WASHINGTON (APUPI) The media and political pundits lauded the preliminary results of the months-long commission to determine the true ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle today.

"This has been a troubling national issue, since the nation's founding. Several legislatures have attempted to proclaim the value of pi, in order to simplify mathematics for our students, but the effort has always been viewed as partisan and controversial," stated the introduction to the initial report, released today.

It was a long-standing controversy, viewed by many as a policy quagmire, that has been finally almost been laid to rest by a compromise report from a panel of distinguished experts from all sides of the political spectrum. The goal was to inject some "realism" into the debate, and because the blue-ribbon commission had equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, no one can any longer claim that the recommendations provided are partisan in any way.

"Obviously, there has been a lot of dispute over this issue over the years," said the commission leader, Lincoln Chafee. "We wanted to ensure that we could generate a report and recommendations that most could accept, regardless of their self-contradictory, and trivial pabulatory nature."

Many had argued for a value of 3, claiming that this was the simplest number to use in calculations, and one that most students would have a prayer of remembering. Others thought that this was a laudatory goal, but that it would be too incongruent with the actual ratio to be useful, arguing instead that the number should be determined to be 3.142, which would be close enough to usually generate actual useful results, but not too difficult to recall. Another group thought that the value should be 4, to ensure that the number would not suffer from self-esteem issues by being too low.

One extremist radical contingent, dismissed by the mainstream members of the panel, insisted that it was an irrational number, computable only by adding an infinite series, and unable to be completely memorized by any human being. This was obviously an unacceptable solution, politically, since given its infinite nature, it wouldn't have been able to even be printed in the report in its entirety, let alone made statutory law.

Everyone was pleased when the determination was made to take an average of all of the members' positions, arriving at the value 3.45 (after throwing out the suggestions of those favoring the irrational solution, since adding it in would have made the final solution unprintable and unmemorizable as well).

"We expect that the president and Congress will quickly act on our recommendation once we finalize it, since it was made on a bipartisan basis, and based on months of discussion between washed-up diplomats, spongy former Supreme Court justices, and also-ran wishy-washy politicians," said a spokesman for the group.

"Of course, there is one more key step to determining the final number," she added.

"We have to ensure that this will be an acceptable decision to the world community. Therefore, before we finalize our report, we want to sit down and get the opinions of Iran and Syria, and incorporate their thoughts into the results. We'd like to include Israel as well, but we fear that, like those on the panel familiar with actual mathematics, they'll be too unrealistic. And irrational."

[Copyright 2006, by Rand Simberg]

And thanks to Andy McCarthy for the inspiration.

[Thursday morning update]

Lileks isn't kind to the commission recommendations:

Imagine a government report on organized crime, demanding the following:

* The Mafia’s full adherance to the RICO and IRS statutes concerning independent contractors, including but not limited to Social Security contributions, FICA regulations, as well as compliance with state and federal laws concerning murder, extortion and kidnapping

* The Mafia’s full cooperation with all investigations into the deaths of Artie “Two Sheds” Palini, Ricky “The Squid” Piscatori, Jackie the Gaspipe, Tommy Shoes, and 16,302 others

* A verifiable cessation of Mafia contributions to local law enforcement officials

* The Mafia should use its influence with the Russian and Irish mobs to find out what the hell happened to that poor guy who wandered into the back room when they were all having a sit-down

* A verifiable cessation of Mafia efforts to undermine and circumvent the laws in the states of New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Chicago, as well as Nevada and portions of Kansas City which Johnny Mook swears he has no control over, but some of those hits just have his style written all over them

If those things are done, well, the price of garbage hauling in selected municipalities might decrease. But I wouldn’t count on them happening, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that we should give the Mafia Staten Island in the hopes some age-old territorial grievance will be settled for good.

For a "realist," James Baker seems to be living in some kind of alternate reality.

I was confirmed 95-2. How did John Bolton do?

By the way, Iran probably only wants those nuclear weapons for deterrence and that slimeball who wants to eradicate Israel? The mullahs have him on a tight leash.

And yes, I am James Baker's protege. Thanks for asking.

The number is quite easy (Pi)
3.141592653589793....shall I go on? Learned it as a kid. Doesn't everyone memorize the number? Never know when you have to be precise.
sarcasm off

Rand, I take it you find the ISG recommendations not to your liking? I can sympathize, given your thoughts over the years. Unfortunately we have had over six years of "foreign policy" leading to disaters in every direction. How can we sensibly recommend "staying the course?" I think the ISG poured a nice cold bucket of water on a bunch of fantasies, needed cold water if I may say so. In the same context, what a relief to have Bob Gates as the new SecDef ....

I take it you find the ISG recommendations not to your liking?

I don't particularly. I found them contradictory and, as the old saying goes, the things that were good weren't new, and the things that were new weren't any good.

But even if I did, the main point of this is another thing that's not to my liking--this blind worship of "bipartisanship" and "compromise," by the media, with the implicit assumption that any time such a commission is assembled and disgorges its results the president and Congress must salute and immediately implement them without question (at least if it's a Republican president and Congress). I thought that the 911 Commission was a bipartisan disaster. I see little to like with this one, either.

The thing is, we tried, to a large extent, the philosophical tactics of the commission report during the first Bush administration, and both Clinton Administrations: we made nice with Saudi Arabia, put our hands on our ears and said "yah yah we can't hear you" if anyone mentioned what Syria was doing, we left Saddam in power even though we were fighting him and he was bombing his own people at the same time...

We did everything in a "dictator-friendly," stability-orented way as possible, except maybe for the Balkans.

What did we get?

The 9/11 attacks.

TNT says: Unfortunately we have had over six years of "foreign policy" leading to disaters in every direction.

This is a picture perfect example of partisanism to the fullest. Everything that doesn't go the way you would have done it is immediately, a DISASTER! Lord, if we only lived in a society where everything went fine every time. Had we done nothing after the towers fell, it would be a disaster. If we'd lauched a few missiles at aspirin fatories, it would be a disaster. So, going to an earlier reply of mine in a different thread, the Education funding package that Bush passed for Kennedy's use....did it fix anything? Was that a disaster?

Phil, I think it was a famous Israeli general who said that when it comes to the Middle East, things can always get worse.

Yes, we were suporting or establishing dictators like the Shah of Iran and various autocrats across the region in the interest of "stability" or "realism" for which we paid the price of the Ayotollahs taking over Iran and as you rightly say, 9/11. That "realism" was a big mistake. Unfortunately in Iraq we may have tried a cure that was worse than the problem. Maybe some "realism" will give the doctor some time to review his options for the patient.

Part of the problem with Iraq was that foreign policy shorn of war, which was viewed with sneers as something only liberals indulged in, was formulated and implemented over the last few years by a group of people who had absolutely no experience dealing with the rest of the world other than in white papers for various right wing think-tanks. Had the "Arabists" in the State Department been drawn into the effort, an alternate approach underlined by Bush's unwillingness to support the status quo may have been viable. Unfortunately the Bush team was so full of itself that the State Department was shoved aside until things started to get really bad in Iraq. It's quite a shame since the basic premise of Bush's arguments about the region remain valid.

We still have a shot at success in Afghanistan. Perhaps our energies would be better diverted there with the aim of establishing a modern state there whatever the cost.

Sorry, but the notion that everything would be fine, or even better, had we listened to the "Arabists in the State Department" is so ludicrous as to be laughable.

I've not read the entire report but one part of the Executive Summary has me scratching my head:

Executive Summary: External Approach

"No country in the region will benefit in the long term from a chaotic Iraq."

Really? What is the committee smoking?

The "Arabists" were the people who could have explained to George Bush and his team the nature of the populace in Iraq, the divisions, the tribalism, the interactions between them, the consequences of removing the Baathists from power on the Sunni-Shia dynamic. Yes, had Bush and company absorbed this information better, we may have escaped the pipe dream of a peaceful democracy in Iraq which was what Bush was honestly and sincerely hoping for.

When you want to do something in a part of the world where you have no experience you should at least talk to the people who have spent their lives studying the people and languages of that region. That's so obvious, one should not have to say it. Instead we had Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, Krauthammer etc. telling us how the Iraqis would behave once Saddam was gone - terrible advice indeed.

Speaking on behalf of Johnny Mook, there are certain sections of Kansas City that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade.

I did not mention the Shah; I was talking about Saddam, who we were allowing to stay in power in the interests of "stability" even as we expended blood and treasure to limit him to Iraq.

If you want to say everything's the fault of us supporting the Shah, say it yourself instead of trying to put words in my mouth.

As near as I can tell, the Shah was much more liberal than any of his successors or any of the current crop of dictators the realists would have us deal with today. And I doubt that 9/11 could have been "punishment" for our support for the Shah, given that we had sold him out some twenty years or so previously.

As far as I can tell, the Shah was not a major sponsor of Hamas or Hezbollah or Al Qaeda. All the dictators the "realists" want us to support, are, directly, supporters of the above groups, who they often also say they must stay in power to suppress.

"For a "realist," James Baker seems to be living in some kind of alternate reality."

I don't know Rand, sometimes I think your blog and opinions must be leaking from some alternate universe. One must reach the highest levels of delusion and denial to believe that invading Iraq was a good idea.