Just some totally random connections here, documented in case they develop into anything later.
In a comment on my Mini T. Rex post, Wandering Gondola posted a link to this video of a T. rex race at a racetrack called Emerald Downs.
The combination of emerald and down made me think of the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the source of the maxim "As above, so below." This in turn led me to Kevin McCall's blog, since I remembered several of his early posts had been about the Emerald Tablet. While there, I read the comments on his latest post. One comment by an anonymous person included the line "The ideas of Mach (and Leibniz) appeal to me," which I at first misread as "the Ides of March."
I knew nothing about Mach beyond the use of Mach number to express airspeed, so I looked up some of his major works. I unexpectedly discovered that two different paperback editions of his book The Science of Mechanics were published -- in different years, by different publishers -- on the Ides of March.
Since this came up in connection with a T. rex race, I thought about how Mach's name suggests the Greek mache, "battle," which sometimes has the broader meaning of "contest, game." I wondered if it could be used to describe the T. rex race, with the modern use of Mach as a measure of speed adding a felicitous connotation. Then, thinking of such terms as Titanomachy, I had the thought that tyrannomachy -- tyranno- as in Tyrannosaurus -- was probably an English word, too, so I googled it. The very first result was one with a rather obvious connection to the Ides of March!
I'm pretty sure tyrannomachy is an error in that article -- surely the proper term is tyrannicide -- but then reading "ideas of Mach" as "Ides of March" was an error, too.
Since I'm talking about the Ides of March and reposting videos from the comments, enjoy this insanely good cover of "Vehicle," courtesy of regular commenter Debbie.
