Life of Pi

I haven’t read, “Life of Pi,” nor have I seen the movie, but from what I can gather it’s “Moby Dick,” only the whale is a tiger, and it’s in the fucking boat with him. When I was a young writer, I would read advice on how to make it in publishing, (Phil’s Pro-Tip: You can't). One of the first rules was to never write a, “Moby Dick,” story, because it would just be sent back to you with a rejection letter. It’s good to know, many years later, that I should have ignored that advice and plagiarized the shit out of someone else’s work. I’m not even talking about, “Moby Dick,” in this case. The author of, “Life of Pi,” was accused of plagiarizing another author’s work.

This Thursday is, “Pi Day,” because it’s March 14th. I just thought I’d tell you that in advanced, because you might want to filter your more annoying facebook friends now.

Pi, itself, is an illogical number. It supposedly goes on forever. Scientists and mathematicians (nerds) have tried numerous times to find a way to find the last digit, or the point at which it repeats itself. They’ve even calculated the type of computer it would take and how long it would take the average 1980’s computer to complete the calculation. Fact checking that the computer itself was correct if it ever does finish would take multiple generations. Really, though, if you guess which number is the last, you have a 1-in-10 chance of being right.

The real issue is that because of the absurdity of Pi it is impossible to 100% accurately calculate the circumference of a circle using it as a formula. You’ll always be off by the amount of decimal points you decided to stop counting. Meaning, Math is basically giving up. So celebrating Pi is celebrating human failure.