| I've been fascinated by numbers lately, and one of my go-to tools is a simple mobile app that calculates all the divisors of a given number. So I can determine prime numbers, and readily factor the non-primes. And it's been eye-opening. Now I'm no crackpot numerologist, adding up the numerical values of Bill Gates' name, or telling you who shot JFK. But I can tell you that the main launch pad 39A at Cape Kennedy was not numbered by accident -- look it up in the Book of Psalms. And it's interesting how the city buses around here are numbered. For example, the 68xx series; I look up Psalm 68 and I can definitely imagine the bus singing that as it lumbers down the road -- can't you? Back to primes -- if we consider the top numbers authorities of our times, such as the US Post Office, city planners, and the telephone company (circa 1970s). I ran a chunk of ZIP codes from Southern California and discovered that some are the factors of two quite large prime numbers. Others yield interesting factors. Once again I pull out my Book of Psalms. There are plenty of other "hermeneutics" to interpret assigned numbers, especially street addresses. And as for phone numbers, I've gone back to figuring out "what do they spell" on a standard TouchTone keypad, because sometimes it's quite informative. It's no accident, for example, that the hospital where I was born is located at 4077 5th Avenue. And that number assigned by city planners, many decades before M*A*S*H was written or went on TV. Significant nonetheless. I also figured out a few prime numbers related to my own life, and others that are recurring tropes, just cropping up at interesting times. What's your social security number? Have you sort of broken it down and pondered if those numbers turned up again and again in your life? Every time I see a number now, I'm compulsively factoring it out in my head. Is it prime? It feels prime. I'll check it in the app later; try some mental math for now. I'm also counting things more often now. How many spokes in a wheel? How many petals in a flower, especially a flower depicted in art. How many brick courses in that interesting wall they built? Plug any interesting numbers back into the divisors app. Finding the primes, find the factors, just ponder numeric coincidences. It's fun. So many signs and signals, hidden in plain sight before us. Buses singing Psalm 68 as they take on passengers. Launch pads singing Psalm 39 as Europa Clipper slips the surly bonds of Earth. What's on your telephone dial? |