11 is a magic number, and not just because it is both the first double-digit prime number AND palindromic. Take my last post, for example. My last post was 22 days before impending academic deadline. 22 is a multiple of 11. Today is 11 days before aforementioned deadline. Coincidentally, my birthday is 11-22, which was 5 days ago. 5 is also prime. (Oddly enough, somebody who contributed a solid 50%, or 10 [which is almost 11] x 5, of my accumulated DNA has the numerical anagram/rotation [depending on how you toss your cookies] birthday 12-21). Not convinced? Consider the fact that my car turned 100,000 on 11-22. Or better still, consider 11,000 virgins: put 11,000 virgins on 11 boats that have just clocked 100,000 nautical miles (boats that are hopefully larger than the boats pictured above...unless the virgins are VERY VERY small) and sail them around the known world. Despite the accepted subtitle and apparent historic generation, some scholars debate that this was the actual origin of Shostakovich's 11th symphony, which was written the morning after a dream wherein Shostakovich was at once and simultaneously all 11,000 of those virgins on all 11 of those boats. In the dream, Shostakovich (or the 11,000 virgin instantiation of Shostakovich, that is) went ashore in Cologne, Deutschland (before the wall came down...or was even built), which was actually Centralia, PA and listened to a performance of Schoenberg's opus 11, the Three Piano Pieces. In the middle of the Second Piano Piece, Christopher Columbus entered the room wearing soggy boots and smelling of sea salt and pesto, and was so taken with the post-tonal music (which he mistakenly attributed to the 11,000 Virgin-Shostakovich sitting there listening to it), that he proclaimed the date to be Oct.21, and further proclaimed that the island on which the room was sitting, and all of the surrounding islands shall henceforth be known as "The Virgin Islands."
Yes, the number 11 is truly a magic number.
(n.)
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