THINGS THAT NEED TO GO AWAY RIGHT NOW, VOL. 9

• People who ridicule biblical fundamentalists because the Bible allegedly sets 3 as the value for pi. The relevant passage is 1 Kings 7:23:

  [Huram] made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it. (NIV)

  For those of you who spent your time in Geometry class sticking your hand up Michelle Lundegaard's skirt: pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi stays the same for all circles, no matter the size, and approximately equals 3.1416. A circle with a diameter of exactly 100 feet (that is, measuring 100 feet across), would measure about 314.16 feet around.
  
  The Bible states that the Sea (a huge bronze basin used for ceremonial washing) had a circumference of thirty cubits and a diameter of ten cubits. The ratio of the circumference to the diameter of the Sea is thirty divided by ten, which sets pi equal to 3.
  
  Skeptics love this. "You see?" they say, snickering, "Every high school freshman without his hand up Michelle Lundegaard's skirt knows that pi equals 3.1416 or whatever, so the Bible is bullshit."
  
  But pi does not exactly equal 3.1416 or any other number expressible in a finite number of digits. A better approximation of pi than 3.1416 would be:

  pi = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...

  but even this value only approximates pi because pi is a transcendental number that never terminates (like 1/2 = 0.5000) or repeats (like 1/3 = 0.33333...).
  
  How do we handle ugly numbers that refuse to terminate or repeat? We round them. Many people use 3.14 as a convenient value for pi, while others needing more precision might use 3.14159265. An ancient Hebrew, unaccustomed to decimals, might round to 3 without error.
  
  Right now you are saying, "Okay, but the Bible passage doesn't say anything about measuring the diameter and then multiplying by 3 to get the circumference. It only refers to separate measurements of ten cubits and thirty cubits. Even if we only expect the ancient Hebrews to use integers, the correct measurements should have been ten cubits and thirty-one cubits."
  
  Not necessarily. The Hebrews often used round numbers instead of exact numbers -- see Numbers 1:20-46 -- and nobody should reckon this as an error. The writer of 1 Kings might have rounded from thirty-one cubits to thirty cubits. More likely, the actual measurements were, say, 9.6 cubits and 30.16 cubits, and the writer rounded to ten cubits and thirty cubits.
  
  I'm all for ridiculing fundamentalists and their blind belief in biblical inerrancy. But let's be smarter about this than they are. If you want real ammunition for debating fundamentalists, use the inconsistencies in the four Gospel accounts of Easter morning, which I'll blog about some other time.
  
  
• Inappropriate use of the word "approximately." I saw a sign in downtown Denver that read: "For Sale: Approximately 50,832 sq. ft." Hey, that looks like an exact value to me, guys. Thanks for the correction, Hubs. (See Comments.)
  
  
• My crippling phobia of getting ridiculed by George Carlin. I can't stop entertaining irrational fantasies of being out in public, and suddenly George Carlin pops around a corner and starts mocking me for picking my nose when I don't think anyone's looking, or for wearing my cap backwards, or for using my debit card to buy a box of Tic Tacs. I always imagine the lovely Patricia Clarkson with him, laughing and saying, "Oh, leave the young man alone, George, and let's go have sex." But George would keep insulting me, and dozens of people would stop to point and laugh, and I would have to stand there and take it, because I'd have better luck trading punches with Roy Jones Jr. than trading taunts with George Carlin. I guess I could rush the guy, but even at 66 I'm pretty sure he could take me.
  
  
• Jessica Simpson. She's nowhere near hot enough for me to tolerate the shit she's pulling: the "Newlyweds" show, the asinine "Nick & Jessica Variety Hour," the self-effacing Pizza Hut commercial, and the remake of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away." Attention Jessica Simpson: I'm already coming to California to hunt down the inventor of White Merlot, and I have room in the trunk for one more body.
  
  
• Women who wear low-rider jeans, T-back thongs, and tight belly shirts, and then keep pulling the shirts down to cover their exposed flesh. This never works because the shirts are too short, which is what makes them belly shirts. Hey ladies: if you don't want men gawking at your midriff and the tattoo in the small of your back, try buying clothes that fit.
  
  A variation on this theme is the young men who wear pants that are too large by two or three orders of magnitude. This makes them look very cool and stylish until they have to walk, an operation that requires them to gather up four square yards of crotch fabric in one hand and shuffle forward with their knees pressed together like a nervous virgin on her wedding night.

+posted by Lawrence @ 5/02/2004 11:44:00 PM