Old Age and Cunning

So reading this article in the Telegraph leaves me with a couple of questions:

1) The numbers are weird -- why would 50 be the new 42 instead of 40 or 38.75? The story says it's because people who took the test at 50 scored the same as people at 42 did when they took the test six years ago. Which, since those people are now 48, means people like me are smarter than people two years younger than me. But we knew that ever since those little twerps showed up as sophomores when we were seniors.

At least, I think that's what it means. The jumble of numbers and ages is kind of a tangled skein and I'm not at all sure I did the math right. Which may boot the results for the whole thing right there.

2) Why did someone not tell me this almost a year ago when it could have done me some good? I've got less than a week left before I'm 51 and we all know how washed-up that means the ol' thinker's going to be. I could have spent this last year challenging those slack-jawed 48-year-old mouth-breathers to all kinds of feats of intellectual strength and battles of wits and not only made some money but proved that my attic ain't full o' junk, bub.