I saw this snarky poster on Instacram™ and shamelessly purloined it to present it here.
As tragically endangered as our firearm rights might be, it is always nice to get a little humor from the situation.
Humor
Happy Pi Day – 3/14/2019
Before there was a PI key on our Bowmar Brains, many of us would approximate the value of PI using the formula 355/113. Some of us also memorized the first nine digits of Pi – 3.14159265 and input that into our calculators. Either way, the result would be off by less than 1 part per million, good enough for most applications short of space launches.
Scientific American has this offering about How Much Pi Do You Need?:
You might have observed Pi Day on March 14. It gets its name from 3.14, the first three digits of the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Always on the lookout for excuses to eat pie, some geeky math types also celebrate the number on July 22. The fraction 22/7 has a value of 3.142857, so it has the same first three digits as pi.
Both 3.14 and 22/7 are approximations of pi, so the two days deserve the same title. In fact, 22/7 is closer to pi than 3.14 is. So if you’re an aspiring pedant, you can choose to celebrate July 22 as Pi Day and March 14 as Not Quite as Close to Pi Day. (Either way, you’ll enjoy more pie.) But what does it mean to be an approximation of pi—and why does it matter?
This interesting article goes on to discuss how many decimal places of PI accuracy are needed for space operations, navigation (GPS) and quantum mechanics.
Grumpy Veteran T-Shirt
I have a new acquisition to my T-Shirt collection. The words and images on the back of it say it all from my perspective. And, it’s true that I was born in July. Click on the image to enlarge.
I found it in an ad on the FecesBook™ website and Damsel said I NEEDED to get it. So I did. It was a little spendy, but it is now mine to be worn on whatever occasions for which it may be suitable. I’m not trying to pick a fight, but won’t back down from one either.
Most of the time I am not actually grumpy, but that mood gets set into motion when really stupid people do stupid stuff. It could be in traffic, in the supermarket aisle, or practically anywhere else. As we have said in the past, “STUPID SHOULD HURT.”
Image courtesy of The Damsel.
Caught on Google’s Aerial Image
I was casually looking at the Google™ satellite map of our neighborhood (actually an aerial photo mosaic, not taken from a satellite) when I noticed a couple of objects on our neighbor’s driveway. I zoomed in to have a closer look and the conclusion I came to was that the objects in question are us walking our dogs!
Our morning routine after breakfast: we feed and then walk the dogs. We generally walk them up the road to the west toward our neighbor’s house up the hill from us. In the image, the dark colored part of the road running to the left side is where we are. You can see our light colored cowboy hats, our shadows and the dogs and their shadows. Damsel is further up the road than I am by about 30 yards. The image below will clarify where we are in the top image.
I think it’s a funny coincidence that we happened to be out where we were when the aerial photo plane flew over. I estimate the time frame for the image is last summer. My clues are that the RV is not in the usual place as it was being serviced down in Avondale last year and the shadows are shorter on the north side indicating summertime.
Season’s Greetings from the PC Legal Department
I found this protracted politically correct message for the Holiday Season at The Patriot Post:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.
And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2017, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only “AMERICA” in the western hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.
(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.)
Regardless of the tongue-in-cheek PC verbiage, on behalf of The Damsel and myself, we wish you a
Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year!
Pie Are Round
Only us nerds will understand this. More significant digits are shown above than a double precision 64 bit IEEE-754 Floating-Point give for this constant. 😉
Image found on FecesBook™.
LGBT Air Force
While walking the dogs on Saturday, we heard a peculiar-sounding aircraft noise. When we looked, we saw this flying lawn chair attached to a giant fan pendulously hanging beneath an ultralight rainbow parafoil. My only thought at the time was that I did not know that the LGBT community had their own Air Force Flagship. And what are they doing here in the high desert?
Weird.
Go back to Hollywood!
I apologize for the low-res photo. I only had my little pocket camera. Click on the image to enlarge.