Dex,
Good write-up on numerology, as always. But you’ve got one bit scrambled: for the Chinese, 4 is BAD, signifying death. 8 is good.
Link to column: What’s the story on numerology? – CKDH
Hey Africa Bob, I just joined this forum to say that! But here in Hong Kong, my friends think that the ‘four = bad’ notion is only in the Cantonese-speaking south, where ‘sei’ for four, sounds like the word for death.
Historically, in Chinese, 3, 6 and 9 were lucky, together or separately, especially 9 which (as .9999999…) means completeness. But northerners’ consumption of Hong Kong TV shows has spread the southern belief that 8 is lucky.
Earthly,
Good point. When I lived in Hong Kong, I would always ask the Chinese how the numbers can have the same implications in other parts of China where the pronunciation of the number has no resemblence to that of the allegedly associated word (such as death). Never got a coherent answer.
All a load of crap, in my book. ANY number can be good luck if there’s a dollar sign in front and enough zeros following.
BTW, I also just joined solely to comment on this slip-up. I must have too much time on my hands today.
Numerolo
This paragraph needs to be edited:
First, it should be “taut”, not “taught”, and second, if you double the length of the string, you get a note one octave lower, not higher.
OOps. Sorry, I’ll get fixes on all those things.
The column doesn’t actually appear until Tuesday. In fact, I thought I had a few more weeks, and delayed a proofing. Sigh. And I shoulda remembered Gaudere’s Law: if I start out commenting on the kid’s spelling, I’ll surely have spelling mistakes on my own.
Thanks for the corrections.
Two small comments:[ol]
[li]The “4” superstition is apparently quite powerful. The Palm company (as in “Palm Pilot”) skips “4” and “IV” in their model numbering to avoid sales problems in China.[/li][li]Plenty of real nutcases have constructed phantasies over the Psalm 46/Shakespeare coincidence.[/li][/ol]
I’m really going to have to ask for a cite here about that parenthetical. Are you asserting that the Chinese historically had this concept of limits, which would seem to put it long before the West?
I can’t comment on the 4. But many years ago a Chinese restaurant was opening up in our area, and they hired my engineering firm to help them through the site plan approval process. We were under the gun, because the owner was absolutely adamant that the restaurant open on 8/8/88 for continued luck and prosperity. So, I would concur that 8 means luck to at least one Chinese restaurant owner.
And yes, I know that it was the Western year of 1988, but the owner was insistent.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 (It was only a matter of time…) 
Is the restaurant still open?
As a matter of fact, it is indeed still open, although I don’t know if the original owners are still there. However, I was only commenting on the perceived luck of the number 8, and not on whether it has validity (though this will doubtless reinforce that perception in at least one person’s mind). Chinese restaurants were not that plentiful in that town, and my guess is that all they needed to do was to serve good food to have a long-lived and prosperous business.
Call me crazy but last i heard the Romans, namely Julius and Augustus Caesar, added 2 of those months to make twelve well after the general convention of a 10 month calendar had been established. Evidence being the fact that the months are quite obviously named for their old positions DEC-ember being the 10th, NOV-ember being the 9th and so on with OCT-ober and SEPT-ember.
You’re crazy. Sorry, but you asked for it.
July and August were renamed in honor of Julius and Augustus, not created specially for them. Before their time, the months were named Quintilis and Sextilis. The reason that December is named for the number ten and not twelve is that the new year used to begin on March 1. It’s true that at one point there were only 10 named months in the Roman calander, but the two that were missing were January and February. That deficiency was made up long before the time of Julius. Cecil covered all this here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_160.html
The Romans originally had a 10 month calendar, but then added two more months during the time of the kings. Julius Caesar reformed the calender, but neither he or Augustus added any more months, even though the Romans renamed the month of Quintilis to “Iulius” and the month of Sextus to "Augustus.
Look, I think we’re overlooking some obvious interesting things about Dex’s article. Which was very cool, I agree.
There are 2,287 words in the article. 2+2+8+7 = 19, and 1+9 = 10, which is the number of completion.
22+87=99. This can become very significant. 9+9=18, which is the Hebrew “number” for Chai, which means “life”.
99 is clearly also a multiple of 3, the number of completion.
There are also 13,514 characters (counting spaces), and 1+3+5+1+4=14 which is twice 7, which is a number of completion.
If one removes the question, one is left with 2,246 words. 2+2+4+6=14, see above. Also, 22+46=68, and 6+8 also equals 14!
Without the header (SDStaff DEx replies…) and the signoff, there are 2,235 words. 2+2+3+5 = 12, which explains the really long section on Babylon. 22+35=57, which as we all know relates to ketchup. Also 5+7=12!
With the Bib, you’re left with 2,196 words. 2+1+9+6=18, “Life”! So there is life when you follow proper documentary procedures and footnote! Also, 21+96=117, and 1+1+7=9, which is a multiple of 3.
Finally - Dex has 3 letters also!
Zog, I think you have too much time on your hands. 
Excellent article Dex; the numerology of the Pythagoreans had a staggering effect on their development of the musical scale. If the board will induge an aside, I think an examination of their methods would be illuminating.
The Pythagoreans made two essential discoveries regarding music produced by plucking a taut string of length X (assume throughout the tension of the string remains constant):
[ul]
[li]If you halve the length of the string, you produce a note “in pleasing harmony” with the original note; in modern terms we call this the “octave” of the original note.[/li][li]If you add 50% to the length of a string, you also produce a note “in pleasing harmony” with the original note; in modern terms this is called the “fifth” of the original note.[/li][/ul]
Now, you can apply these rules repeatedly to create all the notes in an interval (scale plus all sharps/flats); for the purposes of music, we’d like to keep all the notes within the two octaves (i.e. string lengths between 50% and 100%).
For example, the second rule creates a fifth with a string length of 150%; we then use the first rule to cut that length in half, and place a new note at 75%. Repeat the process using this new note: add 50% of the 75% length to get 112.5%, then cut the length in half to get 56.25% and call that a new note.
The Pythagoreans continued the process–adding 50% of length to each new note, and cutting it in half if necessary to get the length between 50-100%. On the 12th attempt, they arrived at a length of 101.36%. For geometers who did these calculations with a compass and straightedge, they believed the process had returned full-circle to the original octave, and so had found a harmonious division of the 50-100% length into a mystical 12 intervals. The first seven (another mystic number) of these notes, played in ascending order, correspond to the modern major scale.
Of course, there was still that unnoticed 1.36% discrepancy, which became a problem for instruments that couldn’t be quickly retuned (e.g. a piano, which relied on transposing sclaes to get in tune with other instruments). The scale was eventually corrected to be logarithmic, making transposing and staying in tune a breeze (cf. Bach’s “The Well-tuned Clavier”).
For what it’s worth, prolonging the method does not produce a better answer than 12 until you reach 53, which is probably why quarter-tones, etc., don’t seem to work except as melodic decoration, a 53-tone octave being simply too complex to deal with in performance.
Also for what it’s worth, the same process produces good results for 5 and 7 notes before reaching 12, yielding the pentatonic and diatonic scales.
Um, also, your second sentence refers to the column as a “Staff Reopt.”
I wonder- are the Chinese any more superstitious that us Westerners? I work in a building where the floors go 11,12, 14, 15- they skip #13. Which of course is silly- not to mention un-American as 13 is a very good number for America.
Er, blush, yeah, it’s a Staff Report. The Columns are by Cecil. My goof.