St. Patrick, Designated Driver?

Most of us have only just recovered from the excesses of Pi Day  and now face St. Patrick's Day with all the parades, green ale and shamrock-festooned aluminum-foil hats. 

It all makes you tax your aching head with a reason to go on another damned... church service.

St. Patrick is about as authentic as Punxsutawney Phil.  Oh, yes, Pat (Latin for Paddy) existed, about 1800 years ago just as Phil does today, but he was born on the very wrong side of what even the English now call the Irish Sea.  Pat was, in fact, a Romanized Celt, as opposed to the Romanticized Celt he is today.  Pat probably spoke both Latin and Celt, which are pretty close Gaelic, but deader.  On a pirate ship home, he heard voices--Paddy, it's a pirate ship!--and became a Born Again Christian.  This after being enslaved to tend sheep for seven long years while atop Brokeback Mountain, Ireland.

Yes, a pirate ship, but maybe it was another mountain. 

Anyway, Patrick converted, became a priest  And turned right around and went back to Ireland in a missionary role.  You can figure that he provided the voices needed to convert others to Christianity, because he did better than any other missionary of his era.  He also provided shamrocks to his flock--the converts, since he didn't have to work the sheep any more--to explain how the Holy Trinity and photosynthesis make sense.

Do not try this at home.

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove all the snakes off of Ireland and all the way to Australia just to eat some bunny rabbits, but ophiologists (Latin and, maybe Celt, too, for snakeologists) tell us that Ireland never did have any snakes (any more than Australia had rabbits, for that matter).  That is because nothing with even a tiny brain really wanted to live on that cold green rock and snakes pretty much get their own way about such things.  Still, it's a good myth and may have some allegorical meaning that is best sorted out at great length after, say, 10:45 on March 17th.

Speaking of which, Green Beer did not enter in the picture at all for the eventually-patron-sainted ventriloquist (the voices you'll hear, remember?).  Though he understood both the Trinity and photosynthesis, Pat could not synthesize a decent tasting green dye, a feat still not mastered from what you probably don't remember of last year's celebration.

On second thought, maybe that mountain got confused with some parade thing.

Notwithstanding the confusion to come, St. Patrick did give us one holiday on which we don't have to buy flowers, candy and cards. Or jewelry, should the day be missed somehow.  Everyone, even the profane and inane among us, sees St. Patrick's day heading in.

If not always passing out.

Pi Day Transcends St. Paddy's

Do not stop reading.

The mere appearance of the symbol (π) or the word "Pi" is enough to bring back trembles that began in Junior High.  But you know perfectly well that you haven't thought of Pi for years.  If you had or have kids, you just let it rest at "Use 3.14, for God's sake!" and let them do their own damned homework.  If they still have homework.

Today is 3.14, as the Europeans would have it, and, therefore, is Pi Day.  But not as cool as five years from now when it will be 3.1415 (ironically no rounding here).

Pi Day has traditionally been lost in the run up to St. Patrick's day, just like your car keys or, for that matter, your car.  Mathematicians are too busy working on the next generation of mortgage-backed-security derivatives for Goldman Sachs to loose on us when the SEC stops looking, probably next week.  They can't be gathered in one Irish bar easily, like the rest of us.  You try talking about multi-dimensional space with pretzels in your mouth for five hours.  Such words, aside from, Pi maybe, do not flow as readily as green beer.

Unlike St. Patrick, however, Pi can wait.  Pi is as infinite teenage angst, for which it is partially responsible; as transcendental as a Ralph Waldo Emerson essay (see teenage angst above); and as misunderstood as Alan Greenspan's legacy (see teenage angst above but apply it to a 401K).

So, what is Pi, you having long since forgotten it and the teenage heartache that supplanted it?  Pi is the product of the circumference of a circle (that's the round part) and its diameter (the straight-through-the-heart part, the heart not being on the ring itself).  Something like that and, no, you don't need to remember these things when you move to the next blog.  They are just approximations, just like 3.14.

It should be noted that 3.14 is a very weak approximation.  (Think this blog versus, say, literature.)  Pi has been computed out to 1 trillion digits and it keeps on going.  Like a circle, Pi has no end.  That is a real circle, not the oblong-looking things you are doodling right now.  In that endless sense, Pi is just like God or the usual Megan Fox obsession.

Pi is not restricted to circles, either, which are as two dimensional as any Jim Cameron character. It even had its own smaller-than-Avatar-grossing movie.  And Pi is in the middle of all kinds of objects. like baseballs, and equations, like the volume of a baseball.  Add steroids to get multi-dimensional equations with Pi, equations that reach $30 million a not-endless-season.

Let the celebration begin!  Let it run right through St. Paddy's Day.  Hell, let it run all the way to next year.  Pi is like that and deserves no less.

But, don't try a Pi Parade at home without a bucket of Dramamine and shift-designated bartenders.  Each of whom can double as your spotter.