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The Belmont: Riff2 Awards Celebration, with the Beggars and Dangerous Pursuit, 10 p.m. Fri. New Grenada, with Pop Project, Kiddo and DJs Art Fag and Inc., 10 p.m. Sat. 10215 Jos. Campau, Hamtramck. 313-871-1966.
Cavern Club: Killer Flamingos, 10 p.m. Sat. 210 S. First, Ann Arbor. 734-332-9900.
Dawg House: Magma, with Left For Dead, 9 p.m. Fri. 35965 Groesbeck, Clinton Twp. 586-791-7143.
Fifth Avenue Ballroom: Killer Flamingos, 10 p.m. Thu. 25750 Novi, Novi. 248-735-4011.
Fifth Avenue Billiards: Killer Flamingos, 10 p.m. Fri. 215 Fifth, Royal Oak. 248-542-9922.
Hard Rock Cafe: Edgewise, 8 p.m. Thu. 45 Monroe, Detroit. 313-964-2683.
Lager House: Cetan Clawson Revolution, with Odell Blues Boy “D,” 9 p.m. Fri. Horse Cave Trio, with Dirt Road Logic, 9 p.m. Sat. 1254 Michigan, Detroit. 313-961-4668.
Mo Doggie’s: Crop Circle, 9 p.m. Thu. King Moon Racer, 9 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 715 Torrey, Fenton. 810-629-1415.
Rusty Nail: Government Honey, 9 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 35703 Groesbeck, Clinton Twp. 586-790-4311.
TC’s Speakeasy Bar & Grill: Devil Elvis, with the 77’s, 9 p.m. Fri. Spag Burlesque, with the Widowmakers and Tickled Fancy Burlesque, 9 p.m. Sat. She Bang!, featuring DJ B Girrrl, 9 p.m. Wed. 207 W. Michigan, Ypsilanti. 734-483-4470.
Andiamo Italia: John D. Lamb, 7 p.m. Thu. 7096 E. Fourteen Mile, Warren. 586-268-3200.

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Zeta Beta Tau will face probation until next year after a university investigation found the fraternity guilty of hazing a new member last semester.
Mike Hayes, the university’s director of the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, said the office didn’t intend to send a message with the punishment, but acknowledged that it serves as a reminder that hazing is still a reality on the campus.
“This is a good wake-up,” he said, adding, “It’s out there. It’s unspoken … It’s not just the fraternities.”
An OFSL memo released in October found that Zeta Beta Tau leaders injured a new member in an induction ceremony earlier that month.
The leaders seated inductees in a circle and forced them to chant the names of Zeta Beta Tau’s founders. If they misspoke, senior fraternity brothers poured water over their heads. At one point in the night, the water mixed with the Shout gel placed in a new member’s hair, injuring him.
OFSL yesterday responded with a 10-month probation, which means Zeta Beta Tau will see more severe sanctions for future violations and will be excluded from university awards competitions, Greek Week and Homecoming. The fraternity will also have to fund an anti-hazing flier and organize an anti-hazing event for the rest of the Greek community.

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Every year on March 14 math lovers around the country celebrate pi, the irrational number commonly abbreviated to 3.14. Some enthusiasts go so far as to mark Pi Minute, 1:59 PM, taking into account the first six digits of the number: 3.14159.
Start your math festivities with a hands-on activity. With Discovering Pi(PDF), your students can measure cylindrical objects in the classroom and then see for themselves how pi comes up every time.
What Is Pi and How Do We Use It?
Pi is the number you get when you divide the circumference of a circle (the distance around the circle) by its diameter (the distance across). In other words, the circumference of any circle is approximately 3.14 times its diameter. Because pi is an irrational number, it has an infinite number of digits. No matter how many decimal places we calculate, pi will always be an approximation.
Because pi is the same for every circle, we can use it to determine the diameter if we know the circumference, or vice versa. When we know the diameter, it’s easy to calculate the area.
Show your students exactly how a circle’s diameter, its circumference, and pi are related with this short animated sequence.

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Chad and Robyn Barker thought that Pi would make a good baby name years before they knew they would have children together.
There seemed to be something spiritual about pi, the irrational number that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It begins 3.14159 and goes on for eternity. It is always the same number, no matter the size of the circle.
Baby Pi wasn’t born March 14, but the cute little guy, whose birthday is Dec. 6, 2007, will be among the folks celebrating Pi Day at the San Francisco Exploratorium at 1:59 p.m. Friday, which also happens to be Albert Einstein’s birthday.
The day will be celebrated with a Pi Procession, in which Mill Valley resident Larry Shaw, the founder of the event that is in its 20th year, leads attendees around the museum all the way to his pi shrine, where participants sing “Happy Birthday” to Einstein, famous for his mathematical prowess.
Ron Hipschman, who has worked at the museum for more than 35 years, and Lori Lambertson, the Exploratorium’s New Teacher program coordinator, will lead a demonstration in the computation of pi. Other events of the day include the Ask a Scientist Pi Day Puzzles, pie eating and pizza pie tossing contests with nine-time world pizza champion Tony Gemignani of Pyzano’s in Castro Valley.

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Get your geek on, Seattle. It’s Pi Day.
March 14 = 3/14 = 3.1415926535 … a.k.a. the mathematical number pi. Everywhere, math whizzes are celebrating. Eating pie at 1:56:26 p.m. Going online and answering questions like, “How many digits of pi do you have memorized?” and “What is your favorite equation that uses pi?” They’re buying pi mugs, buttons and T-shirts.
To celebrate, here’s a student P-I rap from YouTube, as linked on the official Pi Day page. And here’s more info on the first Pi Day held in the very geeky San Francisco Exploratorium 20 years ago today.
P.S. — We at the “P-I” have our own reason to celebrate. Last year, breaking news editor and Big Blogger Candace Heckman brought pie to celebrate. But shucks — she’s off today. No pie. No good.
Posted by unregistered user at 3/14/08 1:36 p.m.
It appears you missed the largest story of the day about Barack Hussein Obama’s preacher, Jeremiah Wright since it was not mentioned once in your paper today. Here’s a link for you to get up to date: http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/03/13/obamas_

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The Burt Norville Trial Part I
By Christine Larbey
The circumstances surrounding the death of Wilberforce ‘Burt’ Norville made local headlines for weeks in 2003. The 24-year-old who belonged to a prominent local family was stabbed at a birthday party held at the Bonne Terre home of Omar Boyea on November 9. He later died at hospital. Since his death a young man has been on remand at Bordelais charged with his murder.
(Meanwhile the Norville family two years ago brought a civil suit against the state for negligence stemming from the events at Victoria Hospital before Norville died. Justice Sandra Mason is yet to rule on that matter.). Nearly five years since Burt Norville’s death, the nation has obviously shifted to other issues. But in the local courts Norville’s death has been the focus for the past three weeks as the now thirty-year-old accused went on trial for murder. The case which had some shocking revelations was heard before presiding Judge Kenneth Benjamin. The STAR brings you segments of the trial in a two part series.
During the lengthy trial described by Justice Benjamin as ” no ordinary one” twelve witnesses gave evidence. Six voir dires (trials within a trial) were held. The Acting Commissioner of Police John Broughton was summoned to appear before the judge. Likewise a representative from the Attorney’s General’s Chambers. The Victoria Hospital record keeper was also called in.

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A preliminary analysis of the effect of radio frequency identification on retail-inventory accuracy demonstrated that an automated, RFID-enabled inventory system improved accuracy by about 13 percent in test stores compared to control stores. The investigation, conducted by researchers in the RFID Research Center, a research unit of the Information Technology Research Institute in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, also revealed that manual inventory adjustments by store personnel significantly declined in test stores due to the automated, RFID-based system.
“Inventory accuracy is one of the keys to an efficient and effective supply chain,” said Bill Hardgrave, director of the research center and principal investigator. “Yet, inventory accuracy, which determines important processes such as ordering and replenishment, is often poor, with inaccuracy rates sometimes as high as 65 percent. Our results suggest that RFID technology makes a difference. The 13-percent improvement found in this study can significantly reduce unnecessary inventory, and the value of this reduction for a company like Wal-Mart, with all of its suppliers, can be measured in millions of dollars.”
Inventory accuracy is a chronic problem in the retail industry. Retailers focus on what they call “perpetual inventory,” a name to describe an estimate of inventory, based on various systems and methods of tracking items. As Hardgrave mentioned, previous research has demonstrated huge gaps between perpetual inventory - what managers think is on hand - versus the actual number of items in a store, either on shelves or in a stock room. Studies have found that retailers generally have accurate inventory information on only 35 percent of their items.

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Measuring is a basic human activity, we all do it all the time, but the reality is that what we do is not measuring, but estimating, and the one thing we over-estimate more than anything else is our ability to estimate accurately.
During my time in Africa I noted that native women (for they did the work) were uncannily accurate at estimating not just how many containers of size A fitted into a container or size B, but were able to adjust on the fly from measuring out “solids and voids” like millet to measuring out liquids like water.
How many egg cups heaped full of rice will fit into the empty coffee jar? A native African woman will estimate this accurately to a precision of one egg cup, e.g. the volume of the smaller container.
Gardner diesel engines used to use three oil pressure gauges, they all measured the same oil pressure, and the rule was the majority of two out of three was presumed to be right.
My mother has a thermostat with a dial for controlling her central heating fitted to the lounge wall, it is graduated in numbers from 10 to 30, despite telling her for ten years that the numbers are arbitrary she still insists on treating it as an accurate temperature setting controller, if she sets it to 25 she thinks it should heat the house to 25 degrees.

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - A preliminary analysis of the effect of radio frequency identification on retail-inventory accuracy demonstrated that an automated, RFID-enabled inventory system improved accuracy by about 13 percent in test stores compared to control stores. The investigation, conducted by researchers in the RFID Research Center, a research unit of the Information Technology Research Institute in the Sam M. Walton College of Business, also revealed that manual inventory adjustments by store personnel significantly declined in test stores due to the automated, RFID-based system.
“Inventory accuracy is one of the keys to an efficient and effective supply chain,” said Bill Hardgrave, director of the research center and principal investigator. “Yet, inventory accuracy, which determines important processes such as ordering and replenishment, is often poor, with inaccuracy rates sometimes as high as 65 percent. Our results suggest that RFID technology makes a difference. The 13-percent improvement found in this study can significantly reduce unnecessary inventory, and the value of this reduction for a company like Wal-Mart, with all of its suppliers, can be measured in millions of dollars.”
Inventory accuracy is a chronic problem in the retail industry. Retailers focus on what they call “perpetual inventory,” a name to describe an estimate of inventory, based on various systems and methods of tracking items. As Hardgrave mentioned, previous research has demonstrated huge gaps between perpetual inventory - what managers think is on hand - versus the actual number of items in a store, either on shelves or in a stock room. Studies have found that retailers generally have accurate inventory information on only 35 percent of their items.

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Just because it’s “noncommercial” doesn’t mean public radio doesn’t have the same concerns about how to attract and retain listeners, and how to use rather than be run over by new technology, as its commercial brethren.
And when there are disagreements about strategies to address those concerns, they can result in executive changes that are as public and messy as those on the commercial side of the business.
Such was the case last week when National Public Radio announced the departure of its chief executive officer, Ken Stern, “by mutual agreement.”
The appearance of that phrase in a news release is rarely a sign of a happy parting.
What Stern’s exit does mean is the appointment as CEO, on an interim basis, of a Northwesterner and someone who has worked for years on the affiliate side of the business — Dennis Haarsager.
Until last week, Haarsager was associate vice president and general manager of educational and public media at Washington State University. In that capacity, he ran Northwest Public Radio, which operates two networks of NPR programming and classical music heard on stations and translators across the region.
Haarsager, who has been on NPR’s board for 2 1/2 years and chairman since November, wasn’t specific about the reasons for Stern’s departure. The Washington Post, however, said the issue was unhappiness of affiliates over NPR’s initiatives into new technologies and delivery channels.

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