A Blog Around The Clock

From today's Quotes Of The Day:

As something of a student of history, I need to remember a number of numbers. Few of them remain easily in mind, although I normally can remember 1066, 1492, and 1776. It happens that on this day in 1776, Lorenzo Romano Amedeo Carlo Avogadro was born at Turin, Italy. Amedeo got his law degree at the age of sixteen, and did well, but ten years later began to study science. He made a number of breakthroughs regarding the nature of atoms and molecules, he was the first to realize that oxygen and hydrogen generally occur as molecules of two atoms. When it was possible to actually number the atoms or molecules in one mole (an amount of material, the mass of which in grams is equal to the molecular weight), that number was named Avagadro's Number. For some reason I have remembered that from ninth grade: 6.022 times ten to the 23rd power. I've never actually had a reason to know or use it, but I've remembered it.

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase.... The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
- Frank Herbert, 1920 - 1986

Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
- Immanuel Kant, 1724 - 1804

The rule on staying alive as a forcaster is to give 'em a number or give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
- Jane Bryant Quinn

Every sorrow suggests a thousand songs, and every song recalls a thousand sorrows, and so they are infinite in number, and all the same.
- Marilynne Robinson

One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
- Clifton Fadiman, 1904 - 1999

Well, if I called the wrong number, then why did you pick up the phone?
- James Grover Thurber