Jen printed out some names from familysearch.org to take to the temple. When she looked close, she noticed that one of them - "Deborah Massey" - was listed as a male. It was pretty clear that was wrong, so I figured I'd dig in and see what I could do.
It quickly became clear that Deborah was obviously a woman, born in Salem, Massachusetts December 21, 1738 and died in Salem, New Hampshire September 28, 1757. The Massachusetts birth records were already connected on familysearch as were the New Hampshire death records, but no one had seemed to try to fix the gender. I figured it shouldn't be too hard, but I wanted to make sure I was rock solid in my justification before going further, and that's what opened the Pandora's box.
The Massey family had two Deborahs listed, one born in 1738 and one born in 1750. That hardly seemed likely, so I dug deeper. As I dug I found that not only was Deborah Massey listed as being born in Salem, Massachusetts in December 1738, but also listed as being born in Salem, New Hampshire in December 1739. It was the same parents - Daniel Massey and Abigail Baker - and with the same siblings but duplicate records in the different states and with the variation in birth dates! In fact, both sets of state records listed the same family with the same city names but different states.
Being sort of geographically challenged I looked on the map to see where the two Salems are. Turns out that Salem, MA and Salem, NH are about 25 miles apart. That's not very far apart, but for 1738 that's a day or two of travel depending on travel method. For the time that was a fair distance. I wondered if maybe they lived partway between the two, but it didn't make sense to me that they'd end up with records in both states unless, perhaps, borders had changed! I looked into the history of the colonial borders of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. As it happens, there was a long-standing border dispute between Massachusetts and New Hampshire that was resolved in 1740. Progress! Now to figure out where that border dispute occurred.
I found that part of the city of Methuen, Massachusetts was affected by the border change. The new border sliced through the city of Methuen so that the northern Parish of Methuen became part of New Hampshire and was renamed...wait for it..."Salem, New Hampshire." So, if the Massey family had been living in Methuen, MA in the north end of the city, then in 1740 they would have all of a sudden become residents of Salem, New Hampshire. That explains why all their family and death records would have been part of Salem, New Hampshire. However, it still didn't explain why they would have had records in Salem, Masschusetts - 25 miles away.
Daniel Massey and Abigail Baker came originally from Salem, MA. Methuen didn't really have a congregationalist church until the 1720's and even then it didn't have a solid presence and building until much later. The records for the Massey family in Massachusetts came from the St. Peter's Episcopal church in Salem, MA and include baptisms for some of their children. I suspect that whenever they had a child, the Massey family made a trek back to see family and have the child recorded in the family church and then some years later would come back later and have the child baptized in the same church. Once Methuen and Salem, New Hampshire eventually built up a stronger church presence they might have stopped the trek back to Salem, Massachusetts.
I'm left with the disparity in birth dates, though: December 21, 1738 or December 1, 1739. The Massachusetts records tie back to original church records. The New Hampshire records are updates done by hand in 1905 - I'm guessing as a mass collection and updating of various record sources. There is no indication of where the original records they used might have come from - most likely from various municipal records. Since Deborah was born before the border dispute was settled, I find it likely that the MA records are more accurate because the NH records would have been created several years later, at which point peoples' memories might not have worked as well, or they were transcribed improperly, or any of a number of other possibilities. I have settled on the 1738 as the most likely to be correct.
The second "Deborah" on the record turned out to be spurious. It was the record of a different Deborah Massey who was born and lived a few decades later in the Indiana/Pennsylvania areas. She was married to a Huntsman. I looked into this record just a bit because it became quickly clear that the Hunstman line is not only highly worked, but in great dispute. Family members disagree on certain records and are rather immovable in their positions. It appears that the church has suspended work on those records due to the dispute. What a mess - I'm not wading into that!
The Deborah Massey mystery isn't quite done yet, though, because once I fixed up her record I found a possible duplicate. I resolved the differences in the duplicates and merged them, but the 'duplicate' brought with it the details of a marriage for Deborah. It said that Deborah married a William Woodbury in Salem, New Hampshire 1757. Search as I might - and I have looked extensively - I can not find any verification of this relationship. I found that Deborah's younger brother Jonathan married a Betsey Woodbury, but she had no brother or cousin named William. I have found a William Woodbury who was married near that time period, but not to a Deborah Massey. I have looked through records in New Hampshire, Salem, MA, Hanover, MA, and Beverly, MA to find anything with a William Woodbury, but I can't find any details of this marriage. The temple work was done in the 1960's so I can't delete it, which I wouldn't do anyway since I can't find anything to confirm or reject the information. The original source is apparently someone's old family record that contains to links to sources or justifications and was just imported to familysearch. Sadly, this one seems to be a dead end. If it is true, then it was a very short-lived marriage as they were married on February 3, 1757 and Deborah died in September of that year. There doesn't appear to have been any children - they weren't even married long enough to produce a child (unless she died in early childbirth or due to pregnancy complications - but I have no hint of any record of anything like that).
I think that this is where the Deborah Massey story ends. I cleaned up her gender and her birthdate and identified the source of her family's multiple records from geographical fiddlings between the colonies. Jen took her name to the temple and her work has been done. I don't see that I can do any more for Deborah Massey and hope that what I did was of help.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Sunday, March 01, 2015
Me? Do genealogy/family history? I guess so!
I have resisted doing genealogy for years, largely because I didn't really feel any "pull" to do so. I have sisters-in-law who are very active and have gotten a lot of work done so I didn't see what I could add. I tried indexing - digitizing old records from images - but every name I was supposed to index looked like it had been written by some ancient half-drunken port official with a writing impediment; "is that a letter 'q' or a cartoon of a pig?!" Needless to say, I gave that up from frustration and just figured I'd end up doing "something" later.
However, I think I've found my niche: problem finder and fixer. There are lots of family history records on familysearch.org that are duplicates, or with wrong dates, names, places or even just with the completely wrong person's information. I have found I enjoy digging deep into records and databases to figure out what the right answers are and then fixing the genealogies. It's definitely not the "usual" thing for people to do, but I have been told that it's very useful and I enjoy it.
I have found some things that really have taken digging and it's interesting to me, so in my arrogance I assume it is probably interesting to others, too. I thought I'd write some of my experiences up and post them here as a record for myself and possibly something of interest to others; blogs are effectively vanity projects so this will satisfy mine, I guess.
However, I think I've found my niche: problem finder and fixer. There are lots of family history records on familysearch.org that are duplicates, or with wrong dates, names, places or even just with the completely wrong person's information. I have found I enjoy digging deep into records and databases to figure out what the right answers are and then fixing the genealogies. It's definitely not the "usual" thing for people to do, but I have been told that it's very useful and I enjoy it.
I have found some things that really have taken digging and it's interesting to me, so in my arrogance I assume it is probably interesting to others, too. I thought I'd write some of my experiences up and post them here as a record for myself and possibly something of interest to others; blogs are effectively vanity projects so this will satisfy mine, I guess.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Everyone is religious...somehow.
This little graphic has been making its way around Facebook for awhile:
I don't know what prompted someone to create it, but a thought struck me so I posted it to a friend's Facebook: "Definitely - especially when that religion is 'environmentalism' or 'humanism' or 'science.'"
Unsurprisingly, my comment wasn't well-received, but here's why I made it in the first place. There are a lot of people out there who place their faith in science; illustrated recently during the collective self-congratulation on finding evidence of the Higgs Boson. It is faith because they know virtually nothing about science themselves, but they believe in its power and ability and in the scientists who reveal "truths" to them. They have hope that it will somehow make their lives better. Yet, they can't understand really what it means. They can't verify those truths themselves. Nevertheless, they believe it wholeheartedly and direct their lives accordingly. They trust in the relatively small number of scientists who proclaim their revelations. Science is their god and Lawrence Krauss is their prophet.
Many believe in the higher power of "humanity," in the nirvana-esque utopia that would arise if people simply lived up to their "higher potential." They build their moral code on the normative and axiomatic dicta that are the universal absolutes of humanism. How many of those people actually know the philosophy behind humanism? Further, there is no proof of some inherent goodness or "potential" of humanity; in fact, the balance of the empirical evidence from human history and experience would suggest that, appropriating Hobbes, humanity is "nasty, brutish, and short." And yet, legions of people believe and model their lives according to those tenets.
Even better is environmentalism because it mixes science with humanism to form a powerful belief system of legions of ignorant, but activated, proselytes. Like the Fresh and Easy employee who was waxing poetic about the non-GMO soybeans in the tofu I was buying. She exclaimed, "No petroleum in my food!" I was feeling nice, so I didn't point out to her that since petroleum is not alive it doesn't have genes with which to modify a foodstuff. But she believed with her whole - soul? probably not. Well, with whatever she would believe with deeply - that it was true! Don't get me wrong, sustainability is important. I teach courses about business sustainability. It's still a "religion" to a great many people; it is their faith.
Sounds pretty religious to me. Yes, I believe in God and Jesus Christ; that is my religion. Like many, you may not. Then I ask: Where do you put your faith? Because you do believe in something that you can't fully understand. You are religious, just about something else.
I don't know what prompted someone to create it, but a thought struck me so I posted it to a friend's Facebook: "Definitely - especially when that religion is 'environmentalism' or 'humanism' or 'science.'"
Unsurprisingly, my comment wasn't well-received, but here's why I made it in the first place. There are a lot of people out there who place their faith in science; illustrated recently during the collective self-congratulation on finding evidence of the Higgs Boson. It is faith because they know virtually nothing about science themselves, but they believe in its power and ability and in the scientists who reveal "truths" to them. They have hope that it will somehow make their lives better. Yet, they can't understand really what it means. They can't verify those truths themselves. Nevertheless, they believe it wholeheartedly and direct their lives accordingly. They trust in the relatively small number of scientists who proclaim their revelations. Science is their god and Lawrence Krauss is their prophet.
Many believe in the higher power of "humanity," in the nirvana-esque utopia that would arise if people simply lived up to their "higher potential." They build their moral code on the normative and axiomatic dicta that are the universal absolutes of humanism. How many of those people actually know the philosophy behind humanism? Further, there is no proof of some inherent goodness or "potential" of humanity; in fact, the balance of the empirical evidence from human history and experience would suggest that, appropriating Hobbes, humanity is "nasty, brutish, and short." And yet, legions of people believe and model their lives according to those tenets.
Even better is environmentalism because it mixes science with humanism to form a powerful belief system of legions of ignorant, but activated, proselytes. Like the Fresh and Easy employee who was waxing poetic about the non-GMO soybeans in the tofu I was buying. She exclaimed, "No petroleum in my food!" I was feeling nice, so I didn't point out to her that since petroleum is not alive it doesn't have genes with which to modify a foodstuff. But she believed with her whole - soul? probably not. Well, with whatever she would believe with deeply - that it was true! Don't get me wrong, sustainability is important. I teach courses about business sustainability. It's still a "religion" to a great many people; it is their faith.
Sounds pretty religious to me. Yes, I believe in God and Jesus Christ; that is my religion. Like many, you may not. Then I ask: Where do you put your faith? Because you do believe in something that you can't fully understand. You are religious, just about something else.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy Mother's Day, Mom!
Our special family performance to honor my mom by singing her favorite (or at least most frequently sung) hymn.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Response to silly commentary about where financial crisis will lead.
I just made a really loooooong comment on an article that one of my friends posted to facebook. I figured, what the heck, I might as well go ahead and turn it into a blog post. Why not? No one reads the blog, anyway and I went to the trouble of typing. So, here goes.
This is the original article that triggered my response: http://newledger.com/2009/04/do-free-markets-actually-work/
Here is my response:
I don't know why this is considered positively. Whoever that writer is seems to overstate several points and not really grasp the others. e.g., the statistical risk models were simply an attempt to give a better, more accurate way of generating that "domain-specific knowledge" to "form an opinion" - fancy ways of saying that you look at the opportunity and use what you can to guess at the relative risk vs long-term returns. It has been noted that the math models were misapplied and, my own view, were overly relied upon. E.g., No one truly belives that your house *always* goes up in value, just like the stock market doesn't always go up in value. With a long enough horizon it always has, but some of those downturns that have to be recovered from last a long, long time. A big part of the problem is that people believed that their hourses would always keep appreciating in the short term.
The other issue is the idea of the "government-directed" economy - it's the government and it's system of incentives that helped to create the housing bubble in the first place! Incentives for "non-traditional" buyers to get "creative" financing to become homeowners, government guarantees of various loan types that shouldn't have been made, "artifically" low interest rates, and previous industry bailouts from the past creating an "implicit" government guarantee of insurance in the face of moral hazard (for both financial institutions and auto manufacturers). Had the banks and other financial institutions been in a purely free market, there is good reason to bet they wouldn't have gotten into the mess in the first place because there'd be no one to bail them out when, you know, the fan got hit.
I also find declarative, postive statements of "this is going to happen" or "this won't ever happen" or "fundamental shift in x direction" to be very unconvincing. I think there is always going to be capital pursuing risk - if people have excess money around, they're going to throw it at risk from time to time. There are always going to be big players with more money than sense or money to risk. Look at those that financed the American Colonies. Look at Leland Stanford and the railroad. Look at those that financed the Panama canal. I think it's exceptionally silly to say that's not going to happen anymore. Yes, people and businesses are retrenching right now and unloading debt. It's a good thing. There's a minimum amount of debt that one can achieve - zero. When they hit that point, they're going to feel confident in trying to expand to new opportunities and ways to grow, etc...
One of the biggest problems, IMHO, is that most people, including those in the industry, understand neither modeling nor research in general, especially in regards to what can or can't be done or said with both of those things. It's the lack of understanding of those limitations that lead people to do stupid things like assume that mortgage risk in a large pool of securitized mortgages are statistically indpedendent, or that the only way they can go is "up." The ignorant citation of certain strains of "research" as authoritative is a scourge amongst commentators, news outlets, and advocates. Likely also true amongst policy makers. It's this misunderstanding of the limitations of modeling and research that makes me doubtful about many aspects of the current climate debates - but that's a different story than the one that I have already gone on too long about.
This is the original article that triggered my response: http://newledger.com/2009/04/do-free-markets-actually-work/
Here is my response:
I don't know why this is considered positively. Whoever that writer is seems to overstate several points and not really grasp the others. e.g., the statistical risk models were simply an attempt to give a better, more accurate way of generating that "domain-specific knowledge" to "form an opinion" - fancy ways of saying that you look at the opportunity and use what you can to guess at the relative risk vs long-term returns. It has been noted that the math models were misapplied and, my own view, were overly relied upon. E.g., No one truly belives that your house *always* goes up in value, just like the stock market doesn't always go up in value. With a long enough horizon it always has, but some of those downturns that have to be recovered from last a long, long time. A big part of the problem is that people believed that their hourses would always keep appreciating in the short term.
The other issue is the idea of the "government-directed" economy - it's the government and it's system of incentives that helped to create the housing bubble in the first place! Incentives for "non-traditional" buyers to get "creative" financing to become homeowners, government guarantees of various loan types that shouldn't have been made, "artifically" low interest rates, and previous industry bailouts from the past creating an "implicit" government guarantee of insurance in the face of moral hazard (for both financial institutions and auto manufacturers). Had the banks and other financial institutions been in a purely free market, there is good reason to bet they wouldn't have gotten into the mess in the first place because there'd be no one to bail them out when, you know, the fan got hit.
I also find declarative, postive statements of "this is going to happen" or "this won't ever happen" or "fundamental shift in x direction" to be very unconvincing. I think there is always going to be capital pursuing risk - if people have excess money around, they're going to throw it at risk from time to time. There are always going to be big players with more money than sense or money to risk. Look at those that financed the American Colonies. Look at Leland Stanford and the railroad. Look at those that financed the Panama canal. I think it's exceptionally silly to say that's not going to happen anymore. Yes, people and businesses are retrenching right now and unloading debt. It's a good thing. There's a minimum amount of debt that one can achieve - zero. When they hit that point, they're going to feel confident in trying to expand to new opportunities and ways to grow, etc...
One of the biggest problems, IMHO, is that most people, including those in the industry, understand neither modeling nor research in general, especially in regards to what can or can't be done or said with both of those things. It's the lack of understanding of those limitations that lead people to do stupid things like assume that mortgage risk in a large pool of securitized mortgages are statistically indpedendent, or that the only way they can go is "up." The ignorant citation of certain strains of "research" as authoritative is a scourge amongst commentators, news outlets, and advocates. Likely also true amongst policy makers. It's this misunderstanding of the limitations of modeling and research that makes me doubtful about many aspects of the current climate debates - but that's a different story than the one that I have already gone on too long about.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
The TRUTH About Pi Day
We’ve been duped! Hoodwinked! Taken advantage of by the mathematically semi-literate. Most of us don’t even realize it and ignorantly celebrate a uniquely geeky day of note under false pretenses. But I’m here to shout it to the world: Pi DAY IS A SHAM!! It is not *really* Pi day today; it can never truly be Pi day. (All true math nerds will rejoice at the verity of my statement; for exactness is at the heart of good mathematics) We can only hope to celebrate an approximation of Pi day, and today’s observance is only the crudest of such approximations. If we’re going to do justice to the noblest of numbers* then we must know exactly what it is we’re acknowledging and celebrate with eyes wide open.
*(Sorry e, you are just as valuable as Pi and maybe even more useful – no one ever takes the log base Pi of a number – but Pi gets all the glory. In fact, most people don’t even know you’re a number; “Isn’t e a letter?” they say in their ignorance).
Pi is, of course, an infinitely long, non-repeating irrational number. The best we can hope to do is calculate like mad and get as many digits as we can. Schoolchildren learn 3.14 as early as elementary school. Later in the course of their studies they are taught the somewhat more accurate 3.14159. Of course, there are the seriously Pi-learned (like my good friend Peggy Allen in 9th grade) who memorize hundreds of digits of this glorious number. (In the song “White and Nerdy” Weird Al Yankovic claims, “I know Pi to a thousand places…” but I’m betting that’s artistic license). Websites like “The Joy of Pi” (http://www.joyofpi.com/pi.html) will show you Pi calculated to millions of decimal places, but even those are only makeshift renditions of the infinite beauty of the original chaotic, quintessential real number that even those as ancient as Archimedes enjoyed.
This train of Pi-reverie lays bare the bald truth, shaved of pretense and mathematical illiteracy: there can never be a true Pi day! Anything that we acknowledge and commemorate is only the cruel reminder of a rudimentary approximation. In fact, what we celebrate today, March 14th or 3.14, is the minimally accepted, clumsiest of versions of Pi. Worse, if you include the year 2009, then you end up with 3.14.2009 which is not nearly Pi! It’s a travesty! Only by not including the year can it even be called the basest simulacra of a Pi day. Maybe, if you use the common two-digit year method of dating, we can have a more accurate Pi day on March 14th of 2015. As my 12 year old son noted when I told him my thinking, the most precise Pi day we could have using our method of calendaring occurred on March 14th, 1592, or 3.14.1592. But wait! Even that is inaccurate! The first 8 digits of Pi are 3.1415926 which would round to seven digits as 3.141593! If we apply the mathematically precise thinking that we’re trying to communicate, the most accurate Pi day possible occurred on March 14, 1593 (3.14.1593)! We missed the closest approximation to true Pi day by 416 years! Similarly, the next more accurate Pi day would have to occur in 2016 due to correct rounding rules (resulting in the technically correct “rounded Pi”). If you don’t obey the rounding rules, then you’re just ingloriously hacking off the end of this already sadly estimated great number.
I’m sure you’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking now: this is a great opportunity to establish a more rigorous celebration! But what to more precisely call this day? We can’t call it “Sham Pi” day – sounds too much like “Shampoo.” We can’t call it “Mock Pi” day because, well, I don’t like Ritz crackers all that much.
Hence, I propose the following naming and celebratory conventions:
March 14th of any year (3.14) – This is only accurate to the hundredths place, so we shall call this date “One Hundred Pi Day.”
March 14th, 2015 (3.14.15) – as this can only be considered a Pi day by barbarically hacking off the end of the number at the ten thousandths place, it will be called the “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day”
March 14th, 1016 (3.14.16) – as this now follows the correct rounding rules to the ten thousandths place, this is, of course to be called “Ten Thousand Pi Day.”
Important near-Pi days of the past:
March 14th, 1000 (3.14.1000) – “One Thousand Pi Slice Day”
March 14th, 2000 (3.14.2000) – “One Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1590 (3.14.1590) – “Hundred Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1592 (3.14.1592) – “One Million Pi Slice Day,” or the more commonly accepted “Mega Slice Pi Day.”
March 14th, 1593 (3.14.1593) – Revered and respected as that most accurate of all approximate Pi days, “Million Pi Day,” a.k.a., “Mega Pi Day.”
So, spread the word and stamp out Pi lies! Establish celebratory rigor and commemoratory accuracy! Truncate numerical ignorance! Tell your friends and let’s call today what it really is: One Hundred Pi Day! May we all look forward to “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day” and “Ten Thousand Pi Day” in six and seven more years, respectively. I leave you with the following witticism, courtesy of my Father, who I blame for my Pi-fascination: “Pi are not square, Pi are round! Cornbread are square!”
-- Reynold Byers, 3/14/2009
*(Sorry e, you are just as valuable as Pi and maybe even more useful – no one ever takes the log base Pi of a number – but Pi gets all the glory. In fact, most people don’t even know you’re a number; “Isn’t e a letter?” they say in their ignorance).
Pi is, of course, an infinitely long, non-repeating irrational number. The best we can hope to do is calculate like mad and get as many digits as we can. Schoolchildren learn 3.14 as early as elementary school. Later in the course of their studies they are taught the somewhat more accurate 3.14159. Of course, there are the seriously Pi-learned (like my good friend Peggy Allen in 9th grade) who memorize hundreds of digits of this glorious number. (In the song “White and Nerdy” Weird Al Yankovic claims, “I know Pi to a thousand places…” but I’m betting that’s artistic license). Websites like “The Joy of Pi” (http://www.joyofpi.com/pi.html) will show you Pi calculated to millions of decimal places, but even those are only makeshift renditions of the infinite beauty of the original chaotic, quintessential real number that even those as ancient as Archimedes enjoyed.
This train of Pi-reverie lays bare the bald truth, shaved of pretense and mathematical illiteracy: there can never be a true Pi day! Anything that we acknowledge and commemorate is only the cruel reminder of a rudimentary approximation. In fact, what we celebrate today, March 14th or 3.14, is the minimally accepted, clumsiest of versions of Pi. Worse, if you include the year 2009, then you end up with 3.14.2009 which is not nearly Pi! It’s a travesty! Only by not including the year can it even be called the basest simulacra of a Pi day. Maybe, if you use the common two-digit year method of dating, we can have a more accurate Pi day on March 14th of 2015. As my 12 year old son noted when I told him my thinking, the most precise Pi day we could have using our method of calendaring occurred on March 14th, 1592, or 3.14.1592. But wait! Even that is inaccurate! The first 8 digits of Pi are 3.1415926 which would round to seven digits as 3.141593! If we apply the mathematically precise thinking that we’re trying to communicate, the most accurate Pi day possible occurred on March 14, 1593 (3.14.1593)! We missed the closest approximation to true Pi day by 416 years! Similarly, the next more accurate Pi day would have to occur in 2016 due to correct rounding rules (resulting in the technically correct “rounded Pi”). If you don’t obey the rounding rules, then you’re just ingloriously hacking off the end of this already sadly estimated great number.
I’m sure you’re thinking exactly what I’m thinking now: this is a great opportunity to establish a more rigorous celebration! But what to more precisely call this day? We can’t call it “Sham Pi” day – sounds too much like “Shampoo.” We can’t call it “Mock Pi” day because, well, I don’t like Ritz crackers all that much.
Hence, I propose the following naming and celebratory conventions:
March 14th of any year (3.14) – This is only accurate to the hundredths place, so we shall call this date “One Hundred Pi Day.”
March 14th, 2015 (3.14.15) – as this can only be considered a Pi day by barbarically hacking off the end of the number at the ten thousandths place, it will be called the “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day”
March 14th, 1016 (3.14.16) – as this now follows the correct rounding rules to the ten thousandths place, this is, of course to be called “Ten Thousand Pi Day.”
Important near-Pi days of the past:
March 14th, 1000 (3.14.1000) – “One Thousand Pi Slice Day”
March 14th, 2000 (3.14.2000) – “One Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1590 (3.14.1590) – “Hundred Thousand Pi Day”
March 14th, 1592 (3.14.1592) – “One Million Pi Slice Day,” or the more commonly accepted “Mega Slice Pi Day.”
March 14th, 1593 (3.14.1593) – Revered and respected as that most accurate of all approximate Pi days, “Million Pi Day,” a.k.a., “Mega Pi Day.”
So, spread the word and stamp out Pi lies! Establish celebratory rigor and commemoratory accuracy! Truncate numerical ignorance! Tell your friends and let’s call today what it really is: One Hundred Pi Day! May we all look forward to “Ten Thousand Pi Slice Day” and “Ten Thousand Pi Day” in six and seven more years, respectively. I leave you with the following witticism, courtesy of my Father, who I blame for my Pi-fascination: “Pi are not square, Pi are round! Cornbread are square!”
-- Reynold Byers, 3/14/2009
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