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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

May You Live Until...?

It always bothered me when people said "May you live until 120" - why limit a person like that? Some people used to say "Oh, you can't live past 120, since that's what Moshe lived" - silliness, since plenty of people before and during (if not after?) his time did so according to Tanach.

In recent years, more and more people have approached that mark, with at least one surpassing it from what I can recall. Now, there's a lady this week who they recently realized is turning 130 years old in Kazakhstan: (emphasis added)
Kazakhstan - A Kazakhstan lady, who mothered ten children, will be celebrating her 130th birthday this week, making her the world’s oldest person by 16 years.

Sakhan Dosova’s age was discovered during a census in Karaganda in northern Kazakhstan, when the date of birth on her passport showed as 1879, which was the same year Edison invented the light bulb and Stalin and Einstein were born.

Dosova’s age surprised demographers when they found that she had been on Stalin’s first census of the former Soviet region in 1926, when her age was given as 47, and they are now trying to confirm the record.

For the 129-year-old lady, she puts her longevity down to her love for cottage cheese and her sense of humour, and never visiting a doctor or eating sweets.

Happy birthday to her, and remember: Don't go to doctors.

16 comments:

  1. I actually addressed the "120 years" issue a while back.

    The Wolf

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  2. The key to living long is to not die.

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  3. Just curious, had you not written "emphasis added," would that have altered anything? I mean, we know YOU wrote the top part, and so you are by definition allowed to emphasis anything you want. The only reason people ad "emphasis added" is because they did to someone else's writings. Because of your blunder, i couldn't even bring myself to reading the rest of the post. Good going.

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  4. HH - He emphasized "never visiting a doctor." Had you read the rest of the post, you would have seen! :)

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  5. But thats fine see. Those were his own words, hence he doesn't need to add the (emphasis added) part like he did above. It's just more than any descent man can take.

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  6. Wolf - I knew I'd seen it somewhere :)

    Erachet - Agreed!

    Baila - Right!? My mom will be very happy.

    HH - What Erachet said. I added the bold on the never visiting a doctor line. It's standard practice! :)

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  7. You're not listening. Its not the fact that you bolded it, its the part that you wrote "(emphasis added)".

    Why would you add that if its your own words? You only put "(emphasis added)" when you are emphasis someone elses words.

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  8. I did - look at the part quoted.

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  9. ah beseder :)

    tov, ani olech habayta. Next time, I will read the entire post :)

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  10. a russian speaker here. Did a little research in Russian on this lady (for photo - see here http://rus.azattyq.org/content/Sakan_Dosova_Sakhan_Dosova/1509014.html

    Looking at other google results, it seems that it may be a hoax - because due to calculations, she gave birth to her youngest daughter at 64 years old - which seems highly improbable. So she may be 90 or 100, but not 130.

    As for cottage cheese: given that it was not a usual food item in Russia, from the article above you can see that what she ate is Qurt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qurt
    , a popular snack in Central Asia.

    Anyway, just my 0.02

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  11. thisis the link: http://rus.azattyq.org/content/Sakhan_Dosova_/1516736.html

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  12. > It always bothered me when people said "May you live until 120" - why limit a person like that?

    It always bothers me when people take trivial, irrelevant aspects of life and analyze them as if they matter in the least bit.

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  13. "and never visiting a doctor or eating sweets."

    Ahem, Mr. Selective Reader.

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  14. SJ - No no no - any of those lead to long life. :D

    COJ - Thanks - I can't read the Russian, sadly, but the search I did couldn't find anything other than confirmations.

    Hedyot - ?? Slightly rich, no? Moreover, a passing thought is not the same as overanalyzation.

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  15. In our family we don't say "Ad Meah V'Esrim" on birthdays, etc.
    We say instead, "L'orech Yomim Tovim".

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