I think that I shall ne’er enjoy a piem as lovely as a Troi

If you clicked on the first link in the preceding post for Pi Day, you may have encountered a new word in your reading. I did (clicked), and I did (encounter a new word in my reading).

The new word was piem.

Never heard of it before.

A piem is a poem but not all poems are piems.

Let me explain.

A piem is a special kind of poem that represents pi (you know, our old friend 3.14159 and so on ad infinitum). Each word in a piem consists of n letters where n represents the digits in pi. That is, the first word contains 3 letters, the second word contains 1 letter, the third word contains 4 letters, and so on. Piems were originally introduced by the English physicist, astronomer and mathematician, Sir James Hopwood Jeans (1877-1946).

Here, from that link, is an example of a piem:

“How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.”

Perhaps it could have been arranged more poetically on the page:

How
I
want
a
drink,
alcoholic
of
course,
after
the
heavy
lectures
involving
quantum
mechanics.

Or perhaps more like -- but not exactly -- a haiku:

How I want
a drink,
alcoholic of course,
after the heavy lectures involving
quantum mechanics.

The possibilities, especially in longer piems, are -- like pi -- endless.

Convert the number of letters in each word of that 15-word piem to a numeral and, voila!, the result is 3.14159265358979 (pi to 14 decimal places).

Here is pi to the first 100 decimal places:

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679

Knock yourselves out coming up with piems of your own in the comments.

Chances are, however, that they won’t be nearly as lovely as actress Marina Sirtis in her role on Star Trek: The Next Generation as the half-human, half-Betazoid empath, Commander Deanna Troi, whom you may see here.

My sincere apologies to Joyce Kilmer for the title of this post.

To boldly go where no man has gone before

If Earth were Star Trek and the western nations were the United Federation of Planets and the nations where a certain peaceful-sounding but actually quite bellicose religion that shall remain nameless holds sway were the Klingon Empire, then the solution to our current dilemma on the international scene would be simple. Obvious and simple.

All we would need to do is to wait for the sequel, namely Earth: The Next Generation.

“Pshaw!” you may be saying. “Pshaw!”

And I respond, “No, really!”

Think about it.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, the overly melodramatic James Tiberias Kirk, Captain of the Starship USS Enterprise (William Shatner, in a role he was born to play), has been succeeded by the cool, calm, and quietly cerebral Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart).

In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Worf -- a Klingon -- is a member of the Enterprise crew. The Klingon Empire and the United Federation of Planets have ceased wartime hostilities and become galactic allies, while more sinister foes like the Romulans and the Borg require the former enemies to join forces to fight a common enemy. [Editor’s note. Regrettably -- and here’s the rub -- it took 80 years for this phenomenon to occur. --RWP]

Okay, so Star Trek: The Next Generation may not have Mr. Spock or Dr. McCoy or Lieutenant Uhuru, but it has a blind guy who can see better than his sighted shipmates (Geordi La Forge), an empath (the ship’s half-human, half-Betazoid counselor, Deanna Troi), an android as operations officer (Data), and a really neat bartender who looks like Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan).

It’s simple, really.

All that our world needs to resolve the current crisis are a blind guy who can see, an empath, an android, and a really neat bartender who looks like Whoopi Goldberg.

You read it here first.