47-l-digest            Friday, May 1 1998            Volume 01 : Number 013




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Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1998 15:17:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: happy 4/7

A happy 4/7 to all.  It seems Bob and I have both been abroad recently.
Bob's greetings await below.   I visited Morelia, Mich. in Mexico.  If I
didn't know better (and I don't), I'd say that 47 came from this small
Mexican town.  Aside from numerous incidental 47s (license plates,
tickets, receipts, etc.)  I espied several outrageous examples.

* The bill for my first meal in Morelia: 47 pesos.
* On the wall next to my friend's house, a ten foot tall 47 in red paint.
* My friend took me to his favorite garden; just off the beaten track.  We
discovered the plaque bearing the garden's name: The Garden of the Heroes
of 47!
* The building where my friend gets off the bus to go to work bears a
giant 347.

[submitted by]
Eric


Happy 4/7 everyone!

I recently returned from 3 months in Asia. I didn't plan it this way, but I
just did the math and I have now been back for 47 days! Oh, the irony of it
all...


[submitted by]
- -Bob

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Date: Wed, 8 Apr 1998 09:06:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: only on 4/7...

It could only happen on 4/7:

Went shooping at the local Goodwill store today. I purchased three items.
The total cost was $4.47.

[submitted by]
Bob

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Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 10:00:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 47 L.D.S. temples under construction

This last Sunday, Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. Mormons), announced the church's plans
to build 30 new small temples, bringing the total number of L.D.S. temples
currently under construction around the world to 47.  This is in addition
to the 51 existing operational temples.  Plans are to have all 47 temples
completed by the year 2000.


[submitted by]
Christian & Sarah Schumann-Curtis

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Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 14:27:49 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: musical 47

in the musical "chicago" the lawyer tells his client that a woman has
not been hanged in 47 years, which gives her 47-1 odds of not being hung
in her murder trial.

[submitted by]
mike lazorchak

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Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 15:45:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: mamet 47 

i have recently been cast in "speed the play" which is essentially 4
david mamet plays in 7 minutes.

[submitted by]
camille

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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:33:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: D&D 47

Hello,

I was most intrigued when I recently discovered the "47 story" on the
Web, since the strange significance of that number has long been
familiar to myself and the other players in a "Dungeons & Dragons"
campaign run by game designer Erick Wujcik, that started at Wayne State
University in Detroit nearly 19 years ago.

(We've recently started work on a web page,
http://dragon.stuaffrs.wayne.edu, detailing some of the history of the
game. It's still under construction, but the full notes of the game are
available there. Also especially see
http://people.delphi.com/toddbake/dwpics.htm, which contains scanned
images of some of the cartoons I've drawn during the game, and note that
the VERY FIRST cartoon, by coincidence, concerns the number 47! The
fourth sketch, depicting Arcanum XLVII, is significant too.)

We first became aware of the mystical significance of 47 due to one of
the players, Jim Webster, who continually rolled that number on
percentile dice, particularly when game events involved Jim's character,
Thorn, and the chaotic demon lord Janrak (see previously mentioned
cartoon). Thus we decided that 47 must be the number of Janrak, and
whenever that roll came up for long afterward, the game master made sure
that Janrak had something to do with the result. Even though Janrak was
destroyed in the game years ago, the number 47 still comes up on
percentile dice rolls more often than you would expect from random
probability.

[submitted by]
Todd Bake ("Trow")

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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:40:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Scheherazade 47 again

[This came around about a year ago.  It has come around again.  It is
still intriguing.]

Hello.

PREFACE: #1

The following is being sent to the Synergetics mailing list and to
The 47 Society so each recipient should excuse extensive mention
to their own specialty.  It refers to the following links:

http://www.delta-9.com/net47/47society/
http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/synhome.html
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/6689.html
http://www.servtech.com/public/rwgray/synergetics/synergetics.html

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

PREFACE: #2

"The 47 Society is an international interest-group that follows the
occurence and recurrence of the quintessential random number: 47."

"Synergetics" is a work by the quintessential thinker, R. Buckminster
=46uller.  From Wired News:

"Pronounced the "Leonardo da Vinci of our time" by Marshall McLuhan,
=46uller invented everything from the geodesic dome to a device that
cleaned without soap. While his influence spanned generations and
transcended disciplines, the crowning achievement and foundation of
all his work was Synergetics, in which he described and cataloged the
coordinate system of "Universe," with the four-sided tetrahedron as
the basic unit of all matter."

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

REASON FOR THIS EMAIL:

I've been doing some research into numbers and therefore was more
keen to notice a number-related item on a TV show, "The Internet Cafe".
They mentioned the abnormal amount of occurences of the number 47 on
"Star Trek" and explained that it is a result of one of the writers
being from Pomona College, where, in 1964, some students noticed
that 47 came up alot more than other numbers.  At around the same time,
a "Dr. Bentley had developed a proof that any number is equal to any
other number. [The students to which I referred] had been talking to
him about their discovery of 47, and hence, as a corollary, they were
able to show that all numbers are equal to 47."

I remembered seeing something about 47 in "Synergetics".  The
following quotes attempt to tie this together.
  - 1238.51 is the actual reference.
  - 1238.20-21 explains what leads up to the thinking about 47.
  - 1230.30-33 explains the origin of Scheherazade Numbers.
    The reason I included this was for background and also because of
    the mention of Mesopotamian mathematicians.  Didn't they have some
    fascination with 47 also?

To sum up, basically I just thought the connection between Fuller's
thinking of 47 being "the cosmic random element" and The 47 Society's
thinking that "Many suspect that the coincidental nature of 47
carries some mystical, metaphysical and/or scientific significance."
was pretty neat.  I just wanted to point out to The 47 Society this
other place where 47 shows up and to the Synergetics followers that
there may be something even more intrinsically important about
=46uller's line of thinking regarding numerology and geometry and space
than has been previously supposed.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

1238.51 Scheherazade Numbers: 47: The first prime number
beyond the trigonometric limit is 47. The number 47 may be a flying
increment to fill allspace, to fill out the eight triangular facets
of the non-allspace-filling vector equilibrium to form the allspace-
filling first nuclear cube. If 47 as a factor produces a Scheherazade
Number with mirrors, it may account not only for all the specks of
dust in the Universe but for all the changes of cosmic restlessness,
accounting the convergent-divergent next event, which unbalances the
even and rational whole numbers. If 47 as a factor does not produce a
Scheherazade Number with mirrors, it may explain that there can be no
recurring limit symmetries. It may be that 47 is the cosmic random
element, the agent of infinite change.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

1238.20 Trigonometric Limit: First 14 Primes: The Fourteen-illion
Scheherazade Number accommodates all the omnirational calculations
of the trigonometric function tables whose largest prime number is
43 and whose highest common variable multiple is 45 degrees, which
is one-eighth of unity in a Universe whose polyhedral systems consist
always of a minimum of four positive and four negative quadranted
hemispheres.

1238.21 45 degrees is the zero limit of covarying asymmetry because
the right triangle's 90-degree corner is always complemented by two
corners always together totalling 90 degrees. The smallest of the
covarying, 90-degree complementaries reaches its maximum limit when
both complementaries are 45 degrees. Accepting the concept that one
is not a prime number, we have 14 primes__2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17,
19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43__which primacy will accommodate all the
14 unique structural faceting of all the crystallography, all the
biological cell structuring, and all bubble agglomerating: the 14
facets being the polar facets of the seven and only seven axes of
symmetry of Universe, which are the 3-, 4-, 6-, 12-great circles of
the vector equilibrium and the 6-, 10-, 15-great circles of the
icosahedron.

- ----------------------------------------------------------------------

1230.30 Origin of Scheherazade Myth: I think the Arabian priest-
mathematicians and their Indian Ocean navigator ancestors knew that
the binomial effect of 1,001 upon the first four prime numbers 1, 2,
3, and 5 did indeed provide comprehensive dividend accommodation of
all the permutative possibilities of all the ''story-telling-taling-
tallying," or computational systems of the octave system of integers.

1230.31 The function of the grand vizier to the ruler was that of
mathematical wizard, the wiz of wiz-dom; and the wiz-ard kept secret
to himself the mathematical navigational ability to go to faraway
strange places where he alone knew there existed physical resources
different from any of those occurring ''at home," then voyaging to
places that only the navigator-priest knew how to reach, he was able
to bring back guaranteed strange objects that were exhibited by the
ruler to his people as miracles obviously producible only by the ruler
who secretly and carefully guarded his vizier's miraculous power of
wiz-dom.

1230.32 To guarantee their own security and advantage, the
Mesopotamian mathematicians, who were the overland-and-overseas
navigator-priests, deliberately hid their knowledge, their
mathematical tools and operational principles such as the mathematical
significance of 7 =D7 11 =D7 13 =3D 1,001 from both their rulers and the
people. They used psychology as well as outright lies, combining the
bad-luck myth of the three prime integers with the mysterious
inclusiveness of the Thousand and One Nights. The priests warned that
bad luck would befall anyone caught using 7s, 11s, or 13s.

1230.33 Some calculation could only be done by the abacus or by
positioning numbers. With almost no one other than the high priests
able to do any calculation, there was not much chance that anyone
would discover that the product of 7, 11, and 13 is 001, but "just in
case," they developed the diverting myth of Scheherazade and her
postponement of execution by her Thousand and One Nights.

[submitted by]
Terrence L. Domjan

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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:42:54 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Bays-ball 47

     ABSTRACT: FORTY-SEVEN PLAYERS have logged major-league playing time
               wearing both an Oakland A's uniform and a San Francisco
               Giants uniform.  While many made little impact -- hello, Lary
               Sorensen -- a handful have been celebrated on both sides of
               the Bay. -- Players with at least 10 home runs for each team:
               Dave Kingman -- 100 with A's, 77 with Giants; Mike Aldrete 18
               with A's, 14 with Giants. -- At least 100 hits: Billy North --
               664 with A's, 252 with Giants; Kingman -- 406 with A's, 278
               with Giants; Stan Javier -- 475 with A's, 134 (through
               yesterday) with Giants; Felipe Alou -- 158 with A's, 655 with
               Giants; Aldrete -- 145 with A's, 275 with Giants.

[submitted by]
Bob

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Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 14:48:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: exorcism, simpsons, wimbledon 47s

Tonight (4-22) on PrimeTime Live, Cynthia McFadden covers an authentic (and 
supposedly successful) exorcism performed by a Catholic priest...  How long
did the entire process last?  She reports that it was 47 minutes.

On "The Simpsons" this last Sunday (4-19), news reporter Kent Brockman shows 
Bart his highlight tape #47 of human interest stories.

[Submitted by]
E. F.

[and]

WIMBLEDON, England (AP) -- Prize money for the June 22-July 5 Wimbledon
tennis championships will be 7.2 million pounds (US$11.95 million), up
from about 6.9 million pounds (US$11.45 million) in 1997, officials said
Tuesday.

The increase is 4.7 percent in pound terms and about 6.5 percent in
dollar terms from last year.

[submitted by]
Jeffrey Ross

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Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:36:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: www.47.net

The.47.network is proud to announce the relocation of The 47 Society web
site to the following location:

http://www.47.net/

All resources from the old location (the delta-9.com server) have been
moved to the new domain. Please come by and check out our new home.

[submitted by]
Bob

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End of 47-l-digest V1 #13
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