Scholtes-Blog

Category: Numbers

  • Thirty-Nine

    Thirty-Nine

    Hebrew law, according to Deuteronomy 25:1-3, allowed for flogging as a punishment for a crime. However, the number of lashes allowed in a flogging were to be no more than forty. “If more than that is given, your fellow Israelite would be completely disgraced in your eyes” (Deuteronomy 25:3, Common English Bible). Because forty was…

  • Thirty-Eight

    Thirty-Eight

    The world can be mapped with lines. Longitude lines run north-south, through both the North Pole and South Pole. Latitude lines run east-west, in concentric circles around the globe. Unlike longitude lines, latitude lines never cross one another. Therefore, they are sometimes called “parallels.” Some paralells are well-known for one reason or another. There are…

  • Thirty-Seven

    Thirty-Seven

    ARTHUR: Old woman! DENNIS: Man! ARTHUR: Man. Sorry. What knight lives in that castle over there? DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven. ARTHUR: I– what? DENNIS: I’m thirty-seven. I’m not old. ARTHUR: Well, I can’t just call you ‘Man’. DENNIS: Well, you could say ‘Dennis’. The lines above are the fantastic beginning to a fantastic scene in a…

  • Thirty-Six

    Thirty-Six

    A few years ago, the New York Times published an article entitled The 36 Questions that Lead to Love. Based on the work of psychologist Arthur Aron, these questions are designed to foster intimacy in an organic, yet swift, way. The idea is to carve out some time with someone, perhaps someone you know only a little…

  • Thirty-Five

    Thirty-Five

    I remember 35-mm film. I used to have a point-and-shoot camera. Simple, just aim the camera at your subject, and hit the button. I had friends who had SLR cameras; much more complicated, but they could get some beautiful shots. The thing their cameras and mine had in common? 35-mm film. That little cylinder of potential, which…

  • Thirty-Four

    Thirty-Four

    Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, was one of the great mathematicians of the Middle Ages. He lived in Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and among other things, popularized the Arabic numeral system throughout Europe. It’s in part thanks to Fibonacci that today’s blog post is called 34, not XXXIV. Roman numerals are nice,…

  • Thirty-Three

    Thirty-Three

    Does every elementary school have its resident “whiz kid”? The kid who always knows all the answers, always gets placed in the advanced programs, always is number one in anything academic? Well, my elementary school did, and it was me. It was a small pond, to be sure, but I was the big fish there.…

  • Thirty-Two

    Thirty-Two

    Thirty-two degrees. That’s the freezing point of water. Well, in the United States, anyway. This map shows all the countries, in red, that have not yet adopted the metric system. Yeah. It’s Liberia, Myanmar, and the US. Every other nation on the planet has adopted the metric system, or more precisely, the International System of Units.…

  • Thirty-One

    Thirty-One

    So…Baskin-Robbins has Thirty-One flavors of ice cream, right? Well, let’s see if I can name them. I’m going to try to list 31 ice cream flavors. No Googling, no phoning a friend, no polling the audience. Let’s see how I do. Vanilla Chocolate Strawberry Rocky Road Cookies ‘n’ Creme Cookie Dough Pistachio Peanut Butter Swirl Moose…

  • Thirty

    Thirty

    Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. And once, in Sweden, February. In 1712, Sweden had a day called February 30. It all has to do with the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars. The Julian calendar was designed by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE, and became the calendar of the Roman Empire, and…