So, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

To celebrate the occasion, I headed out to the driving range with my parents and then to Caffé Milano in Palm Beachfor an amazing dinner. I had an entré of baked calamari followed by lamb ravioli with artichoke and thyme. Dessert consisted of a chocolate with fine layers of pastry that was exquisite. Topped off with a nice grappa on the house.We had a bottle of 2000 Le Macchiolle Paleo Rosso from their special wine list with the meal. (Now, they only have 2 bottles of it left.) A very nice cabernet franc  that went well with the meal.

Gaius Julius Caesar learned a valuable lesson on the 15h of March in 44BC: Never tease a haruspex.

Titus Vestricius Spurinna, an Etruscan haruspex (a soothsayer or astrologer), warned Caesar a week or two before his death that some danger would befall him no later than the Ides of March. The 15th of March arrived, so Caesar couldn’t leave well enough along and resist teased Spurinna saying “The Ides of March are come”, to which Spurinna replied “Yes, they are come, but they are not past.”

Unfortunately for Julius Caesar, Spruinna’s prediction came true later in the day when he was assassinated by a group of senators shortly before he was due to appear at a session of the Senate. Among the group of assassins was his friend Brutus Albinus. Shakespeare’s version of the assassination has him utter the phrase “Et tu, Brute?”, though other possibly more reliable reports have him saying either “καὶ σύ, τέκνον?” (Greek for “You too, child?”) or nothing at all.

Happy birthday to one of my very good friends, who celebrates her birthday on the anniversary of the death of Julius Caesar. 🙂

I had queued this up to be published yesterday morning, but decided that grumbling about losing an hour of sleep when Japan had just been hit by a magnitude 8.9 earthquake really wasn’t appropriate.

This is the weekend that we fall forward through time. Specifically, at 2am Sunday morning, everyone should set their clocks forward by an hour – unless you’re in Saskatchewan in which case you can stay asleep. That right – I’m  talking about changing to Daylight Saving Time.

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 defines when most of the US switches its clocks forward and back in an attempt to maximize useful daylight hours save energy. Most of Canada changes its clocks at the same time to minimize the amount of chaos caused by this.

The province of Saskatchewan, along with little parts of British Columbia, Nunavut and Quebec, however, does not switch to daylight saving time, which really isn’t surprising given its agricultural heritage (translation: cows don’t understand daylight saving time). Apparently, the provincial government has been mulling holding a referendum to determine whether they would start switching to DST. According to a story in the Leader Post, they did some opinion polling and found that the majority of people are happy with the status quo, so they’re not going to hold a referendum and save the roughly $500,000 it would cost for something else. Good decision!

As I’ve mentioned before, there’s been no evidence that daylight saving time has resulted in the saving of a single watt of power. Australia tried to use it to offset power consumption during the 2000 Olympic games and found the demand did not decrease as a result.

Accidents also tend to go up in the days following setting the clock forward, probably because everyone’s a little sleep deprived while waiting for their circadian rhythms to adjust to the change in the clocks.

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As you’ve probably heard by now, Japan experienced a massive magnitude 8.9 earthquake a few hours ago, which has led to tsunami warnings and watches for the west coasts of North, Central and South America and the Hawaiian islands. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre is an excellent source of information about this. You can read the bulletin issued at 1431Z here.

Japan is unfortunately well-versed in dealing with massive earthquakes. Prior to this morning’s quake, the Kobe earthquake in January 1995 was the biggest one to hit in recent history, with a magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale. It resulted in more than 6,400 deaths and cost about ten trillion yen in damage, which was about 2.5% of Japan’s GDP at the time, or just over $100 billion US dollars.

This morning’s quake was about 100 times as powerful as the Kobe quake. And I just saw on Twitter that Japan was just hit by a 7m (23′) tsunami. The extent of the damage is staggering.

Google’s Person Finder service is up and running at http://japan.person-finder.appspot.com. Family members of Canadians in Japan can call DFAIT at 613-943-1055, or toll free within Canada at 1-800-387-3124, or visit http://www.voyage.gc.ca/contact/menu-eng.asp.

As you’ve probably heard, there was a fairly significant earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. It hit in the middle of the day, so there were a lot more people out and about. Some buildings have collapsed and some deaths have been reported.

There’s a Google App called Person Finder who are either looking for people in Christchurch or have information about people in Christchurch available at http://christchurch-2011.person-finder.appspot.com.

I hope that anyone you know who is in Christchurch is safe and sound.

February 11th is turning out to be quite the day in history. In addition to being Thomas Alva Edison‘s birthday, it was also the end of the Yalta Conference in 1945, which was trying to deal with post-war Europe.

More recently, it’s the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which saw the overthrow of Iran’s monarchy and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison on this day in 1990.

And now we can add the downfall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after 18 days of anti-government protests in Egypt. I hope the aftermath doesn’t get out of control and that the Egyptian people can rebuild and move forward.

Quite a day in history, eh?

A tip o’ the hat to Al Jazeera who had this photo on their site.

I’m pleased to report that the van belonging to STRIDE that was stolen has been found in a parking lot on Cyrville Road. I haven’t heard whether there was much damage to it, but hopefully not. Apparently, STRIDE had a number of people willing to loan them a van and a couple of people who were willing to donate a van — a very classy response from the community indeed!