We’ve always been plagued by notions that, say, Hitler’s name somehow translates to the number of the beast. Others have “calculated” the date of the apocalypse via a combination of selective wishful thinking and baroque schemes of number to biblical letter equivalency, i.e. a load of bunk.
But here’s a fascinating article on the natural human attraction to certain numbers and some of its strange consequences. A mindbender for sure:
Antibiotics are a godsend, but just how many pills should God be sending? A recent study of antibiotic treatment published in a leading medical journal began by noting that “the usual treatment recommendation of 7 to 10 days for uncomplicated pneumonia is not based on scientific evidence” and went on to show that an abbreviated course of three days was every bit as effective as the usual course of eight.
My doctor had recommended seven. Where in the world had seven come from?
Italy! Seven is a magic number because only it can make a week, and it was given this particular power in 321 A.D. by the Roman emperor Constantine, who officially reduced the week from eight days to seven. The problem isn’t that Constantine’s week was arbitrary — units of time are often arbitrary, which is why the Soviets adopted the five-day week before they adopted the six-day week, and the French adopted the 10-day week before they adopted the 60-day vacation.
