Today's hero is the unassuming integral above, the number nine. Perhaps numbers are not meant to be heroic, but today being 9-9-09, I thought I would give good old number 9 a shot. Maybe my dear readers will actually pay attention to the writing of the post rather than constantly spell checking me, but who knows. The Chinese consider the number 9 to be extremely lucky it apparently sounds like the word long lasting in Chinese, and has something to do with dragons, a symbol of magic and power. In math it is the first composite "lucky" number, trying to explain what that means makes my head hurt, so perhaps my audience can look it up for themselves. In contrast, the Japanese consider 9 to be unlucky because it sounds like their word for pain. Maybe a number's lucky properties are just an accident of your birth. The whole 'lucky' number thing, to me, seems a bit silly. Numbers are just that numbers, just because today is 9-9-09 does not mean that you should book that trip to Vegas and get married. It is just another day on a calendar created by a bunch of dorky ass white men thousands of years ago. It is merely a way of marking times passage. No roulette wheel in the world is programmed to land on 9 anymore than any other number. If you are trusting your luck to a number, then you are already in pretty bad shape. The last gasp of a desperate gambler is to merely bet on a number. You can be dressed to the nines, there are nine circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, there are nine muses, and there are nine Supreme Court Justices on the United States Supreme Court. All these everyday applications for the number 9, but of course you can probably say the same thing about the numbers 8 or 5 as well. I would suspect that any number has its own little fan club, or group that think it is unlucky or lucky. Nine is only heroic in the sense that it is more than eight and less than ten, it allows for the natural flow of things, and does not expect much in return. Nine will never fail you, and as long as you don't ask too much of it you can not go wrong. Don't expect it to perform miracles, nor blame it for any disasters. It is just quite simply the number 9, and for being just the number 9 and nothing else it is my hero of the day.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Nine
Today's hero is the unassuming integral above, the number nine. Perhaps numbers are not meant to be heroic, but today being 9-9-09, I thought I would give good old number 9 a shot. Maybe my dear readers will actually pay attention to the writing of the post rather than constantly spell checking me, but who knows. The Chinese consider the number 9 to be extremely lucky it apparently sounds like the word long lasting in Chinese, and has something to do with dragons, a symbol of magic and power. In math it is the first composite "lucky" number, trying to explain what that means makes my head hurt, so perhaps my audience can look it up for themselves. In contrast, the Japanese consider 9 to be unlucky because it sounds like their word for pain. Maybe a number's lucky properties are just an accident of your birth. The whole 'lucky' number thing, to me, seems a bit silly. Numbers are just that numbers, just because today is 9-9-09 does not mean that you should book that trip to Vegas and get married. It is just another day on a calendar created by a bunch of dorky ass white men thousands of years ago. It is merely a way of marking times passage. No roulette wheel in the world is programmed to land on 9 anymore than any other number. If you are trusting your luck to a number, then you are already in pretty bad shape. The last gasp of a desperate gambler is to merely bet on a number. You can be dressed to the nines, there are nine circles of hell in Dante's Inferno, there are nine muses, and there are nine Supreme Court Justices on the United States Supreme Court. All these everyday applications for the number 9, but of course you can probably say the same thing about the numbers 8 or 5 as well. I would suspect that any number has its own little fan club, or group that think it is unlucky or lucky. Nine is only heroic in the sense that it is more than eight and less than ten, it allows for the natural flow of things, and does not expect much in return. Nine will never fail you, and as long as you don't ask too much of it you can not go wrong. Don't expect it to perform miracles, nor blame it for any disasters. It is just quite simply the number 9, and for being just the number 9 and nothing else it is my hero of the day.
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2 comments:
ah... that would explain the outburst from the chinese man at the airport yesterday when he was asked to fill in a form and asked what date it was :)
more knowledge to me!
That's what you're looking for mate! This one is the start of the hard work so far paying off!
Excellent!
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