52
February 13, 2018 10:54 PM   Subscribe

One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do, and 42 is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, but 52 is...well...

  1. Fresh Off the Grid (and the original inspiration for this FPP): 52 Incredibly Delicious Camping Food Ideas
  2. "Contrary to most other even-numbered U.S. Highways, US 52 primarily follows a northwest–southeast route, and is signed north–south or east–west depending on the local orientation of the route."
  3. "The 52-Hertz whale is an individual whale of unidentified species, which calls at the very unusual frequency of 52 Hz. This pitch is a much higher frequency than that of the other whale species with migration patterns most closely resembling this whale's – the blue whale (10–39 Hz) or fin whale (20 Hz). It has been detected regularly in many locations since the late 1980s and appears to be the only individual emitting a whale call at this frequency. It has been described as the 'world's loneliest whale'." (See also: "Twelve years of tracking 52-Hz whale calls from a unique source in the North Pacific")
  4. "The combination of a Haab' and a Tzolk'in date identifies a day in a combination which does not occur again for 18,980 days (52 Haab' cycles of 365 days times 73 Tzolk'in cycles of 260 days, approximately 52 years), a period known as the Calendar Round. To identify days over periods longer than this, Mesoamericans used the Long Count calendar."
  5. "An untouchable number is a positive integer that is not the sum of the proper divisors of any number. The first few are 2, 5, 52, 88, 96, 120, 124, 146..."
  6. "Set in the time between the end of 'Infinite Crisis' and the 'One Year Later' story lines, 52 dealt with the events of the missing year - a year without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman."
  7. "The New 52 was the 2011 revamp and relaunch by DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero comic books. Following the conclusion of the 'Flashpoint' crossover storyline, DC cancelled all of its existing titles and debuted 52 new series in September 2011 with new first issues."
  8. "There are more possible arrangements in a deck of cards than there are stars in the known universe. The full number is 52 factorial, which is (very, very roughly) an eight followed by 67 zeroes."
  9. "The name B-52's comes from a particular beehive hairdo resembling the nose cone of the aircraft of the same name. Other names the band considered were the 'Tina-Trons' and 'Fellini's Children.' [Percussionist Keith] Strickland suggested the name after a dream he had had one night, of a band performing in a hotel lounge. In the dream he heard someone whisper in his ear that the name of the band was 'the B-52s.'"
  10. "Tom Brady FUMBLES With 2 Minutes Left | Super Bowl 52 Highlights"
  11. Lifehacker: "Seven 52 Week Challenges for an Incredibly Productive Year"
  12. - The 52 Week Money Challenge
  13. - 52 Weeks To An Organized Home
  14. - Reddit's 52 Weeks of Cooking
  15. - (or All She Cook's 52 weeks of no-repeat meal plans)
  16. - Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks
  17. - Men's Health's Year-Long Workout
  18. - Code Academy's Code Year
  19. - (or dream.in.code's 52 Weeks of Code forum)
  20. - Lady Kell's 52 Things in 52 Weeks
  21. "Tellerium is quite a nice element. I shall pick it up carefully."
  22. "Today's modern piano has 52 white keys and 36 black keys."
  23. "Open cluster M52 is one of the original discoveries of Charles Messier, who cataloged it on September 7, 1774 when the comet of that year came close to it."
  24. NGC 52 (PGC 978) is an edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus. It was discovered on September 18, 1784 by William Herschel. He described it as 'very faint, small, extended.'"
  25. 52 pick-up "is not really a card game; it is included here so that if someone proposes to play it with you, you will know what is involved."
  26. "They shouldn't have blackmailed Harry Mitchell. He made them pay — in blood...."
  27. "By midsummer 1980, 52 hostages remained in the embassy compound."
  28. "The British Grand Prix is a race in the calendar of the FIA Formula One World Championship. It is currently held at the Silverstone Circuit near the village of Silverstone in Northamptonshire in England." Laps: 52.
  29. "The number of letters in the English alphabet, if majuscules are distinguished from minuscules"
  30. "The name [52 Hand Blocks] may be a reference to the playing card games of 52 Pickup and to the expression 'let the cards fall where they may.' Other theories relate the name to a combat training game involving the use of playing cards and/or to the Supreme Mathematics of the Nation of Gods and Earths. It could even be a reference, coded, symbolic, or otherwise, to a specific cell block. However, a more likely explanation is that it simply refers to the fifty-two blocking techniques encompassed in the art."
  31. Fightland: "Certainly, though, I heard references to the 52 scattered in lyrics by rappers such as Nas protégé Nature and Wu Tang affiliate Killa Sin. The Wu-Tang Clan, in particular, seems to have an affinity for the 52. GZA, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, and various Killa Bee affiliates have all rhymed about the 52.
  32. “52 cops can’t withstand the 52 Blocks / Unless they bust like 52 shots.”
  33. "In its heyday from 1930 through the early 1950s, 52nd Street clubs hosted such jazz legends as Miles Davis, Harry Gibson, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Nat Jaffe, Marian McPartland, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Louis Prima, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Trummy Young, and many more. Although musicians from all schools performed there, after Minton's Playhouse in uptown Harlem, 52nd Street was the second most important place for the dissemination of bebop. In fact, a tune called '52nd Street Theme' by Thelonious Monk became a bebop anthem and jazz standard."
  34. - Dizzy Gillespie - 52nd Street Theme
  35. - 52nd St Theme (T.Monk), Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Walter Davis Jr
  36. - Charlie Parker - 52nd Street Theme
  37. - Bud Powell - 52nd Street Theme
  38. - Hank Mobley - 52nd Street Theme
  39. - Donald Byrd - 52nd Street Theme
  40. - Sonny Rollins - 52nd street theme
  41. - Miles DAVIS "Hot house into 52nd street theme"
  42. - Toshiki Kadomatsu (角松敏生) – 52nd Street (52ndストリート)
  43. "In 1978, Billy Joel released his album 52nd Street, which won two Grammy Awards for 'Album of the Year' and 'Best Male Pop Vocal Performance'."
  44. - "They say it takes a lot to keep a love alive / In every heart there pumps a different beat / But if we shift the rhythm into overdrive / We could generate a lot of heat... / On 52nd street"
  45. "52nd Street were a British jazz-funk and R&B band formed in Manchester in late 1980."
  46. - "In 1990, Charlemagne and Bowry re-emerged under the name Cool Down Zone. They invited 52nd Street's live drummer Mike Wilson to join, and they released the album New Direction. They released two singles from the album; 'Heaven Knows' and 'Waiting For Love'. 'Heaven Knows' reached No. 52 on the UK Singles Chart."
  47. #52 previously: "Holy Queering of Pop Culture, Batman!" posted by bardic on Jun 1, 2006
  48. #52 previously: 52 weeks, 52 wonderful pieces of art posted by WolfDaddy on May 3, 2007
  49. #52 previously: 52 Songs 52 Stories posted by Sailormom on Feb 8, 2012
  50. #52 previously: Superbummed posted by Artw on Apr 20, 2012
  51. User #52: triptych
  52. MeFi story #52: July 22, 1999, "Hello AOL? It's Microsoft, we've come to crush your Instant Messenger." posted by mathowie
Bonus 52 searches:
posted by Celsius1414 (26 comments total) 46 users marked this as a favorite
 
You know, given your username and this post, I suspect you are a shill for Big Number. Mathematics Blue, anyone?

(I keed, I keed. Neat post!)
posted by Samizdata at 11:15 PM on February 13, 2018 [5 favorites]


I suspect you are a shill for Big Number.

It was a calculated risk.
posted by Celsius1414 at 11:31 PM on February 13, 2018 [32 favorites]


And 1952 was the first year of MAD Magazine, the 550th issue of which arrived in my mailbox today, with the front cover headline "LANDMARK FINAL ISSUE". Actually, it's the last issue assembled in their longtime New York City offices, with future MADness to be generated from a Hollywood, CA facility shared with DC Comics (previously noted in #6 and #7 of Celsius' list), and an alleged "neu image" shown on the back cover. I hope it's a joke; I can't imagine the MAD mascot going on with his teeth straightened.
posted by oneswellfoop at 11:35 PM on February 13, 2018 [3 favorites]


Came here for #25; was not disappointed. A favorite pastime with my younger siblings...
posted by filthy_prescriptivist at 11:36 PM on February 13, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well now 52's stuck in my head
posted by Jon Mitchell at 1:18 AM on February 14, 2018


52 MHz is the centre of the amateur radio 6 metre band in the US, and the top of the band in the UK. Nicknamed the 'Magic Band', it normally behaves like a VHF band - local communications only - but during sunspot activity peaks it can dramatically switch to a worldwide mode with propagation supporting very long ranges at low power with modest antennas. However, the sunspot minimum of the current cycle has been extended and profound, and apart from summer sporadic ionospheric E-layer events the band remains quiet and a minority hunting ground.

The amateur radio allocation on six metres - and, previously, on the five metre band which ended at 60 MHz - was a complicating factor when the FCC was allocating spectrum for FM radio and VHF TV immediately after the war, and is part of the faffery which ended up with US television sets not having a Channel 1 on the dial. In the UK radio hams were unceremoniously booted off 52 MHz, which ended up within Channel 2 of the VHF TV service until that was terminated in the 1980s, whereupon Six was given back to its rightful heirs.

The same propagation enhancements that can make Six exciting for hams also applied to TV signals, making 'TV DXing' - the long-distance reception of broadcasts - a hobby in its own right. However, the switch to digital TV has taken a great deal of fun from that and the ability of the wayward, surprising and intriguing slab of spectrum around 52 MHz to intrude on the lives of the straights has been sadly curtailed. In that, at least, the Magic Band has been a mirror, man, to its namesake.
posted by Devonian at 2:50 AM on February 14, 2018 [10 favorites]


G#1/Ab1 = 51.91 Hz
posted by thelonius at 3:36 AM on February 14, 2018 [3 favorites]


There are more possible arrangements in a deck of cards than there are stars in the known universe. The full number is 52 factorial, which is (very, very roughly) an eight followed by 67 zeroes.

This (the claim about the stars) is true, but a vast understatement. It's like McDonald's saying that they've served more than 4 hamburgers. Or Donald Trump saying that one time he told a lie.
posted by madcaptenor at 4:57 AM on February 14, 2018 [5 favorites]


it's just 52 times 51 factorial
posted by thelonius at 6:21 AM on February 14, 2018 [4 favorites]


I knew I was out of it when I turned 53.
posted by JanetLand at 6:37 AM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


"An untouchable number is a positive integer that is not the sum of the proper divisors of any number. The first few are 2, 5, 52, 88, 96, 120, 124, 146..."
I owe a great debt to professional mathematicians. My life's work depends on their discoveries. I've shared buildings with them. I've partied with them. My Erdős number was 3 last time I checked. But, I often find the things they think about utterly incomprehensible. Like train spotting, bird watching, spectator sports, and reading about the private lives of actors, though, it doesn't actually do me any harm. It makes people happy, occasionally it proves useful, and both these things are great. None the less, finding this concept interesting enough to write down is totally unfathomable.

But, this is a neat post! (Though, the Mayan calendar is the winner, if you ask me.)
posted by eotvos at 6:59 AM on February 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


it's also the number of stations on the Northern Line, according to Robyn Hitchcock.
posted by scruss at 7:58 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


This (the claim about the stars) is true, but a vast understatement.
I've been trying to come up with a better "in the universe" choice, but am stumped. All the typical things with the right sort of mass scale are biological, which seems like one too many weird conceptual leaps.

"Roughly as many card combinations as hydrogen atoms in the Milky Way" isn't a bad choice, but I'm not sure how much intuition anyone has for how big that number really is.
posted by eotvos at 7:58 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


(sigh) I was once 52....but I had to move on.
posted by Oh_Bobloblaw at 8:36 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


What about 51 and 53?
posted by sammyo at 9:15 AM on February 14, 2018


I don't get the untouchables. First of all I don't think 5 is that, because it immediately defies the definition, but math, umm, math. I have to study, once I start thinking about that stuff, I want a new lifetime to do the whole thing. Bzzzzt! Yeah, no.
posted by Oyéah at 9:33 AM on February 14, 2018


I don't think 5 is that, because it immediately defies the definition

Are you thinking of 6 (5 = 2 + 3)?

"A positive proper divisor is a positive divisor of a number n, excluding n itself. For example, 1, 2, and 3 are positive proper divisors of 6, but 6 itself is not."
posted by thelonius at 9:44 AM on February 14, 2018


That Superbowl fumble was both a Fumble and Delicious.

Fumblelicious.
posted by Faintdreams at 9:47 AM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Are you thinking of 6 (5 = 2 + 3)? No it was the 5=1+4. I would like to understand this, and I will find a description that clicks with me.
posted by Oyéah at 9:50 AM on February 14, 2018


Maybe they only count 2 once when listing the proper divisors of 4? so 4 has proper divisors 2 and 1, not 2, 2, and 1? That excludes 3, but not 5 , from the list of untouchables.
posted by thelonius at 10:17 AM on February 14, 2018


This post needs 13 more favorites.
posted by Wobbuffet at 4:07 PM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


Worth revisiting #50 above, because of The New 52 having largely been a bust. Oh, and DC's brilliant new idea? Trying to blame the events of Flashpoint on Dr. Manhattan. No, really.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:51 PM on February 14, 2018


This post needs 13 more favorites.

/Lenny waiting at the awards ceremony.gif
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:49 PM on February 14, 2018 [1 favorite]


You couldn't have waited to post this till May 2nd?
posted by Mchelly at 3:24 AM on February 16, 2018


(I kid. Great post!)
posted by Mchelly at 3:25 AM on February 16, 2018


Just after I hit Post, I realized I should’ve waited until February 21st, the 52nd day of the year.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:11 AM on February 16, 2018 [4 favorites]


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