Happy 3.14; Have a Piece of Pi

Those of you who know me well are very much aware that I'm not in any way a math geek, but I did get a kick out of this story: Fans of the number known as pi will meet today at just before 2 p.m. local time (get it--3.14 at 1:59?). Read the whole story, which includes some amazing feats of people reciting pi to a large amount of digits in a fairly short time. It also notes that people at places like M.I.T. will actually wish each other a "Happy Pi Day" today. (UPDATE: I also found out that Pi Day has its own website; I shouldn't have been surprised.)

One time last semester, I went to a new music concert at my college, and one of the pieces involved a guy who translated the various digits of pi to musical sounds, which was quite fascinating. I can't remember the exact number of digits he had programmed by concert time, but I recall that the piece ran for about fifteen minutes before crashing the computer (d'oh).

I may not get a chance to eat any pie today, but I did get a jump on the holiday by having some for dessert last night. And to top this all off, here's a poem that a guy wrote wherein the number of letters in each successive word correspond to the digits of pi.

(Also, this post is being written at 1:59 if you're out in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere...)

They ate the zoo: The locals in Hibernia, Indiana were happy to find out that raccoon has been returned to the menu of their annual local fundraiser.

She taught the zoo: Authorities coming to the aid of a teacher in New York who was involved in a car crash on her way to a wildlife lecture were surprised to discover her collection of critters in the car with her. They included a boa constrictor, turtles, frogs, small mammals and a monster toad.