Author: Wil

Author, actor, producer. On a good day, I am charming as fuck.

Direct Relief for Japan

Posted on By Wil

One of my favorite webcomics is Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Zach Weiner cracks me up every day, and a lot of his jokes are just science-y and geeky enough to make me feel smart when I laugh at them.

In today's post, he writes:

Hey geeks. No doubt you've heard a lot about the Japanese tsunami. We're now hearing reports of coastal cities losing 15% or more of their population. Imagine 1 in 7 people in your town dying violently in a 24 hour period.

Direct Relief, which has a very good rating for spending most of their money on relief (as opposed to administration and promotion) have a setup where you can choose to give to Japan. Remember, this is the country that gave us Samurai, Ninjas, dirty cartoons, and Godzilla.

I think it's reasonable for a lot of people to have Disaster Fatigue right now, as we watch disaster after disaster strike all over the world. But like LeVar Burton said on Twitter, we have to fight Disaster Fatigue and do what we can to help.

Just think about what Zach wrote, and try to imagine what tens of thousands of people are suffering through right now. There are a lot of us, so I'm sure that, together, just a few bucks at a time, we can make a difference for them. Please do what you can.

#whiskyface is proof that the fsm loves us and wants us to be happy

Posted on By Wil

#whiskyface

Last night, my friends and I had a whisky tasting. As we neared the end, we were all feeling pretty happy … so I grabbed my silver sharpie and drew this, which I called #whiskyface.

It’s not as funny now as it was after several wee drams of scotch, but I think it's still worth sharing.

Preemptive FAQs: We tasted Caol Ila 12, Macallan Select Oak, Lagavulin 16, Laphroaig 10 and Laphroaig Quarter-Cask. Oh, and we poured our whisky into my Reddit glasses from r/Scotch.

happy pi day, my darling mathletes!

Posted on By Wil

I wrote this in 2004:

This morning over breakfast, I said to my wife, "Happy π day!"

"Happy pie day? What the hell are you talking about?"

"No, not 'pie'," I said. "'π'."

"Not 'pie,' but 'pie.'" She was clearly not amused. "Isn't it a little early to be drinking?"

"Anne, look at the date on the calendar."

"Yes it's march 14th, and you're going to watch WrestleMania dos equis* with your brother." She frowned. "Are you trying to tell me that you're taking a pie to Jeremy's house? Because if you expect me to make you a pie . . ."

"No, I don't expect you to make me a pie." I said, well into that area where you've explained the joke so much, it's never going to be funny.

"Today is March fourteenth. That makes it 3.14 on the calendar. 3.14 is also known as π."

She blinked a few times.

"Oh. It's π day."

"Yes!" I said. "And at 1:59 pm, it will be even more π day. Isn't that cool!?"

She took a long, thoughtful drink from her coffee mug, carefully set it down and said, "You are such a nerd."

And to commemorate pi day in 2009:

I present this incredibly awesome song by my friend Chris Hardwick:

 

This year … well, I got nothin'. Except maybe … maybe we could use today's date as an excuse to talk about math with kids!

Yeah! Check this out: When I think back on my years in school, I realize that math wasn't hard, math was just boring. Until I got into high school and started solving equations in algebra, which were framed as puzzles for me to solve, math was always framed as this collection of facts that we just had to know by rote, because … well, nobody really knows why, we just do it and stop asking so many questions you damn troublemaking kid.

Maybe we could use today's date, 3.14, and its relation to π as an opportunity to show kids how numbers and mathematics are all around us all the time, like a secret language or something fun like that.

…or you could just watch the video Chris and Mike made and leave it at that. I'm not the boss of you.

Edited to add: Over at Geek Mom, they're doing a ton of fun math stuff for kids today that's all pi-centric. I highly recommend taking a look.