Albert finds friends at the East River
Me and Albert were cycling around Manhattan yesterday. And Albert found some very handsome friends down the East River (at a little park the height of Grand Street, a hundred yards south of the Williamsburg Bridge). There were some animals there who looked kind of like having fun – except nobody wanted to play with them until we came along. Albert had some great time playing with the turtle and the seals as you see.
For the first time in his life Albert rode on a turtle. (I mean, honestly, you’re not doing that every day anyways.)
Ah yeah, was also his first time riding a seal:
He further tried to win against a seal in the “who blinks first”-game. Albert gave up after a few minutes (not that he would have blinked by then, he just wanted to have a look around everywhere and not spend the whole day there).
And finally he was trying to dive into the concrete like the seals. However, his attempt was only somehow successful. (I think he secretly still wonders how the seals were doing it, even if he would never tell me.)
And as a gimmick to all the lovers of random facts:
I only think that they were eared seals – I’m a useless Pinnipediaologist. But as the different kind of pinnipedia are probably proud of their different roots, a wrong classification caused by ignorance could be taken as a serious offence by them…
Funnily their dental formula starts with a the first 4 digits of pi. A fact that is probably not appreciated very often, I guess.
Speaking of: did you knew that “a physicist needs only 39 digits of ? to make a circle the size of the observable universe accurate to the size of a hydrogen atom“.
Some further points arise at this statement: firstly, why should only physicists want to calculate that? Are mathematicians, mechanical engineers or highschool students not allowed to do that?
Secondly, why would actually anybody want to use more than 39 digits when that would cover already all handy problems of the universe? (Okay, not all problems of the universe, but the mathematical / physicists’ ones. I think most of the other problems of life, the universe and all the rest are tried to be solved elsewhere already.) Actually, if 39 is enough, why would anybody try to calculate more than that?
Thirdly, why did Ludolph van Ceulen spend most of his life (!) calculating 35 digits? Madness!
Fourthly, John Machin calculated 100 digits in 1706. But 39 might be enough for any practical use. (No matter if you call “calculating the universe’s diameter to the size of one hydrogen atom” a practical use. (That would need some serious ignorance of the fact that the universe’s expansion takes place with nearly light speed. So the caluclation would be… err… quick estimate *brainrattle*… wrong by roughly 10 to the power of 18 hydrogen diameters per second. Oops. So with every second that passes during your calculation you can calculate the last 18 digits of your 39-digit-clever-perimeter new. Harhar.
The age of the universe itself is estimated to “13.75 ± 0.17 billion years” – so we are actually down to 3-4 digits precision. So pi can be effectively precise to 3 digits as well for that calculation. Needn’t be 39 even. So is anything more than say 10 digits for pi merely mathematical masturbation?
(Just came to my mind that the worst estimate of pi that I ever heard of was pi=4 which defined by law in an obscure American state 200 years ago. Just can’t find the reference right now.)
Four-and-a-halfly, will the above mentioned word (m***) cause this page to get more hits than any of the other pages in this blog? (Believe me or not, a list that I posted years ago that showed some of the weird names of groups in StudiVZ (a German analogue to Facebook for students) got a couple of hits every week for containing group names which include some words like that in completely random uses. Poor people discovering that site during their search for obviously something else – they must be disappointed.
Fifthly, is actually remembering more than 3 digits of pi then also mathematical m***? I presume so.
Then I feel guilty of haven done so: I know the first 15 digits of pi by heart since I learned them in 10th class for random purposes. To the day people of my old class sometimes ask me after a few pints if I’d remember pi. I still do. (Actually, I’m just thinking, I could tell them any number – as I’m usually the only one around knowing them, nobody can prove or disprove it ;-) I’ll tell them next time the dental formula of seals. Nobody will disagree with that, I bet ;-)
But meanwhile I’ll head out for what I planned yesterday as well but had no time because of taking too many photos: a bike tour down the Hudson river.
ich soll schreiben dass die bilder total süß sind vom älbsiet, die schriftartigen ornamente drumrum aber voll der knack.
weil der Peter sich nämlich beschwert, dass er keine kommentare bekommt. und es stört ihn auch nicht, wenn in den kommentaren nur käse steht.
say cheese! – gorgonzola.
Warum beschwere ich mich nur, dass ich keine Kommentare bekomme? Ich sollte mich beschweren, dass ich keine qualitativ hochwertigen Kommentare bekomme ;-)
Hi, Peter – ich mag deine Sachen – die Lara soll mal schön brav sein. Es IST schön, was du schreibst.
Nele
Die Lara ist IMMER brav!!! Deswegen schreibt sie auch brav Käsekommentare, wie geheißen :P
und wehe Albert fängt sich elefantiasis oder die kratzpest oder ‘nen bandwurm ein, wenn er wilden tieren so nah ausgesetzt wird!
Er kriegt Steinläuse, was sonst?
Na wenn dann Pinnipediaditis: da legt man ganz große Fettreserven an und bekommt Haare so schön ölig wie Snape.
Steinläuse… Diese Mediziner immer mit ihren Pschyrembelwitzen…
The small dinosaur now has his own photo album on Facebook!
Es ist ja wohl bekannt, dass nur Steinkorallen von Steinläusen befallen werden. Die springen allerdings auch auf Doktorfische über und wenn Du die am Wasserbahnhof siehst, dann gare à toi!