Cul de Sac by Richard Thompson for July 01, 2012

It’s a heavy burden, young Alice.

Arthur Rimbaud might have something to say on this situation, Alice.

Alice you can grow up to be either the family genius, or the family eccentric (the slightly weird old aunt/cat lady). It’s up to you!

Alice can be the family member who follows her stream of consciousness wherever it may wander.

(FYI, math doesn’t have anything to do with the imaginary social lives of numeral representations.)

Oh dear…oddly enough I understood exactly what Alice is talking about :)

Those numbers don’t add up, Alice.

Hey, Alice. Two is the only even prime number. How’s that for cool?

If she had only brought in the 4, they would have both known the ultimate answer.

Such a burden at such a young age.

That second hamster looks more ham than ster.

2 be or not 2 be. Alice is definitely number 1 in her own little world.

Even numbers are girls and odd numbers are boys, that’s true, but 2 is yellow, not green. An H is also yellow, but you can really only tell when it’s lower case. Most consonants are boys but as an aspirant H is almost as girly as a vowel. Gutteral consonants are mean, and sibillants are untrustworthy.

3 is blue and the friendliest number, while 5 is red and a bully. Stay away from 5, it’s bad news. If you’re looking for a female green number, look to 4; 2 and 4 are best friends. I don’t know about the hamsters, though.

And WaitingMan? Another unique thing about 2 is that adding it to itself gives you the same result as multiplying it by itself. 2+2=4, 2×2=4. But consider the 3: If you add the digits in any number and the sum is divisible by 3, then the original number is also divisible by 3. How cool is that? Furthermore, ANY other arrangement of those same digits will give you a number divisible by 3. 7+4+5+1+1=18 (divisible by 3), and 74511, 51741, 47115, 15174, etc. are all divisible by 3. A magic number indeed…

I think exactly the same way Alice…

cheers,

1×1=1+1? You might wanna check that. :-)

1. My husband, who is a math genius of sorts (wrote a math textbook, plus a couple of books on AutoCad) would say that the “2” in question is a numeral. A number is the number of doodlepuppies represented by the numeral. (I’m not a math genius.)2. A very interesting book, written by an autistic (or Aspbergery, depending on one’s viewpoint) math savant with synesthesia, is Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. I ordered it online, and wasn’t sorry.

You folks with synesthesia must live interesting lives. I can’t remember numbers (or numerals) very well. Can’t do math in my head to any extent, because I can’t remember the numbers long enough. Prefer “7” because it has a nice handle for me to hold onto while I fumble around with other numerals. Also have poor memory for faces (prosopagnosia). The part of my brain that handles spelling and stuff like remembering auditory phrases has hogged up the other part. Synesthesia might help with all this, and sounds like fun.

You can do it, Alice

For Alice to be an aunt, Petey would have to marry and have children. I can’t quite picture that.

I would comment here but I’ve been lost since I read this one.

It takes 2 to tango.

I’m always amazed at how much I learn reading the comics . . . and the comments. :SMILE:

And we are back in sequence with ten years ago today.