Opening Day

The possibilities are endless
on Baseball's Opening Day.
The popcorn's fresh, the beer is cold,
on Baseball's Opening Day.

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St. Patrick’s Day

As many people already know, St. Patrick is the Catholic patron saint of Ireland, and we celebrate his feast day every February 17, by wearing shamrocks, eating corned beef and cabbage, and getting rip-roaring drunk.   However, according to Philip Freeman, who is a classics professor at Luther College in Iowa, "The modern celebration of St. Patrick's Day really has almost nothing to do with the real man." (1 St. Patrick’s Day)  Indeed, the entire celebration is pretty much an American invention.  More...

What Year Is It?

Well... that all depends where you are.  Living in the Western World, it is often easy to forget that other people in other parts of the world do things completely differently than us, and one of those things is how they record time.  The following is offered just to keep a perspective on time.  And when you’re dealing with Time, it’s always a good idea to have a little Perspective.  More...

The Ides of March

Let’s face it.  Nobody would give a rip about the ides of anything, much less the Ides of March, if it hadn’t been for William Shakespeare.  In his play Julius Caesar, he has the Soothsayer warn the doomed ruler, “Beware the ides of March.”  (I.ii.66)  More...

The Slash /

The slash, which was made popular by rock star Saul Hudson, was used in the days before the Hyphen to break words at the end of lines.  Not to be confused, there are actually two slashes on your keyboard, one that leans backwards, cleverly called the backslash, and one that leans forward, which, not too surprisingly, is called a forward slash, as well as a virgule, oblique, oblique stroke, diagonal, solidus, and separatrix.  The backslash is only used sparingly in computer jargon, so we’ll ignore that one, and to make life simpler, we’ll call everything else a “slash,” though I’d be open to popularizing the term separatrix.  More...