I know! I was supposed to post this yesterday but as you can guess, life got in the way!!

Hello and welcome to one of the most fun days in the calendar year! Yes, that double meaning holiday that brings joy to math nerds and foodies the world over. But guess what? You don’t have to limit your love of π (or pie) to just one day! More on that a little later.

The standard reasoning for choosing today, March 14th, for Pi Day is because the beginning of π is 3.14. But it wasn’t until 1988 that someone thought about it long enough to make the connection and a large-scale celebration was in order. It was California’s Exploratorium physicist Larry Shaw who nabs the honor. But it wasn’t until March 2009 that The House of Representatives agreed to officially designate March 14th as National Pi Day.

This all led Google to do their infamous Doodle and in March of 2014 – it was celebrated as “Pi Month”, allowing the March 14th of 2015 to become “Super Pi Day”! Then to add to the fun, if you use the American style of writing the date then 3/14/15 at 9:26:53 the date and time together represented the first ten digits of π.

According to Wikipedia “Pi Day has been observed in many ways, including eating pie, throwing pies and discussing the significance of the number π, due to a pun based on the words “pi” and “pie” being homophones in English ( /paɪ/), and the coincidental circular shape of many pies. Many pizza and pie restaurants offer discounts, deals, and free products on Pi Day.”

It continues: “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has often mailed its application decision letters to prospective students for delivery on Pi Day. Starting in 2012, MIT has announced it will post those decisions (privately) online on Pi Day at exactly 6:28 pm, which they have called “Tau Time”, to honor the rival numbers pi and tau equally. In 2015, the regular decisions were put online at 9:26 am, following that year’s “pi minute”,^[26] and in 2020, regular decisions were released at 1:59 pm, making the first six digits of pi.” This is very clever indeed, although I feel stupid that I had to look up what the tau number was.

Here’s what I found out: 2π, also known by the Greek letter tau (𝜏) is a common multiple in mathematics. Some even say it is a more “fundamental” constant than π itself. All of this led to June 28th becoming “Two Pi Day” or “Tau Day” and the “jokingly suggest eating “twice the pie” “. Okay let’s not joke about this. I’m all for eating as much pie as I can handle!!

I love Pi Day because it is also Albert Einstein‘s birthday.

Remember when I said earlier that you can celebrate on other days? Well, here’s a list:

• Pi Approximation Day is (using the Western Style of writing the date) celebrated on July 22nd. This is because the fraction  ²²⁄₇ is accurate to two decimal places.
• I already told you about “Two Pi Day” or “Tau Day” (June 28th)
• And there is a second Pi Approximation Day! This one is celebrated on the 314th day of the year – November 10th

So there you have it – reasons to eat pie (or any other circular food) and all the days (not enough in my opinion) where you can sit back, rub your belly and say “That was so worth it!”

Well, well. It appears that March has National Ranch Day – who knew? My question, and it may be silly, but what kind of ranch?

This kind?

Or this kind? (The actual Hidden Valley Ranch!)

Call me crazy, but I have never been a big fan of the Ranch Dressing and seasoning craze that has taken over the U.S. Some of my friends even use it on their chicken nuggets! This concept just seems foreign to me. But I do love to watch YouTube cooking videos and I see a ton of people like Jessica O’Donohue (one of my favorites – along with Mandy In The Making), who absolutely love the stuff and will even add it to things that don’t call for ranch!! I suppose some may consider me crazy because I do the same with hot sauce (well, sometimes). But I do enjoy their crazy videos and their even crazier relationships with their husbands, “Bunkey” and Steven, respectively.

The O’Donohue’s with Daisy Mae

Mandy & Steven

If you do like ranch, just take a quick journey down Google Lane and you won’t be disappointed; dressings, seasoning packets and recipes galore! Or better yet, go to the King of Ranch, the Hidden Valley website, where not only can you find recipes – you can share them, too.

Ranch dressing has been the best selling salad dressing in the United States sine 1992 – when it beat out Italian.

The salad dressing was invented in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s by a man named Steven Hensen while he was working in the Alaskan bush as a plumbing contractor. He wanted to keep his workers happy so he invented the dressing. But it wasn’t until 1956/1957 that it really took off – being produced at his personal ranch; Hidden Valley Ranch in San Marcos Pass, California. Hensen would make the dressing for friends at functions and it was always well received. But it wasn’t until he put a batch together for his friend and owner of the Cold Spring Tavern, Audrey Ovington, that he hit it big and she became his first commercial account.

Hensen stayed with the operation until 1972 when it was bought by Clorox (of all companies!) for $8 million. Since then the name and production has changed hands numerous times as well as being cloned by entities like Kroger, Ken’s, Kraft, Litehouse, Marie’s, Newman’s Own, and Wish-Bone.

If you’re interested in a more in-depth history of Hidden Valley Ranch, check out Wikipedia and the Hidden Valley website.

I thought I would share with you some of the funny music remakes that have come out of this Corona Virus. Let’s face it, we could all use a little laugh during this difficult time.

Let’s start with the Friend’s theme song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyeFFoH627s

 

Now a little Queen:

 

Some Bee-Gees perhaps:

 

Even Billy Joel:

 

The clip I really wanted to show you I can’t find!  How typical is that?  It was from the British TV show The Last Leg.  They did a parody of Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.  It was fantastic!  I’ll keep looking for it and if I find it I will post it.

Meanwhile, everyone stay safe and inside if you can.  We really do have it easy with NetFlix and delivery and the grocery store when we need supplies.  Good Night!

Edmund Blair Leighton, God Speed, 1900, private collection

Frank Bernard Dicksee, Romeo and Juliet, 1884, Southampton City Art Gallery

(for the two above)

Corrado Giaquinto, Religion Protected by Spain, 1750s, Royal Palace of Madrid

Eugène Delacroix, The Massacre at Chios, 1824, Oil on Canvas

Honore Daumer, The Uprising, c. 1848

Winslow Homer, Prisoners From the Front, 1866, oil on canvas, private collection

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, 1937, oil on canvas, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, Spain

Thomas Cole, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm or The Oxbow, 1836, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Vincent Van Gogh, Olive Trees With Yellow Sky and Sun, 1889, The Minneapolis Institute of Art

Aaron Brumbelow, Border of Howling Fjord, 2013

Alfred Eisenstaedt, Kissing on VJ Day, 1945, Black and White Photograph

Robert Smithson, “Spiral Jetty,” IKONOS satellite image, 11/11/02.

 

 

One thing I have mentioned before about being at my mother’s house is that she has cable TV. Hundreds of channels and still rarely anything I actually want to watch. However, there have been a few things of interest on the Smithsonian Channel. For example, last night they ran a show called King Tut’s Final Mystery.

Ever since Howard Carter and his team discovered – and let’s call a spade a spade, pillaged – King Tut’s tomb in 1922, the boy king has captivated the world. So how did the most iconic Egyptian king ever, actually die? And why so young? That is what the scientists featured in this show were out to discover.

We know that the 19-year-old king’s death was sudden and a surprise. How do we know this? Several things: first, his burial chamber was small, cramped, and hardly decorated. Secondly, there was something present in Tut’s tomb that has never been present in any other tomb: mold. The 3,000-year-old mold is indicative of the walls being hurriedly painted on wet plaster and then the chamber sealed. So whatever killed the pharaoh was not something anyone could have foreseen.

Check out the reconstruction of Tutankhamun. I find it interesting the dramatic contract between this image and the beautiful youth of his death mask. Notice the pronounced overbite and it is also believed that he had a cleft palate.

King Tut’s mummy was first x-rayed in 1968, causing speculation that the boy king had been murdered by a blow to the back of the head. If you look at the x-ray, there are some bone fragments inside the cranial cavity. People believed, and rightly so, that a killing blow to the back of the head would propel bone fragments inward. The problem with this is that the mummification process would have blown them back out again. So the fragments were somehow created post-mummification. The site Two Views mentions that some scientists believe that the bone fragments are not even from the skull, but are actually part of the first vertebra that were broken off during mummification. (I’m not sure if I entirely concur with this – more on this later). Either way, Myth #1 debunked.

Another thing the x-rays revealed is a broken femur. This is not an easy task. The femur is the largest bone in the body and it takes a tremendous amount of force to fracture it. This injury to Tut was pre- or peri-mortem (before or around the time of death). Personally, I believe (based on information that I have) that this injury happened close to the time of death. For one thing, the x-ray shows a very clear break. For another, none of the scientists mentioned the presence of ossification (bone formation) that would have indicated any type of healing process. Primary callus begins to form within two weeks, so it is my educated guess that death ensured within two weeks of this injury.

But how he broke his leg led to another theory about his death. Perhaps he died in a chariot accident? The scientists decided to test it. How fast can a chariot even go? And would it be fast enough to cause a fracture? After several passes urging the horses on, the top speed reached was 21 miles per hour. Enough to assure that any bone fracture would be possible – even the femur. It seems likely that accidents with these “sports cars of their day” would not have been few and far between, so it seems we might be on to a valid hypothesis here.

Further examination in the “virtual autopsy”, which included more than 2,000 CT scans, showed that Tutankhamun was actually born with a club foot.  This deformity would have caused the young king to walk with a limp and more than likely use a walking stick. This affliction would make it unlikely that he would be able to use a chariot. But this revelation made understanding some of the artifacts in his tomb a bit easier: it contained 139 ebony, ivory, silver and gold walking sticks.  Myth #2 debunked.

Okay, so we have debunked the two major theories of how Tut died. So what did kill the 19-year-old king? Maybe we should step back and take a look at the larger picture. In order to do that, we need to know, for certain, who Tut’s parents were. It was generally believed that Akhenaten was Tut’s father because it was generally the way it was for a son to take the father’s place on the throne. However, this was not always the case. So a DNA profile was taken and compared to the one taken from Akhenaten, known as KV55. It was a match. And it was a “probability of better than 99.99 percent” certainty that Amenhotep III is Akhenaten. So we have a good paternal lineage for Tut now.

But what about Tut’s mother? After comparing Tut’s DNA sample to that of Queen Tiye, the wife of Akhenaten, there was no match. And there was not a match to any of Akhenaten’s known wives. Okay, our hands are not tied quite yet and we are finally able to find a maternal match with sample KV35YL, the DNA sample taken from a mummy designated “The Younger Lady”, found lying beside Queen Tiye. Here is where the water gets a bit murky. The Younger Lady was the sister of Akhenaten, making Tut the product of incest.

So the information of the incest and the club foot led to a question of: are there any other hereditary problems that could have led to Tut’s early death? If you go back to Tut’s great grandfather, Thutmose IV, all the men have wide hips and accentuated female characteristics. This is due to a condition known as gynecomastia. Also, they died early. It is estimated that Thutmose IV died at an age between 25 and 33 years old; Amenhotep III died at the age of 38 or 39 and Akhenaten died when he was between 28 and 45, although it is commonly believed to be on the younger ends of the scale.

Now let’s take into account the religious visions of Tut’s father and great grandfather. Thutmose IV while taking a rest after hunting had a vision of the Sphinx. It told Thutmose that if he uncovered all the sand that engulfed the feet of the Sphinx, it would make sure he ascended the throne. This vision is chronicled in the Sphinx Stele. Akhenaten had a religious vision that caused him to turn against the polytheistic pantheon, build the city of Amarna to honor the one God, Aten.

What can cause all of this: young death, religious visions and a hereditary problem compounded by a small gene pool? The only really good fit is familial temporal epilepsy. And when you look at all the information and that fact that the epilepsy would not have been treated in King Tut, it seems likely that he had a grand mal seizure, fell (causing the broken femur) and passed away either due to the fall or through sepsis (infection) caused by the damage of the fracture.

There is more damage to the body that just what I have covered.  However, I did not go over it because it was done post-mummification.  In fact, it was done by Carter and his crew when they removed the death mask from the mummy, as it was essentially glued to the body.  That is why I said earlier that I did not concur with the bone fractures done during mummification. I find it far more likely that it was just more damage done by Carter.

I would like to conclude by saying that this was a fascinating documentary and if you get the chance to see it, do.  I think you will find it very informative.