Numbers

A thought occurred to me a couple of days ago.  I was thinking about a number, and how that number fit into the knowledge base that I have in my head.  As I thought about it, I then thought how there were other numbers that also fit into my knowledge base somewhere, somehow.  I wondered how many such numbers there were, or if I could list even a few of them.  So, here goes a sort of experiment to list some of the numbers that are in, have been in, or somehow have encountered my life, either in thought or experience.

55:  The national speed limit put into place during the oil crisis from 1974 to 1995.

66.  The number of books in the Bible (Protestant version).

4’ 8 ½”.  The distance between the rails of a standard gauge railroad.

26,800,000,000.  The known breadth of the universe, in light years.

3.  Number of “persons” in the Godhead Trinity.

1.  The loneliest number, according to Three Dog Night.

100.  Highest denomination of circulating U.S. currency, in dollars.

13.  Baker’s dozen.

5.  The pink money in a Monopoly game, in dollars.

96.  The age of my paternal grand dad when he died in 1966

3.14159  The (approximate, since pi is an irrational number) value of pi.

180.  The sum of the angles of any triangle, in degrees.

10.  The height of a basketball goal, in feet.

365 ¼   Approximate number of days in a calendar year.

666   A number frightening to many, but holds no special meaning for me.

256  My EMS radio call number in Harper County.

2,000   Number of pounds avoirdupois in a short ton.

   Member of the set of imaginary numbers

50  Number of sprinkler heads on our small farm irrigation system when I was a youngster.

16 ½   Length of a rod in feet.

320   Number of rods in a mile.

(2^74,207,281  1)   The largest known prime number (as of the beginning of 2017).  It has over 22 million digits in it.

6   The number of my siblings plus myself.

4.  The width of overturned dirt, in feet, that a 3-bottom plow will make in a field.  Plowing a quarter-section of land with one three-bottom plow is a daunting and humbling experience.

2  The number of tools used in Euclidian geometry construction (compass and straight-edge).

2.71828   The number whose natural logarithm is 1 (aka the constant “e”).  e, like pi, is an irrational number, so this is an approximation.

24  My age when I married.  Best thing (almost) that ever happened to me.

776  My EMS radio call number in Harper County after the reorganization.

300,000,000  The speed at which my text message travels from my phone to the cellular point, in meters per second.

As you can readily see, numbers that may mean something to me may have no meaning for you.  You may not have thought about imaginary numbers recently, or the speed of light, or even a baker’s dozen.  But you do have numbers in your life, and numbers do mean something to you.

Take a little time and think of some numbers that have meaning for you and why they mean what they mean to you.  It’s a pleasant exercise, and one that is sure to get you thinking past what’s for dinner tonight.

Are You Willing to Bet Your Soul?

I'm sitting here toward the end of the afternoon listening to a cassette tape...yes, a cassette tape...that I made some years ago. I took the liberty of hooking my computer audio output to the cassette recorder we have and recorded some of my favorite tunes from over the years. You might be surprised, if you don't know me well, just what they are.

Music Box Dancer, Nadia's Theme, the theme from “Gunsmoke,” I Hope You Dance, the theme from Captain Kangaroo, Both Sides Now, Downtown, and others are here. I'm really not finished with the tape yet, and probably will put some more on it, or convert it to digital somehow and listen to it that way. But the songs that are on here are those which are indelibly etched into my memory, and each evokes a particular thought. If I thought I had the room and the time, I could write down each thought and memory, but you probably would be bored to tears.

I use this as an intro to this blog to try to get you to recall music from your past, that evoke strong emotions, pleasant or not, within your soul. Music has a unique way of doing that, as you probably already know. There's something about hearing music for many of us, just as for some of us there's something about observing artwork or reading a well-written piece of prose or poetry that brings back a flood of emotion and memory.

There can be a danger in this, however. It's not wrong to remember. It's not a bad thing to go back in time,for a time. The danger is if we begin to live in the past as if it's the present. The danger is if we lose track of the reality that is the present. We dare not...we cannot...go back and live as our lives once were. Much as we'd like to be back in the home where we grew up, with mom, dad, and the siblings all gathered around the black-and-white TV watching the Red Skelton show, it just isn't going to happen.

Like it or not, we are in the present, and the present is ever changing...ever encroaching on the future. The future that was ten seconds ago is now the present, and now is the past. It flies by so quickly, we hardly are able to catch a glimpse of it before it's gone. Like it or not, we are moving through time to some destination. For, you see, time will not always be for us. There will come a time (if I may put it that way), when we will no longer experience time. Our impending meeting with death will come upon us all.

Some of us believe that when that happens, not only will we no longer experience death, we won't experience anything because we will cease to be. Others of us believe in some kind of afterlife that is different from what we are now experiencing, but nevertheless will be timeless. Still others of us believe that we eventually will be reincarnated as some kind of living creature...human or animal. And that the cycle is unending, which is another way of saying it's timeless.

Whatever you may believe, know that at some time, we will no longer experience time. And while you're thinking about these kinds of serious things, think seriously about your relationship with the One who created time and created you. Creation demands a creator. You are a creation. And regardless of what you may or may not believe about things, there is but one Truth. There is but one Correct. There is but one Way. There can be many falsehoods, but only one Truth. Are you willing to bet your soul on what you believe now? Or do you think you should take another look? Your choice.