Back in 2012, classylady said:

[Vort]

On 6/1/2012 at 3:42 PM, classylady said:

Aw, but did you know this about the number 42? From wikipedia.

-Given 27 same-size cubes whose nominal values progress from 1 to 27, a 3×3×3 magic cube can be constructed such that every row, column, and corridor, and every diagonal passing through the center, is composed of 3 cubes whose sum of values is 42.

-Forty-two is a pronic number and an abundant number; its prime factorization 2 · 3 · 7 makes it the second sphenic number and also the second of the form { 2 · 3 · r }. As with all sphenic numbers of this form, the aliquot sum is abundant by 12. 42 is also the second sphenic number to be bracketed by twin primes; 30 is also a pronic number and also rests between two primes. 42 has a 14 member aliquot sequence 42, 54, 66, 78, 90, 144, 259, 45, 33, 15, 9, 4, 3, 1, 0 and is itself part of the aliquot sequence commencing with the first sphenic number 30. Further, 42 is the 10th member of the 3-aliquot tree.

-42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester's sequence; like the first five such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number.

-It is a Catalan number. Consequently; 42 is the number of noncrossing partitions of a set of five elements, the number of triangulations of a heptagon, the number of rooted ordered binary trees with six leaves, the number of ways in which five pairs of nested parentheses can be arranged, etc.

-It is a partition number - the number of different ways 10 can be represented as the sum of natural numbers.

-It is the reciprocal of the sixth Bernoulli number.

-It is conjectured to be the scaling factor in the leading order term of the "sixth moment of the Riemann zeta function". In particular, Conrey & Ghosh have conjectured

where the infinite product is over all prime numbers, p.[1][2]

-It is the third pentadecagonal number. It is a meandric number and an open meandric number.

-42 is a Størmer number.

-42 is a perfect score on the USA Math Olympiad (USAMO)[3] and International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).[4]

-In base 10, this number is a Harshad number and a self number, while it is a repdigit in base 4 (as 222).

-42 is the only known value that is the number of sets of four distinct positive integers a,b,c,d, each less than the value itself, such that ab-cd, ac-bd, and ad-bc are each multiples of the value. Whether there are other values remains an open question.[5]

And how about this?

42 is:

-The atomic number of molybdenum.

-The angle in degrees for which a rainbow appears or the critical angle.[citation needed]

-In 1966, mathematician Paul Cooper theorized that the fastest, most efficient way to travel across continents would be to bore a straight hollow tube directly through the Earth, connecting a set of antipodes, evacuate it (remove the air), and then just fall through.[6] The first half of the journey consists of free-fall acceleration, while the second half consists of an exactly equal deceleration. The time for such a journey works out to be 42 minutes. Remarkably, even if the tube does not pass through the exact center of the Earth, the time for a journey powered entirely by gravity (also known as Gravity train) always works out to be 42 minutes, as long as the tube remains friction-free, as while gravity's force would be lessened, so would the distance traveled at an equal rate.[7][8] (The same idea was proposed, without calculation by Lewis Carroll in 1893 in Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.[9])

-In the old ASCII character encoding, 42 represents the asterisk '*'. In many search and pattern matching algorithms, the asterisk is a "wildcard", replaceable with any character or set of characters. (In other words, "v*t" could match "vet", "vat", "violet", "violent", "vest", "vault", or "Vort".) Some people think that when Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that a supercomputer found the answer to "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" to be 42, he was being cleverly cryptic in saying that the "meaning of life" was '*' in computer terms—that is, whatever you wanted to assign to it. A good atheistic statement of values and the meaning of existence, perhaps pessimistic and hollow by religious standards, but reasonably clever.

[Carborendum]

8 hours ago, Vort said:

-In the old ASCII character encoding, 42 represents the asterisk '*'. In many search and pattern matching algorithms, the asterisk is a "wildcard", replaceable with any character or set of characters. (In other words, "v*t" could match "vet", "vat", "violet", "violent", "vest", "vault", or "Vort".) Some people think that when Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that a supercomputer found the answer to "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" to be 42, he was being cleverly cryptic in saying that the "meaning of life" was '*' in computer terms—that is, whatever you wanted to assign to it. A good atheistic statement of values and the meaning of existence, perhaps pessimistic and hollow by religious standards, but reasonably clever.

Instead of "whatever you wanted to assign it", I'd translate that asterisk into mathematical terms.  It is the variable "X".  An unknown.

Life is a big X.  Life is the great unknown.

Edited June 10, 2021 by Carborendum

[Traveler]

9 hours ago, Vort said:

-In the old ASCII character encoding, 42 represents the asterisk '*'. In many search and pattern matching algorithms, the asterisk is a "wildcard", replaceable with any character or set of characters. (In other words, "v*t" could match "vet", "vat", "violet", "violent", "vest", "vault", or "Vort".) Some people think that when Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that a supercomputer found the answer to "the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" to be 42, he was being cleverly cryptic in saying that the "meaning of life" was '*' in computer terms—that is, whatever you wanted to assign to it. A good atheistic statement of values and the meaning of existence, perhaps pessimistic and hollow by religious standards, but reasonably clever.

I could be mistaken (as I often am) but did not Patrick Henry say something like, "I have but one asterisk '*' for my country?"

 

The Traveler

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Traveler said:

I could be mistaken (as I often am) but did not Patrick Henry say something like, "I have but one asterisk '*' for my country?"

 

The Traveler

I believe you're talking about Douglas (Adams) Hale  

Edited June 10, 2021 by Carborendum