Survive This! ;)

Having studied Math during school and college, I must know what an Asymptote means. And having had a rudimentary introduction into the world of science, I must be familiar with Evolution, Darwin, Survival of the fittest and stuff like that. The reality, however, is that I have to ask Dictionary.com for the meaning of Asymptote and look up Darwin in Google. Being the practical guy that I am, I can accept reality for what it is (especially since there is nothing I can do about it). So what do an Asymptote and Mr. Darwin have to do with each other to get me thinking about those two in combination? Read on.

An asymptote, according to the above mentioned site (not Google, the other one), is a straight line approached by a given curve as one of the variables in the equation of the curve approaches infinity. (Understood that? Good. Leave me a comment explaining it in English) Asymptote being what it is, it has an adjective form to it. "Asymptotic" which means ‘pertaining to an asymptote’. And that would make "Asymptotix" or "Asymptotics" the plural form, which means ‘pertaining to lots of asymptotes’. Right? Hmmmm, good. Because Asymptotix is the name of the latest blog I have added to my blog roll and now you know what it means. When I was adding it, I wondered what that name meant and now I guess I know, though I am still as foggy as before about what an asymptote or a collection of them and their collective adjective has to do with a blog.

Now let's tackle Darwin. Not the physical, football'ish tackle. I meant the other one. Yes, that one. He is the guy who gave us the Theory of Evolution. The one who said, way back before most of us were born, that we were monkeys and didn't get labeled a 'Racist' for that. However, it's not the Evolutionary Theory that brings me to Charles D but the other concept. The concept of 'Might is Right' that I am all too familiar with every time I take my bike out for a ride. In case you are wondering, the 'Might is Right' concept is just a manifestation of the generic 'Survival of the Fittest' concept which is what brought me to good ol' Charles in the first place. (Before I go any further, if you want to tell me that 'Survival of the Fittest' is not a Charles Darwin concept, please feel welcome to keep that piece of info to yourself and just substitute the correct name where ever necessary while reading this. Thank you.)

Mid-way through all that stuff above, you might have started wondering when I was going to quit rambling and start connecting the Asymptote and Darwin. If you had indeed wondered, the answer would be NOW. Follow this link and you will see the connection - a post in the Asymptotix blog about Survival of the fittest. A post in a new blog - Was that all that took to get me started on this madness, you might ask. My reply will be no. What actually made me wander down this route is the fact that I saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. One - I wanted to comment on it. Two - I am helping out a new blogger by giving him some publicity. Three - I have something to write about in Noodle House! Ok that's three birds with one stone, but I guess you got the point. I have already done the publicity part, I just have to do the commenting part and I will be done.

Unfortunately, I seem to have been so caught up with establishing all this background that I have actually forgotten what it is that I wanted to write as part of my comment! I know it has something to do with Darwin (obviously!), Federer, moths, wolves, rabbits and dodos but I seem to have lost the thread that connected all of these. Hmmm. Maybe I wanted to call Darwin a dodo! Then again, maybe not! Anyway, I will just leave this here, satisfied that I at least got 2 birds out of the 3 I was aiming for with my one stone. A 66% success rate is something I can live with.