You know what prime numbers are, yeah? They're natural numbers which have only two divisors, themselves & one. (A number like 12 has six: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12. A number like 2 has two: 1, 2. So 2 is a prime number.) Human beings have been fascinated by prime numbers since they had a little leisure time to while away with mathematics. I like them for no apparent reason, which is all right by me.
In a week, my age becomes a prime number, too. I'd like to attach (for the hell of it) some numerological significance to being that age, but as I look over my life I realize that prime number years weren't necessarily the best years of my life. This last year, for example, for all of its changes & weirdnesses & what-not, was a pretty good year. & it wasn't prime, not hardly. So the "prime is primo" theory doesn't hold water.
Prime numbers get more & more rare as we count up. But there are twenty-five of them in the first hundred natural numbers. One in four is a prime number! That's awesome. Here they are:
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67, 71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97
1973 was a pretty good year for music, something I'll explore this weekend. But it was even cooler for being the 297th prime number. (297, by the way, is not a prime number. Its divisors are 1, 3, 9, 11, 27, 33, 99 & 297.) It's really hard, by the way, to count a list of numbers. My brain now aches.
Hooray for prime number 1973! Hooray for math geekiness!
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