Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It is approximately 22/7 and is usually calculated to 3 digits, 3.14. With the use of computers, Pi has been caculated to over 51 billion decimal places. Pi is an irrational number meaning it will continue infinitely without repeating. The symbol for pi, , was first used in 1737 by William Jones, but was popular after it was adopted by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in 1737.

And our Pi a la mode comes with a plate of shrimp: on Kate Bush’s album Aerial, in Pi she sings each number of Pi to 150 decimal places — or tries to: all is well for the first 53 decimal places when she falters, adding in a 3 instead of a 0 (what?!), she nails the next 24 digits but then, according to the Independent,

“it went to hell in a handbasket when she missed out the next 22 digits completely before finishing with a precise rendition of her final 37 digits.”

I had just had occasion to look up what a handbasket really is this afternoon — and came up empty. There’s some weak claim that it’s some sort of cart used deep within mines, but I’m thinking a handbasket is small, chic, works with any shoes and carries just the basics: lipstick, credit card, keys, Blackberry. And I suspect the lovely, photogenic, approximately-married Pam agrees with me there.For Pi Approximation Day (July 22, of course), I’m hoping the man of the house will bring me home a sweet little Gucci handbasket.

At a department lunch today in the soiree room at the lovely, oh so funky Upstairs on the Square, we got comfy beside a very festive fireplace, consumed much salmon and chocolate and poached pears and hot coffee (and nary a drop o’alcohol — what’s come over work-related dining out?). And then conversation turned around how Robin Young and Terry Gross and Tom Ashbrook sound vs. how they look when we’ve all met them. All met them??? In my dreams (literally). Am I the only one in the department who hasn’t hobnobbed with the glitterati of NPR & local public radio?Thank god at some point in a later conversation I was able to trot out stories of uber-Baker Scholar Orit Gadiesh rolling around in my cubicle with my little Grendel-as-a-pup back in the day.And holy feelings of self-doubt: I may also stand alone in this supergroup — never having submitted a caption to the New Yorker’s famed caption contest. I love this place.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government’s marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped.’My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,’ he said. ‘The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?’Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. ‘The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?’ said Sheridan.The mystery surfaced when a separate group of dolphins was washed from a commercial oceanarium on the Mississippi coast during Katrina. Eight were found with the navy’s help, but the dolphins were not returned until US navy scientists had examined them.Sheridan is convinced the scientists were keen to ensure the dolphins were not the navy’s, understood to be kept in training ponds in a sound in Louisiana, close to Lake Pontchartrain, whose waters devastated New Orleans.The navy launched the classified Cetacean Intelligence Mission in San Diego in 1989, where dolphins, fitted with harnesses and small electrodes planted under their skin, were taught to patrol and protect Trident submarines in harbour and stationary warships at sea.Criticism from animal rights groups ensured the use of dolphins became more secretive. But the project gained impetus after the Yemen terror attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Dolphins have also been used to detect mines near an Iraqi port.

• americablog
• the Daily Kos
• Crooks and Liars
• The New York Times
• National Public Radio

A lot o’ people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch o’ unconnected incidents ‘n things. They don’t realize that there’s this, like, lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything. Give you an example; show you what I mean: suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate o’ shrimp. Suddenly someone’ll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o’ shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconciousness.~ from Repo Man

Another play on this concept lies in Amazon.com’s statistically improbable phrases (SIPs), which is explained more elegantly here, but basically means interesting, distinctive and unlikely phrases that occur with unusual frequency in the text of a particular book relative to other books or “this odd phrase occurs a lot in this book, but not in other books.”