Go Moko

Deja Vu from Doonesbury

The NY Observer has resurrected this cartoon from 16 years ago, back when Bill Clinton was campaigning in the Democratic primaries and being embraced by the media. Sound familiar? Have you drunk the Kool-aid yet?

Today's Pi - Day, folks

Rounding out the week before the onset of the ides of March comes the geek holiday of Pi-Day, calculated fun for number-crunchers everywhere.
So to celebrate squaring the circle and a mathmatical triumph, do have a "slice of pi": 3.1415926535 8979323846 2643383279 5028841971...
and, regarding the photo above (courtesy of the Beeb) here's pi in your eye.

The NY Times Science correspondent, John Tierney, goes full circle to suggest ways to mark today:

If this is 3/14, it must be Pi Day. In fact, it’s the 20th anniversary of the first Pi Day, a feast that began at the San Francisco Exploratorium and has been rightfully spreading in a great circle around the world. Here are some ways to celebrate it and win a prize from the Lab:

1) Enjoy a piece of pie precisely at the Pi Second, 1:59:26 p.m. (3/14/1:59:26).

2) Calculate the value of pi by tossing needles on a sheet of lined paper — or, much simpler and quicker, watching your computer toss the needles and do the computation for you. Here’s a cool applet tha calculates pi before your very eyes by using Buffon’s Needle, an 18th-century math problem named after the Comte de Buffon.

You can also do this calculation using frozen hot dogs instead of needles, but it’s more of a production.

3) Compose a pi-ku or other poem about pi — and win a pie of your choice if you submit the best one here at the Lab. The Exploratorium has gathered a few genres on its Pi Day site, including the limerick:

If inside a circle a line
Hits the center and goes spine to spine
And the line’s length is d
The circumference will be
d times 3.14159

You can submit a traditional haiku about pi like this one:

Unending digits . . .
Why not keep it simple, like
Twenty-two sevenths?

Or, for the ambitious, you can try a pi-ku that’s both a haiku and a mnemonic device in which the number of characters in each word equals the value of the corresponding digit of pi. Here’s an example that enables you to derive 11 digits of pi (3.1415926535) by counting the number of characters in each of the 11 words:

Let C over D
(Wheel perimeter on height)
Equal its value.

Then, for the real purist, there’s a new form of pi-ku proposed by Ian Chillag of NPR: Instead of the 5-7-5 syllable pattern of haiku, honor pi with lines of 3, 1 and 4 syllables. Like:

Why is pi
Square
As pie is round?

Chortles in Oz about 'Harry's War'

The cheeky Australian cartoonist Nicholson pokes fun at the British royals and the popular reaction to princely heroics during the "Harry's War"-- a sojourn in Afghanistan which was brought to a sudden halt after the press blabbed about the soldier prince's general whereabouts.

The Economist: spit-shining the NY news

Here's the headline of the week, from the Economist:

Spitzer swallows?

HIS pride, at any rate: New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been caught on tape arranging a rendezvous with a high-class prostitute. Mr Spitzer today issued an apology to his family and staff, saying he was "disappointed that I failed to live up to the standard I expected of myself". Those with a taste for irony can read the then–attorney general waxing indignant in the wake of a 2004 prostitution bust here.

Global empathy for the wife and three teenage daughters, who may be a tad po'd about the $80,000 blown on callgirls by Dad.

Tony Blair to teach at Bush's alma mater

He's still Tony to his diplomat croniess, but American students will call him Professor Blair. According to the Agence France Presse, the former British Prime Minister has accepted a Yale position. As Middle East envoy, Blair has been uncommonly silent about the mayhem in Gaza that left 126 Palestinians dead overfive days as well as the shooting spree inside the Yeshiva in Jerusalem. This may explain why he's biting his tongue:

Former British prime minister Tony Blair is to take up a post teaching at Yale, one of the top educational institutions in the United States, the university said Friday.

Blair, who stepped down as prime minister last year after 10 years in power, was to lecture on faith and globalization as the Howland Distinguished Fellow, and would start in the next academic year, the university said.

His work at the university would relate to the work of his Tony Blair Faith Foundation, which he is due to launch later this year.

"The appointment of Mr. Blair provides a tremendous opportunity for our students and our community," Yale President Richard Levin said in a statement.

"As the world continues to become increasingly interdependent, it is essential that we explore how religious values can be channeled toward reconciliation rather than polarization.

"Mr. Blair has demonstrated outstanding leadership in these areas and is especially qualified to bring his perspective to bear. We are honored that he is planning to join the Yale community," he added.

According to British media reports, Blair would continue in his role as special envoy to the Mideast Quartet working towards Palestinian statehood, a role that reportedly takes up around 10 days of every month.

There has also been speculation that Blair could be made the future EU president, a role enshrined in the European Union's reforming Lisbon Treaty that the 27 member states hope to ratify by the end of the year.

However, some members are known to oppose his candidacy partly due to his role in supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Former holders of Yale's Howland fellowship include composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, BBC journalist Alistair Cooke and late Indian leader Indira Gandhi.

Moore's Arlington grave shot wins top prize

Getty's award-winning photographer, John Moore, has won another prize, this time for best magazine image, awarded by the U of Missouri Pictures of the Year International competition.

In his own words, Moore, a former wire photographer who also won World Press kudos for his image of Benazir Bhutto's assassination in the street of Rawalpindi, tells the story behind his poignant picture of an army ranger's fiancee in mourning last Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery.

Mary said that they had planned to get married after Jimmy’s four years of service were up next year. “We loved each other so much,” she said. “We thought we had all of the time in the world.”

Later on, I passed by and she was lying in the grass sobbing, speaking softly to the stone, this time her face close to the cold marble, as if whispering into Jimmy’s ear.

Some people feel the photo I took at the moment was too intimate, too personal. Like many who have seen the picture, I felt overwhelmed by her grief, and moved by the love she felt for her fallen sweetheart.

After so much time covering these wars, I have some difficult memories and have seen some of the worst a person can see - so much hatred and rage, so much despair and sadness. All that destruction, so much killing. And now, one beautiful and terribly sad spring afternoon amongst the rows and rows of marble stones - a young woman’s lost love.

I felt I owed the Arlington National Cemetery a little time - and I think I still do. Maybe we all do.

...from John Moore's blog on Getty Images website