Three-Hundred and Still Going Strong
By Don Hobbs

Today’s article is the 300th one, in case anyone is counting. If anyone is paying close attention, my co-conspirator Brad is on number 301, but he can’t count. This means we have been delivering a different Sherlockian article every week for 5.769230…years. This impresses me and I am half the one responsible. I have written many times in the past that I thought I could sustain my half of the bargain for a couple of months, yet here I am 5.769230 years and 300 articles later still churning them out.

The first Sherlockpeoria debuted on June 02, 2002. At that time my collection had just 6,000 items and now it is just over 8,600 items. This means that I have added an average of 450 items a year over the life of Sherlockpeoria. Every newsletter, journal, and book is included in this count, so Sherlockpeoria adds 52 items a year to the total. Excluding this built-in number padding bit of Sherlockiana and other monthly and quarterly subscriptions, I am still adding to my collection at a rate of more than a book a day! It is no wonder my library is out of shelf-space.

Three-hundred is a good number in the grand scheme of things. It is evenly divided by the number sixty, which happens to be the same number of tales in the Canon. If I were a major league baseball player, it would be a decent batting average. Chrysler is proud of the number 300 and names one of it’s best selling automobiles after it. I am writing this in airplane flying at 30,000 feet in the air, which ironically is also evenly divided by the number 300. In the year 300 A.D. nothing of any real importance happened, but have you ever wondered if A.D. really stands for Arthur Doyle?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the sixty Canonical tales over a 39 year period. This means he only averaged writing tales at a rate of 1.6666666 per year. Thus in the lifetime of Sherlockpeoria, only 9.6 of the Canonical tales would have been written. Then again using Doyle’s rate of story completion, it would have taken me 180 years to complete my 300th article. Of course Brad could have accomplished this sooner using his kind of math.

Not every one of the 300 article are great (as today’s will attest) but each one has taken at least 300 seconds to write. Once again divide that number by 60, which oddly enough is not only the number of Canonical tales but also the same numbers of second in a minute. Before you say wait a minute, remember, this is no coincidence, do the math (except you Brad) and you get 5, the exact number of pips in a certain Canonical tale. This is the kind of stuff that can not be made up. Numbers do not lie.

I could continue amazing you with fact and numbers but I hope by now I have made my point. We here at Sherlockpeoria will strive to bring to the Sherlockian community the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth even if Brad’s math is a little on the fudged side.

Happy Collecting!!