Ewwww — that looks kind of gross.  Godzilla is such a monster.  Here’s a less bloody angle:

May the Fourth be with you!

Enjoy!

Well, just like a blog that doesn’t post for so long that you figure it’s basically dead, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere WHOA there’s a new post (Hi everybody!), the third derivative made a new appearance recently.  On the appropriately palindromic- (in the US)  date of  March 10, 2013, Paul Krugman wrote in the Opinion pages of the New York Times:

People still talk as if the deficit were exploding, as if the United States budget were on an unsustainable path; in fact, the deficit is falling more rapidly than it has for generations, it is already down to sustainable levels, and it is too small given the state of the economy.

Did you catch that?  The line about the deficit falling more rapidly than it has been?  Let’s take a closer look:

Assume that the National Debt at year t  is the original function:  D(t).  This is positive, since we have debt.

Then the Deficit is the derivative, D’(t).  It’s also positive, because the National Debt is increasing.

If the Deficit is falling, that means that the Deficit is a decreasing function, so the derivative of D’(t) – that is, D”(t) – is negative.  That would mean the Debt is increasing, but concave down.

But the quote said the Deficit is falling more rapidly than is has been:  the derivative of the Deficit is getting more negative, so to speak.  In other words, the Deficit itself is decreasing and concave down, which means that D”’(t) is negative.

And so we have a third derivative!  Welcome back old friend!

Here’s a detail:

Hey, I can answer that question!  I’m not as sure about the next one, though.

Congratulations (and Happy Anniversary!) to Emily and Glen — I can think of no better way to start a marriage.

Props to the photographer, Hilary Argentieri, for taking such clear picture!

Oddly, this isn’t even our first math wedding post (see this mathy proposal) although it’s the very first one involving cake.

Edited 9/19 to add:  Apparently this came from xkcd — I think that makes me like it all the more.

“The employee responsible for finding a replacement part for a tower crane that ultimately collapsed on the Upper East Side in 2008, killing two workers, testified on Tuesday about his own difficulty with the basic math of measuring key components. Tibor Varganyi, whose formal education ended in the ninth grade in Hungary, struggled how to measure the distance between the roughly 30 bolt holes around a piece of the turntable assembly. He decided to use a ruler.”

The article (“Worker Tells Court He Lacked Math to Measure Crane Part” by Russ Buettner)goes on to explain how the measurements didn’t match up with expectations, so he switched to a protractor, which also didn’t work.  This particular replacement part was never used, and the article is primarily about the prosecution’s argument that the company wasn’t worried about the lack of expertise or safety, instead focusing on profits, but the description is still worrisome.

That’s depressing.  We’d better recover by looking back at some old Pi Day Sudokus.

Follow up question:  should they have won with the sheep?

According to the Muppet Wiki, Guy Smiley’s enthusiasm was rough on Jim Henson’s voicebox, so his portions were rerecorded so that it could be played over and over without Mr. Henson having to keep repeating his dialogue.   The Muppet Wiki also says that there were two two-headed monsters:  the one in the clip above was designed by Jim Henson, but a second, who was on Fanfare and the Mike Douglas Show rather than Sesame Street, was performed by Jim Henson.

Why am I telling you all this?  I mean, besides the sheer ridiculousness/awesomeness of a word for the fourth-to-last item in a list?  I needed an excuse to post this video:

Perhaps the second bar is twice as delicious as the first.

Via Language Log.  Photo from Spiderham.