Today we´ve had a double celebration at home: my birthday and Mother´s day, which here in Ireland is held on the fourth Sunday in Lent. It´s been a lovely day (thanks a million guys!)

How old am I now, you say? Weeeell, they say age is just a number, right? Following this blog´s tradition , I´ll write it in binary: 101110.

Speaking of numbers, BinaryWords is also celebrating today: this is the 150th post! Feel free to take this opportunity and visit the blog´s archive page, to check out the new "highlighted articles" section.

Today I was reflecting on this thing we have with numbers, and how sometimes we pay too much attention to them, age being just an example, and I remembered a passage from The Little Prince that speaks about that:

If I´ve told you these details about Asteroid B-612 and if I´ve given you its number, it is on account of the grown-ups. Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: "What does his voice sound like?" "What games does he like best?" "Does he collect butterflies?" They ask: "How old is he?" "How many brothers does he have?" "How much does he weigh?" "How much money does his father make?" Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, "I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves on the roof..." they won´t be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, "I saw a house worth a hundred thousand francs." Then they exclaim, "What a pretty house!"

Antoine the Saint-Exupéry

What about you? How much do you care about numbers? I´ve realized I care about them less and less...