Square Root Day

Yes, it’s true – today is Square Root Day.

Dust off the slide rules and recharge the calculators. Square Root Day is upon us.

The math-buffs’ holiday, which only occurs nine times each century, falls on Tuesday — 3/3/09 (for the mathematically challenged, three is the square root of nine).

“These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day — and poof — they’re gone,” said Ron Gordon, a Redwood City teacher who started a contest meant to get people excited about the event.

The winner gets, of course, $339 for having the biggest Square Root Day event.

Gordon’s daughter even set up a Facebook page — one of a half-dozen or so dedicated to the holiday — and hundreds of people had signed up with plans to celebrate in some way.

Celebrations are as varied: Some cut root vegetables into squares, others make food in the shape of a square root symbol.

The last such day was five years ago, Feb. 2, 2004, which coincided with Groundhog Day. The next is seven years away, on April 4, 2016.

From SFGate

I have an alternative, very Australian suggestion. To an Australian, a root is… well, not a vegetable. And I am old enough to remember what a square is. I’m not quite old enough to remember that it’s hip to be square, but I hear it’s true again.

A square was a geek, back when you didn’t realise how much better geeks made your lives. So, what better way to celebrate square root day than to root a square. Everyone has a favourite geek – that guy that always knows where to buy a good computer despite your willingness to waste several hundred dollars at a department store, or that girl who never runs out of patience at your insistence to demonstrate your ineptitude with software, and fixes things up for you.

Square root day – make sweet passionate love to a geek.

But hurry up would you, the day’s almost gone, and there won’t be another until 2016.

No, really. Hurry. Geeks have less sex than everyone else. They need you. And you need us them us.