naught...naught...carry the one...naught

From the Associated Press:

DETROIT, Michigan (AP) -- More than 200,000 computers spent years looking for the largest known prime number. It turned up on Michigan State University graduate student Michael Shafer's off-the-shelf PC.

"It was just a matter of time," Shafer said.

The number is 6,320,430 digits long and would need 1,400 to 1,500 pages to write out. It is more than 2 million digits larger than the previous largest known prime number.

Shafer, 26, helped find the number as a volunteer on an eight-year-old project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search.

A prime number is a positive number divisible only by itself and one: 2, 3, 5, 7 and so on. Mersenne primes are a special category, expressed as 2 to the "p" power minus 1, where "p" also is a prime number.

In the case of Shafer's discovery, it was 2 to the 20,996,011th power minus 1. The find was independently verified by other participants in the project.

"People are going to make posters of it to hang up on the wall," said Shafer, who is pursuing a doctorate in chemical engineering. "It's a neat accomplishment, but it really doesn't have any applicability."

Anyone who learned to cipher in the sixth grade can see real news when it comes spewing out of the big wheel. Prime numbers are well known to hillbillies, and when the largest one yet has been discovered, it's a time to uncork the jug and fire your shotgun indiscriminately at various varmints and road signs, at top speed in the middle of the night with your headlights off. Every prime number is odd, but not every odd number is a prime...my family are all hillbillies, but not all hillbillies are my family. Yes friends, just like every prime number is divisible by itself and the number 1, "2 to the 'p' power minus 1, where 'p' is also a prime number" is just another way to say, "run cousin LuLu, run; because cousin Goober's pretty fast, and, if he catches you, well, it's just another strange page in the family Bible."

If everybody called 2 to the "p" power minus 1 friends Saturday and told them to listen to the Other Side of Country, why, we'd have a great big party. If 2 to the "p" power minus 1 people called the old pigwhistle Saturday between 1 and 3pm (651-275-1220 local; 877-646-1220 toll free), why, we'd have ourselves an opry.

P.S.--I still have Gopher Wrestling Tickets tonight for anyone who can email me the answer to this question:

Last year, Damion Hahn was the most recent individual National Champion for the Gopher Wrestling team. Who was the last Gopher wrestler to both win an individual National Title, AND, go undefeated during the season?

Email your answers to me by clicking on this link. First come, first serve WITH THE CORRECT ANSWER. Winners will be notified by me, and arrangements will be made for you to attend. One winner per household, Shania Twain can't be your date, and you aren't allowed to root for Iowa State. Contest ends 3pm CST Friday, December 12th.

Jack's 2 to the "p" power minus 1 Top Twenty:

1. Live at Billy Bob's, Jack Ingram
Loud, driving, Country. It doesn't get much better than this.
2. Famous Anonymous Wilderness, Graham Lindsey
Perfesser Al wrote a great review of Graham's live show under my Robbie Fulks review. This album is just a great piece of music from start to finish. It's travelling minstrel hobo folk blues murder music at its best.
3. Warmth & Beauty, Thad Cockrell
Thad Cockrell is the tenor voiced hillbilly Barry White that Ryan Adams either steered clear of becoming or, never quite became.
4. My Baby Don't Tolerate, Lyle Lovett
Sam Snead used to take a backhanded swipe at Ben Hogan's popular Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by saying he never had a callous in his life from playing golf. The unspoken words being that he was more of a gentleman golfer than the zealous Hogan. You get the feeling, listening to Lyle Lovett, that he doesn't have any callouses on his left hand from playing guitar. He puts out pretty complex musical albums, but they all seem so effortless and gentle.
5. A Day at the Farm with Farmer Jason, Jason Ringenberg
When I was a kid, my grandma had all these yellow, red, and blue vinyl albums with all sorts of hillbilly kids' songs on them. This record by Jason of Jason and the Scorchers is just like those old disks. Screw Barney!!! Plug this into the CD player in the minivan while your ADD kids drink soda pop playing video games in double reinforced harnesses in the back seat.
6. Oh the Stories We Hold, Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel
Anna Fermin could melt butter on frozen lake in Canada in January.
7. Just For The Record, Bobby Flores
The best damn country dance record that's out right now.
8. Fool For Love, Paul Burch
There are all these guys who can sing, write, and pick in Nashville, and all the talentless people who have hits on mainstream country radio go to see them when they go out. This is a country record that ought to be a big hit, but it doesn't contain any tampon jingles, so you're not going to hear it on the FM at say 2PM on a Thursday.
9. Railings, Frog Holler
Will be in Chicago and St. Louis later in November, I have my fingers crossed that they'll turn the van north for a show. Pennsylvania's finest hillbilly pickin' an' hollerin' band.
10. "OK - I'm sorry...", Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals' Starvation League
I like this better than the original disk. There's some great live material on it and some really nice studio outtake stuff.
11. Live from the Memory Hotel, Mark McKay
A fine live album from an up and coming heavy hitter on the East Coast roots rock scene.
12. Weatheredbound, Barn Burning
Every song is an imbalanced equation where the mandolins and fiddles could give way at any moment to power chords of I Wanna Be Sedated, all the while integrating polynomials of mountain strings, Music City steel fills, and Jay Farrar-style guitar turned up to "11."
13. Hope is a Thing With Feathers, Trailer Bride
Lead singer and songwriter Melissa Swingle could be singing about bluebirds eating lollipops in the sunshine, and you would still feel like somebody was asking you whether to take a relative off of life support. It's a deceptively alluring sound that wiggles its way into your noodle before you know what hit ya.
14. Lost Highway: Lost & Found 1, Various Artists
Mostly made up of songs from the artists' most recent albums, the highlights are obviously the unreleased stuff and yet-to-be released stuff, including "Falling Star" by the Jayhawks from the Bunkhouse Record, and a version of "Wichita Lineman" by Johnny Cash that will make you weep like a baby. "Hockey Skates" by Kathleen Edwards is also a great tune to throw on this album.
15. It Happened in America, Sherwin Linton & Friends
There's all these young guys and gals playing country around here now, and after a few hours of sitting around telling stories, one of them inevitably starts off a story, "Sherwin Linton once told me that..." This is a disk that just reinforces that Sherwin Linton has seen and done it all.
16. Post To Wire, Richmond Fontaine
All reports say that it's better than Winnemucca.
17. Love Ain't a Cliche, Dan Israel & the Cultivators
Minnesota's Elvis Costello. This disk has a nice feel to it. The best way to describe it might be that it's the kind of music you think you might have seen in the clubs of Minneapolis 15 or 20 years ago, when we were the cutting edge of most music styles. That's not to say it's old-fashioned; rather, the process that created it was old-fashioned club gig know-how. The songs on this record are tested and tight, and you can see yourself boppin' next to your buddies in a good ol' smokey club, checkin' out the Cultivators gig.
18. The One That Got Away, Dry County Crooks
Music to open a cheap beer with a greasy but sharp switchblade by, as you drive through the streets of Portland in your three-on-the-tree, straight-six Impala. There's just the slightest touch of the early work of the Old97's in these guys, but it's not quite early 90's Austin hick pop, more of an edge to it. (See also, Moonshine Hangover).
19. Fought Down, Ken Layne & the Corvids
If it wasn't a bedrock fact that you can't smoke anywhere in the State of California, least of all in bars, I would say a few packs went into making this disk. And maybe that's the best description for the record, it's an ashtray full of butts, and everybody in the room saying it was the other guy smoking; the minute you turn your back, they all light up again. There's some grit and reality to this record which I never saw in my 10 or so trips to the Los Angeles area, which leads me to believe there's some kind of secret roots rock society there, where you can eat fatty foods, smoke cigarettes, and actually listen to the band on stage, rather than posing yourself to get laid by someone higher on "the ladder" than you. Go West young man.
20. Blue Sky, The Bottle Rockets
Haven't heard it yet, but what the hell? My old list was getting stale. Ya gotta figure it's at least the 20th best CD out there, sound unheard.