Mind Soup

This is why engineers are cool. [ via ]

01-02-2010 can be read the same way in both directions. One math geek's really got its number. Professor Aziz Inan has a passion for palindromes. There will be 12 dates this century  that can be read in two directions; today's is the second. (December 31, 2009) Professor Aziz Inan has a passion for palindromes. There will be 12 dates this century that can be read in two directions; today's is the second. (December 31, 2009) Some people are into cars. Some people dig the ocean. Aziz Inan, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland in Oregon, loves numbers. "I can relate to them," Inan said. "Each number has its own personality." With this adoration in mind, consider today, Jan. 2, 2010. The day is a palindromic date, meaning the number can be read the same way in either direction: 01-02-2010. There will be 12 palindromic days this century, Inan said, and today is the second. The first was 10-02-2001. (His complete ...

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Have special plans this 09/09/09? Everyone from brides and grooms to movie studio execs are celebrating the upcoming calendrical anomaly in their own way. In Florida, at least one county clerk's office is offering a one-day wedding special for $99.99. The rarity of this Sept. 9 hasn't been lost on the creators of the iPod, who have moved their traditional Tuesday release day to Wednesday to take advantage of the special date. Focus Features is releasing their new film "9," an animated tale about the apocalypse, on the 9th. Not only does the date look good in marketing promotions, but it also represents the last set of repeating, single-digit dates that we'll see for almost a century (until January 1, 2101), or a millennium (mark your calendars for January 1, 3001), depending on how you want to count it. Though technically there's nothing special about the symmetrical date, some concerned with the history and meaning of numbers ascribe powerful significance to ...

I saw this on a friend's facebook page and I wanted to share this with all of you: I was talking to the 8 year-old daughter of a friend of mine, and she said she wanted to be President some day. Both of her parents are liberal Democrats so I asked her, "If you were President what's the first thing you would do?" She replied, "I'd give food and houses to the homeless people." "Wow - what a wonderful goal," I told her. "But you don't have to wait until you're President. You can come over to my house and mow the grass, pull weeds, and rake my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food or a new house." She thought that over for a few seconds and with perfect 8 year old logic said, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work himself, and you can just pay him the $50?" And I said, "We...