Eleven; and Why is Six Afraid of Seven?

Earlier today, the Lemming promised - or threatened - to come up with another post. This is it.

Today is November 11, 2011. In other words, it's the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year after the year 2000: which is when the Y2K bug didn't bring civilization to its knees.

The number 11 is, of course, just simply fraught with purport, import, and significance: to say nothing of meaning, nuance, and overtone. Like, it's the number that keeps 10 from running into 12. Which reminds the Lemming of this bit of wisdom: "Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven ate nine!"

A Wikipedia article (not one of its best) reveals this astounding fact: 11 "is the first number which cannot be counted with a human's eight fingers and two thumbs additively." Amazing! If you're on Earth, see if you can find a human and verify this claim. Or, not. Come to think of it, you probably are human, and can try the experiment yourself.

The number 11 is trebly significant since it appears three times in the title of "11 11 11."

And 11 11 11 is the date on which another motion picture is released. Or escaped, depending on your point of view:

"Movies opening 11/11"
Minneapolis Star-Tribune (November 5, 2011)

"...Immortals (R) A mortal man is chosen by Zeus to lead the fight against a ruthless king. With Luke Evans, Henry Cavill and Mickey Rourke...."

There's more about "Immortals" (2011) at the IMDB website:

"...Eons after the Gods won their mythic struggle against the Titans, a new evil threatens the land. Mad with power, King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) has declared war against humanity. Amassing a bloodthirsty army of soldiers disfigured by his own hand, Hyperion has scorched Greece in search of the legendary Epirus Bow, a weapon of unimaginable power forged in the heavens by Ares. Only he who possesses this bow can...."
(IMDB.com)

Somehow, the Lemming will restrain the urge to spend several hours and dollars for the privilege of viewing that cinematographic work at the local theater. Now, if a re-release of "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988) was playing - - - and that's another topic.

Not-entirely-unrelated posts:

• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming Hits the Big Six-Oh"
  (October 1, 2011)
• "The Neutrinos are Coming! 2012 and Hollywood Science"
  (November 16, 2009)
• "Z2K? Zune Media Players: Tick Tock Tick Tick Erk!"
  (January 1, 2009)
• "Friday the 13th: The Geek Approach"
  (June 13, 2008)
• "Triskaidekaphobia: More than Friday the 13th"
  (June 13, 2008)

Lemming Tracks: The Lemming Hits the Big Six-Oh

The Lemming has a reason for not posting anything yesterday. Maybe not a good reason: but a reason just the same.

The Lemming turned 60, was celebrating a birthday, and will now drop the 'editorial we.'

The Big Six-Oh and a Birthday Watermelon

My family did a good job of seeming to have forgotten my birthday. I nearly lost track of the date, myself. Which would have been awkward, since I had a driver's license renewal coming due this year: and that's another topic. I passed the vision test, by the way, and the photo looks like me: which can't be helped, and that's yet another topic.

My wife and #3 daughter came in at noon, with balloons and presents in tow. That's the nicest surprise I've had in - can't remember. A long time. We've now got the complete Danger Mouse series to watch, thanks to my son's efforts. It's not Shakespeare or Lucas: but I think we'll like it. Danger Mouse, that is.

#3 daughter explained that they couldn't find any balloons with "60" on them, but I think the slogans they found were at least as appropriate. Those balloons have 'attitude,' of which this family has at least its share.

"It's not the age ... it's the attitude."

"Age is just a number. (A high one in your case - but just a number.)"

That evening they brought out the birthday watermelon. I'd wonder if they'd find a cake analog: being diabetic isn't as big a problem as it could be, but there are foods I definitely shouldn't eat. Not in any significant quantity, though.

Birthday Candles: on my birthday - - - watermelon.

Those curly candles? Nobody said "screwball," but I suspect that may have been an inspiration for the shape.

As my father used to say: "And a good time was had by all."

60: A Highly Composite Number, and More

Whaddaya know: HCN stands for highly composite number, which "is a positive integer with more divisors than any positive integer smaller than itself."¹ Not only that, but it's a unitary perfect number, an excessive number with an abundance of 48, and - hang on to your hat - a semiperfect number!²

Which probably means more to math geeks than it does to me.

Still, it's interesting.

More Information You Won't Need Next Week (Probably)

Geometry time: solid!

Archimedean solids with:

• 60 vertices
  • Truncated icosahedron
  • Rhombicosidodecahedron
  • Snub dodecahedron
  • Truncated dodecahedron
• 60 edges
  • Snub cube
  • Icosidodecahedron

What time is it?

An hour is 60 minutes, a minute is 60 seconds, and we have the Babylonians to thank for that, sort of.² I suppose somebody's tried imposing a 'decimal' day: and that's another topic.

And, of course, 2060 is the year when - whoops. That hasn't happened yet.

Almost-related posts:

• "Google's 13th, and Where Did the Month Go?!"
  (September 27, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming's Back, and Pooped"
  (August 10, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming's Taking a Sabbatical, Sort Of"
  (July 26, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming's Taking the Day Off - Again"
  (May 4, 2011)
• "Lemming Tracks: The Lemming Gets Transparent"
  (April 18, 2011)
  Particularly
  • Why Write Posts as "the Lemming?"
  • The Man Behind the Lemming

---

¹ "Highly Composite Number," Wikipedia

² "60 (number)," Wikipedia

The Neutrinos are Coming! 2012 and Hollywood Science

" '2012' Sells Tickets, Sells-Out Science"
Discovery News (November 15, 2009)

"Last night, my wife Deb and I went to watch the Roland Emmerich movie 2012. Deb fell asleep. She was the lucky one.

"I'm joking, it wasn't that bad, we just had to attend the midnight showing as the earlier showings were all sold out. It looks like the 2012 doomsday phenomenon is still alive and strong.

"Sure, the scenes of planetary destruction were impressive, John Cusack did his thing and Beatrice Rosen smoldered on the screen, but as for the rest of it, I have similar criticisms as I had of Nick Cage's Knowing. Both movies got the science behind doomsday all wrong...."

The article isn't a movie review so much as it's a discussion of Hollywood science. I'd been wondering what the writers and director of 2012 decided to feature as the scary thing in 2012. The author saved me the trouble of sitting through the movie:

"...Neutrinos. Killer solar neutrinos. Yes, you heard me: neutrinos....

"...Emmerich opted to used one of the most unlikely candidates to kill Earth. After all, the neutrino is electrically neutral and it has minuscule mass. Also, the sun pumps out a lot of neutrinos -- the human body is bathed in 50 trillion solar neutrinos every second -- and just as many neutrinos can be found entering the Earth's crust on the sun-facing side of our planet as there are on the opposite side. The ghostly particles pass through our planet totally unimpeded.

"They are extremely weakly interacting particles that have zero effect on our everyday lives. They are very useful to scientists however, and many billions of dollars have been spent world wide on building neutrino detectors that can sense distant supernovae.

"In 2012, scientists discover (in the depths of a copper mine in India) that an increased flux of neutrinos from the sun is interacting with our Earth's core, causing it to heat up, increasing subterranean pressure...."

That's Hollywood science item #1. Next, Hollywood science #2:

"...Why is there an increased flux of neutrinos? Planetary alignment of course! This magically kick-starts the sun's flare activity. And there we have the popular doomsday theory that we will be killed via planetary alignment.

"No sign of Planet X though, I'm disappointed.

"So Emmerich found a way to kill the Earth using a faux astronomical event (there is no planetary alignment in the year 2012)..."

None of which will change the minds of 'true believers.'

Personally, I think the movie-makers made a good (by their standards) decision, having a non-existent planetary alignment pull killer neutrinos into Earth.

"Neutrino" sounds cool and scientific - and, although quite a number of people have heard the word "neutrino," my guess is that relatively few have learned how maddeningly hard it is to get a neutrino to interact with anything. Which is part of why neutrino detectors are so expensive.

So, as a vaguely-familiar, really scientific-sounding thing that very few people in the audience really know anything about: "neutrino" is a pretty good choice.

I suppose it's easier to make people believe that killer neutrinos from outer space will make things go boom; than to sell the idea that simultaneous cases of static cling will create a lightning bolt that destroys lower Manhattan.

Now that would be a disaster flick!

2012, the Mayan Calendar, and Y2K

I've heard that the Mayan calendar ends in December of 2012, and that this somehow means that the world will end then.

I did a little checking, and found out that, following the same logic, the world ended in December of 999 and 1999. Since we're still here, there may be something wrong with the idea that the world ends each time a calendrical cycle ends, beginning a new cycle.

From "Commie Plots, Cholesterol, Frank Burns, Hugo Chavez, and 2012"
Another War-on-Terror Blog (November 15, 2009)

"...Quite a number of people seem to assume that 2012 will be when the world ends. As a matter of fact, December 21, 2012, is when a 'Long Count' cycle of the Mayan calendar will end - assuming that the current Long Count started on August 11, 3114 BC. If it started on August 13 - which is possible - the cycle re-starts on December 23, 2012. It'll also re-start in the spring of 7138, summer of 12263, autumn of 17388, and so on.

"Western civilization's calendar uses a base-ten numeric system, and involves centuries and millennia. We just experienced the end of one of our 'long cycles' - December 31, 1999 - and Y2K went past without an apocalypse. (Yes, there was a real issue with legacy software - which encouraged some long-overdue upgrades and re-engineering.)..."

Disaster Flicks, Hollywood Science, and the Killer Tomatoes

From the sounds of it, "2012" is a disaster flick that might be worth the price of a ticket. But in terms of having plausible reasons to account for the special effects extravaganza? You might as well be watching "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!"

Related post:

• "IceCube, Neutrinos, Kamioka Observatory, and All That"
  (July 15, 2008)

Background, about the Mayan calendar:

• "Converting from the Mayan Calendar"
  University of Nevada, Reno
• "Mayan Calendar"
  Pomona College, Claremont, California
• "What's going to happen on December 21st 2012?"
  Curious About Astronomy?

Friday the 13th: Leftovers

As Friday the thirteenth drew to a close, I had some links left over:

• "A Brief History of Friday the 13th"
  Time (February 13, 2009)
• "The Thirteen Club"
  Boston University School of Theology
• "The Code of Hammurabi"
  The Constitution Society

What's the Code of Hammurabi doing there? Look for law #13. It's not there. At all.

Z2K? Zune Media Players: Tick Tock Tick Tick Erk!

"A Year Ticks Over, and Zunes Get Hiccups"
The New York Times (December 31, 2008)

"It has been nine years since the Y2K computer glitch inspired apocalyptic fears. On Wednesday, another time-related bug created its own small-scale panic. For some owners of the Zune, the portable media player that is Microsoft’s answer to the Apple iPod, it was a day without Kanye West and Girl Talk...."

2008 was a leap year: with 366 days. Not 365. Microsoft hadn't taken that into account, when designing the 30 gig Zunes.

Accidents - and forgetfulness - happen, but this 'oops' was a big one, with lots of publicity.

2008 had an extra second, too, but that didn't seem to be involved here.

Friday the 13th: The Geek Approach

"Friday the Thirteenth "
Wolfram Research / scienceworld.Wolfram.com

"The Gregorian calendar follows a pattern of leap years which repeats every 400 years. This is true since the number of days in 400 Gregorian years is

which is an exact number of weeks since it is divisible by 7 (namely, ). There are 4,800 months in 400 years, so ...."

Well, you get the idea.

As a sort of bonus, there's a snippet of Mathematica code that can generate counts for how many times a given weekday occurs.

Triskaidekaphobia: More than Friday the 13th

"TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA/ˌtrɪskaɪdɛkəˈfəʊbɪə/Help with IPA"
WorldWideWords.org

If you can pronounce triskaidekaphobia, you probably know what it is: fear of the number 13. This short piece discusses triskaidekaphobia, but mostly deals with Friday the 13th.

The author points out that 1998 was a bad year for people who fear Friday the 13: there were 3 of them then.

And, we learn, there are more to come: 2009, 2015, and, yes, 2012.

Pretty Good Marketing Advice

"13 Ways to Earn the Trust of Online Purchasers" is a pretty good how-2 summary for gaining customer trust. Unless you suffer from triskaidekaphobia, of course.