Pi-Consulting

The last 40 years has seen meat consumption rise by 59% in Europe, and 39% in America. Europeans now eat just under 200 pounds of flesh per year each, while Americans gnaw their way though 270 pounds of meat per person. The trouble is, it would be vastly more efficient if we all reverted to vegetarianism. It takes 10lb of animal feed to produce 1lb of beef. (Source: Compassion In World Farming Report/The Economist.)

Pi Day is the unofficial holiday held to celebrate the mathematical constant π (Pi). Pi Day is observed on March 14 (3/14 in American date format), due to pi being equal to roughly 3.14. Sometimes it is celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. (commonly known as “Pi Minute”). If pi is rounded out to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., “Pi Second”.

Pi Day celebrations nearly always include the eating of pie.

Pi Day was first celebrated at the Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, and then consuming fruit pies; the museum has since added pizza pies to its Pi Day menu. The founder of Pi Day, the “Prince of Pi”, is Larry Shaw, now retired from the Exploratorium, but still helping out with the celebrations.

March 14 happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday, and it is common to sing “Happy Birthday Dear Albert”.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology often mails out its acceptance letters to be delivered to prospective students on Pi Day.

On March 14, 2007, students at Leslie High School in Leslie, MI constructed the worlds longest “Pi Chain,” which was composed of 13,726 links.

Pi Consulting staff declined the offer of eating humble “pi” but instead ordered in a large pepperoni with extra cheese. (Source: Wikipedia, Pi)

In 1900, only a tenth of world population lived in cities. Now the figure is well over half, and it looks like rising to three-quarters within another 30 years. Just 17% of Americans live outside metropolitan areas. Already more than 75% of the Japanese are townies, and the European figure is closing fast on 80%. Urbanization is increasing virtually everywhere, (except Switzerland, for some reason). The agreeable myth of country living is becoming a thing of the past, and nowhere is this truer than in the UK, which already sees an astonishing 90% of population living in towns. (Source: Pi, The Economist, Various.)

Ask Silvio Berlusconi where advertising clutter comes from. If his memory gets hazy, remind him about his motorcycle days.

Long before his expansion into the politics racket, Signor Berlusconi established himself as the capo di tutti capi of Italian TV. Back in the 1980’s, advertisers were complaining that the dead hand of RAI, Italy’s then monopoly state network broadcaster, was restricting their access to the airwaves. The young Berlusconi spotted an opportunity, and invested much of his newly-minted property fortune in snapping up local TV stations across the country and forging them into networks.

When the government slapped an interdict on national networking by anyone that wasn’t their own RAI, Berlusconi biked hundreds of tapes of his sultry soap operas and sexy variety shows to his provincial TV stations. By pure coincidence, they all decided to transmit the same shows at the same time, turning hundreds of individual TV stations into de facto national networks again. The stratagem toppled RAI’s top shows from their dominant position in the ratings. The “bicycle thief” had broken the government monopoly. The law duly bowed to the inevitable (Italian laws often do), the Berlusconi networks were legalized, and Don Silvio unleashed such a torrent of TV ads on a goggle-eyed public that it surprised even the Italians. Advertisers were delighted. (more…)