Good Morning Gentle Readers,

Before we get things started this morning, it’s only right that we get our priorities in order, putting the most important thing first.  And to that extent, the most important thing I can think of is a report from our dear friend, Lethal Leprechaun:

Thank you Lethal, and thank you God for keeping your hand on your daughter.

As you enter the facility and sit down, order your favorite morning beverage and settle in, you notice a sight on stage that has you a tiny bit confused and even a little concerned.  Right in the front of the stage is a life sized mechanical automaton that looks like Impish Dragon.  It is standing up straight and waving its hand in greeting, and moving from the waist back and forth.  Its lips are moving, but not even close to being in time to the words that are coming out of its mouth.  It is obviously a mechanical creation and not a good one at that.
Good Morning boys and girls, please take a seat and order your drinks and breakfast.  Today’s issue will begin momentarily.  Good Morning boys and girls, please take a seat…
It keeps repeating over and over again.
As you settle in with your beverage and pastry of choice, you look around for any of the familiar faces…Lethal, Diaman, Ginny, Paul, they all seem to be missing.  Before you can ask someone, the repetitious monotony of the mechanical Impish changes.
Good Morning boys and girls, please take a seat and ord…..crick! pop!
Good Morning boy….clunk!
After a pause, the voice picks up again.
Good Morning boys and girls, today’s issue is about pie….and … pi!  Ha! Ha! Ha! Get it? Pie and Pi.  Ha, Ha, ha. The horrible laughter sounds like a toaster being kicked by a kangaroo.  I know, I know…I’m supposed to be facing my addiction, but it’s okay.  I can talk about pie without really having any pie.  Besides, this issue was recorded a while ago in preparation for just this occasion, so while it’s playing, you can rest assured that I am somewhere very safe from any distraction.
A high piercing scream rips through the walls.  Everybody jumps and looks towards the door as the mechanical dragon dud keeps going.
And since it’s March 14th…
The bellowing sound of Impish’s real voice echoes in from the outside hallway.  I’m fine I tell you!  It’s my Saturday!  What could be so wrong about me being here?
You can hear Diaman’s voice trying to calm the dragon, “Impish, I just don’t think this is a good idea after just getting back.”
And Ginny saying, “Just listen to Diaman…”
And Paul, “Impish old buddy…”
And the real  Impish again, “What the hell is wrong with all of you?  Get out of my way!”
And Lethal, obviously speaking into a radio or a cell phone, “…the sedation crew. Code 1!  I repeat Code 1!  Yes, to the auditorium.”
And the mechanical Impish, “…3.1415 so you see…”
And the sound of the real Impish again, “Diaman, Ginny, ladies.  What could possibly be so …”
Mechanical Impish adds, “And with that… TA DA!”
Several things happen simultaneously; As the mechanical impish throws up his mechanical arms, the ceiling opens and thousands of pies, big ones, little ones, tarts, apple pie, pecan pie, cherry pie, every pie you could ever imagine, comes floating down from the ceiling on little balloons, as well as pi signs and shapes of all sizes and colors.  Lights are flashing, and people are applauding.  At the exact same time, the real Impish dragon bursts through the front doors with Ginny holding one arm and Diaman holding the other; Paul is standing in front and Lethal is in the back, motioning towards others coming down the hall.
As the doors slam open to the sides of the room, everything goes silent.  All you hear is the breathing of the blue dragon, and the sound of balloon floating pies lightly hitting the floor.
Just as the moment couldn’t get any more tense, Impish throws his head back and roars with laughter just as Lethal motions with his hand and you hear the sounds of several shots being fired.  Slowly Impish stops laughing, his eyes roll up in his head and he falls face first to the floor.
Surprisingly, his face lands in several apple pies, as if arrayed in just that spot.  Once he’s down you notice several darts sticking up out of his back and Lethal bringing in Dr. Ben T. Needle,  the corporations personal vet.
The mechanical impish, in the silence repeats, “TA DA!” at which point lethal pulls a wicked looking pistol from his waist and shoots the mechanical dragon in the face.  The head explodes and the metal behemoth falls over on its side.  He whispers in Diaman’s ear and as the men, under the vet’s watchful eye start to remove Impish from the room, snoring softly in his pie, Diaman approaches the mic and says, “Dear friends.  It seems as though our blue dragon is going to be indisposed for a short while, so Lethal asked if I wouldn’t mind wrapping up the opening statements and getting you started on today’s issue.”
She glances down disgustedly at the mechanical dragon that has begun to stink and smoke a little bit.
Well, as this thing started to say, today is international Pi Day.
Impish called it a “Special Pi” day because Pi Day is celebrated every March 14th since the first 3 digits of pi are 3.14 today is extra special since the next 2 digits are 15 and that matches up with our date very nicely.  3.1415 is March 14, 15.  Taking it one step further, at 9:26:53 am this morning, it will be the perfect pi time or 3.141592653….Which, you will all notice, is not that far away.  So, while we wait for that time to arrive, why don’t you all start on today’s Pi/Pie centric issue and enjoy.

 

Pi Day is an annual celebration commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (or 3/14 in the month/day date format), since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π in decimal form. In 2009, the United States House of Representatives supported the designation of Pi Day.^[2]

Pi Approximation Day is observed on July 22 (or 22/7 in the day/month date format), since the fraction ²²⁄₇ is a common approximation of π, which is accurate to three decimal places and dates from Archimedes.^[3]

A sequential time will occur on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 following the sequence of pi.

History

The earliest known official or large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw in 1988 at the San Francisco Exploratorium,^[4] where Shaw worked as a physicist,^[5] with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, then consuming fruit pies.^[6] The Exploratorium continues to hold Pi Day celebrations.^[7]

On March 12, 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution (HRES 224),^[2] recognizing March 14, 2009 as National Pi Day.^[8]

For Pi Day 2010, Google presented a Google Doodle celebrating the holiday, with the word Google laid over images of circles and pi symbols.^[9]

The entire month of March 2014 (3/14) has been observed by some to be “Pi Month”.^[10][11]

In the year 2015, Pi Day will have special significance on 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 a.m. and p.m., with the date and time representing the first 10 digits of π.^[12] That same second will also contain a precise instant corresponding to all of the digits of π.^[13] However, some argue that 9:26:54 a.m. and p.m. on 3/14/15 are more accurate because of the 11th digit of π being 5, which would cause the 10th digit to round up to 4.^[14]

Observance

Pi Day has been observed in many ways, including eating pie, throwing pies and discussing the significance of the number π.^[1] Some schools hold competitions as to which student can recall Pi to the highest number of decimal places.^[15][16]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day.^[17]Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28 pm, which they have called “Tau Time”, to honor the rival numbers Pi and Tau equally.^[18][19]

The town of Princeton, New Jersey, hosts numerous events in a combined celebration of Pi Day and Albert Einstein‘s birthday, which is also March 14.^[20] Einstein lived in Princeton for more than twenty years while working at the Institute for Advanced Study. In addition to pie eating and recitation contests, there is an annual Einstein look-alike contest.^[21]

 And….believe it or not, there is a real, honest to goodness Pie Day.  By my way of thinking, it ought to be today, but then that would probably be too confusing.

American Pie Council

And how about some more PI stuff?

π has a long and interesting history!

 That the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle is constant (namely, pi) has been recognized for as long as we have written records.

A ratio of 3:1 appears in the following biblical verse:

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it about. (I Kings 7, 23; II Chronicles 4, 2.)

The ancient Babylonians generally calculated the area of a circle by taking 3 times the square of its radius (=3), but one Old Babylonian tablet (from ca. 1900-1680 BCE) indicates a value of 3.125 for pi.

Ancient Egyptians calculated the area of a circle by the following formula (where d is the diameter of the circle):

This yields an approximate value of 3.1605 for pi.

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The first theoretical calculation of a value of pi was that of Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BCE), one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the ancient world. Archimedes worked out that 223/71 <  < 22/7. Archimedes’s results rested upon approximating the area of a circle based on the area of a regular polygon inscribed within the circle and the area of a regular polygon within which the circle was circumscribed.

 

Beginning with a hexagon, he worked all the way up to a ploygon with 96 sides!

 

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Archimedes’s method for approximating the value of pi.

(Source: http://www.math.psu.edu/dna/graphics.html#archimedes)

The approximate area of the circle lies between the areas of the circumscribed and the inscribed hexagons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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More pi history:

European mathematicians in the early modern period developed new arithmetical formulae to approximate the value of pi, such as that of James Gregory (1638-1675), which was taken up by Leibniz:

 

π/4 = 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + . . . . . . . . . . .

 

One problem with using this formula to calculate the value of pi is that you would have to add 5 million terms to work out a value of /4 that extends to 6 or 7 decimal places!

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In 1706, another mathematician named John Machin developed a refinement on Gregory’s formula, yielding the formula still used today by computer programmers to compute pi:

 

 

Using this formula, an Englishman named William Shanks calculated pi to 707 places, a labor of many years, which he published in 1873. (Only 527 places were correct, however!)

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The symbol for pi:

was introduced by the British mathematician William Jones in 1706, who wrote:

3.14159 = 

This symbol was adopted by Euler in 1737 and became the standard symbol for pi.

 

 

And from my brother, the Owl, we get this addition to the last message…

 

 

 

On the USA Network show “Psych” the digits of Pi are painted around the trim of a crazy perpetrator’s bedroom. Shawn & Gus look creeped out. I’m sure they catch the guy.

Even the logic of Spock is overwhelmed when he considers pi….. or is it maybe pie?

 

 

 

**********   AN IMPORTANT SAFETY MESSAGE   **********

The older you get, the more important it is to protect your nose from the sun.

 

 

Ginny wrote to us with some wonderful news about what a lucky day she was having…

I won a Nigerian lottery according to an email from a Nigerian prince.   He holds the sum of ONE MILLION DOLLARS in my name and he wants to send it to me FREE!   All I have to do is give him my bank account numbers and send him $500.00 US dollars cash, to show my good faith so he can transfer the money!   And then I got ANOTHER email.

It’s from a KENYAN prince who wants to give me FREE healthcare for life!

All I have to do is give him:

my BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS,

MY SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

MY CONFIDENTIAL HEALTH INFORMATION

and pay $700 per month for a policy with only a $10,000. deductible.

Then he can make it happen!

I’m sure he can…

Ginny also sent us this belated Valentine’s Day Story…

Little Thelma’s Valentine…

Little Thelma came home from first grade and told her father that they had learned about the history of Valentine’s Day.

And, “Since Valentine’s Day is for a Christian saint and we’re Jewish,” she asked, “will God get mad at me for giving someone a valentine?”

Thelma’s father thought a bit, then said  “No, I don’t think God would get mad. Who do you want to give a valentine to?”

“The ISIS terrorists,” she said.

“Why the ISIS terrorists?” her father asked in shock.

“Well,” she said, “I thought that if a little American Jewish girl could have enough love to give the terrorists a valentine, they might start to think that maybe we’re not all bad, and maybe start loving people a little bit.

And if other kids saw what I did and then they sent valentines to the terrorists, they’d love everyone a lot.

And then they’d start going all over the place telling everyone how much they loved us and how they didn’t hate anyone anymore.”

Though skeptical of the idea, her father’s heart swelled and he looked at his daughter with newfound pride. ” Thelma, that’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I know,” Thelma said, “and once that gets them out in the open, the Marines could blow the shit out of them!”

 

And that my friends, brings us to the end of today’s issue.  Oh how I pie-ne away wishing it could have gone on forever,…

But it can’t…

So this is the end…

Now, go eat some pie.

Cheers!