On birthday candles.

[xiphias]

It is my considered opinion that, after a certain age, one should stop doing birthday candles on one's cake in base one -- that is, one candle per year -- and start using binary.

I suggest sixteen as the cutoff point. Up to age sixteen, you can have one candle per year. On your seventeenth birthday, you will have five candles, with only the first and last candles lit. In this manner, even Methuselah would only have required ten candles, had birthday cakes been an antediluvian tradition.

Comments

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a birthday cake in ages, though I keep wanting one. When my mom asked me what I "really really wanted" this year, I almost told her that I wanted a cake. With penguins. But I lost my nerve.