There are a lot of things in this world that will make you say “why”? “Why would you climb Mount Everest?” George Mallory said, “Because it’s there”, but he was never seen again. Why would you wait three days in the snow for tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert? Why would you stick your tounge to a frozen pole knowing what will happen? Why would you buy a Pretty Ricky CD? To most people, anyone who does this is crazy or dumb. Well, I ran across a situation earlier that had me asking “why”.In Upper Darby Pennsylvania a 40 year old fling clerk named Mark Umile has me not just asking why, but “how”. For most if you ask what is pi, they will look at you and say it’s a type of dessert. Others will tell you it is 3.14 then stop but ask Mark Umile and you better have a couple of hours. He has memorized pi to the first 12,887 digits. You probaly have issues with memorizing the 10 digit number of the shorty you met last night while you were out drinkng. Not only did he memorize the first 12,887 digits, but he did it “by hand”. He also memorized the first 905 digits of the constant of e, and the first 5,544 digits of the square root of 2, he needs a new hobby.

The world record is held by a man in China who memorized 67,890 digits.

So what is pi it is an infinite number that tells you the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. To see how amazing this is try memorizing this 3.1415926535897932384; these are the first 20 digits of pi. If you think you can do it or better, go to http://www.exploratorium.edu/pi/Pi10-6.html and get the first million, or if you really want to go at it there is a book that gives you the first 6 million digits. Yeah, exciting huh?

That’s it for this edition of Bizzaro World, see you next time…I hope.