[Fictionary] Yes, Virginia, there is a "shive" (or, The True Meaning of Shive)

[Pierre Abbat]

On Friday, May 04, 2012 10:47:49 Jim Moskowitz wrote:
> It's already been written, and published in Strange Horizons over a decade
> ago: http://www.strangehorizons.com/2000/20001120/secret_number.shtml

When I heard of it, which was between 1979 and 1981, bleem was between 6 and 
7. I hacked my calculator, an HP 34C or something like that, into displaying 
hexadecimal numbers. It had several error messages, of which I remember "Pr 
Error", which meant that it had forgotten because it lost power. It turned out 
that these errors were displayed by showing hex numbers, according to the code 
"rFoPE ", i.e. 10=r, etc. I managed to store 5.dccbeaf in a memory location. 
According to the code, this displays as "SPooFEr "; since the tenths digit is 
thirteen, it is between six and seven, even though it begins with five. 
Multiplying this number in decimal produces strange results.

There are actually irrational integers between three and four, between six and 
seven, and so on. They are algebraic integers, such as phi, which is between 1 
and 2 and is approximately 1.618034.

If we ask Igor Teper (or Igor Proshly; Igor Budushchi wouldn't know yet) if he 
knew anyone on the ninth floor of Howe at CWRU, maybe we'd figure out where his 
bleem came from.

Pierre
-- 
I believe in Yellow when I'm in Sweden and in Black when I'm in Wales.