…I am the sum of the squares of the first three primes.
Or the number signifying Anubis, the jackal-headed deity of death.
Or the number of Shakespeare’s surviving plays.
I’m also how many slots there are on an American Roulette table.
And the Atomic Number of Strontium.
Oh, and I’m a nontotient.
Blimey.
Totally #1 to me home boy.
Love this.
You’re not so bad yourself.
And…me too. I like being this age. Matured, but without the penicillin everywhere.
why are you 14? is it a mental age thing? or how many years it takes you to return phone calls?
what does 14 slots on an American Roulette table mean?
Fourteen? Wherefore havest thou concocted this numerical witchery? Pray tell. Also, thank you, in a way. It’s like being asked if you’re old enough to buy alcohol, but in a blog comment.
i believe that belly is taking 1 to be the first prime number. seems reasonable, to some.
Sounds like the kind of thing belly would do, yes.
Woah, that made my head hurt.
Despite the throbbing headache you just gave me, I wish you the very best of days – may there be many more! (seriously, how the heck did you come up with all those? Genius genes?)
Yes. I’m a genius.
And research on Wikipedia had nothing to do with it, so don’t believe those rumours. They wrong. I came up with these things without Googling *anything*. Honest.
(And thank you for the b’day wishes).
21, definitely 21.
You could be on to something there.
Sadly for both of us, you’re not. But you *could* be.
If you’d picked another number.
well fancy that. Helen you are correct. i always believed 1 to be a prime number. silly boy!
strange that 14 is also the first nontotient too……….
14 has particular significance for you, sir? Perhaps the amount of times this year that you’ve successfully sold me PC games and/or IT equipment that I initially decided I didn’t need?
If I remember correctly, 1′s a funny number. It’s the mathmatical equivalent of water or fire: there is no consensus on whether it should be lumped in with a particular existing group or given its own unique category. Hence, 1 is a prime and also 1 isn’t a prime, while being neither of these and yet included within each category if you feel like it or are in a hurry.
It makes me laugh when people complain about maths being a bunch of inflexible “laws”. Yeah, if you like.
you too, huh? I can’t remember who it was said that the worst thing about turning forty is realising it doesn’t stop there, you just keep on getting older…
still, better than the alternative.
oh crap…
really must check my mental arithmetic before posting. Apologies for prematurely ageing you, you don’t look a day older 23 etc. etc..
Hey hey hey. I’m nearly 40, but not quite yet.
And by god, I’m looking forward to it no end.
Thing is, there’s a lot of pressure on you in your 30s. You’re supposed to be a career-monkey, making your way in the world with grown-up assurance, siring children or focussing on other things with the same sweaty intensity, getting a mortgage, more than one credit card, doing community work, all that malarkey.
But past 40, you’re allowed to go off the rails – a “Mid Life Crisis”.
Since most of the really fun things in life seem to reside under this heading, I’m looking forward to being able to do them with some kind of accompanying social validation.
I look 23? *preens*
Oh, right. I look “23 etc.”. Damn.
Hehe, I am just a skosh older. It doesn’t kill you, at least for a while.
That’s reassuring.
Also, it appears that when I’m a skosh older, I can live in the Mediterranean and surround myself with Italian food all day long while remaining svelte. Fantastic. Well, that was my plan anyway.
But what happens if my skosh (bottle of skosh?) never materializes? What if I’m chronologically trapped in England? What if you timed it just right, being born when you were, and I was born the following week when the stars were out of alignment and the mighty jewel-festooned chariot of the heavens had a wobbly wheel.
Well, people need to know about the “real York” as well. OTH, being here was no accident. It took me 27 years of planning and saving and filling in the blanks to come here just in time for the dollar to slide into the Mariannas Trough.
Real York, check. I still don’t know what that is, or where it is. You’re right – I need to look a bit harder.
Fact is, I’m in one of the most densely-historical cities in the UK and hardly write about it while spending my time banging on about how I’m becoming a travel-writer. There’s a Monty Python sketch there, I reckon.
Your planning is spectacular, and definitely paid off.
(Except, well, maybe not so much in dollars. Hurrm).
Do you generally feel in the right place at the right time? Or do you still hear the call of for’n parts, as you did before you moved to Italy?
Huzzaar! Happy Birthday my fellow Libran. Hope you had a good one and apologies for not sending you a card etc, i was probably having a terrible time in the Aegean sea, or wandering around Knossos. It’s a hard life.
Ta, old fruit.
Yes, I bet it was a trial beyond even those endured by Odysseus.
So – Crete = gorgeous, but Iraklion = Hull?
Crete=Pretty in Parts, East Coast in others. Heraklion=Vibrant, interesting, occaisionally pretty and REAL Greece, not the picture postcard fakery a lot of it is. So in effect, I have some issues with your anti-Heraklionism!
Superb. We disagree fundamentally. That is, if you’re not just playing devil’s advocate…
Iraklion: Interesting history, interesting fortress, interesting port, interesting walls. Scabbed over with shabby decrepit shop fronts, noisy in that special way inner Manchester is, modern in the bad way (not the Athens way, which is unapologetically raucous and multicolored and chaotic) – modern in the way that its character is being erased by neglect.
Cannot agree it’s “Real Greece”, in the sense you mean. Real Greece can be found in villages and up in the hills. It can be found on the back of a moped, or on foot. (I don’t reckon you can fly or catch a catamaran ferry to it). (Real Greece isn’t picture-postcard except by accident. Real Greece is too-strong coffee at 3am, clouds of cigarette smoke and an old man mopping olive oil with a piece of bread while his dog looks on hopefully).
Your turn. Explain yourself.
And I’m happy to be “proved” (if you can prove opposing opinions) wrong. But I should add this isn’t just me – I’m not the only one that is an anti-Heraklionist.
eg.
“The modern city has been disfigured by a lack of any comprehensive planning or any serious commitment to preservation, which has resulted in a traffic-choked urban horror overlaying historical remains of potentially immense interest, but the knowledgeable visitor will still be able to trace the past under the ugly urban sprawl of the present.”
- http://wikitravel.org/en/Heraklion
(Goes a little far for my taste, but that’s the essence of my opinion, yup).