2025
Pennsylvania 6-5000, theme and variations
an empty lot in manhattan today
Work took me to New York City this week, and I was a little sad to see this sight out the office window in Manhattan -
That’s the former site of the grand Hotel Pennsylvania, built in 1919 but demolished in 2023.
the famous phone number
You know that hotel! You know its phone number! Well, I do, and anybody who’s ever played in a big band surely knows the number 736-5000 - which, of course, in the way phone numbers were pronounced in the mid-20th century, where you gave a two-letter exchange followed by the rest of the phone number, was PE6-5000, or of course Pennsylvania 6-5000.
That’s possibly the most famous hotel phone number in the WORLD, because in 1940, Glenn Miller’s band was playing at the hotel’s Cafe Rouge. Inspired by the phone number, Jerry Gray and Carl Sigman wrote a
big band classic where the band sings the phone number.
Everybody played this song, although nobody sang the full lyrics - the band just shouted the phone number.
Movies about math
I’m enjoying the Apple TV+ thriller “Prime Target”, about a mathematical genius who is apparently on the verge of some breakthrough about prime numbers and somebody wants to take him down because he’s going to break all known crypto or something - and it’s kind of silly and fun, but it make me wonder:
Hollywood should make a biopic about legendary, and extremely quirky, mathematician Paul Erdös. That’d be fun.
Erdös got an honourary degree from Waterloo and spoke at my graduation in 1981. I remember how he started, something like …. “I flew from Hungary, to the USA, to Waterloo, and after this I’m going to California, then Japan, then back to Hungary … so I’m going 360 degrees around the world to get one degree.
361 degrees.
Now that’s an interesting number. 361 is 19 squared. I remember when I was 19, and …”
Tom Green's A Canadian
This “I’m a Canadian” song by Tom Green is by far not the dumbest thing he’s ever done.
Blog Migration a qualified success
fingers crossed, I think I have got all the DNS bits worked out so that my old wordpress blog is, for now, oldblog.hayman.net (but I’ll be decommissioning that soon) and WELCOME TO THE NEW AND IMPROVED blog.hayman.net !
I’m liking micro.blog so far but still finding my way around the documentation.
cheaters everywhere
Musk cheating at video games - shouldn’t surprise anybody seeing as how he’s pals with Trump, who cheats at golf.
let’s make a collection
please forgive the noise. Migrating my blog over to microblog.hayman.net - soon to be “blog.hayman.net” - and I’m testing this ability to crosspost from micro.blog to mastodon/bluesky/threads.
but if you feel like replying, it would be fun to see if that shows up back on the blog.