Monday, November 19, 2007

It's Time To Guess That Symbolism!

So did anyone else notice that Layla Miller's shirt had "46664" written on it in last week's X-Factor? It wasn't present the whole time (it's absent when she charges out onto the platform to dimension-hop with Jamie), but it was there for a few pages.

Good ole Wikipedia informs me that 46664 was Nelson Mandela's prison number, and that Joe Strummer and Bono made a song called "46664" in honor of Mr. Mandela, and that there was an AIDS charity concerts by that name. Said concert took place on November 29, 2003, so I guess this could be a reference to that.

Wiki also says 46664 is the 44th number in the Mian-Chowla sequence, and a Smith number, which means the sum of its digits (4+6+6+6+4) is equal to the sum of the digits of its prime factorization (I get what they mean, but you better go check it out yourself, because I doubt I can explain it). I have no idea whether any of that is at all relevant, though I could see Layla sporting a shirt with those numbers just because, or it could be connected to the parallel universes somehow. How? I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there.

3 comments:

SallyP said...

I...I never even noticed that!

CalvinPitt said...

sallyp: Leave it to me! I'll always notice the weird little things in an issue, while completely missing the bigger, more important stuff. It's my superpower, you see.

SallyP said...

And a handy superpower it is. Rather like Layla's when you think about it. As she says, most of her "stuff" is just paying attention.