Pure Twaddle

I have moved to the non-posh neighborhood of Lefferts-Prospect-Park in Brooklyn. I’m giving myself a few months to make some cash and find a job. I face the enormous task of obtaining writing/editing work in a failing job market amonst a rising tide of more experienced professionals. Tilting at windmills? You betcha.

Popularity: 20% [?]

In preparation of my potential career as a journalist, I have ripped the following facts from Wikipedia and present them to you completely unverified:

26 (number):

Cardinal	twenty-six
Ordinal	26th (twenty-sixth)
Factorization
Divisors	1, 2, 13, 26
Roman numeral	XXVI
Binary	110102
Octal	328
Duodecimal	2212
Hexadecimal	1A16

In mathematics

Pierre de Fermat proved that 26 is the only number between a square (25 = 5²) and a cube (27 = 3³).

In science

• The atomic number of iron
• The number of spacetime dimensions in bosonic string theory.

In religion

• 26 is the gematric number of the true name of god – Yahweh
• According to Jewish chronology, God gave the Torah in the 26th generation since Creation

In other fields

Twenty-six is:

• A 2003 novel by Leo McKay, Jr..
• The number of letters in the English and Interlingua alphabets, if capital letters are not distinguished from lowercase letters.
• The number of miles in a marathon rounded down (26 miles and 385 yards).
• Michigan is the 26th state to be admitted to the United States.
• Often the number of episodes in a television program each year; this allows one new show per week for half the year, and one rerun per week for the rest of the year.
• The alias of punk rock singer Doc Corbin Dart
• The age at which males can no longer be drafted in the United States
• The “joke throw” in the game of darts, where a player throws 20, 5 and 1 when aiming for 20 (or treble 20). In professional darts, throwing 26 usually results in sneers or laughter from the audience.
• A dice game popular in the midwest United States from the 1930s to 1950s; players had to roll a chosen number 26 times or more, exactly 13 or fewer than 10^[2].
• The number of the French department Drôme
• John Terry, captain of Chelsea F.C. and England national football team defender wears the number 26 for Chelsea.
• Patrik Elias wears #26 for the New Jersey Devils.
• Interstate 26 a freeway that runs from Tennessee to South Carolina.

26 is also the number of years since my birth, according to a source that does not wish to be identified.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Just for Friday, Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road on the Steve Allen Show in 1959:

Popularity: 49% [?]

A telling article on MSN.com shows how reliant on Wikipedia modern journalism has become, much to the truth’s detriment. Shane Fitzgerald, college student in Ireland, posted a fake quote on recently deceased Oscar-winning French composer Maurice Jarre’s Wikipedia page. Although the quote was completely unattributed, manifold news agencies picked it up and published it as fact. It was not until days later that anyone found out it was a hoax, and only until Fitzgerald contacted the news agencies to tell them.

The Guardian newspaper was the sole company to publicly apologize for publishing the completely false information. Other news agencies have either ignored the error, quietly corrected it, or simply blamed Fitzgerald outright. Most deliciously, Wikipedia editors had removed the quote within an hour because it could not be verified.

And news companies wonder why people are losing faith in their product.

Popularity: 37% [?]

T.V. viewing is at an all-time high, according to the Nielsen Company, at 151 hours per month per average adult. That’s three-tenths of each waking day sitting in front of the boob tube. This news is disturbing, considering a majority of Americans don’t even read one book a year anymore. So how much T.V. do you watch?

I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book.  -Groucho Marx

Popularity: 66% [?]

Perhaps the internet is not the cause of the decline of print journalism, but merely a symptom. Spurred on by cell phones and instant information gratification, we have no more time to sit down and read the New York Times Sunday edition cover-to-cover.

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Popularity: 32% [?]