Documenting the conspiracy.
The US Postal Service annouced today it will increase the cost of a first-class stamp by one cent, to 42 cents, starting May 12.
I expected the next increase to be in 2009 and to be greater than one cent. But this excellent news means there will be stamps emblazoned with The Answer.
My friend and fellow JC alum Heather writes to share this tidbit of statistical joy:
AmericaBLOG.com: US 42nd in Life Expectancy.
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics….Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004….
“Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States,” Murray said. “The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does.”
In much (if not all) of the promotional literature, web photos, and videos of the Apple iPhone, the clock shows the time as “9:42.”
According to President Roslin in the first part of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, there were 42 other government officials ahead of her in the Succession for the Presidency of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.
Donald Trump cited for 80-foot flag pole
Palm Beach officials cited Trump for hoisting a large American flag atop an 80-foot pole at his lavish Mar-a-Lago estate and club.Town officials said the real estate mogul has violated zoning codes with a flagpole taller than 42 feet and for erecting it without a building permit and permission from the landmarks board.
Trump has until November 27 to apply for approvals or face a December 21 code enforcement hearing that could result in $250-a-day fines.
(Emphasis added.)
I can’t. They make me a little dizzy and I keep seeing oddly-proportioned heptagons.
We’ll call this a contest.
The prize is a gold star.
From my sister, who is teaching in an elementary school this year:
I was subbing for my favourite second grade class and we had just read today’s version of Weekly Reader. I was asking them questions about it… I think the topic was space. One of the kids was like “42, Miss Miller.” I was like wait, what? I was trying not to laugh because that had absolutely NOTHING to do with my question, and he was like, “The answer to all questions is 42.” How does a punky little 7 year old come up with that? :) It makes me want to watch the movie of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again.
We don’t know if the kid has subversive parents or if he just came up with 42 on his own.
She doesn’t always use “like” like that. Honest.
… Intelligence work has one moral law–it is justified by results. Even the sophistry of Whitehall paid court to that law, and Leamas got results. Until Mundt came.
It was odd how soon Leamas had realised that Mundt was the writing on the wall.
Hans-Dieter Mundt, born forty-two years ago in Leipzig. Leamas knew his dossier, knew the photograph on the inside of the cover; the blank, hard face beneath the flaxen hair; knew by heart the story of Mundt’s rise to power as second man in the Abteilung and effective head of operations. Mundt was hated even within his own department. Leamas knew that from the evidence of defectors, and from Riemeck, who as a member of the SED Praesidium sat on security committees with Mundt, and dreaded him. Rightly as it turned out, for Mundt had killed him.
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John LeCarré, pp.8-9. (emphasis added.)
“They’re an oversight. Some poor designer was too busy thinking about next week’s production quotas, or his digestive troubles, or his unrequited love for whatever norm-conforming certifiably A-Equivalent piece of tail he happened to be chasing at the moment. His mind strayed”–Arkasha’s free hand slid down Arkady’s chest and across his belly–”unforgivably from the all-important work at hand. An error crept into the D1746 gene at site forty-two of chromosome eighteen. That’s the frizzy D site to you and the rest of the hoi polloi. Our poor designer failed to notice the error. It began to replicate. The control team, perhaps similarly distracted by work, lust, or digestion, also failed to notice the error. Which continued to replicate. Which resulted in your spectacular cowlicks. Which resulted in my falling in love with you. Which is about to result in … here, hold this.”
Spin State by Chris Moriarty, p. 286. (emphasis added.)
Ruth found this in her change yesterday. I believe it is worth roughly sixty times its face value!
My good friend Michael just moved to NYC.
His train for the trip? Number 42.
My parents’ home network automatically assigns IP addresses via DHCP. My MacBook is named “Cotterpin.”
From Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling, Scholastic Mass Market Paperback Edition, page 131.
From the Futurama desktop wallpaper available at Adult Swim.
Via email from Abbey:
When I was getting a tour of what was going to become my apartment, I asked what number the unit is. The building is being remodeled and it took a moment for the landlords to plot out what number mine would be. When they settled on three, I joked that it seemed random, so could I have seven? In response, they joked that they should just let everyone pick whatever their favourite number is, so if you want 42, you can be apartment 42 in a six apartment building. Of course, I cracked up and told them OMG my brother would totes want to live in that one! From their faces I realized… they had no idea that was the meaning of life!
The example network for the Apple MacBook on the subpage about Wireless is named “42Net.”
… they get recruited.
The US Army is raising its maximum enlistment age two years to 42. It was increased from 35 to 40 in January. If this keeps up, Scalzi’s future will be here before we know it.
Ben sent this one in. He wrote:
I just voted in the MacSlash poll….
While toodling around online, for reasons I can no longer remember I wanted to know our latitude and longitude here in Okemos. So instead of grabbing a map and guesstimating it, I figured I’d check google. After stumbling around a bit, I came across Geocode.com, which has a product called Tele Atlas. You can “test drive” it, so I did with our street address.
The results were scary:
Lat: 42:42:10.915N
Lon: 84:26:2.720WI suppose the odds of us moving to 42 degrees 42 minutes were… 1 in 10,800 (ignoring the vast sections of 42:42 that fall on water). It still struck us as highly amusing. Our street address only adds to the fun: 4211.