Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Monday, December 30, 2013

eleventy-one

In The Fellowship of the Rings, it says "Bilbo was going to be eleventy-one, 111, a rather curious number, and a respectable age for a hobbit".

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Saturday, December 28, 2013

91.67

Are you unhappy with the color of your fecal matter?  You can get gold leaf pills that will make your poop sparkle gold.

 Only $91.67 per pill (actually, $275 for 3 pills since they are only sold in sets of 3).  You can buy them on various websites, though 91.67 is the cheapest I could find, at the New Museum gift shop.

New Museum gift shop,$275 for 3 pills:  http://gawker.com/334908/new-museum-let-them-eat-gold

Here is the link to the Citizen's Online page, where they would be selling for $425 each, but they are temporarily unavailable:  http://www.citizen-citizen.com/collections/all/products/gold-pills

I was NOT able to find them on Amazon.







Friday, December 27, 2013

A number that is approximately 6.60568 x 10^16, since that is the best approximation my calculator will give me

The 363 rd triangular number is 66,066 .  Both of these numbers are palindromes.

The 363,474,363 rd triangular number is 66,056,806,460,865,066 .  Both of these numbers are palindromes.

The number in the title is the sum of these four numbers.

(A triangular number is a number that forms a triangle.  Like bowling pins.)

Thursday, December 26, 2013

1.374

A man whose name was not made public has set a record for the highest blood alcohol content of 1.374.  He was found passed out on the road in the village called Tarnowskiej Woli in the province of Podkarpaciu in Poland. This means that his blood was 1.374% alcohol.

In the US it is illegal to drive with a BAC of 0.08.  Possibility of death begins at about 0.3.  At 0.5, the risk becomes high.


Wednesday, December 25, 2013

114,639.06

How much do all the gifts cost in the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"?

Assuming all the gifts in the song - a total of 12 partridges (1 each day), 22 turtle doves, 42 swans-a-swimming, etc, the total cost is  $114,639.06

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Monday, December 23, 2013

75,000

Robin Williams only made $75,000 for voicing the Genie in Aladdin. After grossing over $200 million, Disney sent him a Picasso painting as a way of saying "thank you."
 
 

Saturday, December 21, 2013

1-800-MD-TUSCH

1-800-MD-TUSCH  is the telephone number of some proctologist in New York.  I have seen his ads in the subway.

Friday, December 20, 2013

285

285 years ago today they bought the land...  (by the Jewish calendar)

In 1684, a group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had fled the Inquisition held a Rosh Hashanah service in New Amsterdam, thereby founding congregation Shearith Israel ("Remnant of Israel"). On this 17th of Tevet in 1728, the congregation purchased a lot in Lower Manhattan to erect the first synagogue in New York.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

4

Nine-banded armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets.



Wednesday, December 18, 2013

25,679,675

A narcissistic number is a number that is equal to the sum of each of its digits raised to the power of the number of digits it has.  There are 4 7-digit narcissistic numbers.


The sum of these numbers is 25,679,675.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

45

A small record with 1 song on each side was called a 45 because it was played at 45 revolutions per minute.


Monday, December 16, 2013

34

The Amazing Magic Square -- Created in 1514 by Albrecht Durer.


















Saturday, December 14, 2013

26

Since today is my daughter's 26th birthday, here is some information on the number 26:

26 is the only integer sandwiched just above a square (25) and just below a cube (27).

26 is the smallest non-palindromic number whose square is palindromic: 26^2 = 676

26 is the smallest number with three representations as a sum of three distinct primes: 26 = 2 + 5 + 19 = 2 + 7 + 17 = 2 + 11 + 13.

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet.

There are 26 spacetime dimensions in bosonic string theory. 

26 is the gematric number of the name of G-d, the sum of the Hebrew characters of the Tetragrammaton י-הוה

26 is a 2003 novel by Leo McKay, Jr.

26 is the name of the Australian Alternative Rock band.

26 is the smallest number that can be expressed by three identical prime digits in a prime base, i.e., 222 in base three. Note that it is also the reverse of the second such number: 62 = 222 in base 5.

Friday, December 13, 2013

51

In 2004, there were 51 deaths caused by power lawnmowers.

Breakdown by country:

Thursday, December 12, 2013

14,050

Togo has the highest rate of motor vehicle fatalities per vehicle of any country:  14,050 fatalities per 100,000 motor vehicles.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

1

Heil Honey I'm Home!, a British show about the escapades of Hitler, Eva Braun, and their Jewish neighbors, was canceled after one episode in 1990.

The show centres on fictionalised versions of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, who live next door to a Jewish couple, Arny and Rosa Goldenstein. The show's plot is centred on Hitler's inability to get along with his neighbours. A caption at the beginning of the episode presented the series as a 'lost' sitcom from the '50s, recently re-discovered. The show spoofed elements of 1950s and 1960s American sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy, as well as other elements including a corny title, vacuous plots and dialogue, and unwarranted applause whenever a character appeared on-screen.


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

180

Sammy Sosa is the only player in MLB history to hit 60 or more home runs in 3 different seasons, and yet he didn't lead the majors in home runs in any of these seasons.

Monday, December 9, 2013

11,628

11,628 – that’s how many ultra-thin photovoltaic cells cover the Solar Impulse, a 100% solar-powered aeroplane. 
 
11,628 ultra-thin photovoltaic cells cover the wings and the cockpit of the Solar Impulse, a 100% solar-powered aeroplane. The aim of this project, which started in 2003, is to fly an aeroplane both day and night without using any fuel or emitting any pollution during the entire flight. The two pilots, Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg, will be flying around the world on their enormous environmentally-friendly albatross in 2015 in five stages.

This incredible human adventure has attracted a number of enthusiastic sponsors, including Google, Omega and Dassault Aviation. The Solar Impulse really is an outstanding piece of design in the way that it constantly seeks to achieve the perfect balance between weight, energy efficiency and performance – the very criteria that might one day allow us to build a huge power line that works using solar energy.


to see the actual article that I just copies and pasted here:  http://pulse.edf.com/en/11628/?utm_source=OutbrainInter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Trafic

Sunday, December 8, 2013

1

This is the front of the original $1 bill, put out in 1862.  It was designed by Salmon Portland Chase, who put his own picture on it.


What kind of parents name their kid Salmon?

Saturday, December 7, 2013

50

The number of times I have traveled around the sun is now equal to half of the square of the number of fingers I have.


Friday, December 6, 2013

0.0019685

The smallest Chanukiyah is 0.0019685 inches (0.05mm)

World's smallest hanukkiya shown next to human hair


 
In honor of Hanukkah a physics laboratory at Hebrew University in Jerusalem has built the world's tiniest hanukkiah (menorah for Hanukkah). The hanukkiah, which is the size of a dust speck, demonstrates the revolutionary abilities of the lab's Nanoscribe system.
 
The Jerusalem-based laboratory, part of the Peter Brojde Center for Innovative Engineering and Computer Science, focuses on applying scientific discoveries into ground-breaking technology.
 
As part of its state-of-the-art research, Brojde lab recently became home of the first and only Nanoscribe system in Israel. To demonstrate the Nanoscribe's capabilities in constructing miniscule three-dimensional structures, Yossi Kabessa and Ido Eisenberg, two doctoral students at the lab, recently built the tiniest hanukkiah in the world.
 
Standing at less than a tenth of a milimeter and invisible to the naked eye, the microscopic menorah is built of building blocks measuring 100 nanometers.
 
Professor Aharon Agranat, Director of the Brojde Center, notes that his laboratory specializes in technological breakthroughs called "heterogeneous integration" that allow the combination in one system of various abilities such as portability, sense, data processing and communication.
 
The Nanoscribe system's capabilities are crucial for the lab to develop innovative "heterogeneous integration" technology, which has very practical applications.
 
An example of the technology's potential is the creation of a physical interface between electronic signal processing devices with opto-electronic devices. With such technology it would be possible to build a new type of network able to sense its surroundings and influence it directly. Such a breakthrough would bring a revolution to the fields of medicine, environmental protection, military and the war on terror.
 
Another groundbreaking technology which the Nanoscribe's capabilities can help the Brojde lab develop is known as "lab-on-a-chip," miniature systems that allow execution of chemical and biological process and physical measurements of samples ranging from nano-liters to micro-liters.
 
With "lab-on-a-chip," instead of bringing patients and samples to a lab, it is possible to bring the lab to the patient and send results through a network to a source for evaluation and appropriate action. While the technology already exists, Professor Agranat comments that it is far from realizing its revolutionary practical potential, and that Nanoscribe's production technology may be a foundation stone for developing the necessary complex combined systems.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

48.9

Monaco has a median age of 48.9, the highest in the world.  (2010 figures)

The world median is 28.4.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

1999

1999 is the largest prime number to be in the title of a television series.  Space: 1999 was a British television series that ran from 1975 to 1977.  The premise of the show was that people were dumping their garbage on the moon, and on September 13, 1999 some radiation hit the garbage and caused an explosion.  This knocked the moon out of its orbit, sending it shooting through space.  But there were people living in a space station on the moon, who were now on the moon-turned-spaceship, looking for a new place to live.

For more information:  Space 1999

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

31

 The speed limit in downtown Trenton, a city in western Tennessee, is 31 miles per hour.

Monday, December 2, 2013

24

The factors of 14 add up to 24:  1+2+7+14=24

The factors of 15 add up to 24:  1+3+5+15=24

The factors of 23 add up to 24:  1+23=24

24 is the lowest number to be the sum of the factors for 3 different numbers.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

56

LAHORE:  Fifty-six women have been killed in Pakistan this year for giving birth to a girl rather than a boy, human rights activist IA Rehman said at a symposium here on Monday.  [As of November 23]
 
 “A country where mothers are killed for giving birth to baby girls can’t be called an ethical society,” Rehman said at the symposium, titled ‘Youth emerging as a force for positive change’, meant to mark the International Day to Eliminate Violence Against Women. The event was arranged by the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA).

From January 2012 to September 2013, there were also 90 acid attacks on women, 72 cases of burning caused by other means, 491 cases of domestic violence, 344 cases of gang rape and 835 cases of violence, he said. “Young girls are being raped in Pakistan and all we do is shout rather that do anything practical,” he said.

for more information:   http://tribune.com.pk/story/636971/56-women-killed-in-2013-for-giving-birth-to-girls/