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The Number 31 — What Does It Mean?
Posted by Steven Hall, March 21st, 2007
19 Comments
Filed under: Guests.
For Jim Carrey it was the number 23, for Douglas Adams it was 42. And for me, weirdly, it's the number 31.
The number 31 keeps showing up in my life at the moment, especially in relation to my novel, The Raw Shark Texts. Don't believe me? Okay, check this out — I am 31 years old now, this year, at the time my first novel is released. At the time of its release, Raw Shark had sold into a total of 31 counties. The day after its release, it hit its highest sales rank to date on a certain other bookselling website: Sales rank 31. And proceeded to enter the UK hardback fiction chart at, you guessed it, No. 31.
All of which is just unusual rather than creepy or significant, of course, but, if the universe is trying to speak to me, then I suppose I should at least take a second to tune in the radio. As a fun experiment then, I'm just about to type '31 Steven Hall' into Google and see what happens. The secret to life the universe and everything? Well, let's see...
Okay, so first up, there's another Steven Hall, at MIT I think, judging from the website address, completing his own final project on October 31, 2005: Looks like some sort of homemade computer.
What next? Ahhh… there's yet another Steven Hall, a painter this time, whose book was released on the 31st January 2005.
Then this, another Steven (or Stephen) Hall, and another 31:
Toxic Environment
Program 97-08-31-B"Also, Stephen Hall tells Steve Paulson about his work in immunotherapy. Hall thinks vaccines can be used to trigger the immune system to resist some malignancies. Hall writes for the New York Times Magazine..."
Here's a good one: Someone called Carrie on a message board looking for an 'Ernest Stephen Hall'. Carrie joined the message board on 31st December and posted this particular message at 1:31.
Okay, this one's a bit more impressive: The Stephen S Hall hotel in Dublin apparently has 31 rooms.
And here another Steven Hall plays piano on a CD featuring Sonata for Piano no 16 in G major, Op. 31, by old Ludwig Van.
Thirty-one out of 81 CEOs received no bonuses last year....Steven Hall, a managing partner at Pearl Meyer, said the recession is ultimately prompting…
Okay, well so much for that. A little bit interesting here and there, but hardly the key to life the universe and everything. More static than Stephen Hawking. So is there anything fun to be learned about 31 itself? What if I just stick 31 into Google on its own..?
We get this from Wikipedia:
Messier object M31, a magnitude 4.5 galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. It is also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, and is readily visible to the naked eye in a modestly dark sky.
Thirty-one is also:
• The number of days in the months January, March, May, July, August, October and December
• The code for international direct-dial phone calls to the Netherlands
• A type of card game
• A type of game played on a backgammon board
• The number of flavors of Baskin Robbins ice cream
• In Star Trek, the name of Section 31, a secret police shadow organization of the Federation
• ISO 31 is the ISO's standard for quantities and units
• In Family Guy, the Griffin house number on Spooner Street
• In the title of the anime Ulysses 31
• In the title of Nick Hornby's book 31 Songs• Turkish slang for masturbation ("otuzbir")
• Jeff Burton's racing #
• 31 Records, a record label
And there are 31 planes of existence, according to this.
And 31 letters in the Russian alphabet according to this.
So what does it all mean?
Well, nothing by the looks of things.
It's all just random noise. But then Gregory Chaitin says that even the things we thought were solid and logical and predictable, like mathematics, are mostly just a big dark churning ocean of random and unprovable truths.
But, it's always nice to check, isn't it..?
S
Books mentioned in this post
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The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams -
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The Raw Shark Texts
Steven Hall -
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Songbook
Nick Hornby
GAAAAHHH!! And your blog was posted on 11:31 am!!!
plus you sold the movie rights for 31 million dollars!!
'Pretty Fly For A White Guy' by The Offspring:
"He asked for a 13/But they drew a 31"
I have been going through very similar experiences with the number 31 for a while. In fact, I found your blog while searching for a meaning for this number.
It happens all the time, each time I look at the clock, a car plate, a restaurant menu, etc. This has been specially happening since some personal troubles changed my life. Last night my ex-girlfriend and I went to an hotel, in search of reconciliation. Right after leaving our room and when I got in my car it came to my mind the idea of checking the time (because it was too late) and my car mileage, since I was running out of gas. Surprise!! The mileage count was something like 3155 and the current time 3:01. I felt freaked, and after some time I watched the clock again, 3:11am.
Ok hows this:
I was born on Dec 13 1977
thats 1+2+1+3+1+9+7+7=31
my mother's birth day was apr 13 1949
4+1+3+1+9+4+9=31
my father's birthday was may 7 1945
5+7+1+9+4+5=31
it get worse:
using a cipher of a=1, b=2, c=3 ..etc.
my name is jeremy, so that's
j=10 e=5 r=18 e=5 m=13 y=25
1+0+5+1+8+5+1+3+2+5=31
although i prefer not to post it, i can tell you my last name also equals 31
as does my father's name Jerry = 31
I relaxed some when i figured out that my mom's name Lee does not = 31, but then I realized that L=12 E=5 E=5 or 1+2+5+5=13 and that's just 31 backwards.
The number 31 one is like direction for me it shows up everytime things are right. And whenever I will advance. If it is not present I often go to see if I'm wrong and the result is not profitable. I am starting not to resist this phenomenon anymore my mother died November 13th
Like some of you on here, im alittle ta takenback on why the numbers 3 and 1 are are always present on clocks and other places that i look, hence wanting to find find an answer and finding this blog. Always too feel that when there seems to be significant change in my life, it pops up everywhere...glad im not the only one this is happening to.
Mann i'm also sufferin from the same problem since a year..
My birthdate is 4 july 1989
4 july falls in the 27th week of the year..
Simply 27 + 4 gives me 31.
My flat number is 301.
The numbers on the plate of my bike is 5152 which totals up in 13(31 back)
I myself search the meaning of 31 or
13 until i found your blog. My father house
house num is 31, my place of work num
31. I had once rent an aprtment num
18-3-1. I am now staying in my own
house num 13. Both of my vehicles
have no 1 and 3 on it. My daughter
was born in 13 Dec. I pursue a Master
Degree where the class in 3rd floor.
All the subject code have 1 and 3 num
on it. What next ? Can anybody here
tell me any web site that shall
exlain all this?
im a crazy ass lunatic since i
discoverd this whole 31 phenomenom,
it all started with lucky 49 numbers
a couple of months back and its being haunting me since, i think im
POSSESSED....
I have been seeing the number 31/13 a LOT. Every time I look at a clock, the time (sum of the #'s), ANYTHING. It's always there. I thought it was nothing at first, but then I saw it more and more and now when I see the number it worries me. It's become a part of my everyday life. I searched for the #31 in google and I got paranormal stories, stories of people who have the same problem, and a bible verse: John 13:31 "When he had left, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him."
By far the most scary thing I found was an article about Julian Blacke State Mental Hospital. A hospital riddled with death and chaos. On Halloween night (October 31), 1989 SIX teenagers went to have a romp through the old aslylum, Some neighbors across the street saw them enter the building and called the police. Four police officers were dispatched to the scene. Twenty minutes later, one of the officers radioed the station, begging for backup. Multiple voices were heard screaming in the background.
4 of the kids and 3 of the cops were never found. And !!13!! year old Janice Wendelboe, who was one of the only ones found, screamed her vocal cords to shreds every time she saw something red.
NEwayz... yah, idk wat it means... =|
Oh Auto -- that mental hospital story is fun, but totally fake. Just try to find a record of it. Be a good movie though.
it's fake??? whoa
it haunts me too I can't do anything about it but there's many others who are haunted by the number I'm haunted by 31, 14 and 314
I wuz lookin up meanings of 31 to figure out What Offspring was talking about in Pretty Fly . Turkish word for masturbation, eh? i doubt that's it, funny though. As for this thing, don't worry bout it, cuz i wuz trying to see my pattern number and it's random chance. 4 example, my email is exactly 24 characters long, 1 more than 23.
Wait! 34 or 38 may be my number. 34 million veiwers watch Naked news. the president of this show shares his name with me. Dave Warga. On a phone, the numbers these letters are located on are 3283 92742=34. 38 was my freshman locker # and my old soccer jersey number. my birthday digits add up to 37, 1 less than 38.
i was surfing the net.. and i saw this message board Im 31 and iam curious what 31 really means..
I seem to see the number 31 every single day for about a year and a half. On the Internet, movies, books. And for me it seems to be connected to love, mothers, and babies.
Examples from last week:
Like a novel I'm reading (Cryptonomicon) is talking about a woman who may be pregnant, and is talking about another woman who may have a child, and I look up, and I see page number 531.
131 is on the train in Back to the Future 3, where Clara is trying to catch up with the Doc.
Just tonight I go to see the movie The Invention of Lying, and 31 is right in my face in the center of the screen, on the roulette table.
I expect to see it, but I still bust out laughing when I do.
ive been doing a project for school aboutt the number 31. after i think about it i have been having the same problums! does anyone kno anything about the number (facts) i could use for the project?