Happy Birthday this 31st August to ...

jellybellys!

(A bit late in the day, I know -- but I think it's still Friday on US time!)

Lyrics: The last one was Marblehead Johnson, a top 10 hit for the Bluetones in 1996 -- hey, I like it, although apparently no-one else remembered it. :) Which is a pity, as I haven't a clue how the title connects to the lyrics, and was hoping someone might inform me.

Ah well. Let's try a classic oldie:

You move it to the left
And you go for yourself
You move it to the right
Yeah if it takes all night
Now take it kinda slow
With a whole lot of soul
Don't move it too fast
Just make it last (1960s)

JKR, maths, and interview statements (see also: small crystal of NaCl, to be taken with)

Remember when JKR talked in interviews way back about typical wizard ages and said Dumbledore was about 150? And then gave an age for Great-Aunt Muriel in DH that implied he couldn't reasonably be much more than about 120? (She's 107, and remembers eavesdropping as a kid on Bathilda telling her mother about Ariana's funeral, when Dumbledore was 18. This would have been about 100 years previously.)

Well, Dumbledore is the new Wizard of the Month on JKR's site, and his dates are indeed given as 1881-1996 -- age 115 at death, which fits nicely. (The funeral would have been c.1899, when Muriel would have been about 9.) Bang goes a whole load of stories which have him at school in the 1860s, or otherwise used that interview age as background. Indeed, he could well have been at Hogwarts when Phineas Nigellus was headmaster, certainly when he was a teacher.

Another strike against the idea of treating interview statements as near-canon, then, or even as probably correct, especially if they involve numbers. Sigh.

ETA: And now I have a chance to look at the flist I see masterofmystery quite reasonably points out that he actually died in 1997 according to the standard timeline ... I hope JKR's got a good accountant. :)