Numbers

Today is September 11th, 2011.

Yesterday was the 10th, or, as Americans also write it, 9/10/11.  It doesn't entirely make sense as to why we in America put the date as month/day/year; I'm sure there's some fascinating (to me, anyway) story about why we do it this way but it's still not logical.  I think that in Europe they go from smallest to largest (day/month/year) and I can't speak for Asia as a whole but in Korea the date is listed by the year first, then the month, and finally with the day.

Nine, ten, eleven.  Most of the world uses base 10 in counting, and makes a big deal about anniversary years that are multiples of 5 and 10.  But we all start with one.

1: the beginning.  Everyone wants to be number 1.  Number one also refers to urination (why?)

2: can refer to defecation (again, why?).  Silver medalist, not bad at all.

3: good things come in threes?  Bronze medalist, just made it to the podium.

4: in Chinese this number is bad luck because it sounds like the word for "death". 4-1-1 refers to info.

5: halfway to ten! Number of fingers on a hand, toes on a foot (usually).

6: Sixth is "sexto" in Spanish.  From Fox in Socks by Dr. Seuss, the toughest tongue twister: the sixth sick sheikh's sixth sheep's sick"

7: Lucky number in American/Western lore.

8: Homophone of "ate".

9: Almost at ten.  Why do the digits 9-1-1 refer to emergencies?  Why these three digits?  I wonder what the number for emergencies is in other countries. Which reminds me of this silly little clip from another one of my beloved BBC/Channel 4 sitcoms...

10: Back to seriousness.  The big one-zero, the first of the double digits if we go by Arabic numerals.  A decathalon is ten events, a decade is ten years, December is the...twelfth month.  Again, things don't always make sense. 

Again, it's hard to make sense of this world.  But there's still hope...