In some social circles, wasting your time is a big faux pas. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to unlock the last level of Goldeneye, arguing against long-dead theories like Zeno’s paradoxes or devoting one’s life to continually calculating 1 divided by 3, in the hope that some day the digits will stop repeating.

Someone should definitely pass this news on to Japan’s Yasumasa Kanada and his team of nine researchers, who made history last Friday by obliterating a justifiably long-ignored world record.

That record is one that Sir Roger Bannister, Hank Aaron, Marilyn vos Savant and that Indian guy who has the world’s longest fingernails all fell amazingly and pathetically short of breaking — the most digits calculated in pi. Their record is an amazing 1.2411 trillion digits, although there is not word yet on whether there was another computer that set a record by counting how many digits this computer had calculated, which would almost certainly deserve its own press release and Nobel Prize for Medicine and/or Physiology. After all, we all know no real progress ever happens in those fields, probably because researchers can’t get time in the computer lab because they’re too busy determining that the forty-six trillionth decimal place in the number 1 is still 0.

Vos Savant seems a peculiar example. If she honestly holds the world record for IQ, as that uppity Parade magazine claims every week, it’s only natural to wonder why she didn’t do this first.

I think I’ve found the answer. Because in this case, it requires real intelligence to not calculate pi to trillions of digits but to realize that doing so is fruitless and not even original work, since the calculations were done by a computer. In this case, it’s smarter to do nothing at all, because at least then someone might use that supercomputer for something more useful, which would mean absolutely anything else.

Of course, I do have to plead a lack of understanding. Perhaps there is something that knowing the value of pi to trillions of digits can do. Perhaps once I have it, my coffee cups will be rounder, or somehow I’ll be able to calculate how round someone I see on the street may be.

More than anything, I think this stands as proof that the Marshall Plan went too far. After boosting Japan’s economy following World War II, we not only created a difficulty for our own proud manufacturing industry by building its strongest competition, but also have helped them reach a level of prosperity where this dawns on someone as being a meaningful and useful project. Have the people of Japan genuinely reached a point where this is a better expense than everything else? Have we reached a point where this is a better expense than anything else?

I’d say no. Alternatively, here are some ideas I think need to be revived.

Alchemy may seem like dead pseudo-science to you, but to the less bold, it’s a study that’s been neglected like so many worthy pursuits: phrenology, exorcism, astrology and holistic chiropractic medicine. Like disco or Prohibition, it’s definitely due for a comeback in 2003.

According to a recent telephone survey conducted by Northern Illinois University, 21 percent of respondents believe the sun revolves around the Earth. This was definitely something that people used to be adamant about, but thanks to heathens like Galileo, we’ve abandoned our perfectly acceptable theory for this “science” crap. Since there’s still such a movement for geocentrism four centuries after Galileo, there’s got to be something about it that’s right. Hell, if you could also discover a flat-earth with bizarre sea monsters at the edges of the plane, that’d be even better. I will personally guarantee at least 13 cents in research grants to the first, and thus most worthy, proposal I receive.

Then there’s the truly rigorous project — a computer that will appear to be calculating digits of pi for wacky Japanese scientists, but will actually just be spewing out random things after the 3 to 10 places everyone knows. I think it’d be worth it when they discover that the 2.8 trillionth digit is love.

Now these projects might seem ridiculous to you, but should they be successful, there’s no doubt whatsoever that they’re more valuable than the precious 1.2411 trillionth decimal place in pi.

For now, I’m just hoping I can convince my computer to sit around all day eating pork rinds and drinking beer. It may seem like a waste to you, but trust me, there’s a record in it. After all, there’s a reason why the Book of Records is published by a brewery.

Tim Kearns

is a senior in political science from Bellevue, Neb.