Today's APOD: the Πortara

To celebrate the vernal equinox, APOD has a picture of the Portara--the entrance of the ancient Temple of Apollo on the island of Naxos--take at sunset during last June's summer solstice. However, when I look at the picture, I see an image which would have been very appropriate only four days ago(Pi Day). That's right, I see the silhuette of a Capital letter pi against a setting circle. I'm such a geek!

Volcano!

Amateur exorcist and potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Bobby Jindal thinks that volcano monitoring is a waste of money. I wonder if he's ever seen an underwater volcano eruption up close?



That was pretty amazing! Now just for fun, here's some Jimmy Buffet.

Video Sunday

Yesterday was Pi Day (3/14). To celebtrate, I ate some slices of pizza pie. Also, here is an explanation of how to figure out the area of a circle much as the ancient Greeks did. You'll notice that the principle is the same that's used in Calculus to measure the area under a curve. In fact, the Greeks used the same general method to calculate all sorts of areas and volumes. Of course it would be about a couple millenia before the invention of the Calculus where we could calculate the area under any defined curve.



Yesterday was also Albert Einstein's birthday. Here's an audio recording of the man himself explaining the significance of his most famous equation.



And finally, just for fun, here's what you get when you cross Gilbert & Sullivan with Ray Kurzweil. Enjoy.