Radio Lab recently produced a short about people’s favorite numbers, For the Love of Numbers. It’s interesting because it had never occurred to me to have a favorite number. In fact, it seems like one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. It’s kind of like astrology or something. And indeed, the reasons people gave for having their favorite numbers were generally stupid. For example, one said, “Four is my favorite number because I won a swim meet while racing in lane four.” Actually, that’s one of the more rational choices. Other people liked the way numbers looked. It’s quite a fascinating show and well worth listening to.

I want to tell you about my relationship with numbers—or rather whole numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3… Because my mind is a little crazy about them. If any of this leaked out in my regular life, I would probably be in an institution somewhere, or at least on powerful drugs. All the numbers to me are like characters in a play. This actually goes far beyond numbers. My entire understanding of the highest levels of math is littered with stories about this or that function and how it gets along with other functions. But let’s just stick with numbers.

Zero is like God. When combined with other numbers it doesn’t do a thing: 0 + you = you. But it has the power, if you embrace it, to consume you: 0 × you = 0. And since it is infinite, it does not grow or shrink. This goes along with the reciprocal of 0 being infinity. Of course, contrary to what many people think, infinity is not a number, so 0 is the only infinite number. So like God it is infinite, generally irrelevant, and infinitely powerful.

One is like air. You don’t even know its there, but it is always there. I don’t like it. It seems smug to me. One is what makes a couple a crowd. It can do some interesting things. Most especially, it can fix prime numbers—I’ll get to them in a moment. But if you interact with it, nothing happens. One can be invited to a party, but you can’t love it because it disappears. It’s almost not a number at all, although conceptually it has amazing powers. Still, standing there along on the page, I want to slap it.

Two is a very troublesome number. I want to like 2. I have a fondness for even numbers for the same reason I hate prime numbers. Even numbers are communal. They are a marriage of two or more numbers. The number 256 is a polygamous same-sex marriage of 2s! But what are these 2s anyway? I find it highly upsetting that 2 is both an even number and a prime number. (If you think this article is a bit tongue-in-cheek, you are right; but I’m dead serious about this one.) This is an issue that has bothered me since I was about six-years-old. It is the one thing in the universe that I find most out of balance. And thus, I feel very much like the paradox of the universe is hiding in this contradiction. As a result, I don’t like the number 2. It taunts me.

The rest of the numbers have their own narratives. Three is the first uncomplicated prime number. And as I said, I don’t like prime numbers because they aren’t bound together with other numbers. I’m more forgiving of 3 and 5 and 7 than I am, say, 11, 13, and especially 17. Good lord, if 117 isn’t a prime (3×3×13), why is 17?! And it only gets worse. The number 611,953 is a prime number. Doesn’t that seem like the Howard Hughes of numbers: having so much to share and yet sharing nothing? No. Well it does to me!

I could go on. There are numbers I rather like. I’m fond of numbers that reduce to a diverse set of prime numbers. The number 2,310 is 2×3×5×7×11. What a wonderful family that is! Or double it, because they had twins: 4,620. Six is also an interesting number, because it combines three troublesome small numbers: 3×2×1. You know they have problems, though. They probably run a meth lab out of trailer in the backyard. But still, an interesting family.

The most common favorite number is 7. One mathematician on the show posits that this is because it is the only number in the first 10 that doesn’t multiply or divide within that group. You can divide 10 by 5 and get 2. You can multiply 3 by 2 and get 6. But you can’t divide 7 by anything and multiplying it by even 2 puts it outside the 1-10 range. I doubt there is anything to that. But regardless, this just makes me think that 7, as I’ve long believed, is a troublesome number. It doesn’t get along with the other numbers. Why would anyone like such a number?

Of course, for most people, numbers represent things. One is the loneliest number (although I’d argue that 0 is the loneliest number—think about that the next time you pray to God) and 2 is not, as long as you’ve picked the right mate. I see it all about how the numbers interact. For me, it is a question of arrested development. When I was in grammar school, I enjoyed reducing numbers to their primes. It annoyed me when I came face to face with a bunch of primes. It seemed like I ought to have been able to go further. The teachers didn’t care. They didn’t even understand. But I think Euclid would have.

Prime numbers are like Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, but much more fundamental. Beyond them you would find God, but you can’t go beyond them. They are the most basic residue of God. Yet most religious people look for God in ancient poetry. It seems odd. The closest you can get to God is through math. And if that leads to any kind of theology, it leads to pantheism: you plus God is God; you times God is God. My take away: you don’t matter but also: God doesn’t matter.

But if you like the number 8 because it is looks nice, you are probably happier than I am.

Forgive me for repeating myself to some extent, I’m having an anxiety attack. But last year on this day, I celebrated the birthday of Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the modern helicopter. And as a man who spent years professionally riding in airplanes and helicopters (to test remote sensing equipment I designed), I can tell you that helicopters are totally cool. It’s like riding on the back of a hummingbird. It is a thousand times cooler than riding in a plane.

But today, we celebrate the famed acting dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson who was born on this day in 1878. He is best know for his work with Shirley Temple. Those films are sweet, but I don’t much like them. But he lived a fascinating life. Both his parents died by the time he was seven. But even before that, at the age of five, he was busking in bars for pennies. Eventually, he made it to Vaudeville, although not before a stint in the Spanish–American War where he was accidentally shot when an officer was cleaning his gun.

At first, he paired up with fellow dancer George Cooper for a tap dancing act. They broke up in 1914, when Robinson went solo. That’s when his career really took off. At that time, under new management, he was making over $3,000 per week—in 1914! But it was also a big deal because there was a sort of rule that blacks didn’t do solo acts. Now, it’s so easy to think, “Black solo performer: no big deal.” But it was a big deal. A very big deal.

And to show you the kind of guy he was, during World War I, he gave free performances to the troops. This was at a time when the Vaudeville industry was giving reduced cost performances. He was known throughout his career and life to be a generous man with money as well as credit to those who had helped and inspired him.

Next up was Broadway where again he was not only successful but a trailblazer. He starred as the first black man in an otherwise all white production, All in Fun (which was a flop, but Robinson got rave reviews). But as demand for black reviews waned, Robinson went into the films. He started with a minor role in Dixiana and then a starring role in the all-black Harlem is Heaven. And that led (thought a surprising assist by D W Griffith) to his work with Shirley Temple. The two of them hit it off immediately. She later recounted their first meeting. She asked him, “Can I call you Uncle Billy?” And he replied, “Why sure you can, but then I get to call you darlin’.”

He went on to make films with Fredi Washington, Will Rogers (the two were good friends), and Cab Calloway. Then he moved into radio and television. The man certainly understood the flow of entertainment—a talent even the most successful people usually lack. Here he is doing the “Sand Dance” in his last film, Stormy Weather:

He died at the age of 71, long past the peak of his fame. Still, over 30,000 people came to pay their respects to the great man.

My initial interest in Robinson was Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Mr. Bojangles.” It appears that it was based upon a true story. But the dancer he describes was not Bill Robinson. It couldn’t have been him since Robinson had died in 1949, when Walker was just 7 years old. It is just that Robinson (like Robert Johnson) was so popular that people made entire careers out of impersonating him. So the song tells the story of one of these men, probably at the end of a downhill slide. Here is my favorite version of it by David Bromberg:

Happy birthday to the real Bill Robinson!

Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? Remember how she said that, “We will meet again, some sunny day”?

Those are lyrics that Roger Waters wrote in The Wall. The reference is to her mega-hit “We’ll Meet Again.” Waters’ point is that his father died in World War II when Waters was less than six months old. Needless to say, they never met again, regardless of the weather.

But what Vera Lynn did was amazing. She broadcast a radio program where she performed songs that the troops requested. It reminds me very much of the end of Sullivan’s Travels. Sullivan is a famous director of comedies, but he wants to make serious films about the way life really is. So he sets out on the road, eventually finding himself imprisoned for six years for an assault. While in jail, the prisoners are allowed to see a screening of the cartoon Playful Pluto. And Sullivan realizes that when people are really suffering, they want something to make them forget their troubles.

Waters is right, however, to distinguish between those for whom pure entertainment allows them to bear the suffering they are going through, and those who don’t bear it. “We’ll Meet Again” is a nice fantasy as long as it is alive. No one wants to think of meeting again as meeting your father’s or husband’s flag draped coffin. Of course, for the Christians the allies nominally were, one can think they will meet in heaven. But that just makes it a typical story we tell children—not one for us adults. What Lynn provided was hope, even if it was a false hope.

Almost a half million of the British people died as a result of World War II. Just under 1% of the population, which was a lot better than the 2% who died in World War I, which no one can really seem to explain the reason for. And it is nothing compared to the roughly 15% of the population of the Soviet Union that died during the “Great War.” So maybe the right thing for the British to do was to keep smiling through.

Vera Lynn is 97 years old and on 2 June, she will release a new album, Vera Lynn: National Treasure—The Ultimate Collection.

Over at The Upshot last week, I was not surprised to read Nate Cohn, Narrow Path to Senate for Michelle Nunn in Georgia. This is important because she is running to replace Saxby Chambliss, a man so conservative he once shot a man for not frothing at the mouth enough. Nunn is the main Democratic hope to turn a red Senate seat to blue. Cohn’s analysis indicated that she was still a long shot. The whites in the state now only represent 64% of the voters, which is down from 72% in 2002. But they’ve become a lot more Republican. This trend will continue to the betterment of the Democrats, but it isn’t going to happen by this November.

But according to Cohn, there’s hope. He wrote, “Demographic change has pushed Georgia far enough that a Democrat could conceivably squeak out a narrow win if everything goes right. But there should be no mistaking this race for a true tossup.” That’s the kind of information that ten years ago would have been pretty cheering, “There’s hope!” But now that sounds like unless her opponent starts talking about how girls in short dresses deserve to get raped, Nunn will lose.

Yesterday, some information came out that cheered up cynical old me. It’s a poll result and we always have to remember that a single poll means basically nothing. But conservative polling outfit Rasmussen Reports performed a survey of 750 Georgians Wednesday and Thursday—so after the Republican Primary. And although we don’t know which of the Republicans—Kingston or Perdue—will be running against her, Nunn is beating both. She beats Kingston 47%-41% and Perdue 45%-42%. And this is not a poll of registered voters; it is a poll of likely voters.

There are more caveats than facts in all of this, of course. The big one is, again, that this is just a single poll. And this is Nunn’s first campaign. But that may not matter, given that she is the daughter of Sam Nunn, the four-term United States Senator from Georgia. And like her father, she’s quite a conservative Democrat. So I’m sure that she has at least a decent chance at winning this race. Right now, because I’m feeling optimistic, I think I will disagree with Cohn and say this is a tossup.

Following the elections this year has been a very frustrating activity. It really is too early to say much. For example, we won’t know for a couple of months if Kingston or Perdue are going to run against Nunn. But like most liberal observers, I’m expecting great carnage in November and for two years, I’ve thought that the Republicans had a 50% chance of taking over the Senate. But then it started to look worse. I believe FiveThirtyEight put it at 60% chance. But now, The Upshot gives the advantage to the Democrats: 56% chance of keeping the Senate.

A lot of people talk about how this might be a “wave election.” I don’t much buy that. I don’t even think it makes sense in non-presidential elections. But if there is a trend, right now it is toward the Democrats. We might just hold on to the Senate. Of course, if we don’t, it isn’t that bad. The Democrats will take it back in 2016. As I wrote last year, It’s Now Or Never for Senate GOP.

My allergies are terrible today, or I would spend the day on Jacopo Carucci, who I do love. But it’s Bob‘s birthday—he’s 73 today. Look, a lot of it (like all great men) is just that he was the right man at the right time. But it hardly matters, he put out at least ten albums of the greatest albums of all the time. The albums that I never tire of are The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and Blood on the Tracks.

So let’s start by singing Happy Birthday for Bob from Loudon Wainwright:

So first, some early Bob Dylan, “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.” We’ve all been at that point of a relationship. The metaphor of the rooster crowing is perfect, because it is as predictable as the end of this relationship. But it’s alright:

A few years later, he wrote one of the funniest songs ever, “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.” It is supposedly an homage to Edie Sedgwick:

Skipping to the 1970s, we come to a song I’ve long been meaning to write an extensive analysis of “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” It’s one of my favorites. This is an extended version, and it is easier to follow the story, plus it adds an extra verse that clarifies the story:

And from the 1980s, we have “Union Sundown”:

Happy birthday Bob Dylan!

Normally, I start the day with a birthday post. But last night, I had a dream. I was in Walmart and Fox News was in the background. And they were talking about Jimmy Carter and his career. It was the kind of garbage that you would expect from that “fair and balanced” network. It sounded something right out of one of Ronald Reagan’s attacks from the 1980 campaign. The hostages. The failure of SALT II. High unemployment. High inflation. Not one of those things were Carter’s fault just like not a single thing Reagan is held up as a hero for were his doing, but what do you expect: Fox News.

And then I thought: why are they talking about Carter? And it hit me: he’d finally died. It was a surprise because he seems to be doing great. Bob Dole and Bush the Elder are both confined to wheelchairs and pretty much out of the public square even though they are both only a smidgen older (Dole is the oldest, by one year and two months). But Carter is still making public appearances, still writing books, still shaking up the world. How could he be the first to go?

Of course, the tone of the coverage didn’t surprise me. When a man as evil as Augusto Pinochet or a woman as evil as Margaret Thatcher dies, the obituaries are respectful. The idea is that we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, even if they themselves were responsible for lots of death and suffering. But when it comes to liberals, the America media seem to think it is best to present a “balanced” picture. We saw this when Reuters accidentally released its mock-up of George Soros’ obituary. So why not lay everything that went wrong in the 1970s on Jimmy Carter in death, especially given that he’s spent most of his time since he was president speaking truth to power.

The dream was so vivid and upsetting, that the first thing I did when I woke up was checked the news. I am pleased to report that Jimmy Carter is not dead—and hopefully will not be for a good long time. That’s not to say that I want Bush the Elder or Bob Dole to die. They seem as honorable as men of their classes usually are. But I don’t see them adding a great deal in the public sphere. So their deaths will be sad for their families. But they will mean nothing to me.