14 March 2024

A pie-cutting template from West Point

"More recently, though, pie at West Point lost its innocence. For cadets who passed through the Academy in the later decades of the 20th century, a favorite form of hazing centered on pie. At dinner in the mess hall, plebes were made to cut the dessert into a mathematically impossible number of exactly equal slices: seven, nine, or 11. Upperclassmen looked on, taunting. The Zip-Locks under plebes’ hats? They held pie-cutting templates—literal pie charts—that helped plebes cut perfect slices and, most importantly, avoid their elders’ wrath."

Posted for Pi day 2024. 

6 comments:

  1. It is not clear to me how this training will assist one on the battlefield or planning thereof.

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    Replies
    1. Those very thin slices might assist one in fighting the battle of the bulge.

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    2. I don't think those are very thin slices - just overlapping templates of 6,7, 9, 10.

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    3. True.

      On a more serious note, on the subject of assisting "one on the battlefield": This entire exercise is a fusion of logic (geometry) and insanity (suspension of autonomy and common sense at the behest of a higher authority); a pretty good description of the psychology of war.

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  2. They are being taught to fear the wrath of senior ranking officers. Like a more manageable, therefore useful, fear of God.
    xoxoxoBruce

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  3. "JANUARY 29, 1943 . . . .
    MONDAY. It is a strange, new thing, this being a first classman, but I love it. I have such fun misusing my power."
    The Collected Works of Ducrot Pepys

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