March 14

Countdown: T-minus four days. Until the beginning of OGT Week and thus five glorious days to sleep in? No… Until the next reading assignment for English? No. Until the first real day of daylight savings time? Much anticipated, I agree, but still no. Give up? This coming Monday is 3/14—Pi Day, of course!

As some of you may know, I work at Math Monkey, and this year we will have our first annual pi contest.   It will consist of taking videos of the students that enter reciting digits of pi and finally we will announce a winner on Pi Day!  If my memory serves me correctly, I recall we did a similar memorization of pi in sixth grade. I thought I was hot stuff for having about thirty digits memorized, but Emily won with two-hundred some digits. Congratulations, by the way Emily! Don’t worry; I’m not at all bitter.  Seriously though, you are a champion.  However your weak triple digit memorization pales in comparison to the tens of thousands on the pi world ranking list. Oh yes, you read correctly, there is a world ranking of memorized pi digits.  People do spend their time memorizing a slew of numbers whose order is without any rhyme or reason, and whose length is undetermined because higher technology computers only add digits as time goes on.  In spending their time memorizing, then reciting this endless list of numbers, these people take up the unachievable task.  They dream the impossible dream.  I say power to them if it makes them happy.  Students at the Maine School of Science and Mathematics seemed to enjoy themselves on Pi Day, 2003: http://www.memoryelixir.com/archive4.html#pi.

So this coming Monday, March 14, please remember Pi Day and pay homage to this great holiday! Even if it is just an approximation-of-pi day, technically.  Fun isn’t built on technicalities.

Don't Panic

This blog entry is what I would much rather write for the paragraph due tomorrow, instead of some focused mumbo-jumbo.  The prompt asks “how would you live if you knew, for sure, that everything will be destroyed when you are 36 years old?” I imagine apocalyptic conditions as the cause of everything getting destroyed in eighteen short years.  Therefore, I immediately thought of Douglas Adams’ novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which aliens demolish the Earth in order to make way for an intergalactic expressway.  For those of you who have not read this amazing book, or even those who think it’s unfathomable to read anything but a book for school during the academic year, I highly recommend giving this one a try.  Not only is it a relatively simple read, but Adams is hilarious—I find myself literally (and I mean literally) laughing out loud every few pages.  Anyway, in his novel, I find it interesting to look at how the people of Earth reacted to the sense of impending doom they faced upon hearing the world would explode in a matter of minutes, on that fateful Thursday.  Some people at a bar chose to put paper bags on their heads and lie down in one last futile attempt of protection. Mostly though, people screamed mindlessly and ran to nowhere in particular.  I, however, if placed in the situation of the end of the world, would like to live as the main character, Arthur Dent, did.  His best friend, Ford Prefect, is actually an extraterrestrial and had masqueraded as a human for a number of years, portraying himself as an out of work actor.  Ford saves Arthur from Earth’s demise and they go on to have fun adventures in space.  How great! So what would I do if I knew the world would end when I turn 36? I would hope one of my friends unveiled themselves as an alien and saved me.  As you may be able to tell, I have had this plan in effect for a few years now, that’s why I do theater…to meet actors who may one day save me from the end of the world.