We had a busy day, today. After attending the Mass of the Holy Sacrament (virtual via satellite TV), we went to target practice, then took a drive, came home, cleaned the guns and prepared Easter dinner.
This picture has nothing to do with that, but I wanted to put something on about Easter Sunday.
Which part of the chocolate bunnies do you eat first?
Bear celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by briefly posing with this shamrock headgear. I say briefly because each time I put this on her, she would quickly manage to get it off.
Well, a day early, but we celebrated with our traditional Irish treat:
What else?
In keeping with the last nerdy post about mathematics, I would like to wish you a happy PI (3.14..) day! In my career in aerospace and also as a pilot and flight instructor, I use the quantity PI (approximately equal to 3.14159265) for all kinds of engineering and navigation applications.
In the excerpt below is the notion that you can approximate the value of PI by throwing needles or frozen hot dogs. Don’t laugh, it works – a group of us a long time ago in a lab at work performed the experiment using tongue depressors. The method uses the laws of probability to approximate PI when you divide the number of throws by the number of times a tossed object crosses one of the reference lines. The lines are set at intervals equal to the length of the objects being thrown.
From SpaceWeather.com
HAPPY PI DAY: March 14th (3.14) is PI day and all around the world mathematicians are celebrating this compelling and mysterious constant of Nature. PI appears in equations describing the orbits of planets, the colors of auroras, the structure of DNA. It’s everywhere.
Humans have been struggling to calculate PI for thousands of years. Divide the circumference of a circle by its diameter; the ratio is PI. Sounds simple, but the devil is in the digits. While the value of PI is finite (a smidgen more than 3), the decimal number is infinitely long:
3.1415926535897932384626433832795
02884197169399375105820974944592307
81640628620899862803482534211706…moreSupercomputers have succeeded in calculating PI to more than 200 billion digits and they’re still crunching. The weirdest way to compute PI: throw needles at a table or frozen hot dogs on the floor. Party time!
You remember the answer that Miss Teen South Carolina gave when she was asked why one-fifth of Americans can’t find the United States on a map. I couldn’t find a transcript of her incoherent ramblings but this is a synopsis of the event:
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps,” she ventured.
During her meandering response, she also tossed in out-of-the-blue references to “the Iraq” and “Asian countries” and their need for the support of the American educational system in identifying the United States on the map.
Upton is described as a varsity athlete and student leader at Lexington High School, where she graduated in June with a 3.5 GPA.
Despite the on-camera gaffe, Upton finished as third runner-up.
And then there was this screed from Senator John F’n. Kerry in response to media questions about a recent tornado disaster:
[I] don’t want to sort of leap into the larger meaning of, you know, inappropriately, but on the other hand, the weather service has told us we are going to have more and more intense storms,” Kerry said. “And insurance companies are beginning to look at this issue and understand this is related to the intensity of storms that is related to the warming of the earth. And so it goes to global warming and larger issues that we’re not paying attention to. The fact is the hurricanes are more intensive, the storms are more intensive and the rainfall is more intense at certain places at certain times and the weather patterns have changed.
Maybe it’s just me, but that made less sense than Miss Teen SC’s response.
Miss TSC had the disadvantage of being in a high-stress situation, and did the best she could do given her state of mind.
Kerry, on the other hand, fights his way through to be in front of the media, and is certainly used to bloviating. I can’t cut him any slack for that, and he sounded like an idiot while trying to politicize the tornado disaster.
Despite his lack of articulation, however, Kerry finished second in his last big contest. Go figure.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Here’s why hearts, flowers and candy are associated with St. Valentine’s Day:
During the medieval era of chivalry, the names of English maidens and bachelors were put into boxes and drawn out in pairs. Each couple exchanged gifts and the girl became the man’s sweetheart for a year. He wore her name on his sleeve and was bound by duty to attend and protect her (the accepted origin of the phrase, “to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve”). This old custom of drawing names was considered a good omen for love and often foretold a wedding. In 1537, King Henry VIII declared, by Royal Charter, that all England would celebrate February 14 as “Saint Valentine’s Day” and with the passage of time, February 14 became the traditional date for exchanging love messages and simple gifts (such as flowers or candy), with Saint Valentine becoming the accepted Patron Saint of Lovers.
Did you know that St. Valentine was not only the patron saint of lovers, but also of epilepsy, fainting and the plague?
St. Valentine was a Priest, martyred in 269 at Rome and was buried on the Flaminian Way. He is the Patron Saint of affianced couples, bee keepers, engaged couples, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travelers, young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses.
Enjoy the candy – Click on the pictures for larger size.
We really don’t know if Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today or not. Had he been in Redondo Beach, California, he might have seen a vigorous surf blown by balmy winds on a 62°(F) day.
Click on the image for the large view – but before you decide to move to Redondo Beach, don’t forget that our next great earthquake is long, long overdue.
