NP Alabama Pi

[rwan]

----- Original Message -----
From: Henry Musikar <scuffling at hotmail.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2000 7:11 PM
Subject: Re: NP Alabama Pi

I've actually contacted the Alabama State Legislature to
> >check whether any such bill was ever proposed and/or passed. The
> >information
> >I received was emphatically negative, even though rumours of such being
the
> >case have been popping up regularly during the last appr. 2 years.



> That's excactly what they would say....

Even if there was documentation to the contrary? I don't suppose so.
Besides, such a denial is a sure sign that nothing of the sort being denied
would be implemented/proposed/whatever even if there HAD been some efforts
in that direction previously.
>
> BTW, how do you "contact a legislature?" I would think that it would be
more
> effective to contact the office of the legistlator who is supposed to have
> proposed the legislation.

Legislature IS the legislative body of a State. Such a body CAN be
contacted, by making a phone-call for instance, which is exactly what I did.
I found the phone number at the web-site of Alabama State, State
Information, Legislature, etc.: www.legislature.state.al.us/ALISHome.html.

You can give it a try yourself and hear what they have to say. Even though a
later mail of the very person - Vaska - asking for "confirmation of this
deliciously/eerely bizarre law proposal" said:"(Absolutely right.  And silly
me).  I checked on the thing in the meantime,
and the hoax seems to have spread from Yale.  But, and this is both genuine
and quite as delicious, the Indiana House of Representatives once tried to
legislate the value of pi (in 1897, for some reason settling on 4), but the
Senate let the bill die after Purdue math Professor C.A. Waldo explained the
idiocy of putting pi into Indiana law."

Richard


>
> AssB4,
>
> HenryMu
>
> >From: "rwan" <r.wank at cable.a2000.nl>
> >To: "jporter" <jp4321 at IDT.NET>, <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> >Subject: Re: NP Alabama Pi
> >Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 16:49:15 +0200
> >
> >Re: NP Alabama Pi
> >Pi is - and remains - as yet undifined (beyond the 210 billion digits
after
> >the decimal point). Amen.
> >Richard
> >
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: jporter
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Sent: Monday, July 03, 2000 4:03 PM
> >Subject: Re: NP Alabama Pi
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >From Vaska:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Can anyone confirm or otherwise that the deliciously/eerily bizarre
Alabama
> >law proposal on pi ever got passed?  I found this posted from AGITPROP
NEWS
> >(5.20.98) on the Roy Bhaskar list.
> >
> >
> >[snip, to the biblical justification]
> >
> >"...Lawson called into question the usefulness of any number that cannot
> >be calculated exactly, and suggested that never knowing the exact
> >answer could harm students' self-esteem.  "We need to return to some
> >absolutes in our society," he said, "the Bible does not say that the
> >font was thirty-something cubits.  Plain reading says thirty cubits.
> >Period."
> >
> >Can't confirm or deny the veracity of the AGITPROP story, however,
> >
> >between the Biblical literalists and Platonic Idealists (PI) there would
> >definitely seem to be a lost middle ground. Your post reminded me of a NY
> >Times article from Feb 10, 1998, that's been lying around on my bedroom
> >floor: *Useful Invention or AbsoluteTruth: What is Math?* by George
> >Johnson.
> >At last, an excuse to pick it up.
> >
> >I won't reproduce it here, but the gist: There seems to be growing
support,
> >among those who think about such things, that Pi (and other versions of
> >Platonic Idealism) ain't so absolute, after all. Not that Math is a
> >"relativistic free-for-all," but it may very well be a human invention- a
> >manifestation not just of our brains but of our bodies, and the
"grounding
> >metaphors" [George Lakoff- quoted in the art.] that link them.
> >
> >Bottom line: Math works, but that doesn't mean it's the absolute truth,
> >even
> >though many scientists (crypto-Platonists, no doubt!) appear to operate
as
> >such.
> >
> >
> >cheers,
> >jody
> >
>
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