[New-Poetry] also:
David Weinstock
david.weinstock at gmail.com
Sat Jan 31 20:34:26 EST 2009
In 7th grade my friend Bill and I decided to memorize pi together. I got to
about 100 digits and he got to 70. Now he's a distinguished professor of
high energy physics and I'm an underemployed poet.
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 6:47 AM, Anny Ballardini
<anny.ballardini at gmail.com>wrote:
> Today is the 30th birthday of the man who holds the European record for
> reciting pi from memory, *Daniel Paul Tammet<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,dpta,dv,j736,4dvi,3hrs,fxvj>
> *. (books by this author<http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,dpta,dv,ecu,gmzk,3hrs,fxvj>)
> It took him five hours and nine minutes to recite 22,514 digits of pi (the
> number that begins 3.14).
>
> He was born in London in 1979, and he grew up autistic, epileptic, and with
> synesthesia, a rare condition in which a person has unique sensory
> experiences. He wrote a memoir called *Born on a Blue Day: Inside the
> Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant* (2007). It begins, "I was born
> on January 31, 1979 — a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday, because the
> date is blue in my mind and Wednesdays are always blue, like the number 9 or
> the sound of loud voices arguing."
>
> Tammet describes synesthesia as "a visual, emotional experience of numbers,
> a neurological mixing of the senses, which most commonly results in the
> ability to see alphabetical letters and/or numbers in color." Vladimir
> Nabokov was also a synesthete, and documented his perspectives and
> experiences in the memoir *Speak, Memory*.
>
> Daniel Tammet said, "Numbers are my friends, and they are always around me.
> Each one is unique and has its own personality."
>
>
> --
> Anny Ballardini
> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
> I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing
> star!
>
>
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>
>
--
..........................................................
DAVID WEINSTOCK
240 Woodland Park, Middlebury, VT 05753
Home: 802-388-6939
Cell: 802-989-4314
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