grandparents, great-grandparets and the like) increases exponentially with each generation, so that the calculation for their number is 2 raised to the nth power, where n is the number of generations. For instance, the number of your great-grandparents (ie: three generations ago) is 2 x 2 x 2 = 6. [By the way, I'm saying "you" and "your" all the time. This applies exactly equally to me.]

2 x 2 x 2 = 6? Does this mean you failed to find two of your great-grandparents?

Now go back thirty generations, to about 1066. The number of your direct ancestors in that generation only is 1,073,741,824, or about 1 billion. This is almost a thousand times greater than the population of Britain in the 11th Century, which is variously estimated at between 1-2 million, and significantly bigger than the total world population, which was some 400 million. And the same is true for you and everyone else. (By the way, it cannot be 1 billion for me and a different billion for you, but we'll deal with that in a minute.)

I would have thought that any reasonably numerate person would soon realise that the size of the populace was insufficient to fill all the places
on an ancestral tree once you've gone back many generations, and would look for possible explanations. One obvious(?) explanation is that the places in the tree are not filled by unique individuals. A single individual may occupy multiple places by virtue of shared ancestors. For instance, you'd only have six great-grandparents if you descend from two first cousins. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_collapse

This is of course Pabmusic's factor (3)

If we're more realistic about where our ancestors lived and how much they crossed geographic barriers, numbers of potential ancestors alive in any generation decrease. Most people are probably descended from a pool that was at most a third of the world's population, or about 130 million in 1000 AD. Bearing this in mind, the number of people who might have been our ancestors thirty generations back only fills about one ten-thousandth of the number of spaces on the ancestral chart! This tremendous shortfall of possible ancestors suggests that (1) almost anyone alive and reproducing in the geographical area in question in 1000 AD had a high probability of being an ancestor; (2) that persons descended from one geographical area (such as Europe and the Mediterranean) must necessarily have very many ancestors in common, and that (3) among any one person's ancestors, close intermarriage was inevitable. Equally inevitable is the remarkable proposition that everyone living in Europe in 1066 was an ancestor either of everyone of European descent living today, or of no-one at all. If there are descendants of Alfred the Great, Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Owain Gwynedd ap Gruffydd. Brian Boru or Macbeth living today, I am one of them. So are you.

Actually, the most recent time when everyone was either an ancestor of all in the current generation in Europe or an ancestor of none is much later than 1000 AD - probably more like 1300. Even 1600 would see most being ancestors. It all makes it difficult to rely on 'ethnic origin' as a meaningful concept beyond a purely cultural one.

So we really are closely related. Can I borrow a tenner till the end of the week...

Anyone interested in delving into these ideas further might find these links useful:

http://www.humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.math.html

http://www.humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.math.html#chang

http://tedlab.mit.edu/~dr/Papers/Rohde-MRCA-two.pdf

http://www.humphrysfamilytree.com/famous.descents.html#exponential

You don't have to be a mathematical wizard to at least appreciate some of the ideas that have gone into Rhode's analysis of "Common ancestors of all living humans".

So we really are closely related. Can I borrow a tenner till the end of the week...

Like I tell all my friends, and especially relatives, you can go whistle for it.

[Beef Oven]

Who was the boy who sang the solo in Jerusalem? I can't find out.

You'll need a CRB check before we can give you the name - sign of the times