[dba-Tech] Cubits and Qubits

[Arthur Fuller]

Without consulting Google, do you remember what a cubit is? Noah's Ark was
measured in cubits. A cubit was an ancient measure of length, based on the
distance from one's extended middle finger to the elbow -- and thus
obviously a rather imprecise measure, but it served for several centuries,
and is still employed in the oft-forgot discipline of hedge-laying. Who
knew that even in this information-age, that one could make a living in
hedge-laying? Most people I know don't even have a lawn, let alone a hedge
describing its edges. I guess that's the province of the fancy-pants, whose
company I enjoy all too little.

And then we have Qubit, a term from quantum mechanics, which refers
toa two-state
quantum-mechanical system
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-state_quantum_system>, such as the
polarization <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_polarization> of a
single photon <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon>: here the two states
are vertical polarization and horizontal polarization.  In a classical
system, a bit would have to be in one state or the other. However quantum
mechanics allows the qubit to be in a superposition
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_superposition> of both states at the
same time. Or, in the vernacular, there are simultaneously two square root
of 4 -- 2^2 and -2^2. And so on, for all the square roots.

But for my money, the magic numbers are 9 and 11. Any multple of 9 adds
horizontally to 9 (9 * 3 = 27, 2 +7 = 9). Any multiple of 11 results in an
ascending + descending staircase: 11 * 11 = 121. 11 *11 * 11 - 12321, and
so on.

Are there other such magical numbers? (Aside from 1 and 0.)

-- 
Arthur