Info about March 17

St. Patrick's Day honors St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. We celebrate St. Patrick's Day on March 17. Americans march in parades, dance the Irish jig and gather to sing Irish songs. People wear green in memory of Ireland, the Emerald Isle and wear shamrocks, clover with three leaves.

March 17 was not the day St. Patrick was born but the day he died. Even though we don't know the date of his birth, most scholars believe the year was 385 AD and the year of his death was 461 AD.

St. Patrick was born in Wales, studied religion to become a priest and then went to Ireland to teach the people about God. There are many wonderful stories about St. Patrick, some true and some not true. The most famous legend is that he drove the snakes out of Ireland. This did not happen but the Irish will tell you that you cannot find a snake throughout the whole country of Ireland.

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On St. Patrick's Day there are many different customs that people do. One of the most widely known customs is to wear green. One famous saying is that on St. Patrick's Day everybody is Irish.
Every year on March 17 more than 100 U.S. cities have a parade for this festive holiday. The largest parade is held in New York City. Another custom takes place in Chicago. The custom is dyeing the Chicago River green. The tradition started in 1962 when some city pollution control workers used dye to trace some illegal sewage discharge and realized that the green dye might provide a unique way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. On that year they released 100 pounds of green vegetable dye into the river. That much dye made the river green for a whole week. Today only 40 pounds are used so the river stays green for several hours.

Another custom is that people wear shamrocks on their shoulders to remember St. Patrick.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Go to this website to check out the history of St. Patrick's Day


Build your own Blingee

More My View

'300' a visceral feast for the senses
By BRUCE KIRKLAND - Sun Media

Zack Snyder’s 300 is an ultra-modern movie about an ancient battle, a vanished culture and a rigorous code of conduct that only an insane man would adopt in contemporary times.

That violent intersection — of slick new digital technology and the elusive rites of antiquity — has resulted in the first unique cinematic experience of the year. 300 is a savage spectacle of scope and bravado.

Geared to adults and based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller, it tells a mythological version of a true story.

In 480 B.C., 300 Spartan warriors marshalled at the Gates of Hell to defend their nearby city state from an invasion force of one million Persians.

Their strategy was brilliant and simple: Force the Persians into a narrow gorge between two cliffs, meaning the Spartans could not easily be dislodged, run over or surrounded. Of course, that also meant the defenders had to be fierce, disciplined, well-organized and each willing to submit to what they called “a beautiful death.”

Arguably, you could make the case that the Battle of Thermopylae, with Spartan King Leonidas aligned against Persian god-King Xerxes, changed the course of Western civilization.

But you are not thinking about that when bathed in blood and thrilling to the event. As a film, 300 is smashing entertainment more than it is accurate history. Prepare for an assault of violence, heroism, duplicity, action, surprising humour, sensuous interludes and startling moments of agonizing pathos.

In short, 300 provides the qualities that Rudolph Mate’s 1962 movie, The 300 Spartans, lacked when it also did battle at Thermopylae. That plodding sword-and-sandal epic, with Richard Egan as Leonidas, was wooden. It creaked and it groaned under the weight of pomposity.

Yet the movie inspired artist-writer Miller. Of course, he was only five years and impressionable. Years later, in 1998, he published his version as an adult comic book. Now, after a seven-year production ordeal typical of projects that do not hew to Hollywood formula, it is a film by co-writer (with Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon) and director Zack Snyder.

The technical side is dazzling, especially for a film with a relatively modest $63-million budget that was shot in Montreal to take advantage of tax credits and boutique-shop special effects houses.

Smart decision. Except for one scene, the enterprise was executed on sound stages. Like the ground-breaking Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, all the environments — indoors and out — were created through digital diddling. The artistry is staggeringly beautiful, except for the cheesy attempt to show a storm swamping the Persian navy. But, with scenery and weather, rampaging rhinos, bellowing elephants, bizarro mutants, hordes of archers, masses of both Spartans and Persians both alive and dead, and the gigantic persona of Xerces, the special effects are marvellous.

This technique also allowed freedom to Snyder (known for his deliciously diabolical re-make of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead) to play with tone, mood and stylistic flourishes. Like Miller’s Sin City, which morphed into Robert Rodriguez’s noir film, 300 is a surreal film dreamscape with live action humans at its core.

They are well cast, starting with Gerard Butler as Leonidas. Like all the main players, he physically trained into a magnificent human warrior machine.

You haven’t seen this many buff bodies on one screen, maybe ever (women audibly gasp as mostly naked men with washboard tummies march off to war — and it’s also homoerotic).

There is also eye candy for the straight guys in the audience: Lena Headey as Spartan Queen Gorgo (some viewers may want to be Gorgonized, even at the risk of impalment on a Spartan sword).

Others in key roles include Rodrigo Santoro (from Lost) as the exotic Xerxes and David Wenham (from The Lord of the Rings) who plays Dilios, a warrior and the storyteller-narrator.

This clever twist allows the entire saga to be given a Spartan propaganda spin.

Real war is hell, but this version is heaven, in a mythological heroic sense. It is an experience, not literal history.

(This film is rated 18-A)

NOT MY VIEW

'300' Flick Is Ready-Made for the Right-Wing Crowd

By Steve Burgess, The Tyee. Posted March 10, 2007.

If new acquaintance tells you that their favorite movie is 300, back away slowly -- they probably kills cats for fun.

What's your favourite movie?

Someday soon, you may ask a new acquaintance that question, and just maybe -- because it takes all kinds -- your new friend will reply, "My favourite movie is 300."

If this happens, back away slowly. Your new friend probably kills cats for fun. Worse -- your new friend may be George W. Bush. Director Zack Snyder's new dramatization of the epic Spartan stand at Thermopylae will probably go down real well at the White House, and wherever disturbed young people massacre hundreds in violent video games. Others should exercise discretion.

This is a historical epic, but its real history is not so much ancient Greek as recent comic book. 300 is another film taken from the work of graphic novel auteur Frank Miller, following very much in the CGI tradition of last year's Miller-inspired Sin City. Nothing in 300 is natural -- not a ray of honest sunlight falls on a single frame of the movie. Like Sin City and the execrable Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 300 was filmed entirely in front of blue screens and subsequently built around the actors digitally.

Pretty dumb

It's certainly better than Sky Captain, visually at least. 300 has an undeniable beauty, a burnished look intended to evoke the mythic. Think of the dream scenes in Gladiator and imagine a whole movie of that. Don't imagine much else, because you'll be disappointed.

Someday, somebody is going to make one of these comic book movies that isn't quite so depressingly comic book. Not this time. 300 is an adolescent wet dream to its very core, a homoerotic paean to half-naked Greeks and their bloody, thrusting swords. And to make all the Chippendales-style posing more palatable for the young straight male target audience, there's a little bit of rough doggie-style hetero sex too.

The plot -- don't blink now -- is this: 300 brave Spartans, led by the heroic Leonidas (Gerard Butler), guard a pass against the Persian hordes commanded by King Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro). There's a small bit of politics thrown in, and the aforementioned boinking (featuring Lena Headey as Queen Gorgo). But it's mostly just the glorious, sexual thrill of slow-motion violence and orgasmic geysers of spurting blood. Really. Such unabashed tributes to slaughter are usually delivered with a wink in slasher films, but 300 does not know how to wink. It is deadly serious in the way that so often provokes giggles.

Certain parallels

There's virtually no development of the Persian side, almost no real sense of who they are and why they are so scary -- except that there's a whole lot of them, and their leader Xerxes is seven feet tall, like Darth Vader and with pretty much the same voice. When it finally arrives, the big sacrificial climax doesn't even make a lot of sense. It's just heroic.

Regardless, 300 will likely be a masturbatory experience for the Ann Coulter crowd. Cruel, militaristic Sparta is the ideal; weak, artsy Athens is mocked, particularly in a scene where Athenian soldiers are revealed to be potters, sculptors, poets. Brave men who leave what they love to defend their country? Bah! Weaklings, according to this flick. As a tribute to a particular world view, 300 could play on a double bill with Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.

And no doubt it will be screened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President Bush will certainly relish a film in which King Leonidas tries, and fails, to get authorization from Sparta's governing council for an attack against the forces of Persia, a.k.a. modern-day Iran. Leonidas goes ahead anyway. History calls him a hero. So much for congressional funding.

There's even evidence that the film consciously grasps at this clash-of-civilizations message. "Today we will rid the world of mysticism and tyranny," shouts a Greek soldier, leading a charge against the Persians moments after we have seen an image of dead Spartans in Christ-like poses.

Most of the bloodthirsty teens in the audience won't care about that stuff, of course. But Dick Cheney will cream himself. I guess Dick can use a little diversion. He's had a rough year.

board & lodging

Trio must pay for prison 'board'

Three men who spent years in jail after being wrongly convicted of murder will have to pay for their prison board and lodgings, Law Lords have ruled.

Brothers Vincent and Michael Hickey of Birmingham, spent 18 years in jail for paperboy Carl Bridgewater's murder.

Michael O'Brien from Cardiff spent 11 years in jail for a separate murder.

The three were deducted money from their compensation for what lawyers called "living expenses" but what the court agreed was for life necessities.

Judges ruled by a four to one majority that they must pay back 25% of their compensation.

'Necessities of life'

The three men had appealed against an earlier Court of Appeal ruling the Independent Assessor was entitled to deduct their compensation to reflect the necessities of life which they would have to buy from wages if they were free.

Their lawyers had argued it was wrong to expect people wrongly imprisoned to pay for what is effectively their "board and lodgings".

Vincent Hickey, 49, and Michael Hickey, 42, of Birmingham, were jailed in 1979 over Carl's murder at Yew Tree Farm, near Stourbridge.

They had their convictions quashed at the Court of Appeal in 1997.

Michael Hickey was awarded £990,000 in compensation and Vincent Hickey £506,220, subject to the deductions.

Michael O'Brien spent 11 years in prison after being wrongly convicted in 1988 of the murder of a Cardiff newsagent.

He was awarded £670,000 subject to similar deductions.

London Firefighter Docked Wages After Taking Leave to Donate Bone Marrow to Cancer Victim

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

A firefighter who took time off to donate bone marrow to a teenage girl dying of cancer was docked a week's worth of wages, a London paper reported.

After learning he was a match for a teenage girl who suffered from leukemia, Mark McCracken, 43, applied for special leave. McCracken, his colleagues and the firefighter's union were outraged when they heard the selfless firefighter would not be given pay while on leave, the Daily Mail reported Wednesday.

"It is ironic that a large part of our job is about saving lives and the lad has saved someone's life and he is being punished," Steve Harman, a member of the firefighter's union, told the Daily Mail.

The national bone marrow register to treat leukaemia reimbursed Mark for his lost wages.

No Email Fridays?!

No E-Mail Fridays Transform Office

By ERIC HORNG

March 10, 2007 — It's how corporate America communicates.

Scheduling a meeting? Send an e-mail. Need that report right away? Send an e-mail. Are there serious issues in the department? Nothing a chain of e-mails can't solve.

The volume of e-mails has exploded in recent years with over 170 billion now being sent daily around the globe, according to technology market researcher Radacati Group. That's two million every second.

But many in business now worry this tool for easy communication is actually making it harder to communicate.

"Some [e-mails] are very valuable, and some of them are just an excuse not to communicate or to protect myself from something that's going on," said Jay Ellison, executive vice president at Chicago-based U.S. Cellular.

Two and a half years ago, Ellison was receiving an average of 200 e-mails a day, many of which went unopened. After getting cyber-indigestion, he sent out a memo to his 5,500 subordinates.

"I'm announcing a ban on e-mail every Friday," Ellison's memo read. "Get out to meet your teams face-to-face. Pick up the phone and give someone a call. … I look forward to not hearing from any of you, but stop by as often as you like."

The no-e-mail-Friday idea landed with a thud.

"Jay's insane. He's crazy," said marketing director Kathy Volpi, recalling the initial impression she and others had. "Employees would queue up their e-mails, and then at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, they'd let them fly."

Eventually, the policy won over staff members. Forced to use the phone, employee John Coyle learned that a co-worker who he thought was across the country was, in fact, across the hall.

"I asked him where he was and he said I'm on the fourth floor, and I said, 'Well so am I,'" said Coyle. "We now have a working relationship that is deeper than he's the guy that provides reports."

Public affairs manager Tyler Caroll, because of her gender-neutral name, used to get e-mails addressing her as a "he" or "Mr." Phone calls on a no-e-mail-Friday changed all that.

"People were really surprised that they had a woman's voice at the other end of the line instead of a man's," said Carroll with a laugh.

U.S. Cellular isn't the only company curbing e-mail. At PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based outsourcing company, e-mail-free-Fridays have changed habits throughout the week — e-mail volume is down a whopping 75 percent — and that's helped the bottom line.

"What I think it's done is make us more efficient, and it's made us listen to our customers better," said PBD vice president Lisa Williams.

The trend is seen as a backlash against a corporate "crackberry" culture of impersonal communications. Last August, 400 Radio Shack employees received their pink slips electronically. In 2002, now-defunct accounting firm Arthur Anderson dropped the e-mail hatchet as well.

"I think it's been abused over the years," said Ellison. "We tend to use e-mail as a kind of a tool to hide behind issues versus getting up and talking to people."

In addition to being impersonal and tedious, studies show e-mail can also be confusing and lead to misunderstandings in the workplace, particularly with bosses.

"As a medium, it's inherently ambiguous," said behavioral science professor Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. "There's not as much information conveyed. The pitch of your voice, the speed with which you say something, the emotional tone that's carried in your voice isn't there."

At U.S. Cellular, no-e-mail-Fridays have been such a success that the company recently instituted a new policy aimed at another corporate vice: no-meetings-Friday.