Time and Death

[adams house cat]

Just heard on CNN that 26 of the new intake of Dems to the House were born post Watergate.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Just babies.

On Remembrance Day there used to be this big commemorative do at the Albert Hall. Military representatives of every regiment/squadron/fleet of every war would march across the floor, while their honours were read out. The whole thing was televised and took all evening. My Mum always cried while I wondered when proper TV would start again. Leading off were the oldest survivors, generally Chelsea Pensioners who'd fought the Boers. "Christ they're old," I thought "That war's ancient history." In fact they'd be the same age as WW2 vets today, a war whose shadow I was born under.

[WOM]

Happy Days was a nostalgic look back at the mid 1950s...from the perspective of the mid 1970s.

That'd be like a nostalgia show of 1998, with people wistfully thinking 'man, the cars and music back then...'.

[adams house cat]

"That Seventies Show" is just that WOM.

[Lang Spoon]

The early nineties probably look and feel alien enough. But even though technology has accelerated beyond recognition since 98, the culture is pretty fuckin similar. Just way more atomized.

[George]

When I was a young child much of the WW2 generation were still working. Coming up to retirement admittedly, but still clocking on in a morning. Now they're pretty much all gone. Afternoon daytime TV regularly catered for the generation before them with Chaplin and Buster Keaton silents. Feels like another world now and I'm only 37.

On the early 90's - I reckon the recession (which seems to be forgotten now but lasted for most of three years) led to a general dinginess which has visually aged that period far more than the rest of the decade.

[Hot Pepsi]

We're still in the shadow of it. I suspect we will be for many more years.

[Hot Pepsi]

"That Seventies Show" is just that WOM.

That 70's show was looking at the 70s from the late 90s-early 2000s. I think what WOM was saying was asking is where is the contemporary show, like that, about the 90s?

I'm not aware of anything like that, but Friends (remastered in HD and widescreen) is a huge hit on Netflix and lots of kids who weren't alive then watch it. I suspect that, going forward, he ability to easily access high-quality video stuff from 20 years ago may undercut the market for new shows about 20 years ago.

On the other hand, we may see more shows - especially shows about teenagers and young people dating - set in the past because people actually talking to each other and meeting each other in the real world makes for better film/TV than a lot of screen shots of texts and apps. I read that that's why the makers of Landline, a pretty good indy film from 2017 set in 1995 - chose to set it then, even though there's not much else about the story that necessitates it being in 1995 or any particular year.

Likewise, That 70's Show was all about kids just hanging out and smoking weed in the basement because there was nothing else to do - not much on TV, no VCR, only rudimentary video games, etc. Dazed & Confused was just about kids driving around, because that's what kids in small towns did back then. The equivalent today would mostly be kids at home texting each other. Whether that's better or worse is debatable, but it certainly would be a much worse film.

[WOM]

"That Seventies Show" is just that WOM.

Yes, that's true. It was, also, only a little over 20 years removed, but felt like ages.

Little known fact, but there was briefly "That '80s Show" from the same producers, which sucked wet, hairy ass. Instead of a funny ensemble cast set in the 70s, it was a collection of really shit '80s jokes with few laughs. Didn't last.

[Greenlander]

The Goldbergs have the 80s revivial bit of the TV schedules sewn up.

[Hot Pepsi]

Red Oaks, on amazon, is another great show about the 80s (among other things, but set in the 80s).

[Hot Pepsi]

Yes, that's true. It was, also, only a little over 20 years removed, but felt like ages.

Little known fact, but there was briefly "That '80s Show" from the same producers, which sucked wet, hairy ass. Instead of a funny ensemble cast set in the 70s, it was a collection of really shit '80s jokes with few laughs. Didn't last.

I liked that ok because the woman who is now on Supergirl - playing the titular character's adoptive sister - played the token punk.

[adams house cat]

It was fifty years ago in September that the last revenue earning steam trains ran in the UK.

[WOM]

Early Kinks earworm....

[adams house cat]

Keith West earworm.

[Bored Of Education]

There is a shorter period between the Opium Wars and World War 1 and the latter and today.

[jdsx]

There is a shorter period between the Opium Wars and World War 1 and the latter and today.

By some distance.... (c75 years compared to c102, depending on how you measure it of course)

Surely the Opium Wars were (in many ways) the absolute nadir of the British Empire. On the other hand, they led to the formation of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, which was (in some respects) one of its great achievements, though virtually no-one has heard of it today...

A couple of interesting side notes:

According to Wikipedia, in 1820, China had the largest economy in the world....

After two decades of operation, the CIMC (staffed almost entirely by foreigners) collected about one third of the revenue available to the government in Beijing.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Surely the Opium Wars were (in many ways) the absolute nadir of the British Empire. On the other hand, they led to the formation of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, which was (in some respects) one of its great achievements, though virtually no-one has heard of it today...

I don't know, it's got stiff competition. halfway between the two opium wars, they allowed 5% of their own population die of hunger in Ireland and Scotland, in a time of plentiful food, and unprecedented wealth. China was very far away. people could see this outside their window. That wasn't that long ago. What the hell was going on in people's heads at the time.

[Lang Spoon]

Not that many really died in scotland but directly from famine during the blight. The affected areas were much closer to population centres like Glasgow/Inverness (as well as established seasonal emigration to fertile lowland areas bordering the potato dependent Highlands) and the relief was slightly less evilly doled out (Trevelyan was frustrated from his worst impulses to some extent). The Highland/Lowland enmity was also somewhat dimmed by the 1840s through sentimental Walter Scottishness and the sufferers by this point being mostly converted to Calvinism, so Scots towns and cities in the unaffected lowland areas raised a lot of cash for their “brothers” (maybe as much to stem the flood of emaciated waifs and strays into douce lowland touns).

Also the Clearances had been underway long before the famine so the crowded lands of West Cork didn’t really have a parallel in Scotland (first through the landless emigrating against their Landowners’ wishes in a Dance Called America like during the 18th cent/Napoleonic Wars, then through the forced evictions later by the bastards in the most marginal land like Sutherland etc). And the more fertile lowlands and central/southern highlands had been efficiently cleared earlier and more thoroughly than in Ireland.

The Bengal famine under evil bastard fuck Churchill must be up there with the Opium Wars and the great Famine.

[Lang Spoon]

As much as pure racialist evil contra the Celts, the mad adherence to laissez faire and the idea of deserving poor/poverty as Just Punishment for moral failing was probably a major factor in the potato famine(s). The pointless and needless austerity under Osborne and Pig Fucker/Strong and Stable being a pale reflection of same.

[adams house cat]

Next year Elvis Presley will have been dead as long as he was alive. He was granted the Congressional Medal Of Freedom last week after all these years.

[Lurgee]

Next year Elvis Presley will have been dead as long as he was alive. He was granted the Congressional Medal Of Freedom last week after all these years.

Good to see they are addressing the pressing issues of the day.

[Bored Of Education]

The last time England won a trophy was closer to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand than to the present date.

Being Welsh, this should be my favourite fact (and it is, in reality). However, as I was born in the same year, I have mixed feelings about it.

I quite like the accompanying fact that, in this year's World Cup, Gareth Southgate was two years older than Alf Ramsey was when he won in 1966.

[Jah Womble]

I think Sir Alf had been middle-aged since birth, however.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Not death-related, but today's (?) xkcd strip points out that space flight is now older (first human spaceflight 12th April 1961, being 57 years 7 months ago) than human flight (Wright brothers, 1903) was when the first space flight happened.