20 twenty things

The other day, when I was making my little jokes about 20/20 vision and losing my glasses (in a very 2020 way), I found myself pondering things about the number 20. And that pondering led to some enumerating, and that enumerating became a list. On this 20th day of the month, and in the tradition of my ThThTh lists (but breaking tradition since it’s not Thursday), I present a list of things around the theme of 20. And it seemed only right to have a list of 20 of them.

1) 20/20 vision: Normal vision. It is based on what row of an eye chart you can read from 20 feet. 

2) The 20-20-20 rule. To help with eyestrain. For every 20 minutes you find yourself staring at a screen, spend 20 seconds looking at something that is 20 feet away.

3) 20/20 hindsight. An expression meaning that things are clear in retrospect, typically after some misjudgment.

4) venti: size at Starbucks. It’s 20 ounces, and it means twenty in Italian. It’s sort of the “large” size, though there is also grande (which means “large” in Italian), but is smaller than the venti.

A 20-sided die. (image credit)

5) icosagon or 20-gon is a twenty-sided polygon

6) icosahedron: a polyhedron with 20 sides. The shape of a 20-sided die.

7) Twenty questions: a guessing game whereby one person thinks of a thing, and the second person tries to guess what it is by way of asking yes-no questions. The guesser wins if they name the correct thing before reaching the twentieth questions. (Experienced players know that it’s a good idea to narrow down the categories early on, rather than guessing one item in the universe of millions of things, i.e: Is it pants? This is the game for which “Is it bigger than a breadbox” and “is it smaller than a house” are frequent size-establishing questions.)

Mayan base 20 number system. (Credit: Bryan Derksen source)

8) Vigesimal: base 20 number system

9) a score: a term meaning the number twenty. Fairly infrequent, excepting in quotations of the Gettysburg Address. (“Four score and seven years ago…”)

10) XX: The Roman numeral for 20

11) 20th anniversary gift: china/porcelain

12) a dart board has 20 sections

Photo by icon0.com on Pexels.com
US 20 dollar bills. Photo by Shane on Pexels.com

13) The (current) US twenty dollar bill. A frequent denomination distributed in ATMs in the U.S. Currently bears the face of Andrew Jackson.

For those who can’t wait for the new bills to be minted, stamps are sold to make the adjustment manually. (source)

14) Harriet Tubman 20 dollar bill. 2020 was supposed to be the year when abolitionist and historical bad-ass Harriet Tubman was supposed to replace Jackson on the 20 dollar bill. This has been put off, but many have taken the transformation into their own hands and used a stamp. (See image above.)

15) 20 is the smallest primitive abundant number.

20: The atomic number for calcium. (Image source.)

16) 20 is the atomic number of calcium.

17) 20/20: a new-oriented US TV program.18) Twenty (2015): a South Korea film.

19) Twenty (2017-2018) a webseries.

20) The Roaring 20s. A nickname for the decade of 1920 to 1929. Now that we are in another decade of the 20s, we can only guess what it will be nicknamed.

Some ’20s fashion illustrations. (Source)

 

This blog goes up to 11

Eleven years ago today, I put up my first post on this blog. Here we are over a thousand posts later, and I am still more-or-less here.

analog-clock-1111 It appears that I am quite partial to the number 11. Not the least because I regularly post at the eleventh hour. (It might not surprise you that it is now after 11 as I write this post.)

elevenThe number 11 has featured prominently in quite a few posts over the years, in particular on 11/11. In anticipation of the exciting (at least to me) date of 11/11/11, I encouraged others to post things that go up to 11. I’ve posted about the word for the number 11 in Spanish.  I’ve posted lists of elevens. I’ve posted photos of elevens (or at least photos of patterns that look to me like 11s). And I posted a ThThTh list of 11 things, which, given that I posted it in 2007, did not include one now very well known Eleven.

digital-clock-1111

This is all really just a very roundabout way to say happy birthday to my blog. Thanks to any and all of you who have dropped in over the years.

eleven-candles

 

joking by number

Today was 11/12/13, a fun date for those people who like to enjoy fun dates.¹ The date has compelled me to post something with a numerical theme, though not about those particular numbers.

A few months ago, we were telling jokes in the car on our way somewhere or other. I don’t recall who started telling jokes, but at one point the conversation went something like this:

John: Why 7 is afraid of 8?
Phoebe:
Because 7 8 9!
Theo: Why is 3 afraid of 4?
Everyone else: Um, we don’t know. Why?
Theo: Because 4 is REALLY REALLY MEAN!

Can’t top that.

And just because, here are a few photos of numbers.


Some numbers written by Theo at age 3. Perhaps they are all facing the wrong way out of fear of the number 4.


Who knows what sinister plans the 4 has for the 5 here?


Two 4s, looking as menacing as you might expect.

¹Yes, I am one of those people: Cf. my many Pi Day posts, as well as posts for 12/12/12, 11/11/11, 10/10/10 etc. Hell, I even posted something on 7/8/9 that I’d completely forgotten about.