One of Those Days...

It's one of those days with lots to think about...

It's Pi day again - March 14th - when those with a mathematical inclination think about the beauty of a circle. We only get to use a very few of the digits of Pi (technically π, the Greek letter), unlike in 2015, when we could celebrate 3/14/15. Still, it's a good time to think about numbers and to learn a bit about this amazing mathematical constant. TIME has a good discussion you might want to read.

Today is a day of student protest across the country, with students walking out of their classrooms at 10 am local time, in light of the latest school shooting in Florida,  to protest gun violence and the failure of politicians to take action to end the plague of deaths of students and adults in schools and elsewhere. Districts differed in their response as these protests were planned over the past few days. Some, like New York City, were supportive of the students' actions, while others threatened students who left class with suspension or other discipline. There is an updating story in The New York Times as this unfolds.

It's also a day to think about the wisdom of pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton, who died yesterday at the age of 99. Dr. Brazelton's common sense approach to parenting made him a logical successor to Dr. Benjamin Spock (who died in 1998), who first helped parents move away from strict rules to more common sense and child centered ways to parent young children. In fact, according to an excellent piece in The Washington Post about his life, his patients included Dr. Spock's grandchildren. Dr. Brazelton was the author of two dozen books and hundreds of scholarly articles on child development and pediatrics and created The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) to help pediatricians examine newborns and young infants.