I have been thinking about writing this blog since my brother's 30th birthday, which was on October 30th! Eventhough the date this year 10/30/2010 adds up to 7, his name starts with "H" - the 8th letter of the alphabet. So here are some interesting facts about 8 that i know of. I am sure that googling "the number 8" will result in more interesting information for those of you that want to pursue it.
In my view, the number 8 is a feminine number. It represents fullness and ever since i have seen the "goddess of fertility" statues found from ancient civilizations, my association of 8 with fertility has increased all the more. It is interesting to note that the total number of weeks of pregnancy (typically, 40 weeks) is cut down to waiting time of about 8 months from the time a lady realizes that she is expecting. In the spirit of fun and the upcoming winter though, i am representing a snowman using the 8 as shown below.
If you remember from a previous blog entry, i associate the number 8 with the color Orange. Orange as a color represents courage and bravery in the Indian culture. At what point does 8 come to represent bravery therefore, is indeed an interesting question - one that i am still contemplating. I believe that it takes a special type of bravery in being the "hand that rocks the cradle..." (HUGE shout out to all my female friends out there, whether you are mothers or not!). Recently a friend commented on his Facebook status - "why are decaf coffee containers always Orange?" - a fact that i had not really noticed until i read his post. I really wanted to write "because it takes much courage to drink just that!!"
Now to move on to the characteristics of 8. It is the first cube occurring in the number series (other than the obvious 1) since 2 to the power three results in 8. It is also a number that if you lay on its side, becomes infinity! The factors of 8 are 1, 2, 4, and 8. But the interesting journey of 8 begins with recognizing whether a number is divisible by 8 or not. If you remember, if the last two digits of a number are divisible by 4, the whole number is divisible by 4. In the case of 8 it is a little more complicated because one has to check the last three digits of the number. If the last three digits of a number are divisible by 8, then the entire number is divisible by 8. I guess the lesson to be learned here is that there is no real shortcut method to check for divisibility by 8 except to divide a number by 2 three consecutive times.
After the Octomom event last year and "Jon & Kate plus 8" debacle, i believe that people are more familiar with the fact that "Octa" represents 8. An interesting fact on the word "october" - prior to the rearrangement of the year done by Augustus Caesar (note that he denoted his birth month as the 8th month), October was the 8th month in the Roman calendar. The astrological star sign of Scorpio is still the 8th sign in the Zodiac. According to the new planetary rules, the total number of planets around the Sun is also 8 (sob! sob! Poor Pluto) which is ironical since Pluto is considered to be the ruling planet for Scorpios!!
While most of us are very comfortable with drawing hexagons, octagons are actually more symmetrical and we are more used to seeing them than we realize...think of STOP signs!
Anyways, the child unit is calling out for attention so I need to get going...but here is a thought i would like to leave you with - numerological analysis has demonstrated that people are born on the dates adding up 4 or 8 (4, 8, 13, 17, 22, 26) tend to have major life events occur on those dates or at those ages (and ages that add up to a 4 or 8)... If you are one of these people, please let me know if this holds true for you...
Until tomorrow or later...ADIOS!
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