I talk, but when it really comes down to it I don’t believe in luck. So, today being the eighth day, of the eighth month, of the two-thousand and eight — a day, obviously, peppered with “lucky eights” as per Chinese culture — doesn’t really have much meaning for me beyond the arbitrary confluence of digits in our calendar system. Still, I felt somewhat compelled to write a blog entry on this, the day of eights, if only because I thought it would be nifty to see the /2008/08/08/ show up in the archive filename.

Some famous eights:

- 8 is today, which is the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing at 8PM on 08/08/08.

- 8 is the atomic number of Oxygen, a significant component of a couple of my favorite life sustaining chemicals, water and oxygen gas.

- 8 is the number of bits in a byte, a borrowed computer term (if I am not mistaken) that is derived from an medieval practice of dividing coins into eight bits with a chisel and hammer, hence “two bits” equaling a modern quarter — or “pieces of eight”… arrrrr!

- 8 is the number of notes in an octave, for all you music folks out there; do re mi… etc.

- 8 is a common divisor in imperial measurements, such as converting cups in ounces, gallons into pints, and miles into furlongs which is useful for counting on your hands only if you are thumb-prejudiced.

- 8 looks like the letter B and sounds like the word “ate”, which is useful for folks who want to make up words and domain names in l33t.

- 8 is the number of legs on the common arachnid, which is a handy reference for telling them apart from other insects.

- 8 is the number of remaining planets after Pluto met an untimely death in 2006, offed by a conspiracy of scientists who caught her trying to unify classic and quantum physics. Look out Mercury, your next!

- 8 is a sideways infinity, which is pretty meaningless because its just a symbol after all.