The Czar loves math as much as you don’t. Here are some fun facts to astonish and amaze your pets.

1. The number four is the only number with as many letters as its quantity stipulates. Which is good, because if that were true for 427, it would take some time to spell.
2. Lots of people memorize pi to umpteen places (your Czar, for example), but very few people bother with the square root of, say, three. So memorize the first couple of digits, like 1.73, and then make up a whole bunch of random numbers for about 20 minutes. Almost no one will call you on it, despite being totally impressed with you.
3. Another thing to fool people with: tell them “And weirder still is square root of five.” Tell them it starts with 2.23, and then recite your home telephone number, with area code, then your cell phone number with area code. Then tell them your home number and cell phone number to freak them out like one of those bullshit Lincoln-Kennedy conspiracies, and ask them what the odds are both your phone numbers are found in the square root of five. By the way, if your home and cell phone numbers really are (606) 797-7499 and (789) 696-4091, you’re pretty awesome.
4. Sometimes iTunes launches itself for no reason whatsoever, even when we are typing something, and it is irritating to no end.
5. There is no square root of eleventy.
6. Remember hearing that the sum of the interior angles of a triange must add up to 180°? Sure you do. But it is not always true in non-Euclidian space. No, we are not making this up. There exist triangles who interior sums add up to 270°. For example, take a globe and note where Greenwich and the Equator meet, just off Africa. Than angle is 90° Now look at the place off South America where the Equator meets -90°. Follow the lines of longitude up to the North Pole and measure that angle. Yep: 90°. And that’s a triangle, is it not?
7. Nearly all of the bizarre math tricks where you select a number at random, do this, do that, and your number is seven (or whatever) work the same way. It is all verbal algebra. The steps basically get you to a control number, so that no matter what you pick, the answer will be the same. The next time you see one of those challenges (the Czar’s mother is happy to email you several a week), see if you can spot where the control number is introduced. In its simplest form—itself a popular joke among math fans—you see it as “Pick a number, add 1, subtract 1…and there’s your original number!” Or, “Pick a number. Double it. Divide by the original number. The number is…two!” That sort of thing.

See? Math even ‘Puter can appreciate!

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.