9.27.2006

Thirty Six

  • Number of possible outcomes in the roll of two standard dice.
  • Number of inches in a yard.
  • The atomic number of krypton.
  • Number of plays in Shakespeare's first folio.
  • Number of black keys on a piano.
  • A perfect score on the ACT.
  • Number of stars on the US flag between 1865 and 1867. (Damn you, Nebraska!)
  • In 1636, Harvard was founded.
  • In 1836, Arkansas was admitted to the Union, allowing for Bill Clinton, my friend Dylan, and the problematic final chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
  • In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began, as did the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
  • In 2036, Citizen Kane will enter public domain (assuming no further changes to copyright law, which -- given the Disney Corporation's lobbying to alter fair use laws to keep Mickey Mouse out of the public domain -- seems unlikely. See this article for an interesting overview of how Disney and the presumably animatronic corpse of Sonny Bono conspire to perpetually extend copyright law. The article's author, Chris Sprigman, points out that "Ironically, many of Disney's animated films are based on Nineteenth Century public domain works, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle Book (released exactly one year after Kipling's copyrights expired).")
  • Also, in 2036, I will be 66 years old. Will you still love me, will you still need me?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll still love you. I'll still need you.

Anonymous said...

I don't think I'll have any use for you any more, however.
Well... Maybe one.