23 - cultural meme or independent weirdness?

Apparantly a new film by the name of The Number 23 is soon to be released.

www.imdb.com...

From the comments page:

Perhaps because of these books, a lot of writers and artists in the last 30 years have deliberately included the number 23 in their works. In the 1978 version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," a very early shot shows a dump truck with that number on it. (The trucks are being used to transport Pod people.) Also, in the current TV series "Lost" the flight that crashes takes off from gate 23.

As to whether there is any "real" significance to the number beyond random occurrence, that's certainly debatable. Two pieces of "evidence" to support the notion that 23 has special significance are the fact that the Earth's axis has a 23-degree tilt, and the fact that human genes have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Not to mention the most famous 23 of all -- the 23rd Psalm.

William Shakespeare was born on the 23rd April 1564 and died on 23rd April 1616. In his play Julius Ceasar was stabbed 23 times (although this is also the number on other pages regarding the Roman's death).

23rd of April was also when I met my mate.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963

August 23rd 1946 - Birth of my fave drummer - Keith Moon



Sorry I don't have more personal recollections of the number 23. I like this thread though

[edit on 17-6-2006 by nikelbee]

By co-incidence I found a copy of From Caliban To The Taliban last night and Francis Bacon (sirbacon.org) is mentioned a few times - very interestingly.

Last post (or the post before last as another one went in as I was typing this before this edit) reminded me also of another movie called 23 - it's from the 90s and made in Germany, and is about a computer hacker.

In those Jeepers Creepers movies the killer resurrects and feeds every 23 years.



[edit on 17-6-2006 by ed 209]

Some examples of 23s I have seen in films... there was a while I kept track and almost every film I saw seemed to feature one or two...

"Why, one time I thought I was stuck in July 23rd for three weeks" - Judge in Johnny Bravo cartoon series.

In [i]Blade Runner, the replicants kill 23 in their initial escape. Later, when Deckerd (Harrison Ford) is looking at one of Leon's photos in detial, the last co-ordinate he asks his computer to magnify ends in 23, and then he asks for a hard copy.

In Bruce Almighty, Jim Carrey has his interview with God on 23rd St, and his pager number ends in 23.

"I just want you to come and cover 23 - 23's killing us" - Remember The Titans

"How are you doing, Murphy?"
"I've been better... organics intact, systems efficiency, 23 percent." - Robocop III

In Deep Impact the young protagonist who discovered the comet is about to enter the "ark" in the Missouri caves - a shot shows him against a large tunnel mouth above which is a big 23 in white numerals.

"Would you grab a reverse directory and shag a name and address for me? Crestview 2239..." - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) in L A Confidential

The code for dangerous contamination in Monsters Inc is "23-19!"

Got 23 kinds of adultery going on roun' here" - The Hawaiians

"Free Truman rally - Monday 23rd" - The Truman Show

"Blast! He's on Level 23" - Buzz Lightyear, Toy Story II

"Two-thirty-five... that's 23 minutes" - Robert DeNiro, Meet The Parents

"And the South Park Cows are set to receive... there's the kick, it's taken by number 23, Kenny McCormack... he's at the 50, the 40, the 30... the little running back is down... I think he's... YES! He's been decapitated!" - South Park, Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride

"23 hours ago, the world was stunned by the announcement of the existence of a second Machine..." - Contact

"We're in the 23rd segment of the Gamma Quadrant" - Galaxy Quest

"St. Francis of Assissi received stigmata at the age of 23" - Stigmata

"Oh, you're Johnny 23" - Con Air. This was also the name of a W S Burroughs character who cropped up in various novels.

"Vault 23, encryption download" - Bait

"There's 23 Brills in the Baltimore district area" - Enemy of the State. The pedant in me wants to know the difference between a district and an area...

In Serendipity, the two romantic leads both press buttons for floor 23 when they enter a lift. This is a plot point but the film was so tedious I really can't remember or even care what it was about.

In Nothing to Lose, Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins are hiding in a darkened office from a security guard when an alarm clock goes off. The time? 8:23.

"Explosive device on board: it will explode in 23 rels..." - from Dr Who and the Daleks - an intriguing one, because it was before the whole Illuminatus!-generated interest in the number.

"She's in stateroom 23" - Romance on the High Seas

"Twenty-three years without any kind of sexual activity - can you imagine the frustration?" - from the UK TV series Teachers

The Whoopi Goldberg character in Star Trek has been married 23 times. Really, you could go through all the ST episodes - particularly from TNG onwards - and list hundreds... but who can be bothered? Not I. But they are chock full of them.

This is merely a handful of those cultural examples that I've collected, and I've missed dozens because I didn't write them down. You may be thinking, "he's seen a lot of really crappy films..." and you'd be right. I have an excuse but I'm not really interested in going into details, frankly.

[edit on 17-6-2006 by rich23]

[edit on 17-6-2006 by rich23]

[edit on 17-6-2006 by rich23]

[edit on 17-6-2006 by rich23]

Dunno about 2239 (the address one) - that isn't a 23. The JFK assassination date isn't a 23 either.

I'd forgot to mention this about one of the PI comments earlier back in the thread - the computer does not self-destruct! That is very important because the sticky goo that the computer forms is coming from it becoming self-aware - so it looks like it is crashing, and from our user point of view it is, but what's actually happening is that it's becoming aware of it's own structure in such a way that the biological material forms. What happens is that it understands the same way Max understands what he's been searching for - and he also stops being able to compute number things too.

Spotted another one while browsing ATS

Number 23

[edit on 17-6-2006 by Chris McGee]

Originally posted by ed 209
Dunno about 2239 (the address one) - that isn't a 23. The JFK assassination date isn't a 23 either.

Well.... in either Illuminatus! or Cosmic Trigger, Robert Anton Wilson counts 2:30 as a 23... "and why that damn 23 in 2:30?" is the relevant quote, or something like. Plus one of the examples he gives is of a missing 23... a shot in some film or other shows (I think - memory's a bit hazy on this one) doors with 22 and 24, but no 23.

It's embedded so it might not be a cultural signifier the way I think it has become for some people... but it can certainly obey the law of fives and leap out to catch the attention of the unwary.

And no, the assassination date was the 22nd... I may have missed the post that that came up in. Though there is allegedly a rule in numerology/gematria where you can take adjacent numbers instead (I know, that's one of the reasons I gave it up....

And there are people who say, btw, that the Shakespearean dates have little to no reliable documentation,particularly vis-a-vis his birth, but that it's possible that April 23rd was chosed because it was St George's Day.

Originally posted by rich23
And there are people who say, btw, that the Shakespearean dates have little to no reliable documentation,particularly vis-a-vis his birth, but that it's possible that April 23rd was chosed because it was St George's Day.

Most academics give April 23rd as the death date. His birth date on the other hand is the one people are unsure about.

Here are some things I found that explain why those dates in particular were choosen:

His actual date of birth cannot be substantiated as at this time in England births were not formally registered and Birth Certificates were not produced.

There is a record of William's baptism in the register of the Holy Trinity Parish Church in Stratford dated 26th April 1564

Such was the rate of infant mortality that babies in those days were baptised within two or three days of their birth.

Shakespeare died at the age of 52 on 23 April 1616. This date is based on the Old Style, or Julian calendar of his time. The New Style, or Gregorian calendar date is 3 May 1616.

Shakespeare was buried on April 25, 1616 in Holy Trinity Church.

All things can be speculated to (excuse the wording) death; but 23 April IS the date recorded on Shakespeare's monument. Whether that be factual or speculative is another matter. That it is another 23 occurance is obvious.

----------------------------------------
More 23 facts

His wife Anne died in 1623.

A collection of Shakespeare's work did not appear until 1623.

Shakespeare's death date (23 April) is also recognised as National Poets Day.



ise.uvic.ca...
www.william-shakespeare.org.uk...
www.onlineshakespeare.com...




[edit on 18-6-2006 by nikelbee]

Now this IS an interesting one... and quite a cool example of a "real-world" 23.

I'm looking on another thread and there's a link to a list of Echelon keywords. Among these are "the", which seems rather all-inclusive, "sex", ditto, and various others.

You can find versions of the list on post ten of this thread.

And one of the phrases, which I didn't spot, was "Bubba the love sponge". Naturally I had to Google this to find out what (or, as it turned out, whom) this referred to. And we find that

In the heat of the FCC crackdown on so-called "indecent broadcasts" Bubba The Love Sponge was fired by Clear Channel on February 23, 2004. While his program was carried on other stations, the decision was made to shut down the Bubba Radio Network and to regroup for a new start.

Bubba The Love Sponge� show re-emerged soon on Sirius in January 2006, debuting the same day as Howard Stern. (my emphases - r23)

And you can find that link here. I also took a look at his site - it seems to be a combination of online poker and porn, and therefore I shall not link to it. There also doesn't seem to be anything remotely interesting about it, unless you're into online poker and porn... so why, one wonders, is Bubba so favoured as to be monitored by the security services.? I think Playboy was on the list, too... but then so are a lot of other large companies.

The other option, of course, is that the lists are nonsense and have been deliberately doctored to alert people to Bubba's existence. Which, frankly, I find even less plausible. As a viral marketing campaign it kind of sucks, I would think. Weird.

I was thinking about the address example, and I thought maybe it's the way it is being said? As in 'two twenty-three nine' ?

Nah... he says it "twenty-two thirty-nine" if memory serves.

It strikes me as an embedded one, as in "two-thirty". You might have missed a post or two ago where I addressed this. No big deal, either way... remember the law of fives and the extent to which this is all subjective anyway (if you actually subscribe to a hard and fast divide between the subjective and objective).

Bubba the Love Sponge,eh? The most offensive of his antics was No Panties Fridays in which he incouraged females (mostly minors due to that being part of his target audience) to come down to the station and show him. Funny thing was he recieved his big start in Cincinnati on 700 WLW (very old AM station that is stong enough to be simulcast on XM Radio). Clear Channel, which owns WLW, feared the coming lawsuits in the Cincinnati market and moved him to a smaller station. Eventually when the lawsuits started mounting he was dissmissed from Clear Channel.

I would suspect that Bubba is listed due to pedophilia connections.

One of the shortest transition prices(in my memory) on First Class Postage Stamps was 23 cents.

Thanks - that makes sense, I guess...except there aren't any other references to that subject that I could see on there, and you'd think that if that were the reason, there'd be more obvious ones. I don't know. It's a good reason, but not quite consistent with the rest of the keywords. You might want to browse the list - referenced earlier on - and see if there's anything else I missed. Weird. Thanks, anyway.

Has anyone happened to see the new Dr. Pepper commercial.
Something about 23. I read this thread and the next thing I saw was the commercial.
Kinda wierd

Dreyfuss and Clouseu in that Pink Panther movie....



2:30 ! I forgot about that one,




"some of them brought soccer balls" - Bill Hicks on folks going to crop circle sites


( I actually did that, just before I heard those jokes of Bill Hicks' )

Highlander 2 - The Quickening :

Mc Clouds address is on 23rd Street...

Just finished reading 'Strangers' by Taichi Yamada - a modern ghost story set in Japan. I won't spoil it for anyone who wants to read it, but toward the end, the number 23 appears with reference to a corridor/room/hallway.

I have to say I was surprised. Taking into consideration the thousands of books I've read in my lifetime, I've never noticed that number (or any number) until now.

Random coincidence? Perhaps.

Now that i've bitten the apple of 'knowledge' there's no going back.

Rich, is this part of the conspiracy of 23? Are you the disseminator?

From the link in this thread, and very much a recent story with wide implications.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will halt gasoline imports from September 23 and start rationing gasoline supplies to motorists because of budget constraints, Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh said on Friday.

Source.

[edit on 23/6/06 by Implosion]

Here's another one:

Canada, the United States and Mexico announced the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) for North America on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas.

The agreement provides a framework for Canada, the U.S. and Mexico to advance collaboration in areas as diverse as security, transportation, the environment and public health. On March 31, 2006, Prime Minister Harper and Presidents Bush and Fox reviewed progress on implementing the SPP and reaffirmed their commitment to advancing a positive agenda for the continent.

Thierry Henry's superb volley sent holders Brazil out of the World Cup as France moved into the semi-finals.

Inspired by man-of-the-match Zinedine Zidane, France were the better side in the first half, but failed to create clear chances to trouble Dida.

That changed just before the hour when Zidane swept a free-kick to the far post where it was sumptuously volleyed past the Brazilian goalkeeper by Henry.
Source.

"Why are you posting this Implosion?!?" I hear you cry. Well:

Full name: Zinedine Yazid Zidane
Date of birth: June 23, 1972
Source.

[edit on 1/7/06 by Implosion]