7872: The Durst Constant

"People in the house put them hands in the air

'Cause if you don't care, then we don't care

One, two, three times two to the six

Jonesin' for your fix of the Limp Bizkit mix"

-Limp Bizkit, Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)

In the year 2000, the rap-metal band Limp Bizkit released their seminal album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. The sixth track contains an interesting mathematical constant that we will explore: 123 * 2^6, or 7872, which will hereafter be named the Durst Constant.

What interesting properties does the Durst Constant hold? It is not prime, nor a perfect square. In most respects, it is an entirely ordinary number. It is, however, just one away from a prime number (7873), a property that will become important later.

Title 26 of the Internal Revenue Code, section 7872 specifies laws for the treatment of loans with below-market interest rates, a topic that would soon destabilize the U.S. housing market and cause the 2008 financial collapse. Subsection f, point 7 reads that "A husband and wife shall be treated as 1 person", an antiquated but romantic sentiment.

The European Molecular Biology Laboratory's database defines the Durst Constant as oxytocin, the love hormone (CHEBI:7872), released into the brain during social bonding or cuddling. The hormone is thought to strengthen relationships of all types, familial, platonic, but especially intimate.

Summed up, we have an ordinary number, plain and unremarkable, made even more plain by it's proximity to an interesting number, but fiercely tied to the concept of love. This meaning becomes clear near the end of the song:

Hey ladies, hey fellas

And the people who don't give a ----

All the lovers all the haters

And all the people that call themselves players

Durst uses the shorthand of mathematics to tell us that everyone, the remarkable and unremarkable, the fellas, the ladies, and even those that call themselves players, are deserving of love: That love isn't the reward of the exceptional, but something universal to the human experience. Isn't that what we're all jonesin' for?