~weird factoids & this week's musical treat – 16 august 2010

First of all, I’d like to introduce you to a couple of songs by one of my favorite independent artists, Justin St. Charles. I discovered him on the Nine Inch Nails remix site and he’s pretty talented. The first song, Reckless, tells the sad story of a breakup. It’s a soft hip-hop tune that’s quite heartwrenching. The second is a remix he did of a song by Trent Reznor’s new band, How To Destroy Angels called A Drowning. Justin’s remix is called Drowning Without Me.

Posted with the permission of the artists who believe in sharing their creative passions, here’s Reckless and Drowning Without Me:

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Did ya happen to notice today’s date?

Yeah, today is a nine day. For those who are new to my blog, I have a thing for the number nine – it’s a really cool number.

Why, and why is today a nine-day, you ask?

Just add up all the numbers in the date, then add the numbers in the sum. So 16 August 2010 is: 1+6+8+2+0+1+0=18;  and 1+8=9!

Nine’s a special number and has all kinds of strange effects on numbers involving it. For example, multiply any number by nine. The result is a product whose integers also add up to nine (ex: 9 x 5 = 45; 4 + 5 = 9). Multiples of nine are kinda weird in another way – the first digit increases as the second digit decreases. For example:

9, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. The pattern resets itself when 9 is multiplied by any number ending in 1, such as 11, 21, 31, etc.

Cool, huh?!

Which leads me to my next weird little factoid, only this one is a word.

Interrobang.

Yes, it’s a real word.

Want a clue as to its meaning?

You can find it at the end of the line that begins with the word ‘cool’

Huh?!

Yeah, that’s it.

An interrobang is a special symbol that’s the combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark. From Wikipedia:

The interrobang, interabang[1] (pronounced /ɪnˈtɛrəbæŋ/) or quesclamation mark, ‽, is a nonstandard English-language punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the question mark (also called the interrogative point) and the exclamation mark or exclamation point (known in printers’ jargon as the bang). The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks. A sentence ending with an interrobang asks a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement or disbelief in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question.

It looks like this:

‽

It can be created in HTML or XML documents by typing ‽ or ‽ and some word processors will display it using the alt code ALT+8253 .

Just imagine – if this symbol were widely used, there would be no more confusion as to which order to place the question mark and the exclamation mark for those instances when you need both.

Pretty cool, huh‽