If you use the abbreviated form of the date in your checkbook, today is 12-13-14. That brings up a couple of questions: Do people use checkbooks these days? Will there be such things when this date arrangement comes around again?
It won’t matter much to me at that future point.
When it last lined up, the Washington Post was reporting the activities surrounding the war in Europe, a conflict the US had not yet joined. Goldenberg’s Department Store advertised “Overcoats for the Little Fellows,” for $2.49 – a price that today might cover only the buttons.
Who knows what the world will be like when December 13, 2114 rolls around?
Today’s number arrangement is considered lucky by some. Others couldn’t care a bit. As I am more of a reader than a numbers person, the date arrangement caught my attention simply as an oddity.
It was the National Geographic number that really had me in wonder. In an article about garbage floating around in the ocean, the headline states:
5 Trillion Pieces of Ocean Trash Found, But Fewer Particles Than Expected
National Geographic-Dec 11, 2014
Actually, the number is stated in the article as 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing 269,000 tons. My question is: Who counted the pieces of trash? And furthermore, how do they know how much it weighs?
How do they know how many people were lining the street for those big parades? Is there an official “Crowd Counter?” or are they just wild guesses? Like – maybe it is only 4.25 trillion pieces of trash in the ocean, give or take. Seems to me it would be energy better spent identifying whose trash it is, and send them out to pick it up.
On American Roadshow the other evening, the appraiser was looking over an oversized book with hand-tinted illustrations, and he asked how the man had come to own it. His father had found it, he answered. The man was a New England fisherman and found a box floating in the water. When he opened the crate, the book was inside, a little damp but otherwise none the worse for wear.
Value? Thousands of dollars.
One man’s trash, another man’s treasure.
There are some treasures among the stacks here (although none retrieved from ocean-floating crates!), so…
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow, OK!
