π
One more thing before I go to bed. Yesterday morning, as I was signing a card, I realized my initials, JT, when written together with the top strokes connected, form a reverse pi (π). To think, all these years, I could’ve been using a symbol—or technically, letters that look like another letter that in turn also stands for a number—as my signature. Well, not my signature per se, since a single letter is so easily forged, but maybe I can find some interesting use for it.
Somewhat related note: it kind of annoys me (in an admittedly geeky and inconsequential way) how, in association with its documentary Russia: Land of the Tsars, the History Channel writes “Russia” with Cyrillic characters that, while trying to be clever in using the look of the language to suggest the word to non-Russian speakers, are technically misused. (What looks like a reverse R is pronounced “ya,” and the square U is actually “ts.”) I know, this is really nit-picky, so I’ll stop here, but I’m sure one could go on about the semiotics of it all.