The Tiger-watchers

Boy, am I getting fed up to the back teeth by the news media's fixation with Tiger Woods's private life. I cannot see one good reason for any person on this Earth, other than those individuals directly affected, to have any interest in what this person does (or has done) anywhere except between the first tee and the eighteenth hole of a golf course.

Media folk would argue that there is huge public interest and that they are simply catering to that interest. My view is that there is huge public interest only because the news media generated it in their own pecuniary interest. Unfortunately that says as much about the intellect of the media's audience as it says about the media's greed.

Public Holidays

Today is officially recognised as a Public Holiday in New Zealand. In this particular year, it doesn't matter much to most folk, because it falls on a weekend anyway. But it does matter to those whose job requires them to work, because the law of the land requires their employers to pay them at one-and-a-half times the usual hourly rate and also requires that they are allowed a day off in lieu at some later date. It matters to employers for the same reason.

I wonder how many countries have a public holiday on January 2, simply because it happens to be the day after the first day of the year. It doesn't happen across the ditch in Australia and I don't imagine it happens in too many other countries.

There are other public holidays which seem superfluous as well (although I have no problem with my employer being required to pay me for staying home). The Queen's Birthday holiday is celebrated on the nearest Monday to June 4, because June 4 was the birthday of one of QE2's uncles or great uncles (I think). Does anyone really care a toss, or consider it a significant date?

I would wager that most New Zealanders have no idea that October's Labour Day commemorates the introduction, at some time in the country's obscure past, of a universal eight hour working day (which, incidentally, hasn't been recognised for God knows how many years, either in law or common practice). My understanding is that in earlier days, working folk and their families flocked to communal picnics, organised by respective trade unions, on this holiday, but not many people living today would even remember that.

The founding of each respective New Zealand province is celebrated by a day off work for those in each province on a date unique to their place of domicile and is called Anniversary Day. Never mind that provincial government was abolished in this country more than a hundred years ago and there is no longer any clear definition of geographical provincial boundaries. In my "province" (Otago), Anniversary Day falls in April, so many employers, schools, etc tack it onto Easter weekend, making the officially designated date a curious phenomenon when some institutions are closed and some are not (likewise the Tuesday following Easter Monday).

And then there's Waitangi Day, which is just too complex and controversial to even try to explain!

My solution, which, sadly, is not going to happen because the present system of public holidays is firmly entrenched in Kiwi culture, is to abolish all of the aforementioned holidays, give every employee an extra week's annual leave to be taken at a time of their choice and add a week to school, college and university holidays. Business operators would be in favour as short weeks are not conducive to good business.

A Question of Numbers

A spokesman for a syndicate of indigenous New Zealanders attempting to purchase large amounts of farmland in the southern part of the country was quoted in the weekend press as saying that the group had a genealogical connection, dating back to biblical times, to their Middle Eastern financiers.

He may well be right. In fact, he almost certainly is right if my arithmetic is correct. Most family trees have an average of at least three generations per 100 years. The number of any person's antecedents per generational tier doubles with each generation (e.g. you have twice as many great-great-grandparents as you have great-grandparents). Any one person has eight great-grandparents and 16 great-great-grandparents. On this basis, it's reasonable to expect that a child born in 2009 might have had two living generational tiers in 1809: 32 great-great-great-grandparents and 64 great-great-great-great-grandparents - a total of 96 ancestors living on this earth at one time, just 200 years ago. If we use the same assumptions and go back a further 400 years (12 generations) to 1400AD, a person born in 2009 might have had 390,074 direct antecedents living at that time.

If this seems incredible, go back further still. In 1009AD, the child of 2009 can reasonably claim to have had almost 1.6 billion living ancestors. The problem is, the total world population in 1000AD is estimated to have been only 275 million! The only possible answer to this anomaly is that there is a great deal of intermarriage in our ancestry and that each of us has the same people appearing repeatedly in our ancestral lines. But, all that apart, it certainly puts into perspective any claim of genealogical links going back to biblical times, which were twice as long ago!