Why is my pen name Nineteen?
People have been asking me. And because my last attempt at an answer was one written in a single sleep-deprived hour and failed miserably I've decided to give it a more logical go.
Well, to start with, nineteen is kind of my favorite number.
As K.M.J.L-T. pointed out, it is the age of somebody very important - has been for a while, actually, and will be for a little while longer. Also, it is a prime number, which hold a certain magic on their own, and it's the last one under twenty.
It's the lowest fraction that can be used for 95%. That's not really a reason I carry around with me, I just think it's sort of interesting for some reason. Maybe it's because 95% is the last integer percentile that can be reduced to so small a fraction. I mean, the next thing that goes cleanly into 100 after 20 is 50, and you can only get 50% of the way to the end using that particular method.
It's the very last of the teen numbers, not quite equidistant between voting and drinking (though that, of course, is an opinion in which you might differ, if you count midnight to be in the afternoon rather than in the morning). Also, it is the last number beginning with the numeral 1 for eighty integers, which I think might have made it rather pompous, but didn't, so let's applaud nineteen for that, shall we? May we all be so humble!
But one reason - so simple, so beautiful, so directly under all our noses - makes nineteen a particularly fantastic number to be.
One need only write seven short words:
I love you
I love you tooPeople have been asking me. And because my last attempt at an answer was one written in a single sleep-deprived hour and failed miserably I've decided to give it a more logical go.
Well, to start with, nineteen is kind of my favorite number.
As K.M.J.L-T. pointed out, it is the age of somebody very important - has been for a while, actually, and will be for a little while longer. Also, it is a prime number, which hold a certain magic on their own, and it's the last one under twenty.
It's the lowest fraction that can be used for 95%. That's not really a reason I carry around with me, I just think it's sort of interesting for some reason. Maybe it's because 95% is the last integer percentile that can be reduced to so small a fraction. I mean, the next thing that goes cleanly into 100 after 20 is 50, and you can only get 50% of the way to the end using that particular method.
It's the very last of the teen numbers, not quite equidistant between voting and drinking (though that, of course, is an opinion in which you might differ, if you count midnight to be in the afternoon rather than in the morning). Also, it is the last number beginning with the numeral 1 for eighty integers, which I think might have made it rather pompous, but didn't, so let's applaud nineteen for that, shall we? May we all be so humble!
But one reason - so simple, so beautiful, so directly under all our noses - makes nineteen a particularly fantastic number to be.
One need only write seven short words:
I love you
Count the letters . Good night.
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