Word: pigging
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...what brings the whole program together, in a lot of the participants' minds, is the Yellow Pig and the number 17. Although different activities and events characterize different years (juggling was very popular in 1979, for instance, but not in 1980), Kelly, associate professor of mathematics at Hampshire College, ensures that each generation is well-schooled in lore about YP17. July 17 is Yellow Pig Day, when alumni from all over the country return to the Hampshire campus for the annual reunion. On that day, Kelly gives his renowned lecture on "The History of 17," and relates all the facts...
...origin of the Yellow Pig is shrouded in obscurity: Kelly refuses to divulge the secret. Of the many "creation myths," though, Benji N. Fisher '85 offers the most probable explanation: "In Princeton about 30 years ago. David Kelly and Michael Spivak (author of several math textbooks) were drinking buddies, and instead of seeing pink elephants, they saw yellow pigs...
...Yellow Pig first appeared in Spivak's book Calculus, which is "Dedicated to the Memory of Y.P." The index entry "Pig, Yellow" refers the reader to page 314, where he finds the sentence. "In this case we will go whole hog..." The Yellow Pig reappeared on the covers of each volume of Spivak's five-volume Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. While some picture the Yellow Pig himself, others are more subtle: Volume II, upon close examination, shows a cowering...
...number 17 became inextricably linked with the Yellow Pig much later, when it came to Kelly's attention that the Yellow Pig has 17 eye-lashes--eight on the left eye and nine on the right. (Some radicals insist that there are ten on the left eye and seven on the right...
Although Kelly insists the Yellow Pig is not a cult, a lot of Hampshirites act as if it were. Over the years, various "counter-cults" have developed: Steve Maurer, who taught at Hampshire for two years, introduced the Yellow Pig's antithesis--the Pink Pig, which is closely associated with the number 23, and produced evidence proving the ascendancy of 23 over 17. (Adherents to the Yellow Pig consider 23 the "ickiest" number of them all.) For a while, Pink Pig t-shirts began to appear, but the era of the interloper, though still remembered, was short-lived...