Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic is a Bay Area writer and editor. Her first book Suffering Succotash: A Picky Eater's Quest to Understand Why We Hate the Foods We Hate , a humorous non-fiction narrative and exposé on the lives of picky eaters, will be released by Perigee Books on July 3. My husband is a calculus professor and one who brings food items into the classroom with surprising regularity. No, he doesn't bring pies on Pi day – though he can recite the string up to a couple dozen digits – but he does bring Pringles. As a teaching aid. This afternoon when I walked into his study, I nearly tripped over a plastic Safeway bag filled with six red cans of Pringles. “Is it Pringles Day already?” I asked, nudging the bag. Pringles Day is the day Dr. Mathra lectures on the classification of critical points in multivariable calculus , and he uses the saddle-shaped Pringles to illustrate his points. After class, the students get to eat his illustrations. It's their favorite day. However, this Pringles Eve, Dr. Mathra is kicking himself because in addition to stocking up on Pringles, which were invented by Proctor & Gamble & heaven in the 1960s, he also got an oblong can of Lays Stax, the parvenu potato chip that's only been around since 2003. Personally, I've never been turned on by Lays Stax. Not only are they covered with the stink of being the unoriginal upstart that is so obviously trying to rip-off the adored-for-decades potato chip, but they're not thin and delicate enough, they're not oily enough, and they're not addictive enough. However, none of the above is Dr. Mathra's complaint with them. “It's ridiculous!” he fumed, “They set themselves up as a Pringles competitor, but it's an entirely different curvature!” The shape of the Lays Stax – known as a parabolic cylinder – is way less mathematically interesting than the hyperbolic paraboloid of a Pringles, which is also known as a saddle. In math, the Pringles saddle shape exemplifies how you can stand at the flat point of a surface and not be at the highest point of your surroundings or at the lowest point of your surroundings. Basically, you could call the saddle “the taint” of critical points. T'aint the highest point, t'aint the lowest. “Um, sure. If you wanted to be crass about it,” Dr. Mathra mumbles. The big three types of critical points in multivariable calculus are the bottom of a bowl (aka the local min), the top of a dome (the local max), or in the middle of a saddle (saddle point). “The Lays Stax shape isn't even as interesting as a bowl – it's a wishy-washy bowl. I mean, you can make the Lays shape with a piece of paper ,” Dr. Mathra explains. (In my twelve years of being married to him, I have frequently found that being able to make something with paper is met with derision.) See, you can't replicate the Pringles saddle shape with a piece of paper without cutting the paper and actually adding more paper to it and that makes it more mathematically desirable. Sensing he has my attention throughout all of this raving, Dr. Mathra continues, “They've got these Lays Stax right next to the Pringles as though they are equivalent. How can they do that? One is a positive semi-definite quadratic form and the other is an indefinite quadratic form – they're not even the same definiteness!” When I don't react, he insists, “Oh, come on – that will KILL in class tomorrow!” And why should you, the non-calculus student, care about the Pringles saddle form? The principal application of calculus is optimizing, or determining whether you are at a maximum. You use calculus whenever you want to optimize, well, anything. “If you are at a local max (the top of a dome), everywhere you go moves you down. If you're at a saddle, there's a way you can go that will take you up.” Knowing this is important when thinking about increasing filthy lucre, precious time, diminishing resources, or a supply of Pringles. And that, my friends, is why Pringles will always, always beat Lays Stax. Flavor is subjective. Math is irrefutable.

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Saddle up for maximum snack satisfaction (mathematically speaking)

Content providers may turn their attention to Virtual Private Networks next, as they become the new tool for pirates

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Piracy moves to private networks

A material which halves the price of traditional armour plating is getting the attention of the Brazilian middle class.

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VIDEO: Bulletproofing cars in Brazil

A tactic being used in Lower Manhattan has drawn the attention of the police, but officers have not tried to dislodge demonstrators.

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Evicted From Park, Occupy Protesters Take to the Sidewalks

Omgpop’s popular game Draw Something attracted the attention of the game maker Zynga, which bought the company for $180 million.

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Draw Something Changes the Game Quickly for Omgpop

Jeff Withey of Kansas, a former volleyball player, blocked 10 shots against North Carolina State on Friday, and Sunday he’ll turn his attention to North Carolina 7-footer Tyler Zeller.

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Midwest Region: Kansas’s Jeff Withey Is a Shot-Blocker Supreme

Even as Mitt Romney tries to fend off the continuing challenge from Newt Gingrich and focus his attention on President Obama, he is now being forced to deal with another rival: Rick Santorum.

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The Caucus: Romney Takes Aim at a New Target – Santorum

Charles Dickens biographer Claire Tomalin says children are not being taught to read with the attention span necessary to appreciate the novelist’s works.

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Dickens ‘beyond’ modern children

British-Egyptian Mohamed Negm, is a young, self taught, emerging artist. Painting for the last five years, his work has varied from portraits, buildings, places and to his latest focus: the Egyptian revolution. With a style marked by his imagination and inspired by his surroundings, Negm has produced an outstanding number of pieces that have caught the attention of the media, galleries and exhibitions worldwide.

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Like a Phoenix Rising from the Flames: Artist Mohamed Negm and the Arab Spring

Star Requires Medical Attention

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Heather Locklear Hospitalized

Francis Kallon Jr., who will attend Georgia Tech, drew the attention of football recruiters before ever playing a game for his Atlanta area high school.

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Recruiters Pounce on British Transfer With No Football Experience

Herman Cain’s turn atop the polls in the contest for the Republican presidential nomination captured the attention of journalists and pundits and sparked excitement among grass-roots conservative activists. But is it really possible that he — a black man who overcame poverty in the segregated South to become a wealthy entrepreneur and front-runner in the GOP race — would be the one to bring African American voters back to their original political home? Read full article > >

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Cain’s assertion that he could win over black voters is dismissed by analysts

MOSCOW — Even the not-so-casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that with the elections less than a month away, Bruce Willis was one of the front-runners in the campaign for Russia’s equivalent of Congress. Hardly. The tough-guy American actor has been occupying prime billboard space for months, but he’s the attention-getting face of Trust Bank’s advertising campaign. Look around for political advertising — it’s far less lively, mostly discreet and faceless, with the exception of perennial bad boy Vladimir Zhirinovsky making an unpleasant ethnic appeal. Read full article > >

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Russians pull out political dirty tricks ahead of elections

The revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa have toppled one dictator at a time from Ben Ali, Mubarak and just recently, Gaddafi in a remarkably tenacious struggle for democracy and freedom. This grassroots movement has captured the attention of the world with today’s rapid-fire news feed and communication networks. How were ordinary citizens in these countries able to unravel the seams of the authoritarian regimes in such a short time? Who is responsible for instigating the chain of events? ‘ Sandstorm: a leaderless revolution in the digital age ’ by Adeel A. Shah and Sheheryar T. Sardar, attempts to deconstruct the story of this unique youth-powered uprising with the help of modern technology.

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Sandstorm: a Leaderless Revolution in the Digital Age

NEW YORK — NBA owners and players called it an early night Thursday, with both pointing toward Friday as a decisive day for big moves to end the 119-day lockout. Or not. After two days of talks about the salary cap system, they will turn their attention back to the division of revenues, which derailed the negotiations last week. Read full article > >

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Players, owners eager to end the lockout in the next few days; talks resume Friday