Pi and coffee

It’s tough to keep up with politics these days, but here are a couple tidbits you don’t want to miss:

First, some historical perspective. Back in 1897, some Indiana legislators were apparently feeling heady with power, because the state’s House of Representatives unanimously passed a bill to change the method for calculating the area of a circle and alter the value of pi.

You can expect a similar effort in Washington if students continue to struggle with the math WASL.

Next, in Mississippi: A member of the state’s House has proposed a controversial bill meant to call attention to the problem of obesity by banning restaurants from serving overweight customers.

Like the Indiana lawmakers, he’s concerned with the size of circles. Only his equation goes like this: If your circumference is too big, you don’t get any pie.

In other news, a two-mile strip of road in Albany, N.Y., is lined with seven businesses that serve coffee, with more to come.

To analysts, that’s a sign of a potentially oversaturated market. To coffee addicts, it’s a sign of progress toward utopia.