{"id":15838,"date":"2015-03-16T22:53:14","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T03:53:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=15838"},"modified":"2015-03-16T22:54:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-17T03:54:11","slug":"two-slices-of-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/?p=15838","title":{"rendered":"Two slices of pi"},"content":{"rendered":"

My favorite sonnet by Shakespeare does not appear in collections of his sonnets. Rather, it is embedded in a the dialog of Act 1, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet<\/i>. Here are the fourteen lines of dialog between the two young lovers, leading up to their first ever kiss:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Romeo:<\/td>\n\nIf I profane with my unworthiest hand
\nThis holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
\nMy lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
\nTo smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.\n<\/td>\n
Juliet:<\/td>\n\nGood pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
\nWhich mannerly devotion shows in this:
\nFor saints have hands that pilgrims\u2019 hands do touch,
\nAnd palm to palm is holy palmers\u2019 kiss.\n<\/td>\n
Romeo:<\/td>\n\nHave not saints lips, and holy palmers too?\n<\/td>\n
Juliet:<\/td>\n\nAy, pilgrim, lips that they must use in pray\u2019r.\n<\/td>\n
Romeo:<\/td>\n\nO then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do,
\nThey pray\u2014grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.\n<\/td>\n
Juliet:<\/td>\n\nSaints do not move, though grant for prayers\u2019 sake.\n<\/td>\n
Romeo:<\/td>\n\nThen move not while my prayer\u2019s effect I take.\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I love the fact that this perfectly rhymed and brilliantly metered Shakespearean sonnet appears as the back-and-forth of two teen lovers. As though they just happened to say these precise words while flirting with each other.<\/p>\n

In a somewhat geeky parallel, it would be great to see something similar done with the digits of pi, with one modification: Rather than being an artful construct created by a master playwright, it would be a real back-and-forth, perhaps an email conversation between two real people.<\/p>\n

Each person, in their turn, would continue the dialog using as many or as few words as they’d like, with the one constraint that the letter count of each successive word in the conversation would need to equal the corresponding digit of pi.<\/p>\n

I wonder how such a discussion, constrained as it would be in word choice, would compare to a non-piemic conversation.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it would be better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My favorite sonnet by Shakespeare does not appear in collections of his sonnets. Rather, it is embedded in a the dialog of Act 1, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet. Here are the fourteen lines of dialog between the two young lovers, leading up to their first ever kiss: Romeo: If I profane with my … Continue reading “Two slices of pi”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15838"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15843,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions\/15843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}