GOP to Cut Pi Day by 4.5%?

Or maybe a little more than 4.50703%.

Pi Day (March 14th for those who read other blogs) went by this year with nary a circular blogument.  Fortunately, some types never forget.  The Republicans are celebrating by legislating Pi to 3.000000000.  No more of Pi's endless decimal point extensions, like it was a national debt or something.

The GOP say,"We want it to be an even 3."

This without a hint of irony.

Why?  Well our kids are too stupid to handle all those decimal places, even with all their iPhone apps and endless Facebook Friends to help.

Martha Roby, a Republican Congressperson from Alabama, is the intellectual force behind HR 205.  This bill seeks to simplify geometry, which was pretty much Greek anyway, but before they went broke.  In fact, Martha probably figures (if she does such things) that all that complicated Greek stuff caused their debt crisis.

"Endless numbers are hard to follow," she would likely say.  "Like the Chinese."

Democrats, rightly for a change, seem to fear Gobal Warming will be replaced by Global Ovaling. Or, worse, Global Egging.  That is really hard to clean up.

House Speaker John Boehner, with a name like a German physist to give him at least some gravitas, warned that circles are too complicated and that the French may soon be smarter than American 5th graders.  Boehner's state, Ohio, was laid out in straight lines and is way easier to understand than elitist Massachusetts with all those circular rotaries that some poor drivers went around more than Pi times looking for SSE.

And the best early approximation of Pi was made by Archimedes, from a town named Syracuse, from before Jimmy Brown or the Final Four.  Yes, you non-elitists, the guy in the bathtub.

Again, Greek.

Argue all you want, but at least the unafraid John and Martha will replace that ridiculously hard π thing.  "3" is something any American high schoolers can draw, unless California takes back their pencils.

Now, students, try to figure out when the hell will Pi Day be honored.

Post script:  It turns out the story was not entirely true, being mostly a hoax by some lame columnist (not a blogger).  Republicans are running, yes, in circles trying to find out what part was untrue.

Pi Day Transcends St. Paddy's

Do not stop reading.

The mere appearance of the symbol (π) or the word "Pi" is enough to bring back trembles that began in Junior High.  But you know perfectly well that you haven't thought of Pi for years.  If you had or have kids, you just let it rest at "Use 3.14, for God's sake!" and let them do their own damned homework.  If they still have homework.

Today is 3.14, as the Europeans would have it, and, therefore, is Pi Day.  But not as cool as five years from now when it will be 3.1415 (ironically no rounding here).

Pi Day has traditionally been lost in the run up to St. Patrick's day, just like your car keys or, for that matter, your car.  Mathematicians are too busy working on the next generation of mortgage-backed-security derivatives for Goldman Sachs to loose on us when the SEC stops looking, probably next week.  They can't be gathered in one Irish bar easily, like the rest of us.  You try talking about multi-dimensional space with pretzels in your mouth for five hours.  Such words, aside from, Pi maybe, do not flow as readily as green beer.

Unlike St. Patrick, however, Pi can wait.  Pi is as infinite teenage angst, for which it is partially responsible; as transcendental as a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay (see teenage angst above); and as misunderstood as Alan Greenspan's legacy (see teenage angst above but apply it to a 401K).

So, what is Pi, you having long since forgotten it and the teenage heartache that supplanted it?  Pi is the product of the circumference of a circle (that's the round part) and its diameter (the straight-through-the-heart part, the heart not being on the ring itself).  Something like that and, no, you don't need to remember these things when you move to the next blog.  They are just approximations, just like 3.14.

It should be noted that 3.14 is a very weak approximation.  (Think this blog versus, say, literature.)  Pi has been computed out to 1 trillion digits and it keeps on going.  Like a circle, Pi has no end.  That is a real circle, not the oblong-looking things you are doodling right now.  In that endless sense, Pi is just like God or the usual Megan Fox obsession.

Pi is not restricted to circles, either, which are as two dimensional as any Jim Cameron character. It even had its own smaller-than-Avatar-grossing movie.  And Pi is in the middle of all kinds of objects. like baseballs, and equations, like the volume of a baseball.  Add steroids to get multi-dimensional equations with Pi, equations that reach $30 million a not-endless-season.

Let the celebration begin!  Let it run right through St. Paddy's Day.  Hell, let it run all the way to next year.  Pi is like that and deserves no less.

But, don't try a Pi Parade at home without a bucket of Dramamine and shift-designated bartenders.  Each of whom can double as your spotter.