Nothing’s really going on…but I ran across a couple of interesting things about New Years and 2017 I thought I would post.

First up is the German New Year’s tradition…that you’ve never heard of.

It’s called The 90th Birthday…or Der 90 Geburtstag in German…which you can read about here if you want alllll of the gory details…but here’s the short version.

Back in the ‘60s there was this British comedy duo named May Warden and Freddie Frinton who had this vaudeville skit about an elderly lady named Miss Sophie. She’s invited her friends Sir Toby, Admiral von Schneider, Mr. Pommerov and Mr. Winterbottom for her 90th birthday dinner which will be served by her butler James. Unfortunately…all of these friends are dead…but fortunately Miss Sophie is senile and has failing eyesight…so James decides to pretend to serve dinner …with him playing the parts of the dearly departed. He serves 4 courses at dinner…each of which involves drinks…and he naturally drinks their portions as Miss Sophie keeps proposing toasts. Naturally James gets sort of drunk and has difficulty carrying out his routine.

This skit was seen by a German entertainer Peter Frankenweld…who thought it so hilarious that he convinced May and Freddie to film it for German television…and titled Dinner for One. So they did…and it was filmed in English with no German subtitles. The sketch appeared on German TV in 1963…but in 1972 began to assume a life of it’s own when it was broadcast on New Year’s Eve. Since then it’s earned quite a name for itself…by 1988 it earned a place in the Guinness World Record Book as the most repeated program in history. By 1997 more people were watching it (11.93 million) than watching the German chancellor’s New Year’s speech (9.28 million). It’s been broadcast over 230 times in Germany.

Here’s a shot of James tripping over the tiger rug as he gets increasingly drunk.

I saw on another of my blogs the following tidbits about the new year 2017. It will be a good year.

• We all know that 2017 is a prime number, but it is more than just another prime number.
• 2017π (rounds to nearest integer) is a prime
• 2017e (rounds to nearest integer ) is a prime.
• The sum of all odd primes up to 2017 is a prime number, i.e. 3+5+7+11+…+2017 is a prime number. 
• The sum of the cube of gap of primes up to 2017 is a prime number. That is (3-2)^3 + (5-3)^3 + (7-5)^3 + (11-7)^3 + … + (2017-2011)^3 is a prime number.
• The prime number before 2017 is 2017+(2-0-1-7), which makes it a sexy prime, and the prime after 2017 is 2017+(2+0+1+7). 2017 itself is of course equal to 2017+(2*0*1*7) 
• Insert 7 into any two digits of 2017, it is still a prime number, i.e. 27017, 20717, 20177 are all primes. Plus, 20177 is also a prime number
• Since all digits of 2017 is less than 8, it can be viewed as an octal. 2017 is still a prime number as an octal.
• 2017 can be written as a sum of three cubes of primes, i,e, p^3 +q^3 +r^3 for some primes p, q, r.
• 2017 can be written as a sum of cubes of five distinct integers.
• 2017 can be written as x^2+y^2, x^2+2y^2, x^2+3y^2, x^2+4y^2 x^2+6y^2, x^2+7y^2, x^2+8y^2, x^2+9y^2 (for positive integers x, y)
• 20170123456789 is also a prime
• the 2017th prime number is 17539 and 201717539 is also a prime.
• Let p=2017, then both (p+1)/2 and (p+2)/3 are prime numbers.
• The first ten digits of the decimal expansion of the cubic root of 2017 contains all different digits 0~9. 2017 is the least integer has this property. 
• 2017 = 2^11 – 11th prime

Yeah…I know…way more than you wanted to know.

This photo is undeniable proof that font selection is…very, very important.

That’s all I got for today.

Oh yeah…our local eagle pair…follow along here if you want…Harriet and M15…had one of their two eggs hatch on xx and it appears to be a healthy eaglet. Unfortunately…the second egg which was laid about 30 hours after the first hasn’t hatched yet…and given that it’s now 4+ days after it’s expected hatching time it’s most likely a non viable egg. So I guess Harriet and M15 will be only raising one eaglet this year. We’ll keep track of them and keep ya apprised of the young’n’s progress.

One last request…if any of our readers ever get to Catalan…that’s over in Spain on the Atlantic coast…you gotta get me one of these pooping figurines. Apparently no Catalan Nativity scene is complete without one. You can read all about the tradition here. It’s got something to do with Catalan not really being a willing part of Spain and rejecting the Spanish influence/takeover of the area.

Cyas.