Then there are two ...

Because the Malaysian people have spoken. And boy, did they ever speak. Through the best “weapon” in a democracy, one's vote, when all things seemed to have failed. The wind of change that swept the political landscape has been likened to a tsunami. While the tragic 2004 South Asian Tsunami only wrought havoc on the northwest part of Peninsular Malaysia, the political version bore right into the heartland, wrestling the control of another four states (out of a total of 13) from the ruling party, thus becoming a veritable opposition to be reckoned with.

The two bloggers whom I have mentioned here won their contests, symbolizing the rise of the champions of netizens. A significant victory for the opposition is denying the two-thirds majority in the Parliament, paving the way for more rational and comprehensive debate before a bill can be bulldozed through.

Of note is the prevailing of cool heads. No excessive celebration on the part of the winners, taking the new mandate in humility. At the same time, the vanquished has taken the defeat in stride, planning to hunker down for the next four years in order to return more forcefully.

Next up is the presidential election in Taiwan, after the last face-off in a public debate between the two contestants before D-day, which is next week.

As for the US Democrats presidential nomination, the race is still an entrenched one. On the Republican side, with his party nomination assured, John McCain is getting down to the business of selecting a running mate. Will the attrition war at the Democrats camp hurt its nominee come the Primary in November? Or will the luxury of being able to focus on the foe outside early on favor the Republicans? Only time will tell, to borrow a cliché.

On a happy note, my colleagues at the office help celebrate my Birthday on the day before last, serving my favorite carrot cake. And a nicely picked birthday card to boot. Thanks, guys.

The inside of the card spotted all the lovely hand-written greetings from my colleagues, ranging from the dutiful Happy B-day to to the more creative variety such as "Just remember, once you're over the Hill you begin to pick up speed." How sobering! The momentum will just take care of itself.

And the fish image at the top has a special relevance too. My zodiac sign is Pisces.

And today is Pi day, it being March 14, or 3.14. For those of you who are not mathematically or scientifically inclined, it is also the birthday of Albert Einstein. He would have been 129 years young!

Pin-point, A Spot, A Sharp Placement

I will deal with the somewhat strange looking and sounding title in a little while. But first, the inspiration for that. My brother has alerted me to the online story, Pi fans have their day, which falls on March 14. Written in numerals, it’s 3.14. If you really want to get it down to the second, then it’s 3.14 1:59 pm, since its am counterpart would seem rather unworldly. Does 3.14159 ring a bell? If not, read on.

Some interesting Pi vignettes from the story:

a) The beauty of Pi lies in the fact that “the number seems to go on forever and yet has no discernible pattern to it”.

b) Pi spots a mind-boggling string of numbers that trails after the point and is known — so far — to be more than one trillion digits long.

c) The world record for reciting (b) belongs to Chao Lu, a Chinese chemistry student, who rattled off 67,890 digits over 24 hours in 2005. It took 26 video tapes to submit to Guinness.

d) A software engineer in Virginia named Mike Keith wrote a poem to pi, a "piem." where the number of letters in each successive word corresponds to pi's digits. To whet your appetite, here are the starting verses:

One
A Poem
A Raven
Midnights so dreary, tired and weary …

If you keep a tally as instructed, then the above should translate to 3.1415926535 … Not a bad mnemonics to memorize Pi by.

So by now you would have realized that the title is my feeble attempt at the same word play, which actually incorporates the decimal point (in word), but only till the 5th decimal place, which is the approximation I use daily in my work.

Pin-point, a spot, a sharp placement
3 . 1 4 1 5 9

Like everybody else, Pi entered my life when I was in secondary (middle) school. It’s that constant of proportionality between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. Those day, calculators had not evolved beyond the size of a table top machine and so we were asked to use a fraction approximation, 22/7.

Later in high school, I learned that it’s part of the Greek letter system (alpha, beta, and so on). Then in University I was introduced to it as the symbol for the product of a series of numbers in statistics.

Then in grad school, I used the Buckingham π theorem in my analytical work. According to Wikipedia, the Buckingham π theorem is a key theorem in dimensional analysis. The theorem loosely states that if we have a physically meaningful equation involving a certain number, n, of physical variables, and these variables are expressible in terms of k independent fundamental physical quantities, then the original expression is equivalent to an equation involving a set of p = n − k dimensionless variables constructed from the original variables.

Then one of my favorite TV detective series is PI Magnum, where PI stands for private investigator, starring Tom Selleck. Till now I still can vividly remember the way he twitched his eye-brows in the opening credit.

Then my wife loves apple pies. I guess that’s the closest she would ever get to Pi, Pi-themed food that is.

I recall a trick question once asked by a professor in a class in UF. Say, you enlarge the Earth’s diameter by one foot, what would be the increase in the earth’s circumference? Lest you think it’s an astronomical number, think again. It has everything to do with the innocuous looking Pi.

I’m no pi fan(atic), so I will stop my self-acclaimed Pirotechnics right here.