Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Physicist Albert Einstein born; Eli Whitney gets a patent for his cotton gin; Astronaut Norman Thagard enters space on a Russian rocket; Actor Michael Caine and conductor-composer Quincy Jones born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Albert Einstein
π (Pi), how could we live without it. So let’s celebrate π on it’s day 3.14.
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.
The earliest known celebration of Pi Day 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.
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.
Wikihow has some great ideas how to celebrate Pi with some kid friendly projects.
So, whatever you do today, eat something round and remember π and Albert Einstein’s 137th birthday.
Breakfast News
Voters deliver a message for Germany’s Angela Merkel: No more migrants
German voters on Sunday appeared to send a message to Chancellor Angela Merkel: Close the door on migrants.
Her center-right Christian Democratic Party suffered universal setbacks in local elections — in a vote widely seen as a referendum on Merkel’s humanitarian stance allowing vast waves of migrants to cross German borders.
The upstart Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, a populist force that campaigned on an anti-migrant, anti-Merkel platform — and which drew support from the left as well as the right — scored big gains. It landed 24.4 percent of the vote in one of the three states that went to the ballot box, according to projections based on exit polls produced for the German public broadcaster ARD.
The outcome amounted to a blow to Merkel just as the chancellor is set to fight this week for a new accord between the European Union and Turkey on the refugee crisis. It would stop the illegal flow of migrants across the Aegean Sea, but also compel reluctant European nations, including Germany, to take in more Syrian asylum seekers from Turkey.
Thousands of homes in Louisiana, Mississippi damaged in floods
Widespread flooding in Louisiana and Mississippi has damaged thousands of homes and the risk of more flooding played out Sunday as rain-filled rivers rose over banks.
At least four deaths have been reported in Louisiana, including that of an elderly man, authorities said. Two fishermen have been missing for days in Mississippi.
In northwest Tennessee, more than a dozen homes were evacuated late Saturday after heavy rains breached a levee, according to emergency officials.
Flood warnings were in effect across the region as many rivers remained dangerously high.
Millions Join Brazil Impeachment Chorus in Threat to Rousseff
Dilma Rousseff’s future as president of Brazil was cast into further doubt as millions of protesters, wearied by scandal and recession, staged some of the largest rallies in the country’s modern history.
Brazilians demonstrated peacefully for Rousseff’s ouster in cities throughout the country on Sunday, with some estimates counting more than 3 million people on the streets. Sao Paulo recorded its largest political rally on record, according to polling firm Datafolha. In the capital Brasilia, some 100,000 people marched toward Congress, expressing their support for the anti-corruption blitz that has put several high-profile executives and politicians behind bars.
Many Brazilians say they have had enough of corruption revealed by the two-year investigation known as Lava Jato, or Carwash in English, that has paralyzed Congress and deepened the worst recession in over a century. Sunday’s protests could prompt more legislators to abandon the ruling coalition and vote for Rousseff’s ouster, according to Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia.
Grand Canyon threatened despite win against developers, conservationists say
Plans for a huge commercial development that would transform a tiny town near the edge of the Grand Canyon have been thrown out by federal officials in a surprise victory for conservation and indigenous interests – but campaigners warn that the world famous natural wonder remains in peril.
Tusayan, in northern Arizona, has a few low-key hotels and a population of just 560.
A mile from the entrance to Grand Canyon national park, it is the last settlement tourists pass through, if they even notice it, before entering the park to gawp into the spectacular sandstone abyss.
But an Italian developer has spent more than two decades hovering over this speck on the map with dreams of turning it into a bustling resort area with three million square feet of commercial facilities, including a tourist lodge, spa, cultural center, upscale shops, restaurants, holiday ranch, hotels and a few thousand new homes.
Mosquitoes’ rapid spread poses threat beyond Zika
As the world focuses on Zika’s rapid advance in the Americas, experts warn the virus that originated in Africa is just one of a growing number of continent-jumping diseases carried by mosquitoes threatening swathes of humanity.
The battle against the insects on the streets of Brazil is the latest in an ancient war between humankind and the Culicidae, or mosquito, family which the pests frequently win.
Today, mosquito invaders are turning up with increasing regularity from Washington DC to Strasbourg, challenging the notion that the diseases they carry will remain confined to the tropics, scientists documenting the cases told Reuters.
Ironically, humans have rolled out the red carpet for the invaders by transporting them around the world and providing a trash-strewn urban landscape that suits them to perfection.