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• The four Blaylock sisters—ages 100, 98, 90 and 83—are remarkable; all have surpassed their life expectancy, none has lost her hearing, none has Alzheimer's. "The four women fell easily into the same roles that have probably characterized their relationships since President Harding held office," the New York Times Magazine reported from the Blaylocks' recent joint birthday party. "Living to 98, it appears, does not provide immunity from the ministrations of a know-it-all older sister." But as amazing as the Blaylocks are, America can expect to hold more birthday parties like theirs in the decades ahead, the Times said. The number of centenarians nationwide will jump from about 70,000 now to at least ten times that by 2050, researchers predict, as baby boomers grow older and scientific advances slow the aging process. About one in 20 baby boomers will live to be 100, and some will join the growing ranks of supercentenarians by reaching 110. Among the questions this raises, said the Times: "How will the foreknowledge of an extra 15, 20 or 30 years shape the pacing of the lives that precede them? Full story

Earlier: New York City's growing centenarian population (fourth item)

• As the number of female centenarians does swell, chances are many of them will be living together. Or so a New York Times front-page story suggested late last month. The article profiled single older women who live with friends, saying oh-so-delicately: "The friends-helping-friends model for aging is gaining momentum among single, widowed or divorced women of a certain age." The fact that women outlive men, are less eager than men to marry or re-marry in later stages of life, and have recently enjoyed an unprecedented amount of power and independence in society make this a growing trend, the Times reported. Full story The piece ran the week after the final episode of the HBO series Sex and the City, which, despite the show's effort to celebrate singlehood, must have unsettled single viewers by pairing each of the four main characters with a male romantic interest.

Related: The growing no-kids movement, from the Boston Globe Magazine
Earlier:Business Week on Unmarried America (second item)

• The parting of the Red Sea looked especially surreal in the The Ten Commandments, long before the days of decent special effects (can you imagine that scene if the makers of The Perfect Storm got their hands on it?) But Russian mathematician Naum Voltsinger has taken pains to demonstrate that the actual phenomenon of the Red Sea crossing was in fact quite natural—though no less marked by the fingerprints of God. In a report called "Modelling of the hydronamic situation during the Exodus" published by the Russian Academy of Sciences, Voltsinger and colleague Alexi Androsov found that in the Gulf of Suez, "certain tidal conditions combined with a steady wind speed of 30 metres per second could have exposed the hidden reef under the sea for about four hours, allowing hundreds of thousands of frightened Jews to march to safety across the tongue of raised seabed." "This shows that God rules the world through the laws of physics," Voltsinger told The Scotsman last month. "The situation itself is physically explainable, and it happened. … The divine miracle is that the Jews arrived at the water at the moment they did." So was Moses just idly pointing to the phenomenon when he stretched out his staff? Full story

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