I never liked math as a kid; but maybe if some teacher had made it exciting, or delivered a precise blow to my cranium, things might have turned out differently. The latter is what happened to Jason Padgett, a college dropout who was brutally beaten during a mugging a decade ago. Apparently he sustained head injuries such that his brain compensated for the damage by making him into a math genius – the only man known to be able to visually represent pi. You know – 22/7, or 3.14 – that mysterious mathematical constant so crucial to measuring circles. Padgett has taken to drawing fractals, and says that while he occasionally feels overwhelmed by his newfound power –think A Beautiful Mind – he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
In a less fortuitous incident, Henry Wolf is suing BMW and an after-market seat maker, claiming that riding his chopper gave him an erection that has persisted for 20 months. It’s not clear that he has a (third) leg to stand on in the case; at least one urologist says his claim is unsupported by any existing data.
On an unrelated note, an Australian mining tycoon is planning the maiden voyage of an updated version of the Titanic, unsurprisingly dubbed Titanic II. Clive Palmer, 58, intends for the ship to set sail in 2016. I offer this without further comment.
