London: Gone are those days when people over-50s will spend a quiet retirement life — as a new study has found that baby boomers believe middle age lasts until they are 70.
When questioned by researchers, the post-war generation said on average they felt ‘old’ only after entering their eighth decade.
Even then a quarter don’t think they are past it until they are in their 80s, the study showed.
The findings suggested that in advanced years baby boomers retain their determination to cling to their youth. After drawing their pensions they are refusing to quietly see out their days as generations before them have.
Baby boomers, or those born between 1945 and 1963, have been called the luckiest generation ever after they enjoyed soaring house values, guaranteed pensions and lives of prosperity.
The US study found that three quarters of all baby boomers considered themselves to be middle-aged or younger, even if they were in their 60s. The average age at which they said they were old was 70. (ANI)
A software that aids in shopping
London: Every now and then, those contemplating to buy a new TV, smartphone or laptop are faced with a dilemma as to whether they should buy it now, or wait for the price to drop?
While we had been grumbling, researchers at Microsoft attacked the problem with science.
The result of their experimental system is ‘Prodcast’ — a software that looks at price history, sales volume, and time of year to guess when an item might go on sale.
It works by showing prospective buyers the likelihood that prices will go up or down — for example, an item costs 900 dollars, Prodcast can tell you that it’s 80 per cent certain the item will cost between 750 and 800 dollars in two weeks. (ANI)
Sisters sue cemetery over grave mix-up
NEW YORK: American sisters Evelyn and Hortense Edwards spent two decades visiting what they thought was their mother’s grave only to discover it contained the remains of a stranger.
Now, the sisters are seeking $25 million in damages from the Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey, for emotional distress caused when they learned that their mother, Beatrice Williams, had been buried in the wrong plot.
“It was devastating for them,” Mark Crawford, the sisters’ attorney, said in a telephone interview.
He said they only discovered the mix-up after they complained to the cemetery about their mother’s grave falling into disrepair. An employee looked up the plot in question.
“She said, ‘There’s a man buried there,’ and they said, ‘What do you mean there’s a man buried there?'” Crawford said.
The cemetery declined to comment. (Reuters)
Runaway elephants nabbed at bus stop
BERLIN: Two runaway circus elephants in Germany surprised passersby and police by showing up at a bus stop during a brief bid for freedom, officials in Hanover said on Tuesday.
Dunia, a 40-year-old Indian elephant, and her counterpart Daela, a 25-year-old African elephant, were apprehended by police near the western city of Hanover over the weekend nonchalantly munching on tree leaves and looking for all the world as if they were waiting for the bus.
The pair had escaped from their enclosure at a nearby traveling circus and walked some 50 meters (165 feet) to the stop, police said.
“It was simply an unlucky situation for the circus,” Hanover police spokesman Heiko Steiner said. “The two elephants were quite cooperative and peaceful. Everyone was amused.”
If the two were trying to make an escape, they were not going far, Steiner said. The police station is only a stone’s throw from the bus stop, which is out of use during the summer school holiday. (Reuters)