AS IF it's not MONDAY enough around here, our editorial assistant Jameela posted a link this morning titled OLD AGE BEGINS AT 27. Read it here, in the U.K. Daily Mail. The gist of it is that stars like Jessica Biel, Beyonce, Kirsten Dunst ...alll of whom are 27 ... will be over the hill by next year.
![](http://media.nbcbayarea.com/images/LightBox-VanityFairOscarParty-5_5825792JBiel_022209_83.jpg)
![](http://media.nbcbayarea.com/images/120208-beyonce_448x336.jpg)
Now, this is terrible news, and it's actually based in science. "According to scientists," the story says, "our mental abilities begin to decline from the age of 27 after reaching a peak at 22."
It goes on, and it gets worse:
"The first age at which performance was significantly lower than the peak scores was 27 – for three tests of reasoning, speed of thought and spatial visualisation. Memory was shown to decline from the average age of 37. In the other tests, poorer results were shown by the age of 42."
The one bright spot is that abilities based on cumulative knowledge increase ... until at least 60. That's the good news? We stop learning new stuff at around 60?
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My favorite comment on this article came from someone in Atlanta:
"That's a bunch of crap. I'm 56 and learn something new everyday. It might be the thing I forgot the day before, but it's all new once I've learned it all over again for the first time. And really it's an advantage over the average youngster."
I think you start to get old as soon as you start using words like "youngster." By the way, Jameela, the editorial assistant who posted this atrocity, is 25. Time's almost up J!
If reading this hasn't made you feel like you're cresting the peak of the dreaded hill, here's another one. As I was getting ready to go on the air this morning (hair, makeup, that kind of thing) I was watching Tech Now, a show hosted by my colleague Scott Budman up in the Bay Area. It comes on at 4:30 Monday mornings here on KNBC, and hopefully some other time because it's a really good show. At any rate, I saw it at o'dark hundred and made note of this website called "youshouldhaveseenthis.com." It's a list of 99 "things you should have already experienced on the Internet by now, or you're a loser or old or something." That's a quote, by the way, off the website, which has links to all 99 in case you want to take a pop-culture test.
This one is my favorite; it's been around since 2007:
The Time Online blog on the list summarizes it as follows:
• Animal videos: 11
• Animal videos that should come with a warning because they're too adorable and will make you cry at work: 1
• People who injure themselves: 6
• People who injure other people: 3
• Children who will grow to resent their parents for putting embarrassing footage of them on the Internet: 9
• Things that are funny because they're from the '80s: 6
• Home-shopping TV screwups: 2
• Sports videos: 2
• Acts of bad journalism: 9
• Reminder that OK Go is better at making music videos than it is at making music: 1
• Inaccurate portrayal of American history: 1
• Fat people: 4
• Angry Germans: 2
• Transvestite midget: 1
• Videos longer than five minutes: 5
• Videos shorter than 30 seconds: 12
• Celebrity videos: 7
• Wedding videos: 2
• Videos of people dancing: 9
• Ad for an office product that seems oddly sexual: 1
• Performances inspired by Star Wars: 3
• Freaky Tom Cruise moments: 2
• Things from Japan: 4
• People with too much time on their hands: 37
• Grown men who may never know the love of a woman: 12
• Bonus link hidden at the bottom of the page that should not be viewed in public, or even at all: 4
I won't tell you how many of these I'm familiar with; I'll just ask you... do you feel old? Or are you thinking, "duh, that 99 links list is so ten minutes ago." And so is the saying "so ten minutes ago." Ugh. I gotta run, I have some catching up to do.