(idea) by Gorgonzola Sun Jun 25 2000 at 1:01:57
A Hamburg mathematics professor, Hermann Schubert, once said (in 1889):

"Conceive a sphere constructed with Earth at its center, and inagine its surface to pass through Sirius, which is 8.8 light-years distant.

Then imagine this enormous sphere to be so packed with microbes that in every cubic millimeter millions upon millions of these diminutive animalcula are present.

Now conceive these microbes to be unpacked and so distributed singly along a straight line that every two microbes are as far idstant from each other as Sirius is from us, say 8.8 light years.

Conceive the long line thus fixed by all the microbes as the diameter of a circle, and imagine its circumference to be calculated by multiplying its diameter by pi to 100 decimal places.

Then, in the case of a circle of this enormous magnitude even, the circumference so calculated would not vary from the real circumference by a millionth part of a millimeter.

This example will suffice to show that the calculation of pi to 100 or 500 decimal places is wholly useless."

I got this quote out of Petr Beckmann's excellent book, A History of pi.
I like it! 1 C!