BMTH live in Jakarta 2024

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This time around Ravel gets it right and BMTH (Bring Me The Horizon) are headlining the Nexfest festival in Jakarta which also features Babymetal. In this format there is no seating - which makes for a much more intimate experience - although you do have to arrive really early if you want to pick a spot right up close to the stage.  We arrived about six hours before BMTH were scheduled to start their performance and bought plenty of drinks to stay hydrated in the tropical afternoon heat (mind you, some of those were Iceland vodka mix!) This was a gig I had long been looking forward to - especially after the debacle last year. Not everyone likes BMTH of course. For deathcore fans the band sold out. For metal heads the band is not purist enough. And for the wider mainstream audience, the band is too heavy. You can't please everyone of course but there are few bands in the rock world which can match the sheer emotional velocity of BMTH. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore t
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Family trees and creationism

When I was a kid my mum made a family tree. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents and so on. Very quickly it gets very big. Going back only 6 generations to around the year 1800 and you already have 64 great-great-great-great grand parents. 

But then I thought. Just how many great.. grandparents did I have say, 1,000 years ago when King Harold had to pull an arrow out of his eye at the battle of Hastings? 

Well, 1000 years ago is - roughly speaking - about 40 generations. And I’m sure you’ve noticed the series above expands exponentially as you go back in time. Okay then, so we have 2^40, which is… …1099511627776 or 1099,511,627,776 or 1099 billion great grandparents!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

 WTF - there are only 6 billion people living on the planet at the moment! I asked my mother for an explanation, but she didn’t have one. And as I couldn’t find the answer anywhere else I didn’t think about it again until many years later on Sunday night, when I read the answer in Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything”: 

 “The reason, of course, is incest. If you look around you on a bus or in a park or café or any crowded place, most of the people you see are very probably relatives.” 

 Ah of course: your line is not pure and there will have been many occasions when a relative from your mother’s side has procreated with one on your father’s side! 

And Bryson goes on to say: “Indeed, if you are in a partnership now with someone from your own race and country, the chances are excellent that you are at some level related.” 

Probably relatives?!!! Isn’t that incest? Yucks! No wonder foreigners find Indonesian women attractive!

Comments

  1. Anonymous12 September 2010 at 03:47

    Wow i never quite thought about that 1099 billion great grandparents..no shit.

    It does sound rather creepy thinking we're all related at some point.But we can take comfort in the fact that most of us are Very Very distant relatives.hehe...okay i feel sick.Thanks a lot man.

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