Senator Edgardo J. Angara, who has served the longest of the post-Edsa senators, is defined more by his advocacies than his politics. He is on his last term and may be retiring from national politics when his term ends in 2012.

His public life started as one of the youngest delegates to the 1971 Constitutional Convention; then, having established the law firm known as ACCRA, he went on to head the University of the Philippines as President from 1981 to 1987.

Recently, Angara caused the creation of the Congressional Commission on Science, Technology and Engineering Research and Development or COMSTE.

In a recent talk, he explained: "We have more politicians in the country, what we need is more scientists and technologists." The world has so changed that today, Angara says, "if you are illiterate in science and math, you are as good as illiterate."

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Last year I was meeting with the CEO of a PC company who offered to give me a demo of his company's gorgeous new top-of- the-line notebook, a machine that cost several thousand dollars and came loaded with Windows Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system. He flipped open the laptop, pressed the power button, and … nothing. We waited. And waited. It was excruciating. He tried control-alt-delete. He tried holding down the power button. Finally he removed the battery and snapped it back into place. The machine started up—slowly—while the CEO sat there fuming. Speaking in a carefully measured tone, he acknowledged that he had been less than pleased with Vista, and confided that he'd visited Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., to express this displeasure in person. I would not have wanted to be across the table from him at that meeting.

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Five years ago, when Abigail’s family moved to a subdivision in Montalban, one of the things they enjoyed the most at their new house was the splurge of strong water coming out of the faucet.

Developed by Sta. Lucia, the subdivision sourced water underground. It gave out water 24-7 (24 hours, seven days) and at a pressure the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) would have definitely approved.

But it wasn’t too long until the Sta. Lucia housing’s water flow came in trickles and then in drips. Three years after, water supply visited the houses just every other day.

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SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Figuring out the best way to transform a frozen pizza into a perfectly warmed pie, gooey on top and crispy on the bottom, is as much a computer problem as a work of culinary art.

General Mills, maker of the Totino’s and Jeno’s brands of pizzas, would prefer not to whip up a thousand combinations of mozzarella cheese, tomato paste, crust and chemicals and blast them with microwave radiation. It’s a lot cheaper and easier to model different pizzas using a sophisticated computer and only cook up the best candidates.

To speed up the task, General Mills turned to computers containing high-powered graphics chips from Nvidia, a Santa Clara, Calif., company best known for making video games look more realistic on game consoles and personal computers.

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