Weekend Economists Celebrates Psychedelia - March 14 - 15
Psychedelia never really died it seems, it just changed and morphed with the times. While in the past, psychedelia was associated with music and art; these days it's morphed into a psychotic subculture, highly associated with politics and banking and media. How else to explain the mind-altering (and mind-boggling) things that politicians and bankers and media would want us to believe? You either have to be on mind-altering substances to say such nonsense or to believe such nonsense. Or possibly both.
From Wikipedia:
Psychedelia is a name given to the subculture of people who use psychedelic drugs, and a style of psychedelic artwork and psychedelic music derived from the experience of altered consciousness that uses highly distorted and surreal visuals, sound effects and reverberation, and bright colors and full spectrums and animation (including cartoons) to evoke and convey to a viewer or listener the artist's experience while using such drugs. The term "psychedelic" is derived from the Ancient Greek words psychē (ψυχή, "soul"and dēloun (δηλοῦν, "to make visible, to reveal"
A psychedelic experience is characterized by the striking perception of aspects of one's mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters. Psychedelic states are an array of experiences including changes of perception such as hallucinations, synesthesia, altered states of awareness or focused consciousness, variation in thought patterns, trance or hypnotic states, mystical states, and other mind alterations. These processes can lead some people to experience changes in mental operation defining their self-identity (whether in momentary acuity or chronic development) different enough from their previous normal state that it can excite feelings of newly formed understanding such as revelation, enlightenment, confusion, and psychosis.
Psychedelic states may be elicited by various techniques, such as meditation, sensory stimulation or deprivation, and most commonly by the use of psychedelic substances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelia
Now tell me, isn't that a pretty damn good description of what going on in the world these days?
But today, let's celebrate the Psychedelia of the 1960's, when altering one's mind didn't end up altering the planet through psychotic nonsense like "there's no such thing as global warming" or "the global financial system is completely solvent" or "we can totally fight and win 20 wars at the same time, including nuclear ones."
So like they said in the military back then, "smoke 'em if you've got 'em."
Please note! Music and art are mandatory this week! (If you ain't got them, there's this thing called the internet. Check it out)!
The motto of most Americans these days. (Does not apply to those in the State Department or the DoD or the CIA).
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you
And we all know what happens when you leave these things up to the State Department or the DoD or the CIA! So don't leave it up to them!
Egads! Can you imagine a stamp like this these days? Can you imagine anything costing 10¢ these days? Can you imagine what type of cow Republicans (and many Democrats) would have if the Postal Service advocated preserving the environment?
= new reply since forum marked as read
bath salts are where it's at. bath salts and eating people's faces off 
And fake weed. And Krokodil. 
I cannot understand krokodil.
here in Maine, bath salts are where it's at.
We just had somebody in town jailed for stealing ice cream from the local supermarket. They also wanted to get her for stealing bath salts from the little store next to the supermarket, but the store owners pled the 5th to avoid incriminating themselves. 
They added they didn't realize bath salts were illegal...
I was shocked today by the absolute gaul of the Fed releasing a statement about Net Worth in America reaching record levels. Now I get that they are under extreme pressure to sell the story that everything is rainbows and butterflies. But surely they understand that working class Americans are going along with the story because they really don’t have any say in our nation’s policies anymore. That doesn’t mean they want it thrown in their faces that the Fed has spent 6 years now inflating the wealth of the top 10% so much that it actually lifts the total wealth of the nation’s citizens to record highs.
The ugly reality is that the bottom 80% of Americans experienced none of that gain. That’s right a big ole goose egg. And so when the Fed via its ass pamper boy, Steve Liesman, start banging on about the fact that some sliver of society is being handed extraordinary wealth while the working class has lost 40% of their net worth since 2007, well a big fuck you right back at ya bub! The Fed is very aware that the bottom 80% of Americans own less than 5% of US equity markets. And so the Fed is very aware that its manipulation of stock prices such that it creates immense unearned wealth to those in the markets doesn’t reach the bottom 80%. So why celebrate the results of the stock market price manipulation??
It is embarrassing that our policymakers are either that inconsiderate or that stupid to celebrate such a brutal dislocation between the haves and have nots. I don’t know what one can even say about the Fed making a celebratory statement like that today. It is somewhat beyond words. And really paints the picture as to how little thought goes into the lives and well being of the bottom 80%.
Just to give you something to compare and contrast the situation of the bottom 80% here in the US to counter the Fed’s celebration today. I want you to think about how lucky we are not being in one of the PIIGS nations of Europe. These are the nations that are essentially bankrupt and just hanging on by the kindness of the Troika. Glad we’re not there right?? Well allow me to show you a chart published by CNN Money some 8 months ago.
So there it is. While the average net worth of Americans is 4th in the world pulled up by the top 10%, the median net worth of Americans comes in the 19th spot. Yep, behind Spain, Italy and Ireland so 3 of the 5 PIIGS nations. Meaning the bottom 80% in these broke ass barely hanging on nations have more wealth than the bottom 80% of us here in America.
Complete story at - http://www.firstrebuttal.com/2015/03/12/wow-the-fed-gives-a-giant-fuck-you-to-working-class-americans/
at DU's Economy board. Don't start your day without it. 
March 14, 2015
or
3.1415
Anglesey-born William Jones was the first person to use the Greek letter π for the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. But who was this little-known figure?
In 1706, William Jones – a self-taught mathematician and one of Anglesey’s most famous sons – published his seminal work, Synopsis palmariorum matheseos, roughly translated as A summary of achievements in mathematics. It is a work of great historical interest because it is where the symbol π appears for the first time in scientific literature to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.
THAT GOBBLEDEGOOK IN THE TITLE OF THIS POST IS THE HTML TRYING TO COPE WITH THE GREEK LETTER...
Jones realised that the decimal 3.141592 … never ends and that it cannot be expressed precisely. “The exact proportion between the diameter and the circumference can never be expressed in numbers,” he wrote. That was why he recognised that it needed its own symbol to represent it. It is thought that he chose π either because it is first letter of the word for periphery (περιφέρεια
or because it is the first letter of the word for perimeter (περίμετρος . (Or because of both).
The symbol π was popularised in 1737 by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–83), but it wasn’t until as late as 1934 that the symbol was adopted universally. By now, π is instantly recognised by school pupils worldwide, but few know that its history can be traced back to a small village in the heart of Anglesey.
When he was still a small child the family moved a few miles further north to the village of Llanbabo. He attended the charity school at nearby Llanfechell, where his early mathematical skills were drawn to the attention of the local squire and landowner, who arranged for Jones to go to London, where he was given a position as a merchant’s accountant. He later sailed to the West Indies, an experience that began his interest in navigation.
When he reached the age of 20, Jones was appointed to a post on a warship to give lessons in mathematics to the crew. On the back of that experience, he published his first book in 1702 on the mathematics of navigation as a practical guide for sailing. On his return to Britain he began to teach mathematics in London, possibly starting by holding classes in coffee shops for a small fee. Shortly afterwards he published Synopsis palmariorum matheseos, a book written in English, despite the Latin title.
EVERY KNOWN FACT ABOUT THIS MAN FOLLOWS...SEE LINK
...The date—which also happens to be Einstein's birthday—inspires a variety of events every year. This weekend will feature the ultimate Pi Day, as adding the year to our date notation, 3/14/15, encompasses even more digits in the sequence. We won't get this much pi again for 100 years.
Here are some notable moments in the history of pi:
1900-1650 B.C.
Although the term pi wasn't yet in use, a Babylonian tablet gave a value for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter of 3.125, which isn't bad! In another document, the Rhind Papyrus, an Egyptian scribe writes: "Cut off 1/9 of a diameter and construct a square upon the remainder; this has the same area as the circle." This implies that pi is 3.16049, which is also fairly accurate, according to David Wilson of Rutgers University's math department.
800-200 B.C.
Passages in the Bible describe a ceremonial pool built in in the Temple of Solomon: "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." (I Kings 7:23-26.) This puts pi at a mere 3.
250 B.C.
Archimedes of Syracuse approximated the value of pi by finding the areas of two shapes—a 96-sided polygon inscribed within a circle and one drawn outside it. The areas of the polygons sandwiched the area of the circle, giving Archimedes upper and lower bounds for the coveted ratio. Though he knew he had not found the exact value of pi, he was able to set it between 3.1408 and 3.1429.
Late 1300s
Indian mathematician and astronomer Madhava of Sangamagrama was the first on record to posit that pi could be represented as the sum of terms in an infinite sequence—for example, 4 - 4/3 + 4/5 - 4/7 + 4/9 – 4/11 … ∞. His efforts yielded a value for pi that was correct to 13 decimal places, and he helped lay some of the groundwork for the development of calculus.
1706
Welsh mathematician William Jones began to use π as the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Famed Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler adopted this usage in 1737, helping to popularize it through his works.
1873
Amateur English mathematician William Shanks calculates pi to 707 digits. His number was written on the wall of a circular room—appropriately named the Pi Room—in the Palais de la Découverte, a French science museum. But his number was only correct to the 527th digit. The error was finally caught in 1946 and corrected on the wall in 1949.
1897
Lawmakers in Indiana almost pass a bill that erroneously changes the value of pi to a solid 3.2. Cajoled by amateur mathematician Edwin Goodwin, the Indiana General Assembly introduced House Bill 246, which offered up "a new mathematical truth" for free use by the state. The purported truth was Goodwin's attempt to square the circle—a puzzle which requires that a circle and square of the same area be constructed using only a geometrical compass and a straightedge. The bill unanimously passed the House, but the Senate—and hence the state—was spared from embarrassment by C.A. Waldo, a Purdue mathematics professor who happened to be in the State House that day. "Shown the bill and offered an introduction to the genius whose theory it was, Waldo declined, saying he already knew enough crazy people," Tony Long of Wired wrote. Waldo gave the senators a math lesson, and the bill died.
1988
Larry Shaw of San Francisco's Exploratorium introduces the first Pi Day celebration.
2005
Chao Lu, then a graduate student in China, becomes the Guinness record holder for reciting pi—he recited the number to 67,980 digits in 24 hours and 4 minutes (contest rules required that no more than 15 seconds could pass between any two numbers).
2009
Pi Day becomes a national event! Democratic Congressman Bart Gordon of Tennessee, along with 15 co-sponsors, introduced HR 224, which "supports the designation of a Pi Day and its celebration around the world; recognizes the continuing importance of National Science Foundation math and science education programs; and encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics." The resolution was approved by the House of Representatives on March 12 of that year, proving that a love of pi is non-partisan.
I GUESS I AM GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE PI(E) TODAY!
99,959 0's
99,758 1's
100,026 2's
100,229 3's
100,230 4's
100,359 5's
99,548 6's
99,800 7's
99,985 8's
100,106 9's"
— David Blatner, The Joy of Pi
The question obsessed Moscow and much of Russia on Friday, as speculation mounted as to why President Vladimir V. Putin had not been seen in public for more than a week. He abruptly canceled a trip to Kazakhstan and postponed a treaty signing with representatives from South Ossetia who were reportedly told not to bother to fly to Moscow. Most unusually, he was absent from an annual meeting of the top officials from the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence service. The rumor mill went into overdrive, churning out possible explanations from the simple to the salacious to the sinister. He had been stricken by the particularly devastating strain of flu going around Moscow just now. He sneaked off to Switzerland for the birth of his love child. He had a stroke. The victim of a palace coup, he was imprisoned within the Kremlin. He was dead, aged 62...Dmitry S. Peskov, the presidential spokesman, treated all the health questions with a certain wry humor initially, coming up with new and inventive ways to say, “He’s fine.”
Yet, the fact that the story proved impossible to quash underscored the uneasy mood gripping the Russian capital for months now, an atmosphere in which speculation about the health of just one man can provoke fears about death and succession. There have been periodic glimpses of the tension behind the high red walls of the Kremlin, infighting over the wisdom of waging war in Ukraine that has only deepened as the value of the ruble crumbled under the combined weight of an oil price collapse and Western economic sanctions over the annexation of Crimea. Those pressures seemed to culminate in the Feb. 27 assassination of Boris Y. Nemtsov, the opposition leader and former deputy prime minister who was gunned down near the Kremlin. Mr. Nemtsov’s supporters blamed the atmosphere of hate that has been brewing in Russia, with the state-controlled news media labeling him a ringleader among the “enemies of the state.” All that seemed to feed some of the darker interpretations of Mr. Putin’s disappearance. Andrei Illarionov, a former presidential adviser, wrote a blog post suggesting that the president had been overthrown by hard-liners in a palace coup endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Russians could anticipate an announcement soon saying that he was taking a well-deserved rest, the post said. Conspiracy theorists bombarded Facebook, Twitter and the rest of social media with similar intrigue.
Of course, the “wag-the-dog” grandfather of all the conspiracy theories surfaced as well, that Mr. Putin disappeared on purpose to distract everyone from the problems and economic pressures piling up around them. Given that Russia sometimes seems to be reverting to the dusty playbook of the Soviet Union, some concerns seemed to feed off old habits. In the early 1980s, when three Soviet rulers — Leonid I. Brezhnev, Yuri V. Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko — died in quick succession, the public was among the last to be informed.
“If an American president dies, not that much changes,” said a reporter who has covered Mr. Putin for years, not wanting to be quoted by name on the subject of the president’s possible demise. “But if a Russian leader dies everything can change — we just don’t know for better or worse, but usually for worse.”
The White House declined to say if it had any information about Mr. Putin’s whereabouts or whether President Obama has been briefed.
“I have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of one world leader,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “I would refer you to the Russians for questions on theirs. I’m sure they’ll be very responsive.”
The last confirmed public Putin sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5, although the Kremlin would have one think otherwise. That was another aspect of the Soviet past that seemed to actually emerge from the grave: efforts to doctor the president’s timetable to confirm that all was hunky-dory. The daily newspaper RBC reported that a meeting with the governor of the northwestern region of Karelia, pictured on the presidential website as taking place on March 11, actually occurred on March 4, when a local website there wrote about it. A meeting with a group of women shown as March 8 actually happened on March 6, RBC said. On Friday the Kremlin released video and still pictures of Mr. Putin meeting with the president of the Supreme Court to discuss judicial reform. The footage got heavy play on state-run television, but given that it was not live it did little to douse the flaming rumor mill. The simplest explanation appeared to come from an unidentified government source in Kazakhstan, who told Reuters “it looks like he has fallen ill.”
Since half of Moscow seemed racked with a flu that knocks people onto their backs for days at a time, that seemed the most likely explanation. (Who knows how many hands he shakes in a day?) But there seemed to be a certain reluctance to admit that Russia’s leader, who cultivates a macho image of ruddy good health, might have been felled like a mere mortal. His spokesman told any media outlet that called (and most did) that his boss was in fine fettle, holding meetings and performing other duties of the office. “No need to worry, everything is all right,” Mr. Peskov said Thursday in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. “He has working meetings all the time, only not all of these meetings are public.”
As new theories emerged practically by the hour, Mr. Peskov denied them all. A Swiss tabloid reported that Mr. Putin had spent the past week accompanying his mistress, the Olympic gymnastics medalist Alina Kabayeva, to give birth in a clinic in Switzerland’s Ticino canton favored by the family of Silvio Berlusconi, the former Italian prime minister. (It would be the third child, none confirmed.) Mr. Peskov swatted that one down, too. Of course, Mr. Putin’s opponents next door in Ukraine lost no time celebrating the possible news. One set up a clock using a joyous chorus from “Swan Lake” to count off the time since Mr. Putin last appeared alive.
One of Mr. Putin’s predecessors, Boris N. Yeltsin, used to disappear frequently as well. But that was due either to drinking bouts or, at least once, an undisclosed heart attack. His spokesman settled on a standard explanation that Mr. Yeltsin still had a firm handshake and was busy working on documents. Mr. Peskov drolly resorted to both explanations, telling Echo of Moscow that Mr. Putin’s handshake could break hands and that he was working “exhaustively” with documents. By Friday, Mr. Peskov’s patience appeared to be wearing thin as he told Reuters: “We’ve already said this a hundred times. This isn’t funny anymore.” But he also mused aloud about finding a wealthy sponsor to underwrite a prize for the funniest hoax invented about Russia’s leader.
Early in his presidency, Mr. Putin infamously dropped out of sight when the submarine Kursk sank in 2000 and again two years later when terrorists seized a Moscow theater, trapping hundreds of hostages. But since those two crises, which spawned all manner of questions about his leadership skills, he has been very much a public figure.
A key sign that Russians seemed to be taking it in stride, despite the weird and wild tales, was that the value of the ruble barely budged. Farther away, on world markets distant from rumor central, there were gyrations attributed in part to the Putin uncertainty.
Now all eyes are on Monday, when the president is scheduled to meet with the president of Kyrgyzstan in St. Petersburg.
Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere
MAYBE HE GOT WORD OF A CIA ASSASSINATION PLOT, AND IS WAITING FOR THE ROUND-UP OF CONSPIRATORS AND INTERROGATION TO GIVE AN ALL-CLEAR....
here's something I put together about Poroshenko!
The Fed has created a very very dangerous situation. Ever since 2009, anytime the markets came close to breaking down, “someone” (read: the FED) has stepped in a propped the markets up:
This same madness has continued despite the Fed ending its QE efforts. In October of last year the markets took a nosedive to critical support. This time around rather than launching a new monetary policy, a Fed President stepped out and hinted that the Fed should consider postponing the end of QE (a mindless statement given the Fed had only $5 billion in QE left at the time. Logic aside, the markets took the hint and erupted higher again.
In simple terms, the Fed has completely conditioned the markets to believe that NO MATTER WHAT stocks will be held up. This policy has worked fine… but eventually it will fail, just as all market props do. Eventually the investment herd will begin to sell/ take profits. And at some point there will be a selling panic. Gauging when this will happen is impossible as we are now talking about crowd psychology, not market fundamentals or economic data (neither of which have mattered for over two years). However, the fact remains that all bubbles burst. This bubble will be no different other than the fact that it was in fact been the FED that created and perpetuated it long after it normally would have burst.
Put another way, when the next crisis hits, the Fed will effectively be out of ammo as it will be a crisis of faith in the Fed. Whenever investors themselves begin to comprehend that the Fed is now more leveraged than many of the investment banks were when they went bust in 2008, the end game will begin.
Good one 
& Nash & Young (my fave, edited for Young, so silly to have left him out), and Santana...no shortage of gems.
Come on, go forth & bring it forth. 
with love of and for music 
There's a currency war going on, and the United States is losing. As of Wednesday, the euro had fallen to a 12-year low of $1.05, down from as much as $1.39 just last year. That's a 24 percent drop in 11 months, to be exact, and there's no reason to expect it to stop anytime soon...Now a strong dollar is good for anyone who's planning a trip overseas, but it's bad news for anyone who's planning on selling stuff there. That's why stocks fell, with markets sliding into negative territory for the year this week, as multinationals that depend on foreign sales took another hit. After all, it's not just the euro that's falling against the dollar, but almost every other currency in the world, too — with Turkey and South Africa's falling more than most on Tuesday.
You could see the dramatic decline in the Euro in this chart:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=
&w=1484
Source: Bloomberg
Why is the dollar up so much? Well, the simple story is that the stronger your economy, the stronger your currency. The slightly more complicated version, though, is that currencies go up when monetary policy is relatively tight, and down when it's relatively loose. Now these should just be different ways of saying the same thing — since central banks raise rates when growth is too strong and cut them when it's too weak — but that's not always the case. Sometimes central banks make mistakes, like Europe did, and tighten policy when the economy is still weak, and sometimes they mistake zero interest rates, like Japan did, for easy policy when the economy is so weak it needs even more help than that.
But in any case, it's a lot simpler now. The U.S. economy is doing well enough that it's getting ready to raise rates, and the rest of the world is slowing down enough that it's cutting them. Indeed, the not-so-short list of countries that have eased monetary policy the past few months, some of them multiple times, includes Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Peru, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and, above all, the euro zone. It's finally started buying bonds with newly printed money, a.k.a. "quantitative easing," to try to get its economy out of the low inflation, low growth trap that it's fallen into. And that's not to mention the fact that Japan, which has been stuck in the same kind of one for the better part of two decades, has also been buying bonds this whole time, and recently started buying even more of them. So it's no surprise that the dollar is shooting up so much... the Fed might want to wait to raise rates. Even though unemployment is down to a normal-ish 5.5 percent, there's no rush to normalize policy since there still isn't any sign of inflation or bubbly behavior. The Fed doesn't want to be the only central bank raising rates — a strong dollar is like a tariff against our exports and a subsidy for our imports — unless it really has to, and right now it doesn't.
The only way to lose a currency war is to refuse to fight it, and let yours go up too much. The dollar is already going to go up plenty more no matter what we do, but we can at least try to limit the damage. Because sometimes a strong dollar is a weakness.
Matt O'Brien is a reporter for Wonkblog covering economic affairs. He was previously a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.
Like a hospital soap opera, much of this week will boil down to what happens to the “patient.”
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve will release the statement from its two-day Federal Open Market Committee meeting, and investors are keeping a sharp lookout for whether the word “patient” still appears in the statement, a key reference to when the Fed will begin hiking interest rates.
That one detail is crucial for how already-beaten-up stocks fare this week. Last week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.82% shed 0.6% and the S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.61% declined 0.9%, putting both indexes into negative territory for the year to date. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.44% shed 1.1% for the week but is still up 2.9% for 2015.
“The biggest short term question with regard to the March FOMC is whether the committee chooses to include the ‘patient’ term in their policy statement or drop it,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, in a recent note.
“In terms of impact, retaining the word would imply a first rate hike would be most probable after June and by September 2015,” he said.
For quite a while, the consensus estimate had been that the Fed would start hiking rates in June, but analysts and economists are increasingly nudging the move out to September. LeBas believes the Fed will leave “patient” in its statement, signalling a rate hike closer to September than June.
Another thing to look for in the statement is the Fed’s newest “dot plot,” which should reflect the trajectory of tightening once the first rate hike goes though, LeBas said. The dot plot from the last FOMC meeting appears below:
?uuid=e6444e00-c41d-11e4-b1fb-99640ae08ee5
“As for why we believe September rather than June, it really boils down to one simple fact; the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the headline change in personal consumption expenditures, has not been north of 2.0% since spring 2012,” Greenhaus said.
“Our view is that after such a long period of missing their target, Fed members will ultimately want/need just a few additional months of data before being╉reasonably confident╊ inflation will return to trend,” he said.
I expect we'll get letters any day that our pensions are being reduced.
The Ides of March (Latin: Idus Martii or Idus Martiae) is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds to 15 March. It was marked by several religious observances and became notorious as the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. The death of Caesar made the Ides of March a turning point in Roman history, as one of the events that marked the transition from the historical period known as the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire.
Although March (Martius) was the third month of the Julian calendar, in the oldest Roman calendar it was the first month of the year. The holidays observed by the Romans from the first through the Ides often reflect their origin as new year celebrations.
The Romans did not number days of a month sequentially from the first through the last day. Instead, they counted back from three fixed points of the month: the Nones (5th or 7th, depending on the length of the month), the Ides (13th or 15th), and the Kalends (1st) of the following month). The Ides occurred near the midpoint, on the 13th for most months, but on the 15th for March, May, July, and October. The Ides were supposed to be determined by the full moon, reflecting the lunar origin of the Roman calendar. On the earliest calendar, the Ides of March would have been the first full moon of the new year.
The Ides of each month was sacred to Jupiter, the Romans' supreme deity. The Flamen Dialis, Jupiter's high priest, led the "Ides sheep" (ovis Idulius) in procession along the Via Sacra to the arx, where it was sacrificed.
In addition to the monthly sacrifice, the Ides of March was also the occasion of the Feast of Anna Perenna, a goddess of the year (Latin annus) whose festival originally concluded the ceremonies of the new year. The day was enthusiastically celebrated among the common people with picnics, drinking, and revelry. One source from late antiquity also places the Mamuralia on the Ides of March. This observance, which has aspects of scapegoat or ancient Greek pharmakos ritual, involved beating an old man dressed in animal skins and perhaps driving him from the city. The ritual may have been a new year festival representing the expulsion of the old year.
In the later Imperial period, the Ides began a "holy week" of festivals for Cybele and Attis. The Ides was the day of Canna intrat ("The Reed enters" , when Attis was born and exposed as an infant among the reeds of a Phrygian river. He was discovered—depending on the version of the myth—by either shepherds or the goddess Cybele, who was also known as the Magna Mater, "Great Mother". A week later, on 22 March, the day of Arbor intrat ("The Tree enters" commemorated the death of Attis under a pine tree. A college of priests called "tree bearers" (dendrophoroi) cut down a tree, suspended from it an image of Attis, and carried it to the temple of the Magna Mater with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius. A three-day period of mourning followed, culminating with the rebirth of Attis on 25 March, the date of the vernal equinox on the Julian calendar.
Assassination of Caesar
In modern times, the Ides of March is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC. Caesar was stabbed to death at a meeting of the senate. As many as 60 conspirators, led by Brutus and Cassius, were involved. According to Plutarch, a seer had warned that harm would come to Caesar no later than the Ides of March. On his way to the Theatre of Pompey, where he would be assassinated, Caesar passed the seer and joked, "The ides of March have come," meaning to say that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied "Aye, Caesar; but not gone." This meeting is famously dramatised in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, when Caesar is warned by the soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March." The Roman biographer Suetonius identifies the "seer" as a haruspex named Spurinna.
Caesar's death was a closing event in the crisis of the Roman Republic, and triggered the civil war that would result in the rise to sole power of his adopted heir Octavian (later known as Augustus). Writing under Augustus, Ovid portrays the murder as a sacrilege, since Caesar was also the Pontifex Maximus of Rome and a priest of Vesta. On the fourth anniversary of Caesar's death in 40 BC, after achieving a victory at the siege of Perugia, Octavian executed 300 senators and knights who had fought against him under Lucius Antonius, the brother of Mark Antony. The executions were one of a series of actions taken by Octavian to avenge Caesar's death. Suetonius and the historian Cassius Dio characterised the slaughter as a religious sacrifice, noting that it occurred on the Ides of March at the new altar to the deified Julius.
THERE'S A LESSON IN THAT...NEVER PISS OFF A ROMAN!
Marilyn Monroe was a frequent subject...her suicide left a mark on the American psyche.
The use of pop art techniques meant that the work could be reproduced and printed very easily. The pop artist work was often amusing and used everyday objects such as coke tins, dollar bills and comic strips as their subjects. Pop art also used the faces of well known people such as Marilyn Monroe, again as their subjects.
Now I want to describe one of the most famous pop artist, Andy Warhol. He originally worked as a ‘commercial artist’ and his subject matter was derived from the imagery of mass-culture: advertising, comics, newspapers, TV and the movies.
?w=240&h=300
?w=730
...His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture and advertisement that flourished by the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became a renowned and sometimes controversial artist.
Warhol embodied the spirit of American popular culture and elevated its imagery to the status of museum art. He used second-hand images of celebrities and consumer products which he believed had an intrinsic banality that made them more interesting. He felt that they had been stripped of their meaning and emotional presence through their mass-exposure.
Warhol’s paradoxical statements such as, “I am a deeply superficial person” or “art should be meaningful in the most shallow way” are echoed in his work. The left hand panel of his ‘Marilyn Diptych’ is a crudely colored photograph of the actress whose sense of ‘self’ is degraded through the repetition of her image, whereas the right hand panel is a physically degraded black and white image that reflects the ephemeral qualities of fame. Their combined panels are a memorable discourse on the nature of celebrity and its power to both create and destroy its acquaintances. The ‘diptych’ format was originally used in medieval painting for religious images of personal devotion, an appropriate choice considering Warhol’s fascination for Marilyn Monroe.
https://caecilliamarianatasha.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/pop-art/
Guy Peellaert, The Michelangelo of Pop Art
Peellaert believed everything went better with Coke, including Marilyn...
... The Brussels-born artist Guy Peellaert was a painter, illustrator, graphic artist and photographer, whose work has been exhibited around the world. He made his debut as a theatre decorator and as a comic strip artist and was one of the first artists to embrace the Pop Art movement that began in the late 1950s. Peellaert made no distinction between high art and low art. He approached the pop culture and mythology as a true fan. His style was influenced by comics, American Pop Art and psychedelic art. He painted using a very photo-realistic style and collage techniques. In 1974, Elle magazine called him the “the Michelangelo of Pop”.
http://coca-cola-art.com/2008/11/22/guy-peellaert-the-michelangelo-of-pop-art/
Marimekko Fabrics from Finland also incorporated "pop"...I made drapes for my NH house with several of their designs....
another Marilyn
?w=540
?w=300&h=300
Roy Lichtenstein’s Life, Works and Success Story
https://famouspopartists.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/roy-lichtenstein%E2%80%99s-life-works-and-success-story/
Yet another Marilyn-like rendering
Psychedelic Stella from the Playboy, January 1960 issue where Stella Stevens appeared as the centerfold http://cedar-and-willow.blogspot.ca/2012/06/dean-yeagles-mandy-chickie-and-1970s.html?m=1
Pop Art also manifested in furniture, like this plastic hand-chair