The Usual Shop

Posted by Steve on January 14th, 2008 in Uncategorized

Today my age changed from 26 to 27.  There was nothing good about 26.  I don’t mean that there was nothing good about being 26, that was fine.  I mean the number 26 is pretty unremarkable.  25 was good because it’s a perfect square.  21 was good because it’s a Fibonacci number (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …).  28 will be nice because that’s a perfect number.

Tangentially, the so-called “perfect numbers” have nothing to do with perfection at all but rather have the near-worthless quality of being equal to the sum of all their proper divisors.  For example 6 is perfect because its proper divisors (1, 2, 3) add up to 6.  The proper divisors of 28 are 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14.  After 28, the next time my age will be a perfect number is when I turn 496.

29 will be nice because 29 is a prime number.

So in order to make this year worthwhile, 27 has to be something interesting.  The following, for example, help…

1.  27 is a perfect cube (3 * 3 * 3 = 27).
2.  27 is the smallest positive integer with four syllables in its English pronunciation.
3.  27 in binary is 11011 which is a palindrome.
4.  27 is the number of outs a team gets in a regulation professional baseball game (unless it goes into extra innings).
5.  27 is the country code for calling South Africa, where the next World Cup is going to be.
6.  There is a metaphoric club for musicians who die (mostly from at least partially self-induced causes) at 27.  This club includes:
Robert Johnson
Janis Jopplin
Jimi Hendrix
Jim Morrison
Kurt Cobain

And inspired this Dali-homage painting

Yes, all indications point to 27 being a fine year.