Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It's St. Patrick's Day! There's an awesome Google Doodle for today!

I wore green, but totally by accident. And I think it would probably be inappropriate to go around pinching patrons who forgot. How did that tradition start, anyway? Well, it's long been traditional to wear green on St. Patrick's Day, but this particular tradition started in America! Legend has it* that leprechauns will pinch anyone they can see on St. Patrick's Day, but they can't see anyone wearing green. [Source]

Today is St. Patrick's Day because this is the day the saint died, which is typical for saints' days and also sort of sad. Today also marks the first St. Patrick's Day parade, in New York City.You can also learn more about St. Patrick's Day - history, traditions, and even some Irish foods - from The History Channel's St. Patrick's Day site!

*Is America even old enough to have legends yet? It feels a bit like when seven-year-old Coconut says, "A long, long time ago, when I was, like, four..."


Links!

• Libraries, Books, Writers, & Suchlike
• Summer Meal Programming at the Library 
• Public Libraries and Hispanics 
• Just for fun: What Library Resource Are You? I'm "Ask a Librarian," apparently. Nice!
• Nancie Atwell Of Maine Wins $1 Million Global Teaching Prize "She plans to use all of the prize money for her school. Among her top priorities are expanding the school's library system and maintaining diversity among its student body, 80 percent of whom receive tuition assistance."
• Scotland moots library membership from birth 
• Scientists Believe They’ve Found the Remains of Miguel de Cervantes 
• The 1906 Novel That Imagined Present-Day New York 
• Net & Tech
• White House Celebrates National Freedom Of Information Day By Making Office Of The Administration Completely UnFOIA-able 
• Court Rejects Argument That The Music Industry Deserves 'Pirate Tax' On Every Internet Connection 
• Microsoft is killing off the Internet Explorer brand 
• WellDeserved Is A (Fake) Startup That Pokes Fun At Tech’s Privilege 
• This flying car actually fits in parking spaces — and you can buy it in 2017 
• Health & Science
• Birth Control Pill May Triple Risk Of Crohn's Disease In Women With Family History Of The Condition 
• Scientists Convert Cancer Cells Into Harmless Immune Cells 
• The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse. 
• Catalog Of Life's Colors Created To Assist The Hunt For Extraterrestrial Life 
• Mars One finalist speaks out, says Dutch non-profit likely scamming its rubes This is awfully scammy. How sad...
• Education
• When Students Can't Go Online 
• My for-profit university folded. I refuse to pay back my student loans. 
• Cradle to grave: Student debt now bankrupting seniors 
• International
• Meet The 15-Year-Old From Rural Guatemala Who Addressed The U.N. 
• Myanmar Sentences 3 to Prison for Depicting Buddha Wearing Headphones 
• Other (Serious Stuff)
• The Thin Blue Line of Entitlement "Something unnatural is happening in Portland, and Police Union President Daryl Turner isn't going to put up with it.  The proper order of things is upended. Black is white and white is black, cats and dogs cohabit. Madness!  A judge has disbelieved a cop." 
• NYPD won’t punish cops for sanitizing Wikipedia police brutality entries 
• Non-Nutritive Humor Substitute 
• If You Own a Pitchfork, You Will Grab It When You See This Chart "This statistic provides a pretty compelling snapshot of the severity of our income gap: In 2014, Wall Street's bonus pool was roughly double the combined earnings of all Americans working full-time jobs at minimum wage." 
• Aaron Schock resigns after new questions about mileage expenses "Schock billed the federal government and his campaign for logging roughly 170,000 miles on his personal car from January 2010 through July 2014. But when he sold that Chevrolet Tahoe in July 2014, it had roughly 80,000 miles on the odometer...." 
• It Took Tom Cotton Less Than A Minute To Invoke Hitler In First Senate Speech I very much dislike this man. He gets to join the "Asshats" list, with Jindal and Walker. Related: Cotton has 'no regrets' on Iran letter, warns that 'they already control Tehran' I think we'd be more worried if a country did not control its own capital city, right?