0.fj.randi (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 01, 2021 10:48 am I am a eunuch and use a Unix based operating system on all my computers

kristoff wrote: Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:24 pm I still occasionally use Fortran - rarely, but it is useful.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Thu Jul 01, 2021 7:48 pm You're showing your age with Fortran. The only computer course I ever took taught Fortran, clear back in the Dark Ages. The instructor had worked with Grace Hopper, who actually visited us! I forgot Fortran almost as fast as I forgot my Arabic and Russian.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:56 am In response to jman0001 (post #7):

An article on the lifespan of Korean eunuchs by Min, Lee, and Park (two biologists and a historian) has been cited many times. It is based on two factors that came together in traditional Korea. In a number of times and places where eunuchs were common, they were allowed to marry and to adopt. Usually they could only adopt young eunuchs, though there were some exceptions. Until the fall of the Korean Joseon Dynasty in 1910, Korean eunuchs were allowed to marry and to adopt young eunuchs. Korea also has a long tradition of compiling detailed family histories that may be kept up for many generations. One farm family in a small village showed me their family history that had been kept for 14 generations. The current head of the family also took me to see the tombs of his 13 generations of known ancestors.

Min, Lee, and Park calculated the life span of eunuchs derived from such family histories and compared them to the life span of contemporary intact males from upper-class families. In terms of socio-economic standing, the two groups were probably comparable. They found that the average lifespan of a Korean eunuch was about 70 years, 14 to 19 years higher than non-castrated men of similar social standing. Three of 81 eunuchs whose exact birth and date dates were given lived to be over 100 years old. The researchers calculated that the rate of centenarians among this group of eunuchs was at least 130 times higher than the current rate in developed countries. (Min, Lee, & Park 2012)

Hans Fritz (1994) did a bit of legwork on the life span of Italian castrati. Records are not nearly so good, and he could only find 47 examples where there were both birth and death years. For the 47 (with birth dates between 1588 and 1781 and a death date as late as 1861) he calculated an average life span of 70 years. With no footnotes, he estimated an average life expectancy of an upper class Italian male who had survived to adulthood as about 62.

The best study on the life expectancy of castrated males is that by Hamilton & Mestler (1969). Theirs was a study of the hundreds of males who had been castrated at the Topeka State Hospital in Kansas between 1895 and 1950. For their study they selected 322 castrated White (eliminating all Black and other race) males who had no diagnosis for anything known to restrict life expectancy. These were compared with a matched set of 735 intact White males who had been institutionalized at about the same date and age and with similar mental and health conditions. The age of castration ranged from 8 to 59. They also calculated the life span of 883 intact White females and 23 White females who had been oophorectomized in the institution and who had similar diagnoses.

The median life span for uncastrated male inmates of the institution was 64.7 years. Both the intact and oophorectomized females had an average life span of 65.2 years.

Median life span for those males who had been castrated was

76.3 (castrated at ages 8 through 14) – 27 boys

72.9 (castrated at ages 15 through 19) – 124 boys

69.6 (castrated at ages 20 through 29) – 80 men

68.9 (castrated at ages 30 through 39) – 53 men

Nico Nagelkerke (2012) re-analyzed Hamilton & Mestler's data and concluded that "there was a loss of 0.28 years of potential life for each year of delay in orchiectomy from 8 to 39 years of age."

_______

Fritz, Hans. (1994). Kastratengesang: hormonelle, konstitutionelle und pädagogische Aspecte. Tutzing: Verlegt bei Hans Schneider.

Hamilton, James B. & Mestler, Gordon E. (1969). Mortality and Survival: Comparison of Eunuchs with Intact Men and Women in a Mentally Retarded Population. Journal of Gerontology, vol. 24, pp. 395–411.

Min Kyung-Jin, Lee Cheol-Koo, & Park Han-Nam. (2012). The lifespan of Korean eunuchs. Current Biology, vol. 22, no. 18, R792.

Nagelkerke, Nico J.D. (2012). Courtesans and Consumption: How Sexually Transmitted Infections Drive Tuberculosis Epidemics. Delft, Netherlands: Uitgeverij Eburon, pp. 99-101.

racerboy (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 02, 2021 7:31 am Then there was Y2K -- 2000, the year planes were supposed to fall from the sky due to the rollover of the 2-digit years everyone had been using. (Surprise! Nothing happened). There was even a story back then about a COBOL programmer who went into cryogenic sleep for 9 years to bypass Y2K entirely. When he awoke, he discovered there had been a mistake and he had kept in frozen sleep for 9,000 years instead of 9. And the people of the time were glad to see him. "We see you are a COBOL programmer," they said, "and we have this Year-10,000 problem..."

cutnbulls2ox (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 02, 2021 12:48 pm The Kansas castrations are a much more reliable population and data to show castration extending males life spans. But they need to be cut young to gain the best benefits. Males lose years just by reaching 18 intact to become legal to cut.

Valery_V (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 02, 2021 3:34 pm "The Kansas castrations". Where it is possible to esteem about it if it is about people? How do scientists explain the fact that cut young gives the maximum advantage in terms of life expectancy?

JesusA (imported) wrote: Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:56 am Hamilton, James B. & Mestler, Gordon E. (1969). Mortality and Survival: Comparison of Eunuchs with Intact Men and Women in a Mentally Retarded Population. Journal of Gerontology, vol. 24, pp. 395