Rotundus.com

It's that time of year again to celebrate our favorite number: Pi!

Pi Day is most commonly celebrated on March 14 (3.14), and we have been celebrating here at Rotundus probably since Dave started this site. Back in high school, we had what you could probably call an unhealthy obsession with this number. Dave and I memorized it to 75 decimal places during one of the summers spent in the computer lab reloading all the software. When we had memorized all the numbers on the poster which hung on the wall, we looked up the next numbers on-line, printed them off, and stapled them to the wall. Those were crazy times, but good times.

How does one properly celebrate Pi day? We turn to our fellow pi enthusiasts at Western Connecticut State University for some suggestions from last year's celebration.

For more information, check out the Pi Day web site.

3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286...

This rather interesting (but long) article on fatherhood and the church happens to cite John Calvin's comments on Acts 20:37:

When the Spirit…commends their tears…he is condemning the thoughtlessness of those who demand from believers an iron and inhuman firmness. For they falsely suppose that the feelings, which God has implanted in us as natural, proceed only from a defect. Accordingly the perfecting of believers does not depend on their casting off all feelings, but on their yielding to them and controlling them, only for proper reasons.

You can find the quote in context (and in more-antiquated English) here if you want to investigate further. I'm still trying to figure out how exactly to interpret Calvin's reference to "controlling them" in the context of the rest of the verse.

(HT: nequam_lacuna in response to tskerrit)

Politically I'm a bit all over the map. I lean a bit left on environmental issues, and would describe myself as part libertarian and part conservative on social matters (probably more libertarian than conservative). Similar to some of the stupid decisions resulting from zero tolerance policies in some schools, I think that this illustrates some of the problems with the current nanny state:

Treffly Coyne was out of her car for just minutes and no more than 10 yards away. But that was long and far enough to land her in court after a police officer spotted her sleeping 2-year-old daughter alone in the vehicle; Coyne had taken her two older daughters to pour $8.29 in coins into a Salvation Army kettle. Minutes later, she was under arrest ...

(Via MSNBC)

From the Boston Globe:

With the price of gas on the rise, SUVs have lost some of their appeal. Nevertheless, one reason people are still drawn to SUVs is that they feel safer. They're higher and heavier than cars, a key consideration with so many other big vehicles on the road. But are these bigger vehicles really safer? One economist has undertaken a rigorous analysis of government accident data and finds that these bigger vehicles do not increase overall safety for their occupants -- and they pose a hazard to everyone else around them. The increase in the market share of the light-truck category (dominated by SUVs) from 1981 to 2004 is responsible for as many as 2,900 more deaths per year.

If you look at the actual study upon which the Globe's summary was based, it notes that:

The results suggest that a one percentage point increase in light truck share raises annual traffic fatalities by 0.34 percent, or 143 deaths per year. Of this increase, approximately one-fifth accrue to the light trucks’ own occupants, and the remaining four-fifths accrue to the occupants of other vehicles and pedestrians.

(HT: Evangelical Outpost)