1 is no longer a prime number

[Dark Jaguar]

So apparently including 1 as a prime number was getting too messy when making lists of all non-primes as products of primes (they would always have to exclude 1 or they'd end up with infinite trailing lists of 1x1x1x1x2x2=4 and so on). So, 1 got kicked off the prime list because it made things too inclusive and too messy.

First Pluto isn't a planet any more, and now 1 isn't a prime number any more! Is nothing sacred?! Next you'll tell me that W isn't a letter.

[Sacred Jellybean]

"W" is not a letter, it's two of them, two "U"s to be exact. Jeez, where'd you go to school?

So now 1 is just an exception to the prime number rule? Is this one of those weird mathematical quirks like the debate of whether 0 is a number, or whether infinity + 1 is greater than infinity? Crazy mathemeticians.

[Dark Jaguar]

Pah! Infinity + 1 isn't greater than infinity, but, BUT, the set of real numbers is a bigger infinity than the set of integers. Some infinities are bigger than others.

[Dark Jaguar]

Also, "W" isn't two U's, it's two V's! Just look at it!

[A Black Falcon]

It is kind of amusing that "W" is usually written as "Double V" not "Double U", yeah... but V is a letter that had been in the alphabet since Roman times, while U and W both were added much later. Apparently it was only in the 1300s when U and V were separated into two letters instead of V being used for both. J was separated out of I even later. W comes from Germanic roots instead of the Latin roots of V/U and yes, was originally written as VV or uu, but for some reason whoever named it in English was thinking of U when they did so; the two-Us spelling was used sometimes, not only two-Vs, so it makes some sense. Some other languages do call it "double v" though, such as Spanish and others ("doble ve").


As for the topic subject, I think I've heard that 1 is not considered prime. It is a little weird, though, since it meets most all the requirements of being prime... looking it up on Wikipedia though, 1 is now called a "unit" number. Alright.

[Dark Jaguar]

1 is a dwarf prime, because it was unable to clear it's orbit.

[Weltall]

1 is Omega Prime.

[Sacred Jellybean]

It is kind of amusing that "W" is usually written as "Double V" not "Double U", yeah... but V is a letter that had been in the alphabet since Roman times, while U and W both were added much later. Apparently it was only in the 1300s when U and V were separated into two letters instead of V being used for both. J was separated out of I even later. W comes from Germanic roots instead of the Latin roots of V/U and yes, was original.ly written as VV or uu, but for some reason whoever named it in English was thinking of U when they did so; the two-Us spelling was used sometimes, not only two-Vs, so it makes some sense. Some other languages do call it "double v" though, such as Spanish and others ("doble ve").


As for the topic subject, I think I've heard that 1 is not considered prime. It is a little weird, though, since it meets most all the requirements of being prime... looking it up on Wikipedia though, 1 is now called a "unit" number. Alright.

Interesting stuff.

1 is a dwarf prime, because it was unable to clear it's orbit.

lol

That's all for now.

[A Black Falcon]

Interesting stuff.

We kind of think of the alphabet as something which doesn't change much, but it does, every once in a while since the Romans invented the current forms of most of our letters. It's been several centuries since the last change -- the last I can think of offhand to block letters is making the lowercase 's' look as it does now, as opposed to the almost 'f'-but-without-a-crossbar look it had back in the 1700s, though I may be missing something -- but it does happen. Basically V and I used to have both a consonant form and a vowel form, but in the ~13-1500s the letters split into two, with separate letters for the vowel (I and U) and consonant (J and V) forms.

Of course spelling standardization is another huge thing which happened over the past few centuries, but that's not about the form of the letters themselves.

(I've never been any good at grammar... I can use English grammar just fine, and I'm decent at spelling, but knowing parts of speech and such, beyond the basics? Forget it, I never was very good at that stuff... which is surely part of why I found Spanish so hard in school. :p )

[Dark Jaguar]

The alphabet is probably never going to change again though. We've got keyboards now, and uniicode, and... stuff.

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh, ABF, while the old definition of prime numbers included 1, they have changed the definition of a prime number specifically to EXCLUDE 1.

Before, a prime was any number only divisible by 1 and itself. 1 fits that definition.

Now, a prime is any number exclusively divisible by only two unique numbers. "Unique" is the key word there.

[Sacred Jellybean]

I was gonna go with this image first and I don't know why I didn't, I regret doing that, here it is, I miss Dexter's Lab

[Sacred Jellybean]

You know they have a new Samurai Jack? On Adult Swim I think. It's probably pretty good. I think the original people came back for it. Genndy Tartakovski? Some crazy Eastern European shit like that. Actually I think Tartakovski is a Russian film-maker usually touted by hipsters, but maybe they're both Tartakovski. Tartakovski. Sounds like something you put on Russian fish sticks. Do they eat fish sticks over there? Fucking commies.