Happy New Year 2008!

[Jonathan Post]

Around this time of the year, for many many years, my father would ask
me for a numerical or numerological fact about the coming year.

So, channeling my late father, I do so now.

2008 = 2^3 × 251

2^3 is 2 cubed.

251 is the smallest number that can be written as the sum of 3
positive cubes in 2 ways. Specifically (he said, 4-banger calculator
in hand):
251 = 5^3 + 5^3 + 1^3 = 125 + 125 + 1
251 = 6^3 + 3^3 + 2^3 = 216 + 27 + 8

And, rather surprisingly,  2008 also can be written as the sum of 3
positive cubes in 2 ways.

2008 = 10^3 + 10^3 + 2^3 = 1000 + 1000 + 8
2008 = 12^3 + 6^3 + 4^3 = 1728 + 216 + 64

The previous time this was true was in 1945, a year when my father was
engaged in World War II, a very important year of his life.

1945 = 12^3 + 6^3 + 1^3 = 1728 + 216 + 1
1945 = 10^3 + 9^3 + 6^3 = 1000 + 729 + 216

Isaac Asimov wrote that this year was a singularity in History, as I'd
discussed with my dad, with Hiroshima making a total break between
past and future, in a novel and significant way.

So 2008 will be a curiously cubical year.

Which means what?  That I should hit the Craps table at Vegas casinos?
 That I shall have a job in a cubicle? That World War will break out?

Be that as it may, as Samuel Herbert Post used to say,

Happy New Year

-- Jonathan Vos Post

References:

A025396  Numbers that are the sum of 3 positive cubes in exactly 2 ways.