"The logic of advertising so dominates the media that it views anything new - material, cultural or otherwise - as a product launch. And in any product launch, the key word is concept. So as discussion of décroissance (literally "degrowth", that is economic contraction or downscaling) spread, the media naturally started to ask what was the concept. We are sorry to disappoint the media, but degrowth is not a concept. There is no theory of contraction equivalent to the growth theories of economics. Degrowth is just a term created by radical critics of growth theory to free everybody from the economic correctness that prevents us from proposing alternative projects for post-development politics.

In fact degrowth is not a concrete project but a keyword. Society has been locked into thought dominated by progressivist growth economics; the tyranny of these has made imaginative thinking outside the box impossible. The idea of a contraction-based society is just a way to provoke thought about alternatives."

Back to St. Patrick's Day just for a nice bit: photographer Anthony J. Stewart made this stop-motion video on how Chicago River was dyed in green in 2009:

"Hungarians attach great importance to this picture of the Madonna because it comes from another country whose people have also fought and suffered for their faith. There are many other pilgrim places and shrines of the Madonna in Hungary, for ever since the tenth century the country has been dedicated to her and she is considered its patroness. The veneration of Mary is indeed ingrained in the Hungarian national character. A small nation, living for many centuries among peoples not related to them by ties of blood, the Hungarians have gone through continuous spiritual and material struggles and have a strongly developed sense of loneliness and tragedy. For them the Madonna is particularly the comforter of the afflicted and the protector of Christians. [...]

On March 17, 1697, Saint Patrick's Day, as thousands were praying during early morning Mass in the Cathedral of Gyor, priests and faithful suddenly saw that the eyes of the Madonna on the picture donated by the Irish prelate were shedding tears and blood, which dropped down upon the Child in the crib over which she was bending. [...] News of the marvel immediately spread to the far corners of the city and not only Catholics, but Protestants and Jews flocked to see the miracle. [...] A document signed by more than a hundred persons bears the signature of the imperial governor of the city, the mayor, all the councilmen, the Bishop, some priests, Calvinist and Lutheran ministers and a Jewish rabbi--all of whom, volunteered to give their testimony to an undeniable fact."

Excerpts from Zsolt Aradi's article "The Irish Madonna of Hungary" at CatholicCulture.org, all rights reserved.

"1 I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a priest, of the settlement [vicus] of Bannavem Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our desserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.