Olivier Langlois wrote:
> The bill to change the value of pi
> to exactly three was introduced without fanfare by Leonard Lee
> Lawson (R, Crossville), and rapidly gained support after a letter-writing
> campaign by members of the Solomon Society, a traditional values group.
Note that ignorance, having presumably been around longer than intelligence
(but only to us arrogant evolutionist pigs :)
is well-suited to being a "traditional value."
> "There are other geometries, and pi is different in every one of them,"
> said Humbleys. "Scientists have arbitrarily assumed that space is
> Euclidean. A circle drawn on a spherical surface has a different value
> for the ratio of circumference to diameter. Anyone with a compass,
> flexible ruler, and globe can see this for themselves. It's not exactly
> rocket science."
Indeed, the ratio [circumference/diameter] ranges from pi (the irrational
one, defined using plane geometry) in the limit of vanishing circle size
monotonically downward to 2 for the largest possible circle one can draw
on a sphere, which is a great circle (e.g. on an idealized earth, the
equator is a great circle having circumference C, and its "radius" is
the length of an arc of another great circle from the equator to either
pole, i.e. C/4. Thus [circumference/diameter] = [C/(2*C/4)] = 2. Each
latitude thus has its own value for pi. Atheists standing on the north or
south pole should use the irrational Euclidean-geometry value. Folks
whose religion admits only of whole numbers should choose either 2 or 3,
depending on which value is closer to the real value at their latitude.
Folks living in non-spherical geometries or higher-dimensional spaces
will necessarily be politically disenfranchised. This seems a small
price to pay for the wonderful simplicity of being able to remember
just the number 2 or 3, which can be done even while knuckle-walking:
if one is at a latitude having pi := 2, just stick both thumbs out while
walking on all fours. If pi := 3, stick thumbs and tongue out. In the
latter instance, when having to occasionally retract one's tongue to keep
it from drying out, one should shut one eye so as not to lose one's place.
Of course one has to be careful not to moisten one's tongue and blink
at the same time, because one then has pi := 2 thumbs + 2 shut eyes = 4,
which is heresy, and even momentary heresy is punishable by remedial
mathematics reeducation.
> Roger Learned, a Solomon Society member who was in Montgomery to
> support the bill, agrees. He said that pi is nothing more than an
> assumption by the mathematicians and engineers who were there to
> argue against the bill. "Those nabobs waltzed into the capital with an
> arrogance that was breathtaking," Learned said. "Their predatorial
> deficit resulted in a polemical stance at absolute contraposition to the
> legislature's puissance."
At this instantiation, even the cursory or desultory peruser should
become cognizant of the likelihood that the exposition under scrutiny
is intended to be recognized as risible by the reader. (In plain English:
it's a joke, folks!) Sadly, it's based on actual occurrences, and the
flowery, obfuscatory language of the above paragraph is not too far
from the kind preferred by many politicians and lawmakers.
-Ernst
"The streets shall flow with the blood of the unbelievers."
- Beavis and Butt-Head
"...and three shall be the number of the counting. Four shalt thou
not count, nor two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five
is right out..." - Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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