Happy St. Patrick's Day! Music and Videos to put you in the mood

"So, success attend St. Patrick's fist,
For he's a saint so clever;
Oh! he gave the snakes and toads a twist,
And bothered them forever!"

~ Henry Bennett



The Muppets sing "Danny Boy":




Flogging Molly's "Drunken Lullabies" (we caught them live on Tuesday; it was awesome!):




The Dubliners "Wild Rover" (No, Nay, Never!):

March 15th - The Ides of March

"Beware the Ides of March"

~ Soothsayer, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare





Today, March 15th, marks the Ides of March. The concept of the "Iudus Martii" has been immortalized by the assassination of Gaius Julius Caesar on this day in 44 BC.

In Roman times and for centuries after, the Ides was a term for the approximate middle day of any month (either the 15th or 13th, depending on the month). Since the original Roman calendar was set up to coincide with the moon, the Ides would theoretically be the day of the full moon, although the actual calendar dates were often completely out of sync with what nature had going on. The Ides in general were considered unlucky days along with several others throughout the month.

Happy Pi Day! 3/14

"Just look at that", Currin said almost crossly as he pointed to the envelope of space under a hand in one of Rembrandt's portraits. "It's exact and indefinite. It's like pi--you can keep figuring it out and always be right and never be done."

-- Peter Schjeldahl, quoting the painter John Currin




Today is Pi Day! March 14th is 3/14, the first few digits in "pi", that most famous of irrational numbers. It's also Einstein's birthday, making Pi Day a nerd holiday extraordinaire!



Pi is what you get when you divide the circumference of any circle by its diameter. It's always the same (a little more than 3), but it's such a finicky number that you can never be 100% exact on its value. It has an inifinite number of decimal points, which means that somewhere along the way you have to round it off to write it down. That's why it's usually represented as a symbol instead of an actual number.

To celebrate (and since I happen to have today off work) I'm thinking about making a "pi pie". Hmmm, the trick is choosing the flavor...