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December 4, 2013

Smugopedia

From the website:

Smugopedia is a collection of slightly controversial opinions about a variety of subjects.

We offer you the chance to buy a fleeting sense of self-satisfaction at the small cost of alienating your friends and loved ones
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December 3, 2013

Number Gossip

Enter a number and it will tell you everything you wanted to know about the number but were afraid to ask.


I first used my old h.s. football number:

* The 61st Fibonacci number (2504730781961) is the smallest Fibonacci number which contains all the digits from 0 to 9
* 61 is the smallest multidigit prime p such that the sum of digits of pp is a square
* 61 is the smallest prime whose reversal is a square

I like the number 23:

# 23 is the smallest group of people where there is more than a 50% chance that 2 people will share the same birthday (day and month, not year)
# 23 is the smallest isolated prime, i.e., not an element of a set of twin primes
# 23 is the smallest prime whose reversal is a power: 32 = 25
# 23 is the only prime p such that p! is p digits long
# 23 is the least pandigital factorial, that is it contains all the digits 0 through 9 at least once
# 23 is the smallest prime p such that the ring of integers in the cyclotomic field of pth roots of unity does not have unique factorization

Believe it or not, but I knew that first bit of information (about the birthdays), having read it in an old "bar tricks" book I used to have. The rest of it, though....

December 2, 2013

twain



twain [tweyn] adjective, noun
two



Being a Kipling fan, I was familiar with the word because of his poem The Ballad of East and West with the oft-quoted first line:

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!


Other than that, I'm not sure it's a word used much these days, other than referring to "two" other Twains -  Mark and Shania.

We Found Love - Lindsey Stirling


December 1, 2013

First is Third



In the United States, First Street is the third most common street name, right after Second and Third Streets.  The next most common street names are Fourth, Park, Fifth, Main, Sixth, Oak and Seventh.