Move over Methuselah. Future generations could be living well into their second century and still doing Sudoku , if life expectancy predictions are true. Increasing by two years every decade, they show no signs of flattening out. Average lifespan worldwide is already double what it was 200 years ago. Since the 1980s, experts thought the increase in life expectancy would slow down and then stop, but forecasters have repeatedly been proved wrong.

       The reason behind the steady rise in life expectancy is " the decline in the death rate of the elderly", says Professor Tom Kirk wood from Newcastle University. He maintains that our bodies are evolving to maintain and repair themselves better and our genes are in testing in this process to put off the damage which will eventually lead to death. As a result, there is no ceiling imposed by the realities of the ageing process." There is no use-by-date when we age. Ageing is not a fixed biological process," Tom says.

        A large study of people aged 85 and over carried out by Professor Kirk wood discovered that there were a remarkable number of people enjoying good health and independence in their late 80s and beyond. With people reaching old age in better shape, it is safe to assume that this is all due to better eating habits, living conditions, education and medicine.

        There are still many people who suffer from major health problems, but modern medicine means doctors are better at managing long-term health conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. " We are reaching old age with less accumulative damage than previous generations. We are less damaged." says Professor Kirkwood. Our softer lives and the improvements in nutrition and healthcare have had a direct impact on longevity.

        Nearly one-in-five people currently in the UK will live to see their 100th birthday, the Office for National Statistics predicted last year. Life expectancy at birth has continued to increase in the UK--from 73.4 years for the period 1991 to 1993 to 77.85 years for 2007 to 2009. A report in Science from 2002 which looked at life expectancy patterns in different countries since 1840 concluded that there was no sign of a natural limit to life.

        Researchers Jim Oeppen and Dr. James Vaupel found that people in the country with the highest life expectancy would live to an average age of 100 in about six decades. But they stopped short of predicting anything more.

       "This is far from eternity: modest annual increments in life expectancy will never lead to immortality," the researchers said.

        We do not seem to be approaching anything like the limits of life expectancy, says Professor David Leon from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. " There has been no flattening out of the best of the best--the groups which everyone knows have good life expectancy and low mortality, " he says.

        These groups, which tend to be in the higher social and economic groups in society, can live for several years longer than people in lower social groups, prompting calls for an end to inequalities within societies.

        Within populations, genes also have an important role to play in determining how long we could survive for—but environment is still the most important factor.

        It is no surprise that healthy-living societies like Japan have the highest life expectancies in the world. But it would still be incredible to think that life expectancy could go on rising forever. " I would bet there will be further increases in life expectancy and then it will probably begin to slow," says Tom, " but we just don't know."

         It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere, Gary Bettman was seething. All these events being cancelled, and not by him.

        On TV, anticipation was so animated it was heatedly debated and, in the way that television is ghastly in its predilections, the coverage was both ghoulish and foolish. On CNN, it went like this—in the studio, an anchor lady talking to a weather guy who noted, “it will be onshore in less than three hours,” at which point anchor lady declared,“and there he is ,Ali Velshi!” Cut to Ali Velshi, barely upright and ankle-deep in water in Atlantic City, in a fierce, whipping wind.

        “Ali at any point in time we will yank this, if you are in any danger at all,” anchor lady announced helpfully. Then ,“what else do you see, Ali?”To which he answered, “there’s some siding flying off buildings. Unless you’re kinda like us and reporting, there’s no reason to be out here.”

        Too true. On channel after channel ,reporters standing in howling winds and pouring rain to illustrate that , yeah, the storm was arriving and it was wicked ,just as predicted. In case anyone thought it was a con job.

        Then the Hurricane Sandy devastation in New Tersey and New York. Footage of flooded subways, as if massive wavees of water finding an outlet in large holes in the ground was a surprise. In Toronto’s east end, a tree fell. Power went out. CP24 savoured it all, at last some real, honest-to-God disaster effects.

        For all the raw footage and dramatic scenes of flooding, fires, rescue workers waist-deep in water and darkened buildings lashed by wind, television struggles to convey the authenticity of disaster-inducing storms. The fallback position is disaster-movie cliche and panicked voices in a studio commanding viewers to look (just look!) at this footage of flooding! The term “weather porn” doesn’t do it justice.

        Few live TV shows were taped in New York on Monday. But David Letterman went ahead and one has to wonder, why? The challenge, maybe, of doing a show without an audience and with only one celebrity guest available. Either that challenge, or a stange, terrible addiction to doing the TV show , as if some profound emptiness might result from cancelling it for a day.

        On occasion, the footage reminded me of the great miniseries Storm of the Century, written by Stephen King, which played on a community’s deep fears of what happens after a raging storm passes. In the series, a stranger emerged from the devastation, the devil himself(superbly played by Colm Feore), saying, “give me what I want and I will go away.”

        This led me to think about the U.S. Election coverage. On Fox News, there was an air of peevishness that the storm was distracting from its relentless anti-Obama rhetoric. Not to worry, though, no opportunity was wasted. A report from Washington about “how the president is handling the storm crisis” focused, bizarrely, not on disaster relief, but on the president’s handling of “the Benghazi crisis.” See, as Fox sees it, the devastating weather was absolutely an occasion to compare Barack Obama’s attitude during the storm to his alleged mishandling of the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The term “election porn” doesn’t do it justice.

        The heart sank. Such devastation, such determination to make petty politics of the wreckage of cities, towns, lives. Such emptiness, never empathy, throughout, and across the channels.

        The original Olympic Games were part of an important religious festival to honour the Greek gods, especially Zeus. They were held in a valley in Olympia every four years and men from all the Greek city states attended. Women did not compete in the games or even attend. The first record of the Olympic Games dates from 778 BC, but they were probably established hundreds of years before that.

        At first there was only one competition in the games—a 200m foot race. The distance was based on a myth about the hero Hercules who was side to have run this distance in one breath. At later Olympics other events were introduced, including a 365 meter and a 5 kilometer race , boxing, chariot races and the pentathlon jumping, running, javelin, discus and wrestling.

        Athletes came to Olympia to train full-time for 10 months. As they were allowed to compete, they were examined by a committee of 10 men to make sure they were of good character and physically fit. All wars between cities had to stop for the five days of the games.

        The prize for the winners was a crown made from an olive tree branch, but with a gold handled knife from a sacred tree. The olive branch was believed to give the athlete great strength and health. The winner gave public thanks to Zeus and to his city or district. Winners were believed to have gained the favor of the gods.