Monday, November 25, 2024

The Artemis II mission that was to send 4 astronauts into near lunar orbit has exploded spectacularly on the launch pad this afternoon at 15:14 hours. NASA engineers attribute the failure to Florida SB 99043, the so-called “don’t say pi” bill which was pushed through Florida’s congress by Ron DeSantis. The bill proposes in part, that “because of its irrational, transcendental behavior, the value of pi shall henceforth be exactly 3.14 and all state government agencies and federal agencies operating inside the boundaries of the great state of Florida shall be required to use this exact value and no other approximations”.

The mathematical constant “pi” represented as the greek letter π is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Because pi is an infinitely long sequence of non-repeating digits, any results for calculations requiring its use could only be approximations, although supercomputers have been used to calculate approximately 63 billion digits of pi.

According to DeSantis “The number pi is an abomination, and an assault on our senses. It’s obvious that this number is both queer and woke – I call it “quoke” – and it’s directly responsible for the sexualization of our children!”

In an interview after Florida state legislature passed the bill, DeSantis went on to say “With this bill, we no longer have to accept approximations; all of our calculations will be exact and superior in every way.”