Apr 09

A litte bee-foolery...

I offer here a little fun in honour of a silly day. With left-over inspiration from Pi Day, I challenge you to send captions, as Pi-Ku or not.

Mine attempts the Pi-Ku form... Line1: 3 syllables, Line 2: 1 syllable, Line 3: 4 syllables.

2 bees, er
Not
2 bees. 1 more.

14 Mar 09

I PREFER PI
Not all of you are lucky enough to have a mathematician in your family, so in honour of my cool math-geek daughter, let me encourage you to celebrate Pi Day on Saturday, March 14th. In the American way of writing numerical dates, that's 3/14. In the rest of the world it doesn't work that way. Some celebrate July 22, or 22/7, which is the approximate fraction of Pi. I choose the more exacting decimal configuration and it has the bonus of also being Albert Einstein's birthday: this year his 130th.

Did you notice? The title of this entry is an appropriately cool and geeky palindrome (penned by one Lily Cee to celebrate Pi Day last year). Here are a few Pi activities to get your celebration started.

1. Write a Pi-Ku.
That's haiku with a difference: First line has 3 syllables, second line has 1, and the third line has 4. Here are a few examples from NPR:
------
So Southern
I
Can’t say Pi right.
------
Three point one
Four
et cetera.
------
Math is hard
I
failed algebra.
------

2. Create your own Pi music HERE.

3. Visit the National Geographic Pi Day Blog for Pi fun that never stops:

4. Bake and eat a Pi pie.

5. Make and drink a Blue Pi-Tini: (from Think Geek)
Ingredients:
• 3.14 oz Blueberry Vodka
• Measure diameter of glass in cm, add Pi times the glass radius squared oz. of vermouth divided by 10.
• Splash of Blue Curacao for colour (optional)
• Frozen blueberries
Preparation:
1. Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker with ice cubes while chanting Archimedes' name.
2. Shake 3.14 times.
3. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
4. Drop in a few frozen blueberries as cooling garnish.

Mar 09

The colours of hope...
Here in Canada, March has entered with bitter cold. Does cold count as a lion even without winds? OK, there were some winds in the afternoon. Whether lion or lamb, we have a lot more winter to anticipate... and endure.

Last summer my son and his two perfect boys took a trip south where they visited their grandfather in Oklahoma and their great grandmother and great uncle in Louisiana. Along the way they encountered lots of sights including this colourful pair, which I offer as reminder and encouragement for winter to relinquish itself for our amazement... again.