Prime Number Quotes

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world

People took what they wanted, they clutched at coincidences, the few there were, and made a life from them. . . . Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

She hadn't chosen him over all the others. The truth was that she hadn't even thought about anyone else.

You'll get used to it. In the end you won't even notice it anymore," he said. "How is that possible? It will always be there, right before my eyes." "Exactly," said Mattia. "Which is precisely why you won't see it anymore.

She was tired, with that tiredness that only emptiness brings.

They lived the slow and invisible interpenetration of their universes, like two stars gravitating around a common axis, in ever tighter orbits, whose clear destiny is to coalesce at some point in space and time.

I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?" "Something cool." (Dan) "Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?" Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine." Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?" "What do you mean? It's obvious.

Anyway, then it said on the news, 'And tonight the Prime Minister has just got to Number Ten.' I looked down at Jas and said, 'Ooer.' Meaning he'd got to number ten on the snogging scale. And then we both laughed like loons. Vati just looked at us like we were mad.

In fact, they didn't talk much at all, but they spent time together, each in his own abyss, held safe and tight by the other's silence.

Twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly.

Even though he was afraid to admit it, when he was with her it seemed it was worth doing all those normal things that normal people do.

Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other.

Shepherd Book: What are we up to, sweetheart? River: Fixing your Bible. Book: I, um... What? River: Bible's broken. Contradictions, false logistics - doesn't make sense. Shepherd Book: No, no. You-you-you can't... River: So we'll integrate non-progressional evolution theory with God's creation of Eden. Eleven inherent metaphoric parallels already there. Eleven. Important number. Prime number. One goes into the house of eleven eleven times, but always comes out one. Noah's ark is a problem. Shepherd Book: Really? River: We'll have to call it early quantum state phenomenon. Only way to fit 5000 species of mammal on the same boat. Shepherd Book: River, you don't fix the Bible. River: It's broken. It doesn't make sense. Book: It's not about making sense. It's about believing in something, and letting that belief be real enough to change your life. It's about faith. You don't fix faith, River. It fixes you.

His scars were hidden and safe in her hand.

I'll tell you once, and I'll tell you again. There's always a prime between n and 2n.

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.

In the end it happens, in some way you couldn't imagine before.

It was strange to find them here, still alive, with their shared bits of past that suddenly counted for nothing.

Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away for ever.

Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered. Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that. When he imagined confessing these things to her, the thin layer of sweat on his hands evaporated completely and for a good ten minutes he was no longer capable of touching anything.

He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything.

When one made love to zero spheres embraced their arches and prime numbers caught their breath...

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he’s a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he is to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while you may, go marry; For having lost but once your prime, You may for ever tarry. - To the Virgins, To Make much of Time

I could solve all the Diophantine equations, extend Newton’s work on infinite series, complete Euler's analysis of prime numbers, and it wouldn’t matter.” She looked at Isabelle. “Ella is the beauty. You and I are the ugly stepsisters. And so the world reduces us, all three of us, to our lowest common denominator.

Do you really like studying?" Mattia nodded. "Why?" "It's the only thing I know how to do," he said shortly. He wanted to tell her that he liked studying because you can do it alone, because all the things you study are already dead, cold, and chewed over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they left you time to choose, that they never hurt you and you couldn't hurt them either. But he said nothing.

Slim and neatly groomed, he looked like a really sexy mathematician unaware that he was a prime number. I wanted to unbutton his shirt, muss his hair, and exclaim, "Good heavens, Professor Dracula, you're stunning!

Numbers are everywhere," said Denis. "They're always the same, aren't they?" "Yes." "But Alice is only here." "Yes." "So you've already made up your mind.

With a little effort, she could get up by herself.

but his eyes were too dark for her to make out any spark in them

The South is a strange place, one that can't be fit inside a movie, a place that dares you to simplify it, like a prime number, like a Bible story, like my father.

The scene was set. All that was required was an action, a cold start, instant and brutal as beginnings always are.

Denis's love for Mattia had burned itself out, like a forgotten candle in an empty room, leaving behind a ravenous discontent.

...finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.

Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living.

Separating them were two layers of brick, a few inches of plaster, and nine years of silence.

She found herself thinking of how it would feel to be safely trapped in his arms, with no more possibility to choose.

she and Mattia were united by an invisible, elastic thread, buried under a pile of meaningless things, a thread that could exist only between two people like themselves: two people who had acknowledged their own solitude within the other.

On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as “bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges—curiosity.

Why did you choose to stay here?" (...) "I don't know," he said. "It's as if there's more oxygen here.

The rule for working out prime numbers is very simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. […] Prime numbers is what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

Las decisiones se toman en unos segundos y se pagan el resto de la vida.

I tell you, with complex numbers you can do anything.

All Mattia saw was a shadow moving toward him. He instinctively closed his eyes and then felt Alice’s hot mouth on his, her tears on his cheek, or maybe they weren’t hers, and finally her hands, so light, holding his head still and catching all his thoughts and imprisoning them there, in the space that no longer existed between them.

C'era stata quella volta e ce n'erano state infinite altre, che Alice non ricordava più, perché l'amore di chi non amiamo si deposita sulla superficie e da lì evapora in fretta.

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

Some numbers, even large ones, have no factors - except themselves, of course, and 1. These are called prime numbers, because everything they are starts with themselves. They are original, gnarled, unpredictable, the freaks of the number world.

The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn't going to be easier, not is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime numbers.

She remembered lying in the crevasse, buried by snow. She thought of that perfect silence. Also now, like then, no one knew where she was. This time too, no one would come. But she no longer expected them to. She smiled at the clear sky. With a little effort, she could get up by herself.

prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

There had been that time and there had been an infinite number of others, which Alice no longer remembered, because the love of those we don't love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.

Maybe people like you and me are just prime numbers. We don't neatly divide into a world that demands order. And they keep trying to find out why, and what makes us the way we are, but they can't.

إن شعور المرء بكونه مميزا هو أسوأ أنواع الأقفاص التى يمكن للمرء أن يبنيه.

Porque estaban unidos por un hilo invisible, oculto entre mil cosas de poca importancia, que sólo podía existir entre dos personas como ellos: dos soledades que se reconocían.

We drove around for half an hour in search of two free parking spaces because you couldn't get into a single one," he said, to banish those thoughts. "It was just an excuse to keep you with me," Alice replied. "But you never understood anything.

Por primera vez sintió que la inmensa distancia que los separaba era insignificante. Estaba convencida de que él seguía en el mismo sitio, donde ya le había escrito algunas veces, muchos años antes. Porque estaban unidos por un hilo invisible, oculto entre mil cosas de poca importancia, que sólo podía existir entre dos personas como ellos: dos soledades que se reconocían.

Those nights when the future seemed to last only till the morning and he would count off the hours, one by one, by the chimes of distant church bells.

If we couldn't see anything outside the car, if we didn't know we were moving, there would be no way of telling whether it was the raindrops' fault or our own.

Se había atado a él con la obstinación con que uno se ata a las cosas que lo perjudican.

Alleen en verloren, vlak bij elkaar, maar niet dicht genoeg om elkaar echt te raken.

Then he realized it was the most natural thing in the world, which was precisely why he was incapable of it.

No, what she had in front of her was a grown-up person who had built a life around a terrifying abyss, on terrain that had already collapsed, and yet who had succeeded, far away from here, among people Alice didn't know.

I’m not sure what prime numbers have to do with anything,” I say in a gentle voice. “Prime numbers have to do with everything. But to clarify, that’s what I imagine falling in love is like and then staying married. You start out as low twin primes and as time goes on, if you manage to defy the statistical odds and not get divorced, you become like those rarer twin primes, still only separated by two. That’s an amazing feat.” “How romantic

Hij deed zijn mond open om te antwoorden dat je speciaal voelen de ergste kooi is die je om je heen kunt bouwen, maar hij zei niets.

... perché sapeva che Mattia parlava poco ma, quando lo faceva, valeva la pena di stare zitti e ascoltare.

It was another of the things he had left behind, another obvious step in a boy's life that he had decided not to take, so as to stay as far as possible from the machinery of life.

He was dressed anonymously and had the posture of someone who doesn't know how to occupy the space of his own body.

She emptied herself of Fabio and of herself, of all the useless efforts she had made to get where she was and find nothing there. With detached curiosity she observed the rebirth of her weaknesses, her obsessions. This time she would let them decide, since she hadn't been able to do anything anyway. Against certain parts of yourself you remain powerless, she said to herself, as she regressed pleasurably to the time when she was a girl.

the cipher was based on the product of two hundred-digit prime numbers, and the National Security Agency had staked its reputation on the claim that the fastest computer in existence could not crack it before the Big Crunch at the end of the Universe.

Mattia thought there was nothing good about having his mind. That he would happily have unscrewed it and replaced it with a different one, or even with a package of biscotti, provided it was empty and light. He opened his mouth to reply that feeling special is the worst kind of cage that a person can build for himself, but he didn't say anything.

When she opened her eyes the sky was still there, with its monotonous and brilliant blue. Not a cloud passed across it.

Ci si può ammalare anche solo di un ricordo, e lei era ammalata.

this meant he had reached the end of the track that he had blindly followed from the first year of primary school to graduation.

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life.

The square of every prime number is one more than a multiple of 24.

For Alice and Mattia, the high school years were an open wound that had seemed so deep that it could never heal. They had passed through them without breathing, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and eventually they had noticed that it didn't make all that much difference. They had formed a defective and asymmetrical friendship, made up of long absences and much silence, a clean and empty space where both could come back to breathe when the walls of their school became too close for them to ignore the feeling of suffocation.

It was like being wrapped in a sheet, all white, nothing but white, above, below, all around you. It was the exact opposite of darkness, but it frightened Alice in precisely the same way.

The nature of a letter can also be revealed within its numeric value. All letters and numbers behave in a certain but recognizable way, from which we can deduce its nature. The number two is the only even prime. There is an inherent mathematical dilemma with, “one.” No matter how many times you multiply it, by itself, you still can’t get past “one” (1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1). So, how does “one” move beyond itself? How does the same, produce the different? Mathematically, “one” is forced to divide itself and work from that duality. Therein, hides the divine puzzle of bet (b). To become “two,” the second must revolt from wholeness—a separation. Yet, the second could not have existed without the benefit of the original wholeness. Also, the first wanted the second to exist, but the first doesn’t know what the second will become. Again, two contains potential badness, to a Hebrew. (Ge 25:24)

Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both of their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

Hence 8197. He liked 97 because it was the largest two-digit prime number, and he loved 81 because it was absolutely the only number out of all the literally infinite possibilities whose square root was also the sum of its digits. Square root of eighty-one was nine, and eight and one made nine. No other nontrivial number in the cosmos had that kind of sweet symmetry. Perfect.

She couldn't remember what they had talked about, only that she had looked at her rapt from a place just behind her eyes, a place full of jumbled thoughts that she had kept to herself even then.

He collected the stories of people like himself, mostly keeping silent and listening. He slowly discovered that the stories were similar, that there was a process, and that the process involved immersion, putting your whole head under until you touched the bottom and only then coming up for air.

Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000.

By now he had learned. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains. It had happened with Michela and then with Alice and again now. He recognized them this time: those seconds were there, and he would never make a mistake again.

He was weird. He knew this. He suspected he was in the wrong body, family, town, species, that there'd been some big cosmic mix-up. Like maybe he was supposed to be a tree or a barn owl or a prime number. He only found himself, his real self, in novels, not even in the stories and characters, but in the sentences, the lone words.

That evening, getting up from the table, she had crossed the invisible boundary beyond which things start working by themselves.

No tenían nada en común, salvo el no querer estar allí ese día.

They had passed through them in a state of apnoea, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and they had noticed that it didn’t make a big difference.

Mattia pensaba que él y Alice eran eso, dos primos gemelos solos y perdidos, próximos pero nunca juntos.

الناس يكتسبون الثقة بالنفس كلما تقدموا فى السن.

L'unica cosa certa era che lui era tornato e che lei avrebbe voluto non se ne andasse più.

-Pero no quiero verlo más. -Te acostumbrarás, al final ni repararás en él. -¿Y cómo, si lo tendré siempre a la vista? -Por eso, por eso mismo dejarás de verlo.

Fermat’s assertion that if n is any whole number and p any prime, then n multiplied by itself p times minus n is divisible by p.

the love of those we don’t love in return settles on the surface and from there quickly evaporates.

She tried to open the bottle, but the top slipped through her fingers without moving. He took the bottle from her hand and opened it using only his thumb and index finger. Alice thought there was nothing special in the gesture, that she could have done it herself, like anyone else, if only her hands hadn't been so sweaty. And yet she found it strangely fascinating, like a small heroic feat performed specially for her.

Mattia's voice no longer stirred anything in his stomach, but he was aware of the idea of him and always would be, as the only true benchmark for everything that had come afterward.

Había aprendido a respetar el abismo que Mattia se había excavado alrededor. Años atrás quiso saltarlo y se había despeñado. Ahora se conformaba con sentare en el borde y dejar colgar las piernas.

For example, to a mathematician, the number 28 is really 2×2×7, which is known as the prime decomposition of 28. Prime numbers are, in a way, the atoms of maths, the components that make up all other numbers. The non-prime numbers are known as composite numbers.

the global impact of pure science rises above all national boundaries, and the sheer timelessness of pure mathematics transcends the limitations of his twentieth-century span. When Turing returned to the prime numbers in 1950 they were unchanged from when he left them in 1939, wars

I just wanted you to know these are my favorite numbers and my favorite twin primes: 137 and 139. And since they are my favorite, I wanted to give them to you. 137 and 139. They’re yours now. Please take good care of them.

In a great number of the cosmogonic myths the world is said to have developed from a great water, which was the prime matter. In many cases, as for instance in an Indian myth, this prime matter is indicated as a solution, out of which the solid earth crystallized out.

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all the others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies. In his first year at university, Mattia had learned that, among prime numbers, there are some that are even more special. Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered.

His wife was disappearing from life like a wet mark drying on a shirt.

Era sólo que el tiempo volaba llevándose consigo más tiempo; eran sólo actos evidentes que nada sabían del futuro ni del pasado.

Se vaciaba de Fabio y de sí misma, de todos los esfuerzos inútiles que había hecho para llegar ahí y descubrir que nada había conseguido.

[…] porque, aunque no lo amaba, él aman por los dos y eso los salvaba.

Aquello era exactamente lo contrario de la oscuridad, pero infundía el mismo miedo.

forty-one was a “very special number, the initial integer in the longest continuous string of quadratic primes.

Con un poco de esfuerzo podría levantarse sola.

No pedía mucho; sólo la normalidad que siempre había merecido.

ما تراه فى المرآة هو أقرب مما يكون عليه فى الواقع.

Perché aveva paura ad ammetterlo, ma quando era con lei sembrava che valesse la pena di fare tutte le cose normali che le persone normali fanno.

Parlavano poco, ma trascorrevano il tempo insieme, ognuno concentrato sulla propria voragine, con l'altro che lo teneva stretto e in salvo, senza bisogno di tante parole.

C'era qualcosa, che le faceva venire voglia di avvicinarsi, di sollevargli il mento e di dirgli guardami, sono qui.

Vicini ma non abbastanza per sfiorarsi davvero.

Ecco. Ci pensava spesso. Di nuovo. Era come un altra delle sue malattie, dalla quale non voleva veramente guarire. Ci si può ammalare anche solo di un ricordo e lei era ammalata.

By now he had learned. Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains.

Le persone invecchiando acquistavano sicurezza, mentre lui la perdeva, come se la sua fosse una riserva limitata

Era quello che aveva immaginato così spesso. Non proprio uguale, in realtà, ma per una volta decise di non fare caso alle imperfezioni

Una trepidazione piacevole si prese tutte le sue ossa e la fece sorridere, come se il tempo ricominciasse esattamente da lì.

Le scelte si fanno in pochi secondi e si scontano per il tempo restante.

How she longed for the uninhibitedness of kids her age, their vacuous sense of immortality.

Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away forever.

Prime numbers is what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.

To be an engineer, and build a marvelous machine, and to see the beauty of its operation is as valid an experience of beauty as a mathematician's absorption in a wondrous theorem. One is not "more" beautiful than the other. To see a space shuttle standing on the launch pad, the vented gases escaping, and witness the thunderous blast-off as it climbs heavenward on a pillar of flame - this is beauty. Yet it is a prime example of applied mathematics.

With photography Alice liked the actions more than the results. She liked opening the back of the camera and unrolling the new film a couple of inches, just enough to catch it in the runner, and thinking that this empty film would soon become something and not knowing what, taking the first few snaps into the void, aiming, focusing, checking her balance, deciding whether to include or exclude pieces of reality as she saw fit, enlarging, distorting.

The whole house, its very walls, was impregnated with a smell of vitality that he was unused to. He thought about his own apartment, where it was so easy to decide simply not to exist.

Every time she heard the click of the shutter, followed by that faint rustle, she remembered when she used to catch grasshoppers in the garden of their house in the mountains when she was a little girl, trapping them between her cupped hands. She thought that it was the same with photographs, only now she seized time and fixed it on celluloid, capturing it halfway through its jump toward the next moment.

As a little girl she had liked looking at her palms against the light, the red peeking through her closed fingers. Once she had shown it to her father and he had kissed her fingertips, pretending to eat them.

Una vez, hablándole de su propia experiencia, Denis le había dicho que los primeros contactos son siempre los mismos, como las aperturas del ajedrez. No es preciso inventar nada, porque ambos buscan lo mismo.

Su madre ya vivía en ella en forma de recuerdo, como un grano de polen que se hubiera posado en algún rincón de su memoria, donde permanecería el resto de su vida convertida en unas cuantas imágenes sin sonido.

Because prime numbers are fucking serious, man. Some serious shit. They can make you lose it. They’re like sirens. They call you in with their isolated beauty and before you know it you are in some major mind-shit.

— Привыкнешь. В конце концов и замечать не будешь, — наконец выдавил он. — Как? Это же останется навсегда, так и будет все время у меня на глазах. — Вот именно, — подтвердил Маттиа. — Поэтому и перестанешь замечать.

Because, you know, prime numbers are fucking serious, man. Some serious shit. They can make you lose it. They're like sirens. They call you in with their isolated beauty and before you know it you are in some major mind-shit.

They weren't smiling and were looking in opposite directions, but it was as if their bodies flowed smoothly into each other's, through their arms and fingers. . . . There was a shared space between their bodies, the confines of which were not well delineated, from which nothing seemed to be missing and in which the air seemed motionless, undisturbed.

Sapeva che il disordine del mondo non può che aumentare, che il rumore di fondo crescerà fino a coprire ogni segnale coerente, ma era convinto che misurando attentamente ogni suo gesto avrebbe avuto meno colpa di questo lento disfacimento.

What’s a prime number?” Donut asked, speaking for the first time. “It’s a math thing,” I said. “You learn about them in fourth or fifth grade, and then you don’t need to know about it ever again unless you become a mathematician. Or a math teacher.

The rule for working out prime numbers is really simple, but no one has ever worked out a simple formula for telling you whether a very big number is a prime number or what the next one will be. If a number is really, really big, it can take a computer years to work out whether it is a prime number. Prime numbers are useful for writing codes and in America they are classed as Military Material and if you find one over 100 digits long you have to tell the CIA and they buy it off you for $10,000. But it would not be a very good way of making a living. Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

Матия нарочно беше толкова тих в движенията си. Знаеше, че безпорядъкът в света не може да не се увеличава, че фоновият шум ще нараства, докато не покрие всеки ясен сигнал. Бе убеден обаче, че ако преценява правилно жестовете си, ще има по-малко вина за тази разруха.

Mattia sentiu os cabelos dela a fazerem-lhe cócegas no pescoço. Sentiu o fino intervalo de ar que os separava a encher-se com o seu calor e a premer levemente sobre a sua pele, como algodão. Sentiu o instinto de a puxar a si, mas as mãos ficaram imóveis, como que adormecidas.

Aquela imagem parada fez emergir outras e a mente de Alice juntou-as recriando o movimento, os fragmentos de sons, farrapos de sensações. Sentiu-se invadida por uma nostalgia lancinante, mas agradável. Se pudesse escolher um momento a partir do qual recomeçar escolheria precisamente esse: ela e Mattia num quarto silencioso, com as suas intimidades que hesitavam tocar-se mas cujos contornos coincidiam exactamente.

It’s widely noted that among players currently eligible for the Hall of Fame, Maris and Murphy are the only two-time MVP recipients not enshrined at Cooperstown. In a previous book I argued Maris should be in the Hall of Fame—here I’d simply point out that during his prime, Murphy was the best player in the game. You can argue that his prime didn’t last long enough or that his career numbers aren’t strong enough, but then he didn’t cheat either.

What are you saying?” “I want to try.” He wanted clarification on that. “You want to try what?” There it was, that deep flush. “You know.” Yes, he knew, but he wasn’t going to let her off the hook so easily. She was going to be his. For a brief time, she would belong to him and he would have everything he wanted, and he wanted her to start talking dirty. Yes. He wanted to teach her, to train her to accept pleasure so she would expect it. “No, I don’t know. You’ll have to be plain.” Avery blushed a little. “I want to be intimate with you.” So sweet. So polite. So not happening. “That sounds like you want me to get into my pajamas and exchange secrets with you. I’m not your girlfriend, Avery. Tell me what you want. That’s lesson number one. Communication and honesty are the keys to the relationship I want. I need to hear you say plainly what you want.” She hesitated, but only for a moment. He wasn’t surprised. Deep in her heart, she was a brave girl. She’d faced so much and still was open with her heart. Damn, but he didn’t understand that. “I would like for us to sleep together.” “I’m not very sleepy.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with anything. She groaned a little in obvious frustration. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” “Yes. I do. So say what you want.” “I want to have sex.” “So clinical. I’ll have to think about that.” “I want to make love.” “Sweet, but not what I’m looking for.” Her face crinkled into the cutest pout. “Damn it, Lee. I want to fuck.” Just like that he was primed and ready. She’d said fuck with such a sweet little heat, her eyebrows forming a V over her face as though the entire incident had offended her polite sensibilities. She would learn there wasn’t room for politeness between them. He growled just a little. “I want to fuck, too, baby. I want to fuck all night long.

In America's 'nonlinear war', with no frontline or clear political or territorial goals, the number of enemy killed apparently revealed who was 'winning'. 'The military kill' became 'the prime target, simply because the essential political target is too elusive for us, or worse, because we do not understand its importance'.

The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn't going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime numbers. Of course, lots of mathematical discoveries have practical applications, no matter how esoteric they may seem. Research on ellipses made it possible to determine the orbits of the planets, and Einstein used non-Euclidean geometry to describe the form of the universe. Even prime numbers were used during the war to create codes—to cite a regrettable example. But those things aren't the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the truth.

Putin isn’t a full-blown Fascist because he hasn’t felt the need. Instead, as prime minister and president, he has flipped through Stalin’s copy of the totalitarian playbook and underlined passages of interest to call on when convenient. Throughout his time in office, he has stockpiled power at the expense of provincial governors, the legislature, the courts, the private sector, and the press. A suspicious number of those who have found fault with him have later been jailed on dubious charges or murdered in circumstances never explained. Authority within Putin’s “vertical state”—including directorship of the national oil and gas companies—is concentrated among KGB alumni and other former security and intelligence officials. A network of state-run corporations and banks, many with shady connections offshore, furnish financial lubricants for pet projects and privileged friends. Rather than diversify as China has done, the state has more than doubled its share of the national economy since 2005.

Mr. Jeavons said that I was a very clever boy. I said that I wasn’t clever. I was just noticing how things were, and that wasn’t clever. That was just being observant. Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new. Like the universe expanding, or who committed a murder. Or if you see someone’s name and you give each letter a value from 1 to 26 (a = 1, b = 2, etc.) and you add the numbers up in your head and you find that it makes a prime number, like Jesus Christ (151), or Scooby-Doo (113), or Sherlock Holmes (163), or Doctor Watson (167). Mr. Jeavons asked me whether this made me feel safe, having things always in a nice order, and I said it did.

O beijo durou, minutos inteiros, tempo suficiente para que a realidade encontrasse uma fresta entre as suas bocas aderentes e se enfiasse por aí adentro, obrigando ambos a analisar o que estavam a fazer. Separaram-se. Mattia sorriu apressadamente, automaticamente, e Alice levou um dedo aos lábios húmidos, quase que a certificar-se se tinha realmente acontecido. Havia uma decisão a tomar e tinha de ser tomada sem falar. Olharam um para o outro, alternadamente, mas já tinham perdido a sincronia e os seus olhos não se encontraram.

as if moved by a breeze that only she could feel.

Mattia stayed right where he was, feeling those clothes that weren't his, but with the pleasant sensation of disappearing into them.

She was sleeping a sleep that wasn't her own and the gadgets to which she was connected didn't make a sound.

From the stereo came music that Alice didn't recognize, but it wasn't there to be listened to, just to complete a perfect scenario; there was nothing casual about it.

Mattia was startled to find that he still had instincts, buried beneath the dense network of thoughts and abstractions that had woven itself around him.

Porque el amor de quien no amamos se deposita en la superficie y se evapora rápidamente

Primes are the atoms of the number system: every whole number is a product of primes.

El recuerdo de las personas que no amamos es superficial y se evapora pronto.

Esto último lo pensaba sobre todo por la noche, en ese estado previo al sueño en que la mente produce mil imágenes caóticas y es demasiado débil para engañarse a sí misma.

Впервые она подумала, что ей больше некого обвинять, что во всех своих ошибках виновата она одна.

Он подумал, что если бы вел себя, как все, то был бы другим человеком.

Вообще-то они спокойно относились друг к другу - без особой симпатии, но и без неприязни. У них не было ничего общего, кроме желания находиться в этот момент совсем в другом месте.

finance minister is like the numeral zero. Its power depends on the number you place in front of it. The success of a finance minister depends on the support of the prime minister.

Ze verlangde hartgrondig naar de onbevangenheid van haar leeftijdsgenoten, hun dwaze gevoel van onsterfelijkheid.

I numeri primi sono divisibili soltanto per 1 e per se stessi.Se ne stanno al loro posto nell'infinita serie dei numeri naturali,schiacciati come tutti fra due, ma un passo in là rispetto agli altri.Sono numeri sospettosi e solitari e per questo Mattia li trovava meravigliosi.Certe volte pensava che in quella sequenza ci fossero finiti per sbaglio,che vi fossero rimasti intrappolati come perline infilate in una collana.Altre volte,invece,sospettava che anche a loro sarebbe piaciuto essere come tutti,solo dei numeri qualunque,ma che per qualche motivo non ne fossero capaci.Il secondo pensiero lo sfiorava soprattutto di sera, nell'intrecciarsi caotico di immagini che precede il sonno,quando la mente è troppo debole per raccontarsi delle bugie.

The mathematical order is beautiful precisely because it has no effect on the real world. Life isn’t going to be easier, nor is anyone going to make a fortune, just because they know something about prime numbers. Of course, lots of mathematical discoveries have practical applications, no matter how esoteric they may seem. …. But those things aren’t the goal of mathematics. The only goal is to discover the truth.

Overall, Donner Party men died at nearly twice the rate of women (56.6 percent of the males, 29.4 percent of the females). They died much sooner, too. Fourteen Donner Party males died before the first female did. And it was men in their prime years who died earliest and in the largest numbers. Of twenty-one men between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine, 66 percent died; of thirty women in the same age group, only 14 percent died.

Se si ha la pazienza di andare avanti a contare, si scopre che queste coppie via via si diradano.Ci si imbatte in numeri primi sempre più isolati,smarriti in quello spazio silenzioso e cadenzato fatto solo di cifre e si avverte il presentimento angosciante che le coppie incontrate fino a lì fossero un fatto accidentale,che il vero destino sia quello di rimanere soli.Poi,proprio quando ci si sta per arrendere,quando non si ha più voglia di contare, ecco che ci si imbatte in altri due gemelli, avvinghiati stretti l'uno all'altro. [...] Mattia pensava che lui e Alice erano così,due primi gemelli,soli e perduti,vicini ma non abbastanza per sfiorarsi davvero.

Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced “eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve.

I work at T-Town, which is about ninety-nine percent men, and all of them either are alpha personalities or think they are. That said, what we have here is the standard dynamic for sexual tension. I'm moderately good-looking. I have big boobs, and I get hit on by everyone from the pastor of my church to baristas at Starbucks, and by every single guy at T-Town except for my boss and the range master. I don't blame them and I don't judge them. It's part of the procreative drive hardwired into us, and we haven't evolved as a species far enough exert any genuine control over the biological imperative. You, on the other hand, are a very good-looking man of prime breeding age. Old enough to have interesting lines and scars--and stories to go with them--and young enough to be a catch. You probably get laid as often as you want to, and you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times women have said no to you. Maybe--and please correct me if I've strayed too far into speculation--being an agent of a secret government organization has led you to buy into the superspy sex stud propaganda perpetuated by James Bond films." "My name is Powers," I said. "Austin Powers." She ignored me and plowed ahead. "We're in the middle of a crisis. We may have to work closely together for several days, or even several weeks. Close-quarters travel, emotions running high, all that. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather not spend the next few days living inside a trite office romance cliche. That includes everything from mild flirtation to sexual innuendo and double entendre and the whole ball of wax." She sipped her Coke. The ball landed in my court with a thump.

One hundred and thirteen was a prime number. You couldn’t make it by multiplying any other numbers together. Hundred and twelve, you could make by multiplying fifty-six by two, or twenty-eight by four, or fourteen by eight. Hundred and fourteen, you could make by multiplying fifty-seven by two or nineteen by six, or thirty-eight by three. But one hundred and thirteen was prime. No factors. The only way to make a hundred and thirteen was by multiplying a hundred and thirteen by one.

Pela primeira vez, Mattia envergonhou-se de aos vinte e dois anos de idade ainda não ter carta de condução. Era outra das coisas que havia deixado para trás, outro passo óbvio na vida de um rapaz que ele escolhera não dar, para se manter o mais possível fora da engrenagem da vida. Como comer pipocas no cinema, como sentar-se nas costas de um banco, como não respeitar a hora de entrada em casa imposta pelos pais, como jogar futebol com uma bola de estanho enrolada ou estar de pé, nu, em frente a uma rapariga. Pensou que a partir daquele dia tudo seria diferente. Decidiu que ia tirar a carta de condução o mais depressa possível. Fá-lo-ia por ela, para a levar a passear. Porque tinha medo de o admitir, mas quando estava com ela parecia que valia a pena fazer todas as coisas normais que as pessoas normais fazem.

Perhaps the old lady had kidnapped Michela, had found her in the park and taken her away, because she had a violent desire for a little girl but couldn't have children. Her womb was defective or else she was unwilling to make a bit of room in it. Just like me, thought Alice.

Numerele prime sunt divizibile numai cu unu si cu ele însele. Stau la locul lor în infinita serie î de numere naturale, strivite, la fel ca restul, între altele două, dar cu un pas mai încolo faţă de celelalte. Sunt numere bănuitoare şi solitare şi de aceea Mattia le găsea minunate.

She could imagine problems enormously beyond us that would be old hat to them. But she couldn't get into their minds; she couldn't imagine what thinking would be like if you were much more capable than a human being. Of course. No surprise. What did she expect? It was like trying to visualize a new primary color or a world in which you could recognize several hundred acquaintances individually only be their smells... She could talk about this, but she couldn't experience it. By definition, it has to be mighty hard to understand the behavior of a being much smarter than you are. But even so, even so: Why only prime numbers?

Cuando estaba con ella sentía que valía la pena hacer todas esas cosas normales que hacen las personas normales. Mattia pensó que nada bueno había en tener una cabeza como la suya, que con ganas se la habría arrancado y sustituido por otra, incluso por una caja de galletas siempre que estuviera vacía y fuera ligera. Quiso contestar que sentirse especial era una jaula, lo peor que podía pasarle a uno, pero se abstuvo. Estaban unidos por un hilo invisible, oculto entre mil cosas de poca importancia, que sólo podía existir entre dos personas como ellos: dos soledades que se reconocían. No lo había elegido entre nadie; no había pensado en nadie más.

There is something rather wonderful about the fact that, at a particularly perilous point in a war for the continued independent existence of the nation, the British Prime Minister could be upbraided by his wife for being short tempered; we can be fairly certain that no one was saying this to Churchill’s opposite number in the Reich Chancellery.

Ze observeerde nieuwsgierig, maar van een afstand, hoe haar zwakheden, haar obsessies, weer de kop opstaken. Deze keer zou ze die laten beslissen, zelf had ze er immers niets van terechtgebracht. Tegenover sommige dingen van jezelf sta je machteloos, zei ze bij zichzelf, terwijl ze zich tevreden mee liet voeren naar de tijd dat ze nog een meisje was.

I numeri primi sono divisibili soltanto per 1 e per sè stessi. Se ne stanno al loro posto nell’infinita serie dei numeri naturali, schiacciati come tutti fra due, ma un passo in là rispetto agli altri. Sono numeri sospettosi e solitari e per questo Mattia li trovava meravigliosi. Certe volte pensava che in quella sequenza ci fossero finiti per sbaglio, che vi fossero rimasti intrappolati come perline infilate in una collana. Altre volte, invece, sospettava che anche a loro sarebbe piaciuto essere come tutti, solo dei numeri qualunque, ma che per qualche motivo non ne fossero capaci.In un corso del primo anno Mattia aveva studiato che tra i numeri primi ce ne sono alcuni ancora più speciali. I matematici li chiamano primi gemelli: sono coppie di numeri primi che se ne stanno vicini,anzi,quasi vicini, perchè fra di loro vi è sempre un numero pari che gli impedisce di toccarsi per davvero. Numeri come l’11 e il 13, come il 17 e il 19, il 41 e il 43. Se si ha la pazienza di andare avanti a contare, si scopre che queste coppie via via si diradano. ci si imbatte in numeri primi sempre più isolati, smarriti in quello spazio silenzioso e cadenzato fatto solo di cifre e si avverte il presentimento angosciante che le coppie incontrate fino a lì fossero un fatto accidentale, che il vero destino sia quello di rimanere soli.Poi, proprio quando ci si sta per arrendere, quando non si ha più voglia di contare, ecco che ci si imbatte in altri due gemelli, avvinghiati stretti l’uno all’altro. Tra i matematici è convinzione comune che per quanto si possa andare avanti, ve ne saranno sempre altri due, anche se nessuno può dire dove, finchè non li si scopre. Mattia pensava che lui e Alice erano così, due primi gemelli, soli e perduti, vicini ma non abbastanza per sfiorarsi davvero.

Having never had dealings with Bow Street, Lady Fieldhurst was not quite certain what to expect: perhaps a stout fellow past his prime, befuddled with sleep or spirits, with a bulbous red nose—the same sort as might be found in any number of watchmen’s boxes across the metropolis. The individual who entered the room in [the footman's] wake, however, was very nearly her own age. To be sure, his nose was somewhat crooked, as if it had been broken at some point, but it was far from bulbous, and it was certainly not red. He was quite tall, almost gangly, with curling brown hair tied at the nape of his neck in an outmoded queue. He wore an unfashionably shallow-crowned hat and a black swallow-tailed coat of good cloth but indifferent cut; indeed, his only claim to fashion lay in the quizzing glass which hung round his neck from a black ribbon, and which he now raised, the resulting magnification revealing his eyes to be a warm brown. Julia might have been much reassured as to his competence, had it not been for the fact that his mouth hung open as from a rusty hinge.

Laura tingle: "So it's not jut that we see Gillard as a backstabber who brought down an elected prime minister, it is that we see her as the very reason we have minority government. Gillard has become the embodiment of a crushing number of uncertainties and disappointed expectations, both about politics and Australia's future, which makes voters uncomfortable -and in some cases angry.

Ей никак не удавалось понять секрет этих взглядов, которыми Виола и ее подруги сражали наповал всех мальчишек вокруг. Безжалостные и призывные, они могли уничтожить или помиловать — всё решало едва уловимое движение бровей. Она попробовала посмотреть на свое отражение таким же манящим взглядом, но увидела в зеркале неловкую и нескладную девицу, которая глупо жеманничала, двигаясь, словно под наркозом.

On 10 September 2008, Raghuram Rajan, noted economist and honorary advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, delivered a speech at the Bombay Chamber of Commerce where he spoke about how most of India's billionaires did not derive their wealth from IT or software but from land, natural resources, and government contracts or licences. He spoke of India being second only to Russia in terms of wealth concentration (the number of billionaires per trillion dollars of GDP). To show how extraordinary this number was he quoted the case of Brazil which had only 18 billionaires despite a greater GDP than India. Or Germany, which had three times India's GDP and a per capita income 40 times India's but had the same number of billionaires. 'If Russia is an oligarchy, how long can we resist calling India one?' he wondered.

PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.

Ze hing weer op en ging op de bank liggen. Ze dwong zichzelf haar ogen open te houden en op het gestuukte plafond te richten. Ze wilde dit moment, waarop ze voelde dat er iets nieuws gebeurde, iets veranderde zonder dat ze er greep op had, bewust meemaken. Ze wilde getuige zijn van de zoveelste kleine ramp, alle fasen ervan onthouden, maar binnen een paar minuten werd haar ademhaling regelmatiger en viel Alice in slaap.

Ей так хотелось жить без всяких предрассудков, как живут все ее сверстницы, со смутным ощущением собственного бессмертия. Она бы многое отдала, чтобы обрести легкость и беспечность, свойственные пятнадцати годам, но, пытаясь уловить эту беспечность, она вдруг обнаруживала, что ее время стремительно ускользает. В такие минуты ее мысли начинали бежать все быстрее и быстрее, а груз последствий становился просто невыносимым, подталкивая к капитуляции перед спонтанно принятым решением.

increasingly rare the larger they become. So it is one thing to land upon a seven or eleven. But to land upon a one thousand and nine is another thing altogether. Can you imagine identifying a prime number in the hundreds of thousands . . . ? In the millions . . . ?” Nina looked off in the distance, as if she could see that largest and most impregnable of all the numbers situated on its rocky promontory where for thousands of years it had withstood the onslaughts of fire-breathing dragons and barbarian hordes. Then she resumed her work. The Count took another look at the sheet in his hands with a heightened sense of respect. After all, an educated man should admire any course of study no matter how arcane, if it be pursued with curiosity and devotion. “Here,” he said in the tone of one chipping in. “This number is not prime.” Nina looked up with an expression of disbelief. “Which number?” He laid the paper in front of her and tapped a figure circled in red. “One thousand one hundred and seventy-three.” “How do you know it isn’t prime?” “If a number’s individual digits sum to a number that is divisible by three, then it too is divisible by three.” Confronted with this extraordinary fact, Nina replied: “Mon Dieu.” Then she leaned back in her chair and appraised the Count in a manner acknowledging that she may have underestimated him. Now, when a man has been underestimated

Former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard wrote in the New York Times in 2013, “[T]here is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996.”2 But the impact of Australia’s gun buyback in 1996–97 is a lot less obvious than most might think. The buyback resulted in more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, reducing gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But since then there has been a steady increase in the number of privately owned guns. By 2010, the total number of privately owned guns was back to the 1996 level.

Filoteo: Because the First Principle is the most fundamental, it follows that if one attribute were finite, then all attributes would likewise be finite; or else, if by one intrinsic rationale He is finite, and by another infinite, then necessarily we must consider him as composite. If therefore, he is the operator of the universe, then He is surely an infinite operator; in the sense that all is dependent on Him. Furthermore, since our imagination is able to move toward infinity, imagining always greater size and yet still greater, and number beyond number, following a certain succession, and as they say, power, so too we must also understand, that God actually conceives infinite dimension and infinite number. And from that understanding follows the possibility with the convenience and opportunity such as may be: that should the active power be infinite, then by necessary consequence, the subject power takes part in the infinite: because, as we have demonstrated elsewhere, what can be done must be done, the ability to measure implies the measurable thing, and the measurer implies the measured. Thus, as there really are bodies with finite dimension, the Prime Intellect understands bodies and dimension. If He has understanding of this, He understands infinity no less, and if He understands the infinite, and such bodies, then necessarily these are intelligible species, and are products of that intellect, for what is divine is most real, and as such what is that real must exist more surely than what we can actually see before our eyes.

By 1948, Israel no longer had to consider what “the Arabs” might want. Over seven hundred thousand Palestinians were uprooted from their own lands and banished by the advancing Israeli Army. Many of these people believed that they would be able to return to their homes after the war. But such a return would destroy the Israeli state project by turning Jews into a minority—the very thing Zionists sought to prevent. So the Palestinians were denied the “right of return,” and their land was confiscated by the state and handed over to other Israelis. The transformation was stunning: Before the establishment of the Israeli state, Palestinians owned 90 percent of all land in Mandatory Palestine. Most of this land was seized and incorporated into Israel. “From 1948 to 1953, the five years following the establishment of the state, 350 (out of a total of 370) new Jewish settlements were built on land owned by Palestinians,” writes Noura Erakat in her book Justice for Some. The threat of losing demographic supremacy still hangs over Israel. In 2003, future prime minister Ehud Olmert called on Israel to “maximize the number of Jews” and “minimize the number of Palestinians.” A “Muslim majority” would mean the “destruction of Israel as a Jewish state,” claimed former prime minister Ehud Barak. Netanyahu once warned that if Palestinian citizens ever reached 35 percent of Israel, the Jewish state would be “annulled.” Looking at the “absurd” borders of Jerusalem, the former deputy mayor Meron Benvenisti summarized the policy behind them as “the aspiration to include a maximum of land with a minimum of Arabs.

Contrast that with the Budweiser beer “Wassup?” campaign. Two guys are talking on the phone while drinking Budweiser and watching a basketball game on television. A third friend arrives. He yells, “Wassup?” One of the first two guys yells “Wassup?” back. This kicks off an endless cycle of wassups between a growing number of Budweiser-drinking buddies. No, it wasn’t the cleverest of commercials. But it became a global phenomenon. And at least part of its success was due to triggers. Budweiser considered the context. “Wassup” was a popular greeting among young men at the time. Just greeting friends triggered thoughts of Budweiser in Budweiser’s prime demographic. The more the desired behavior happens after a delay, the more important being triggered becomes. Market research often focuses on consumers’ immediate

С некоторым облегчением даже она позволила себе махнуть на все рукой. Ей и раньше казалось, что домашними делами она занимается только ради мужа, а теперь, оставшись одна, она позволила себе ничего не делать. Времени у нее было предостаточно, но в конце концов она перестала делать и самые простые вещи. Белье для стирки грудами копилось в ванной, по углам собиралась пыль, однако подняться с дивана было выше ее сил. Вернее, она и хотела бы сделать это, но для ее мышц ни один довод не казался убедительным. Сославшись на простуду, она перестала ходить на работу. Спала больше необходимого, спала даже днем. Жалюзи не опускала, но вполне достаточно было просто закрыть глаза, чтобы не замечать света, удалить из сознания окружающие вещи и забыть про свое ненавистное тело. Груз последствий никуда не делся и давил, давил, навалившись на нее.

The first involves streamlining operations and introducing cost innovations from manufacturing to distribution. Can the product’s or service’s raw materials be replaced by unconventional, less expensive ones—such as switching from metal to plastic or shifting a call center from the UK to Bangalore? Can high-cost, low-value-added activities in your value chain be significantly eliminated, reduced, or outsourced? Can the physical location of your product or service be shifted from prime real estate locations to lower-cost locations, as The Home Depot, IKEA, and Walmart have done in retail or Southwest Airlines has done by shifting from major to secondary airports? Can you truncate the number of parts or steps used in production by shifting the way things are made, as Ford did by introducing the assembly line? Can you digitize activities to reduce costs? By

I numeri primi sono divisibili soltanto per 1 e per sè stessi. Se ne stanno al loro posto nell’infinita serie dei numeri naturali, schiacciati come tutti fra due, ma un passo in là rispetto agli altri. Sono numeri sospettosi e solitari e per questo Mattia li trovava meravigliosi. Certe volte pensava che in quella sequenza ci fossero finiti per sbaglio, che vi fossero rimasti intrappolati come perline infilate in una collana. Altre volte, invece, sospettava che anche a loro sarebbe piaciuto essere come tutti, solo dei numeri qualunque, ma che per qualche motivo non ne fossero capaci.In un corso del primo anno Mattia aveva studiato che tra i numeri primi ce ne sono alcuni ancora più speciali. I matematici li chiamano primi gemelli: sono coppie di numeri primi che se ne stanno vicini,anzi,quasi vicini, perchè fra di loro vi è sempre un numero pari che gli impedisce di toccarsi per davvero. Numeri come l’11 e il 13, come il 17 e il 19, il 41 e il 43. Se si ha la pazienza di andare avanti a contare, si scopre che queste coppie via via si diradano. ci si imbatte in numeri primi sempre più isolati, smarriti in quello spazio silenzioso e cadenzato fatto solo di cifre e si avverte il presentimento angosciante che le coppie incontrate fino a lì fossero un fatto accidentale, che il vero destino sia quello di rimanere soli.Poi, proprio quando ci si sta per arrendere, quando non si ha più voglia di contare, ecco che ci si imbatte in altri due gemelli, avvinghiati stretti l’uno all’altro. Tra i matematici è convinzione comune che per quanto si possa andare avanti, ve ne saranno sempre altri due, anche se nessuno può dire dove, finchè non li si scopre. Mattia pensava che lui e Alice erano così, due primi gemelli, soli e perduti, vicini ma non abbastanza per sfiorarsi davvero. A lei non l’aveva mai detto.

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European.

We saw in the discussion of the law of small numbers that a message, unless it is immediately rejected as a lie, will have the same effect on the associative system regardless of its reliability. The gist of the message is the story, which is based on whatever information is available, even if the quantity of the information is slight and its quality is poor: WYSIATI. When you read a story about the heroic rescue of a wounded mountain climber, its effect on your associative memory is much the same if it is a news report or the synopsis of a film. Anchoring results from this associative activation. Whether the story is true, or believable, matters little, if at all. The powerful effect of random anchors is an extreme case of this phenomenon, because a random anchor obviously provides no information at all. Earlier I discussed the bewildering variety of priming effects, in which your thoughts and behavior may be influenced by stimuli to which you pay no attention at all, and even by stimuli of which you are completely unaware. The main moral of priming research is that our thoughts and our behavior are influenced, much more than we know or want, by the environment of the moment. Many people find the priming results unbelievable, because they do not correspond to subjective experience. Many others find the results upsetting, because they threaten the subjective sense of agency and autonomy. If the content of a screen saver on an irrelevant computer can affect your willingness to help strangers without your being aware of it, how free are you? Anchoring effects are threatening in a similar way. You are always aware of the anchor and even pay attention to it, but you do not know how it guides and constrains your thinking, because you cannot imagine how you would have thought if the anchor had been different (or absent). However, you should assume that any number that is on the table has had an anchoring effect on you, and if the stakes are high you should mobilize yourself (your System 2) to combat the effect.

What are the health effects of the choice between austerity and stimulus? Today there is a vast natural experiment being conducted on the body economic. It is similar to the policy experiments that occurred in the Great Depression, the post-communist crisis in eastern Europe, and the East Asian Financial Crisis. As in those prior trials, health statistics from the Great Recession reveal the deadly price of austerity—a price that can be calculated not just in the ticks to economic growth rates, but in the number of years of life lost and avoidable deaths. Had the austerity experiments been governed by the same rigorous standards as clinical trials, they would have been discontinued long ago by a board of medical ethics. The side effects of the austerity treatment have been severe and often deadly. The benefits of the treatment have failed to materialize. Instead of austerity, we should enact evidence-based policies to protect health during hard times. Social protection saves lives. If administered correctly, these programs don’t bust the budget, but—as we have shown throughout this book—they boost economic growth and improve public health. Austerity’s advocates have ignored evidence of the health and economic consequences of their recommendations. They ignore it even though—as with the International Monetary Fund—the evidence often comes from their own data. Austerity’s proponents, such as British Prime Minister David Cameron, continue to write prescriptions of austerity for the body economic, in spite of evidence that it has failed. Ultimately austerity has failed because it is unsupported by sound logic or data. It is an economic ideology. It stems from the belief that small government and free markets are always better than state intervention. It is a socially constructed myth—a convenient belief among politicians taken advantage of by those who have a vested interest in shrinking the role of the state, in privatizing social welfare systems for personal gain. It does great harm—punishing the most vulnerable, rather than those who caused this recession.

Gossip, even malicious rumors, are worth more than the most expensive publicity campaign in the world. What alarmed me most in the course of my stay in the United States was the habit of spending enormous sums of money in order to achieve so little real luxury. America represents the triumph of quantity over quality. Mass production triumphs; men and women both prefer to buy a multitude of mediocre things rather than a smaller number, carefully chosen. The American woman, faithful to the ideal of optimism with the United States seems to have made its rule of life, spends money entirely in order to gratify the collective need to buy. She prefers three new dresses to one beautiful one and does not linger over a choice, knowing perfectly well that her fancy will be of short duration and the dress which she is in the process of buying will be discarded very soon. The prime need of fashion is to please and attract. Consequently this attraction cannot be born of uniformity, the mother of boredom. Contemporary elegance is at once simple and natural. Since there is no patience where vanity is concerned, any client who is kept waiting considers it a personal insult. The best bargain in the world is a successful dress. It brings happiness to the woman who wears it and it is never too dear for the man who pays for it. The most expensive dress in the world is a dress which is a failure. It infuriates the woman who wears it and it is a burden to the man who pays for it. In addition, it practically always involves him in the purchase of a second dress much more expensive - the only thing that can blot out the memory of the first failure. Living in a house which does not suit you is like wearing someone else's clothes. There will always be women who cling to a particular style of dress because they wore it during the time of their greatest happiness, but white hair is the only excuse for this type of eccentricity. The need for display, which is dormant in all of us, can express itself nowadays in fashion and nowhere else. The dresses of this collection may be worn by only a few of the thousands of women who read and dream about them, but high fashion need not be directly accessible to everyone: it need only exist in the world for its influence to be felt.

The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.

I saw Clinton again during the signing of the peace treaty with Jordan in Israel’s Arava Valley in 1995. That year, I also sent him my third book on terrorism, Fighting Terrorism, and he sent me back a cordial letter. Notwithstanding his civility, I knew his administration would do anything to defeat me. In fact they did. Totally committed to the idea of a fully independent Palestine, they were not aware that Rabin himself had been opposed to such a state. Clinton sent his number one campaign strategist, James Carville, his pollster Stan Greenberg and his top team of experts to Israel to help tip the scales in Peres’s favor. Special envoy Dennis Ross would later say, “We did everything we could to help Peres,” and Clinton’s national security advisor, Sandy Berger, would also later admit, “If there was ever a time that we tried to influence an Israeli election, it was Peres vs. Netanyahu.”23 Normally such an outrageous and systemic interference in another democracy’s elections would elicit outcries of protest from the press in America and Israel alike. No such protests were heard. Totally supportive of Peres, the press in both Israel and the United States was silent. Though the odds were stacked against us, we weren’t fazed. “About Carville,” Arthur said, “we can beat him.” Clinton and Peres organized an international peace conference in Sharm el-Sheikh a few weeks before the elections. Peres, Clinton, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Hussein of Jordan, and Arafat all showed up and danced the dance. Yet a few months earlier, soon after Peres was installed without an election as replacement prime minister following Rabin’s assassination, King Hussein had sent me a message through his brother Crown Prince Hassan, asking: Would I meet Hassan secretly in London? In a London flat the crown prince and I hit it off immediately. I liked Hassan. Straightforward, with a humorous streak, he didn’t even attempt to hide his concern about a Peres victory. Though they wouldn’t admit it publicly, he and many Jordanian officials I met over the years were concerned that an armed Palestinian state could destroy the Hashemite regime and take over Jordan.