If you’ve been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the 46th Mersenne, well, it’s time to send out the announcements. UCLA Mathematicians have discovered a 13-million-digit prime number, a long-sought milestone that makes them eligible for a $100,000 prize.

The group found the 46th known Mersenne prime last month on a network of 75 computers.

It’s the eighth Mersenne prime discovered at UCLA. But they’re not stopping now. They’re already on the prowl for the 47th one.

Primes are numbers like three, seven and 11 that are divisible by only two whole positive numbers: themselves and one.

One source said it would take almost three months to write the 12,978,189 digits by hand.

Hmm. It took more time to write out the 46th Mersenee than it did to work out the 107-page plan for the $700 billion buy-out.

Maybe I’ll sleep more restfully knowing the 46th Mersenne is safely tucked into its prime number haven. Or not.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26914730/

Paul Newman dies at the age of 83. He spent 50 of those years married to Joanne Woodward.

From the New York Times:

In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward’s was striking for its endurance. But they admitted that it was often turbulent. She loved opera and ballet. He liked playing practical jokes and racing cars. But as Mr. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?”

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I can’t think of any another time I’ve read of a celebrity’s death where I’ve experienced waves of sadness. Perhaps it’s because Newman is one of the stars I grew up with, the seemingly timeless “pretty boy” next to Robert Redford, both seared in my brain after their Butch Cassidy movie. Perhaps it’s because he dared to race in Daytona in his 70s. Perhaps it’s because he had more longevity in his marriage than most Hollywood stars have in ten marriages.

And, perhaps it’s because these words would hardly be said by anyone remaining in Hollywood:

We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

STUDENT GEMS:

1. “I love reading books because you can enter someone’s world completely unnoticed.”

2. Why would anyone title a book Obama Nation? When you say it kinda fast, it sounds like “abomination.”

3. I went to that website you told us about. It wasn’t on my computer.

FROM THE PETA FILES:

Storchen’s new menu got us thinking … which product would be fabulously awesome if it were made with breast milk instead of cow’s milk? (Light bulb!) Ben and Jerry’s!

So we wrote a letter to the good people at Ben and Jerry’s, asking them to switch from cow’s milk to breast milk. We explained that using cow’s milk for their ice cream is a hazard to consumers’ health. Even Dr. Spock spoke out against feeding cow’s milk to children, saying it may play a role in the onset of anemia, allergies, and juvenile diabetes and, in the long term, can set kids up for a lifetime of obesity and heart disease (America’s number one cause of death).

Update: In response to our letter, Ben and Jerry’s issued the following statement: “We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.” Hey, guys, that’s our point: Cow’s milk is for baby cows. Do you think Ben and Jerry’s should use human milk in its ice cream?

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Tomorrow is supposed to be International “Hug a Vegetarian” Day. (Note: Those participating may want to avoid eating beans the night before.) I’m wondering if, on last year’s hug-day celebration, people squeezed the brains out of the PETA people.

Or, perhaps, while consuming a lunch of cruelty-free food, a PETA person finished reading Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” ( an 18th century satire in which he suggests the Irish poor might lessen their poverty by selling children as food for the rich)and decided to write an immodest one. Because, who wouldn’t think selling your breast milk to make ice cream so you can buy infant formula to feed your baby isn’t a good idea?

I mean, really. Who could afford this ice cream? Donor human breast milk is $3.00 an ounce.  So, a pint of B&J’s might sell for what, $50?  That might go a long way in my thigh-reduction program since I’d declare a moratorium on ice-cream consumption.

Is it any wonder Pamela Anderson is a spokesperson?

Home from the ACFW Conference.

Fifty-four pounds of papers to grade.

A suitcase to unpack.

Visions of plots dancing in my head.

More later.