The Breakfast Club (3.14.15 Super Pi Day)

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Pi mathematical constant photo 200px-Pi-unrolled-720_zpsc86fcb4a.gif Today is Pi (π) Day, how could we live without it. So let's celebrate π on it's day
3.14. This year it's even more special because today's date is 3.14.15
matching the first five digits of the mathematical constant. The next
Super Pie Day won't happen for another 100 years.

As you remember from grammar school math, π is the mathematical
constant consisting of the main numbers 3, 1 and 4. According to the
Wikipedia of π, "it is the the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and is approximately equal to 3.14159."

It has been represented by the Greek letter "π"
since the mid-18th century, though it is also sometimes written as pi. π
is an irrational number, which means that it cannot be expressed
exactly as a ratio of two integers (such as 22/7 or other fractions that
are commonly used to approximate π); consequently, its decimal
representation never ends and never settles into a permanent repeating
pattern. The digits appear to be randomly distributed, although no proof
of this has yet been discovered. π is a transcendental number - a
number that is not the root of any nonzero polynomial having rational
coefficients. The transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to
solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and
straight-edge.

OK, enough of that. Let's get on to the party part.

It's earliest known celebration was in California where in 1988 at the
San Francisco Exploratorium physicist Larry Shaw along with the staff
and the public marched around one of its circular spaces eating fruit
pies. In 2009. The US House of Representatives passed a non-binding
resolution declaring 3.14 π (Pi) Day. And in 2010, a French computer
scientist claimed to have calculated pi to almost 2.7 trillion digits.

Coincidentally, it is also the birthday of theoretical physicist
Albert Einstein. So at Princeton University in New Jersey there are numerous celebrations around both events that also include an Albert Einstein look alike contest.

Besides the partying at Princeton, here's what is going on
elsewhere to celebrate this mathematical necessity that drives
mathematicians nuts.

Celebrating Pi Day, a sweet time for scientists and pie lovers By Steve Rubenstein. SFGate

It took the ancient Greeks and the infinite
power of the circle to make it happen, but the California Academy of
Sciences is opening four minutes early on Saturday.

It's going to open at 9:26 a.m. instead of 9:30 a.m. And the reason
for that is because pi, the ancient ratio that specifies how many times
longer the circumference of a circle is than its diameter, is 3.1415926
... , with a particular emphasis on the 926. [..]

At the California Academy of Sciences, after throwing open the
doors four minutes early, astronomers will celebrate by joining visitors
in the dropping of Popsicle sticks. It's a mathematical game in which
the sticks are used to model the mathematical formula for pi. The best
way to find out how that works, academy insiders say, is to show up and
drop a few sticks yourself.

While astronomers are dropping Popsicle sticks, other astronomers at the Golden Gate Park academy will hold a "Pi in the Sky" lecture in which they will explain how they
use pi to calculate the volume of planets outside the solar system. Pi
works not only on Earth, but billions of light-years from Earth, too.

About 3.14 miles to the east, the Exploratorium is trying to one
up the academy, pi-wise. Admission will be free, all Pi Day long.

'Super Pi Day' - 3.14.15 - will feature weddings, food specials as math nerds celebrate once-a-century date By Sasha Goldstein, New York Daily News

Dana Emanuel and Byron Clarke both love pie -
she the food, he the numerical constant (spelled pi). And Saturday's
date, 3.14.15, dubbed "Super Pi Day," happens to be the first five
digits of the infinite number, which represents the ratio of a circle's
circumference to its diameter and remains the same no matter the size of
the circle.

The date won't come around again for 100 years, so the couple decided
it was a "no brainer," set the date and printed off circular wedding
invitations to dash off to dozens of family and friends. The nuptials
will bring them full circle after they got engaged on June 28 last year -
6.28, or two pi. [..]

- Runners on New York City's Roosevelt Island will take off on a
3.14-mile course at exactly 9:26:53 a.m. Saturday on what is billed as a
"Girls Prep Ultimate Pi Day Pi K."

- A variety of events will honor the Pi Day of the Century at Manhattan's Museum of Mathematics on East 26th St.

- The math whizzes over at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will let prospective students know if they've been admitted beginning
at 9:26 a.m. on Saturday. The prestigious school announced the date with
a two-minute video showing drones delivering the decisions.

- Greenwich Village pizzeria Ribalta will offer diners $3.14 off their bill if they wish their server a Happy Pi Day.

- The American Pie Council has an activity packet filled (pdf) with pi- and pie-related fun, games and food ideas.

- Pie cups at all Hill Country Chicken locations will be on sale for $3.14 on Saturday.

- Pie Corps in Greenpoint will offer a 10-inch pie for $31.41, while a 4-inch mini pie will fetch $3.14, according to DNAinfo.com, which highlighted five city spots featuring Pi Day pie specials.

In 2010's "Moment of Geek", Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC's "The
Rachel Maddow Show," featured a math student teacher, Teresa Miller,
from the University of New Mexico with a hula hoop and a Rubic's Cube
that was quite amazing.

I was never that energetic as a math student. Teresa should be a great math and phys ed teacher.

So, whatever you do today, eat something round and remember π.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.

Albert Einstein

This Day in History

Albert Einstein born; Eli Whitney receives patent for
cotton gin; First US Astronaut in space on Russian rocket; Michael
Caine and Quincy Jones born.

Breakfast News

Were 47 Republican senators who wrote to Iran guilty of a crime? Erm, maybe ...

The open letter that the Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton and 46 other Republican
senators addressed to the Iranian regime this week may have been
controversial, but was it a crime?

Nearly 250,000 people who have signed a petition claiming that these senators "committed a treasonous offense" certainly think so.

But the law that they claim Cotton violated is so obscure and unused that at least one legal expert thinks it doesn't apply any more.

The point of contention is a law passed in 1799 called the Logan
Act. It was passed by Congress in an angry backlash when a Pennsylvania
state legislator named George Logan went to France, which was in a state
of undeclared war with the United States at the time, and successfully
negotiated to release impressed American seamen and restore trade
between the two countries.

CIA director suggests Iraq functions as interlocutor in US-Iran fight against Isis

The director of the CIA came the closest of any
US official so far to acknowledging cooperation between the US and Iran
in their current war against the Islamic State in Iraq.

Asked during a Council on Foreign Relations appearance on Friday
afternoon if the US was formally coordinating its airstrikes in Iraq
with Iranian forces and proxies on the ground, CIA director John Brennan
did not bat away the notion, as Obama administration officials
typically do.

Instead, Brennan suggested that such coordination is laundered
through the Iraqi government, Washington and Tehran's mutual partner -
something widely suspected as the Iraqi military and Shia militias
attempt to claw back the city of Tikrit from Isis.

Angela Merkel's office denies 'private feud' between Greece and Germany

The spokesman of the German chancellor, Angela
Merkel, has denied a "private feud" has broken out between Berlin and
Athens, as the radical Syriza government battles to avoid leaving the
single currency - a risk euro-watchers have dubbed "Grexident".

As Athens rushes to implement economic reforms and convince its
creditors to extend emergency funding, Steffen Seibert, Merkel's
official spokesman, insisted Greece's economic future should not be
reduced to a face off between the two nations.

"I neither see a private feud nor do I view the whole issue of
Greece and how it solves its problems as a bilateral German-Greek
topic", he said, reiterating that Merkel wants Greece to stay inside the
single currency.

Tensions between Greece and Germany have been running high, after Syriza rekindled a row over war reparations to the Greek people earlier this week.

HSBC's Swiss private bank: French prosecutor formally requests trial

The French financial state prosecutor has
requested that HSBC's Swiss private bank be sent to criminal trial over a
suspected tax-dodging scheme for wealthy customers.

The recommendation follows a lengthy investigation by local
magistrates into alleged tax fraud involving 3,000 French taxpayers and
is a procedural step that brings the Swiss banking arm one step closer
to a possible trial in France.

The parent company HSBC, which faces a separate ongoing French
investigation, said: "This is a normal step in the judicial procedure
and the outcome of the matter is not determined as of today."

The bank has one month to respond after which French magistrates will take the final decision on whether to hold a trial.

Koch Industries refuses to comply with US senators' climate investigation

The Koch brothers' conglomerate Koch Industries
has refused to comply with an investigation by three Senate Democrats
into whether the company has funded groups or researchers who deny or
cast doubt on climate change.

In response to a request from senators Barbara Boxer, Edward Markey
and Sheldon Whitehouse for information about Koch Industries' support
for scientific research, Koch general counsel Mark Holden invoked the
company's first amendment rights.

"The activity efforts about which you inquire, and Koch's
involvement, if any, in them, are at the core of the fundamental
liberties protected by the first amendment to the United States
constitution," Holden wrote the senators in a letter dated 5 March and
posted online by Koch Industries this week.

Ferguson police chief not sure if shooter targeted officers or link to protesters

Police searching for the shooter of two officers
in Ferguson, Missouri, have backed away from earlier suggestions that
the suspect must have directly targeted the victims and was associated
with protesters, saying on Friday that this was now unclear.

Chief Jon Belmar of the St Louis County Police department said at a
press conference that he "honestly couldn't tell you for sure" whether
the person who shot one officer in the face and another in the shoulder
on Wednesday night was linked to demonstrators at Ferguson's police
station.

Belmar told reporters that investigators had no suspects in
custody for the shootings of the still-unnamed officers, who he said
were "remarkably well". However he said detectives were pursuing "scores
of tips" passed on by cooperative people in the city.

Fifteen migrants protected under Obama's executive order arrested

Federal agents - in a sweep targeting the most
dangerous criminal immigrants - arrested 15 people who had been allowed
to remain in the US under Barack Obama's executive action intended to
protect children who came to the country years ago with their parents,
the Associated Press has learned.

Fourteen of the 15 had been convicted of a crime, the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed late on Thursday. In at least one
case, the administration renewed the protective status for a young
immigrant after that person's conviction in a drug case, a US official
briefed on the arrests said.

One of the eligibility requirements for the programme is that
immigrants not have a criminal history. The official spoke on condition
of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the
matter by name.

West Virginia landslide forces Charleston residents to evacuate

A landslide next to a West Virginia hilltop airport has forced residents in about 25 Charleston homes to evacuate.

Media outlets report that the landslide began on Sunday, near the end
of the main runway at Yeager Airport, and reached a critical point at
midday on Thursday.

The landslide broke loose, taking out power lines, trees, an
unoccupied home and a church. It also caused a nearby creek to rise. No
injuries were reported, and no flights at the airport were affected.

The West Virginia national guard urged residents to evacuate area
homes, and the West Virginia division of highways closed a portion of
Keystone Drive.

The landslide occurred on a man-made emergency overrun area at
the end of an extended part of the runway where the hilltop drops off.
The area was built about eight years ago on top of an engineered fill of
about 1.5m cubic yards of dirt.

Cyclone Pam: destructive storm slams into Vanuatu

A tropical cyclone has smashed into the South
Pacific island nation of Vanuatu and is believed to have caused
widespread destruction.

Winds beginning to drop on Saturday, gradually revealing the extent
of damage amid unconfirmed reports of dozens of deaths. Communication
systems in many of the hard-hit outer islands remained down.

Chloe Morrison, a World Vision emergency communications officer
stationed in Port Vila, said the capital's streets were littered with
roofs blown from homes, uprooted trees and downed power lines. She said
she was hearing reports of entire villages being destroyed in more
remote areas.

San Francisco to redirect stream of public urinators with hydrophobic walls

The city of San Francisco, tired of cleaning up
after those who relieve themselves in the public, wants to test walls
that pee back.

The San Francisco department of public works (DPW) is hoping to paint
some of the city's walls with hydrophobic (water-repellent) paint. If
urinated upon, the paint makes the urine bounce off the wall - and back
at the urinator's feet.

In Europe, such paint has been proven to work. In Hamburg, walls
in the St Pauli quarter of the city have been painted with a
super-hydrophobic coating and given accompanying signs, which read: "Do
not pee here. We pee back!" It was the Hamburg experiment, as captured
in a YouTube video, that captured the attention of San Francisco officials.