The day after π-day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi_day) let me celebrate the other, unsung hero of transcendental numbers, I mean the number e, of course. If π is the poet of numbers, e is their workhorse, straddling pure and applied math, bearing the burden as the ... base. Let me propose an e-day! Let's see possible candidates: Obvious digital patterns: February 7 (with e-minute at 6:28 PM) July 2 (European) April 15 (Euler's taxing b-day) April 4 (Napier's death day---grim!---his b-day is unknown) Shall we vote? By the way, if MIT bakes the πs, Wall St. should foot the e-party's bill given that e is the foundation stone of quantitative finance ...

And after that we can establish Transcendental Day. I propose February 3 with trans-minute at 2:06 PM. (e^π ~ 23.1406926327793... the simplest function of the two giants of transcendence that has been proven transcendental, aka Gelfond's constant, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_number)

Today (March 7, 2007) Izvestia (after ITAR-TASS) revealed that Jenna Bush signed a contract with Harper Collins to publish Anna's Story: a Journey of Hope http://www.izvestia.ru/news/news128867/ The contract is worth 300K to her. (Radar had caught the news in late January, but the Russian details have more ... pulp and perhaps less friction) According to Izvestia the book is a fictional journey of edification of a 17 year old HIV-positive single mother (anything else?), apparently inspired by Jenna's relief work in South and Central America. Its title and contents remind of (and hearken back?) Obama's Audacity of Hope One can't avoid speculating that this is another step into the making of a Bush Dauphine. She still has ten years to be eligible for a presidential ticket. Precocious campaign! (Talking about overworked kids, can you imagine a politico toddler fighting for a minimum play-time, or against quotas in minority dolls?)