The Watering Hole, Saturday, 3.1415 9:26am (EST): Happy Pi Day!

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Yes, it’s Pi Day; but not just any old 3.14 Pi Day – which is also Albert Einstein’s birthday – today, 3-14-15, is a once-in-a-century Pi Day. Plus I made it even more extra-special by having it publish at 9:26 East Coast time; unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t have a place to put the 53 seconds to make it 9 decimal places. But at least I got 7 places with 3.1415926.

Pi Day

Pi Day

An article by Sasha Volokh in yesterday’s Washington Post has hints for “How to Observe Pi Day 2015“: including, for the real geeks, the author’s own mnemonic for remembering 167 digits of pi. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“One of the best pi mnemonics, which gets up to 740 digits, is a retelling of Poe’s The Raven; here’s its first stanza:
‘Poe, E.
Near A Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary.
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap – the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor.
“This”, I whispered quietly, “I ignore”.’

 

This is actually the beginning of a super-long work called Cadaeic Cadenza by Mike Keith…”

[I hope that Wayne doesn’t consider this to be a challenge to his mathematical mind and his parody talent.]

Pi Chart

Pi Chart

Apparently, Pi Day is ‘celebrated’ by enough people that there are sites selling T-shirts, posters, stickers, etc., with various pi (and pie) related themes. Many of these items are available at Pi Day’s own website, www.piday.org, for true devotees. And some people are even inspired by Pi Day to make pi-themed pies and other treats.

Pi Pie

Pi Pie

Pi Cookies

Pi Cookies

Okay, this is way too much pi for one morning – I’m stuffed.

This is our daily Open Thread – go ahead, discuss pi, pie, or anything you want to.

58 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Saturday, 3.1415 9:26am (EST): Happy Pi Day!”

  2. Ah, geometry. Where would a machinist be without it?
    I can’t answer that question because I’ve always had it.

  3. “Pick a number between one and ten”
    3.14
    “No, I asked you to pick a number between one and ten”
    3.14 is a number between one and ten.
    “No, no, no, you’re not getting it, you have to pick a number between one and ten”.
    I just did and you you didn’t guess it. You lose the bet so pay me.
    “That’s cheating. 3.14 is not a number between one and ten”.
    Oh but it is. Are you going to make good on this wager or do I get out of my chair?

  5. I seem to have lost the argument that this is not pi day today as round to 4 decimal places pi is in fact 3.1416 and not 5….. my son has promised to make an issue of it at 9:26 and 53 seconds instead.

    So my son took his nerd t-shirt to school. It has (I don’t think I have he HTML skills to replicate so I describe) symbols to say:

    The square root of -1, 2 to the power 3, a sigma and a pi…… “and it was delicious”

    And Neil DGT made the mistake of tweeting congratulations for pi day to Australia and New Zealand – who all like “you wot mate? wot are you talking about? its 14th March 2015, so what?”

  6. Here’s a curious li’l tidbit. Last Thursday my Watering Hole post “Elections Have Consequences” was mainly aimed at defining the Tea Party political philosophy as embraced by Colorado’s newly-elected Senator Cory Gardner who defeated progressive-liberal Mark Udall. I posted Gardner quotes from four letters I’ve received from him in response to my communications — mainly via petition — with him.

    Each of those four letters from him were received by me within an hour or two of the time I sent the stuff to him. Until Thursday afternoon. I signed and sent to him (via Daily Kos, hit my inbox at 2:42 PM, and I signed and sent it within ten minutes) a fifth communication, another petition calling on him to “recant” his signature, his agreement, with Tom Cotton’s “outrageous letter immediately.” The petition allowed me to add a comment, so I did. The final submission read:

    Senator, this is a step too far. President Obama says Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran makes “make common cause with the hardliners in Iran” to undermine the president’s negotiations. You should ashamed of yourself.

    Recant your signature from this outrageous letter immediately.

    See also: “Elections Have Consequences”

    I’ve yet to receive any communication from Gardner, not even his typical “first response” to an electronic communication in which he alway says:

    Thank you for contacting me. I appreciate hearing from you and knowing what issues are most important to you. I ask for your patience as we work to respond to the high volume of mail my office receives each day and will get back to you as quickly as possible. Please note that replying to this e-mail will send it to an unmonitored account-I will send you a separate e-mail with a response to your message. Thank you again.

    Sincerely, Cory Gardner United States Senator

    Makes me wonder: did I piss him off to the point where I’m on his shit list? I hope so!

    Or maybe the Brownshirts are on their way? Election do have consequences, after all! 😀

      • I took out the first of the Discworld books, The Colour of Magic, and started re-reading it off and on last night. Still just as enjoyable as ever.

        And for the first time, I noticed the blurb on the back of the book for another novel of his called ‘Strata’, which I’ve never read. Have you, Terry? I’ll have to find it — if necessary I can have the local bookshop order it in for me.

  10. Bristol Palin is engaged to a Medal of Honor recipient named Dakota Meyer.

    So she’ll be Bristol Meyer.

  11. Though I know that number can go up and down, I’m currently just 7 followers shy of hitting 5,000 for the first time. As I said, it could dip below for a bit, then nothing, then surge up again with 10 in a week. Still, it’s nice to have that many, especially when i see how many some other people have. Of course, a lot of those followers were hooked up by Connect The Left and Unite Blue, but I got the celebrity ones on my own. 🙂

    • In this sense, it is akin to communist, fascist and Nazi regimes that set out to transform the world.

      First of all, he should have added ‘capitalist’ “regimes that set out to transform the world” — like us, for example. And too, if/when Republicans take over the government’s three branches, the US will officially have become a ‘fascist regime’ anyway.

      And this idiot is an academic “fellow”? Sounds more like a stupid Republican, to me.

    • Here’s an idea. How about we agree to throw the full weight of the U.S. military behind Mideast military operations but only in the event that it’s a joint operation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

  15. Just wanted to post this pic that accompanied a story about Walker lying about the Reagan bible:

  19. I don’t know why it took me so long to make the connection. I have a sick feeling that the poor girls adopted by the Harrises were subjected to things like this.

  25. I see that Bristol Palin is engaged to Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer. Since he’s from Kentucky, I was wondering if they might give the couple a piece of bottom land and build them a house like Tennessee did for their WWI Medal of Honor winner Alvin York.

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