In view of Mom's impending Sweet Sixteenth, I think it appropriate to dwell, ponder, and generally go "Hmmmm!" about the number sixteen.

The square root of sixteen is four. The square root of four is two. So, not only is sixteen the sqaure of a whole number, but its square root is the square of a whole number as well. Sixteen is the first number in the decimal counting system to exhibit this characteristic. The next is 81 (3x3=9, 9x9=81), followed by 256 (4x4=16, 16x16=256), then 625 (5x5=25, 25x25=625), then 1296 (6x6=36, 36x36=1296) etc.

As one can easily see, the differences between numbers in this series get increasingly large as one progresses. Now, it's possible that, at current posting rates, most of the current crop of MOABites may be around when Mom hits 81,000 posts in about fifteen years. But 256,000 won't come around until 2063 and I doubt many of us will be around then.

So, as I see it, we have four options:

1) Post more frequently. Post, post, post!

2) Recruit new MOABites from among the current Mudcat membership. This could be extremely difficult since most of them think we're idiots.

3) Recruit new MOABites from outside the current Mudcat membership, particularly younger people who can carry on the MOABite way. This also could prove difficult since it's proven impossible to get most of the younger generation to abandon their computer games long enough to engage in anything as esoteric as MOABing.

4) Pay people to post. There's a gentleman in Nigeria who wishes to give me a ridiculously huge amount of money for doing nothing . I would be more than willing to donate the money he is going to send me to the cause.