Happy BD, oh esteemed host!

Excuse me, I'll be out in the garden leaning on my Zimmer frame.

Remember: getting older is better than the alternative.

[1] This is because Hugo-winning editors are supposed to be older than me!

Happy Birthday!

PNH, you're in your prime, and you're certainly not a square.

Your comment proves your mettle: even noticing issues such as primes and squares indicates a great integrity and a salutary shunning of the decadently indecent irrational.

Many happy returns.

(I suppose reading "Imitations of Immorality" for the title of this thread suggests a need for sleep, more than anything else... )

Many happy returns.

So here's hoping that this is the *next* to last prime^2 birthday, or possibly (as said above) even the third-to-last.

And, of course, here's also wishing you a wonderful year! As my dad said, if you can get to 50 without growing up, *you don't have to!* :)

You still have a whole lot of prime birthdays left; who cares if they're square?

* The exclamation mark thanks for you being an excuse to use it.

On mathematics and growing older ... I've always found the argument in Robert Charles Wilson's 'Divided by Infinity' a great comfort, myself.

Next year you'll be able to write your age in Roman numerals with just one letter. The one that looks like a carpenter's square, while "square" is being discussed.* Of course, that may or may not happen to you again, either.

*Not that you are at all square. And we hope you are (a)round a long time!

Lois, whose current age is on every Heinz Ketchup bottle.

#12 The obvious solution is to redefine squares and/or prime numbers.

Or you could choose a reference planet with a longer year.

The good news is that our host's age in days will next be the square of a prime on Pentecost 2010.

Now twice prime cubed he'll
be just five years on,
then prime squared cubed once
ten years more have gone

Math'matic rhyme,
while not sublime,
bears best wishes anon.

Happy Birthday Patrick
(Remember, in hex you're only 31)

Patrick: Happy birthday!

Sadly after 3 years old there are no worthwhile birthdays anymore. It's the last age when you get pi.

(I will now go quietly burn in math pun hell)

I can't, however, bring myself to agree that being 49 means you're old. Or even older. The most I'm willing to concede, from the great height of 50, is that we're not annoying, argumentative kids anymore.

We're annoying, argumentative adults.

I am 1/3 of the way through my 49th year, and finding that it is producing a lot of good reflection and positive change. May it be the same for you!

I mentioned there that finding out that both expected future PMs in our recent election were younger than me was rather confronting (both turned 50 in 2007). Definitely worse than seeing young policemen.

Now I find the respected & experienced PNH is even younger still! Enjoy it Patrick, you never know how many more you'll get. (Go & blow out a candle on that Hugo.) Congratulations & Hoppy Birdies.

(I've always found hexadecimal a friendlier base for birthdays - 49 is only 31!)

May we all live to see you happy and healthy on your 121st birthday.

(Need more coffee ...)

(And damn you, Serge (#47) for earworming me!)

But good going on the birthday thing. Keep having them.

My Aunt Jane, whose eighty-fifth birthday it is today, picked up The King's Peace once in AM's house. She read the first sentence aloud. "What it means to be old is to remember things that nobody else alive can remember." She looked up. Well, that's true!" she said, and put the book down decisively. So she never got to the line in the last chapter of The King's Name "What it means to be young is to wake up in the morning with the belief that today might be better than yesterday."

Happy birthday!

Old? Ha! I have books, sir, that are three times your age.

And forty-nine is not old. Good heavens.

You know, Patrick doesn't look that old. Do you think he might really be a Questor?

At least (unless you haven't been mentioning it) you haven't been receiving solicits from the AARP to join. I have, at one year younger than you, which is odd. They're usually far more accurate than that.

2. Happy first-birthday-with-a-Hugo to PNH!

3. You waited till exactly midnight to post this? Obsessive much?

I hope the twelve months leading to the age of L are all good ones.

Look at it this way, you still get to look forward to being the 6th power of a prime, as well as the 4th power of a prime later.

In other news: Teresa, have you heard about this narcolepsy-related news? I don't know when and if they plan on moving to human trials, though.

In March I'll be a prime cubed. Look at all you have to look forward to!

Much love, as always

And don't pay attention to anybody who insists you're an adult.

Happy birthday!

Intimations of mortality--one of my colleagues at work was born the year I graduated from high school.

Sigh.

If you were Jack Benny, you could just keep repeating this birthday for the rest of your life.

Yeah, I had an experience like this a while back. I went to my doctor's office, and saw a very earnest very young doctor who looked like she had graduated (from high school) about an hour before. It was just sort of jarring....

My youngest coworkers were probably born around the time I graduated high school, too.

I could note that you still get to be the fifth power of a prime and the fourth power of a prime before you get to be a prime squared again, but that's too geeky, so I won't.

On my next birthday, in a few short weeks, I become The Answer. Whoopee.

(After a quick Google by this lover of single malts). Yes, but they're rather expensive...

Happy birthday!

Now someone will tell me that 'prime' IS a verb in mathematics and explain what it means. That's fine. Just don't tell me that squares ARE primes (because after all they're derived from them)! :-)

You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
And now you're older still.

Prime may not be a verb in mathematics, but it is a form of dinosaur.

*runs very quickly away*

*blasts abi as she flees*

Sorry, folks, but it had to be done.

You're going to be even more sorry when I send Prime the Very Mean And Slightly Unusual Dinosaur after you.

You think that'll quill him?

(Making Light: the only place where anyone ever brings a dinosaur to a gunfight.)

Happy Birthday.

You know the proof for there being no largest interesting number, don't you? I think I read it here.

Youth'ink?

Harriet
who will be one year short of the Heinz label day after tomorrow

-- perhaps I should act now to reserve Whisperado to play for my next big one, my LXth, in 2012? :-)

FWIW, I read the title as "Imitations of Morality" as well. Which would probably be post with a lot of supporting material readily available.

Because I could not stop for Puns,
They kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but Xopher's wit
And verbal levity.*

-----
* For the record, this is doggerel. Or, perhaps, dinorel.

When it comes down to it, their pinions matter a lot to you.

I'd post a version of the sad happy birthday song, but I can't even get the VPXI videos online, so I'm going to have to put that off for another birthday.

Hangovers are what's so sad
'Bout the whiskey that you've had
On your birthday
Happy birthday

May your deeds with pen and axe
Outshine those with 'saurs and yaks
On your birthday
Happy birthday

And I wish you joy in each and every one of those days, as well as in the years and decades to follow.

Happy B'day, and thanks for co-hosting our favorite online reading.

-Josh and Ann

- CJH
(celebrated 40th on last ISO8660 date with all-odd digits for the next millenium or so...)

--Dave

Patrick #6: I remember my 20th birthday. So does Teresa. The idea that hot new writer Toby Buckell was writhing into existence on that same day is simply too weird to contemplate.

Well... you could look at Toby and his subsequent writing as a great birthday present that just took a really long while to get to you (-:

-Suzanne