Happy devil's birthday

Yes, it's the sixth of the sixth (in 06), the alleged birthday of the antichrist (ever since The Omen raised the idea as long ago as, what, 1976?), and pregnant women who were scheduled for inducements or caesarians today are asking if they can be rescheduled, I hear.

Believe it or not, I did know a D. Thorne born on this day at school (he was born before he went to school but you know what I mean) - however, the D didn't stand for Damien.

Ansible Information have a very handy little freebie download (see http://www.ansible.co.uk/ai/freebies.html) called BEAST.ZIP, "written to spoof mystic numerological connections like the awesome discovery that, using a cipher table in which A=100, B=101, C=102 (etc), the letters of HITLER add to 666". You can enter ANY text string and get 666 out of it. Amaze your friends!

The Number of the Beast is, of course, an unbelievably crap novel by Robert Heinlein that should not be read by anyone, least of all anyone who has ever read anything good by Robert Heinlein and who wants their memories preserved intact. As a public service, and just in case you haven't seen the countless versions doing the rounds on the internet, I reproduce here the following variations on the dread Number (with thanks to Molly):

• 666 Biblical Number of the Beast
• 660 Approximate Number of the Beast
• DCLXVI Roman Numeral of the Beast
• 665 Number of the Beast's Older Brother
• 667 Number of the Beast's Younger Sister
• 668 Number of the Beast's Neighbour
• 999 Number of the Australian Beast
• 333 Number of the Semi-Beast
• 66 Number of the Downsized Beast
• 6, uh..., I forget Number of the Blond Beast
• 666.0000 Number of the High Precision Beast
• 665.9997856 Number of the Beast on a Pentium
• 0.666 Number of the Millibeast
• X / 666 Beast Common Denominator
• 0.00150150... Reciprocal of the Beast
• -666 Opposite of the Beast
• 666i Imaginary Number of the Beast
• 6.66 x 102 Scientific Notation of the Beast
• 25.8069758... Square Root of the Beast
• 443556 Square of the Beast
• 1010011010 Binary Number of the Beast
• 1232 Octal of the Beast
• 29A Hexidecimal of the Beast
• 2.8235 Log of the Beast
• 6.5913 Ln of the Beast
• 1.738 x 10289 Anti-Log of the Beast
• 66.6% Tax Rate of the Beast
• $665.95 Retail Price of the Beast
• $710.36 Price of the Beast plus 6.66% Sales Tax
• $55.50 Monthly Payments for Beast, in 12 easy installments
• 666 F Oven Temperature for Cooking "Roast Beast"
• Lotus 6-6-6 Spreadsheet of the Beast
• Word 6.66 Word Processor of the Beast
• Windows 666 Bill Gates' Personal Beast Operating System
• #666666 Font Color of the Beast
• i66686 CPU of the Beast
• WD-666 Spray Lubricant of the Beast

And finally, apparently Hollywood is working on a sequel to the Da Vinci Code - I Know What You Had Last Supper.