We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Great Whites inhabit all of the oceans of the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Despite the really, really scary crisis of climate change, New England has seen a huge increase in the seal population over the past couple of decades. The last time I swam in the ocean beach in Wellfleet, there were large Gray Seals all around us, gamboling in the surf. Quite amusing.
Seals attract the Great White Sharks which like to feed on them. They are shark bait. Can a shark distinguish a person from a seal - and why should it care anyway? Food is food. Great white sharks send Cape swimmers running.
My theory: get out there and have fun in the chilly water. The odds are strongly on your side.
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington?
I believe so. That's why I don't care that Vermont is socialist, or that Massachusetts has Romneycare, or that Texas is Texas, or that Stockton is Stockton.
Or that California - by itself the 8th largest economy in the world - is wacky California. I'm in favor of letting them be what they want to be, but not on my nickel. Do your own thing, dude, take responsibility for it, but don't ask me to pay for it. I have my hands full caring for my own.
On this Independence Day week, with the Sousa bands and the marching Vets and the martial rockets' red glare, I think about this: the primary job of the Feds is to protect us from external threats so we, the people, are free to figger out life in our own ways. Not in the ways determined by our supposed "betters."
In America, we acknowledge no "betters." "Betters" are for Europeans and Asians.
We are not children, nor are we stupid: after all, many of us were educated in government schools. We are in life, not cloistered in Washington and we are all as smart - if not as articulate BSers - as they are. We know there is no life on earth without problems, difficulties, challenges, and death at the end of it. That's plain reality. What we do not need is our governments making it all more difficult. We can handle it, most of it.
In America today, the greatest threat to individual and local freedom is our own Federal government. Our external threats are relatively trivial, given our power.
Maine has nothing in common with DC, Hollywood, or Chicago. Nothing, well, except for harvesting the Maine lobsters that the limo Liberals feed on.
When governments accomplish the basic, simple tasks to which they are assigned, they tend to grandiosely meddle in other things to feel important, to keep themselves busy, to invent problems, or to buy votes with the voters' money (A Nation of Takers?). It's an insidious use of power even if it sometimes satirizes itself and makes us laugh at its foolishness: An Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg. Please do not "help" us, jerks. Most of us are far from helpless.
In their book The Size of Nations, Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore argue that, if America were as centrally governed as France, it would have broken up long ago. But hey, that’s no reason not to try it! In a land where everything else is supersized, why not government? Obituaries for the late Andy Griffith generally glossed over his career finale as a pitchman for Obamacare. But he was a canny choice to sell the unsellable, for is not “health” “care” “reform” the communitarian virtues of beloved small-town Mayberry writ large? The problem is you can’t write Mayberry large. And, if you attempt it, it leads not to Mayberry but to Stockton, Calif., and to a corrupt, dysfunctional swamp. A large Sweden is a contradiction in terms. It cannot be done, and the more determinedly you try to do it, the more you will preside over a ruined wasteland. The road to hell isn’t paved at all, and the street lamps went out long ago.
Is leaving people alone a full-time job? Naw, it couldn't be. Corny as it may be to post, this is one of our historic American flags, and some days I wish we had kept it for its ornery assertion to governmental power:
12:2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.
12:3 And I know that such a person--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows--
12:4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
12:5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.
12:6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me,
12:7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.
12:8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me,
12:9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
12:10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
... newcomers to the city, including Twain—straight from the Nevada desert with its pickled oysters and an appalling coffee substitute he dubbed “Slumgullion”—developed a taste for the tiny, coppery Olympias. The Oly, as it was called, was the classic gold rush oyster, a staple of celebrations and everyday meals in San Francisco restaurants and oyster saloons. Olys appeared in oyster soup and stew, stuffed into wild poultry and, of course, raw. Perhaps the most distinctive local dish was a “Hangtown fry” of oysters, bacon and eggs.
Mark Twain loved good food. I've had the Olympia oysters, but prefer the Northeast mollusc. I once ate 72 of them in a contest with a friend somewhere where they had an all-you-can-eat raw bar. I lost, but I still love to eat them.
Now this is a perfect example of poetic justice! A corrupt democrat politician uses corrupt means to win an election by a tactic that our Attorney General claims doesn't exist.
"...don’t let others who are no better than you are, convince you that there is something wrong with you because you don’t want to use the power of the state to try to improve the lives of others. Their strategy has a very mixed track record."
View from the rooftop garden at NYC's Metropolitan Museum last Sunday afternoon. Took a pic of the cool new stainless steel scupture up there, but somehow deleted it by mistake.
I have no clue about the Physics of this, but it's quite a remarkable phenomenon: Pendulum Waves:
"Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown."
As the last wave of fireworks die out, the shooting stars sinking to earth and vanishing into the darkness, the light of Independence Day fades and the crowds slowly trudge away from the brief spectacle, past the lines of police barricades, through narrow streets, past government buildings, back to their co-dependent lives in a co-dependent nation where the will of the people and the rights of the individual matter less than the latest proposal to solve the problems of their independence by making the country a more dependent place.
A few hundred years ago in these streets, men and women celebrated the end of tyranny, and in its darkest hour, lines of grim men marched along the waterfront up to the highest point on the island to mount a final defense. Sometimes the older buildings still wear their shadows on their brick walls and by the golden light of the fireworks you can almost see them, shadows moving in the darkness, their footsteps taking them north, a faint song on their lips, muskets in their hands, their lives lost and gained in defense of their freedom.
If you have a minute (but who does?) and have been on vacation from the intertubes, please scroll down Maggie's and catch up on some of our posts from the last couple of days.
Re France, "Why should they (the Germans) accept to contribute to the financing of a 60 year retirement age in France when they have just raised it domestically to 67?"
Because I am drunk, this Independence Night, I watch the fireworks from far away, From a high hill, across the moony green Of lakes and other hills to the town harbor, Where stately illuminations are flung aloft, One light shattering in a hundred lights Minute by minute. The reason I am crying, Aside from only being country drunk, That is, may be that I have just remembered The sparklers, rockets, roman candles and So on, we used to be allowed to buy When I was a boy, and set off by ourselves At some peril to life and property. Our freedom to abuse our freedom thus Has since, I understand, been remedied By legislation. Now the authorities Arrange a perfectly safe public display To be watched at a distance; and now also The contribution of all the taxpayers Together makes a more spectacular Result than any could achieve alone (A few pale pinwheels, or a firecracker Fused at the dog's tail). It is, indeed, splendid: Showers of roses in the sky, fountains Of emeralds, and those profusely scattered zircons Falling and falling, flowering as they fall And followed distantly by a noise of thunder. My eyes are half-afloat in happy tears. God bless our Nation on a night like this, And bless the careful and secure officials Who celebrate our independence now.
Through Delta, flew from JFK to Rome via Paris (cheaper that way) on Air France (which I like very much - decent airplane food with cheese and baguettes, etc, champagne when you board, drinks free, charming hostesses). We had the worst seats so you do your best to zone out. I needed some Ambien. The quick 2 hr- flight down to Rome, using Delta, is on Alitalia.
We clever, thrifty Yankees can do a 12-day grand luxe and glitz-free trip around Umbria for the price of a good high-end Mac server. A few travel trips for this first pic dump post:
We got some very good hotel deals via Expedia. We are very particular about where we will stay, as you will see (if you care). Mrs. BD is my planner. We seek out little gems without jacuzzis and absolutely without bellboys with uniforms. We are allergic to that sort of crap, and like to explore places that most people do not. We reserved a fine hatchback Lancia through Costco. Cheap. With the talking GPS - and that came in darn handy because we prefer trying to get lost on back roads unless we are in a rush to the airport. Somehow managed not to get the car in a roadside farm ditch on this trip - but I have done that in the past. Hilarity always ensues! Amusing recriminations also. Good way to meet the local farmer with tractor!
We stayed at one hotel in the Tiber Valley, one in the Valle Umbra, and one in the Valnerina to cover all the of Umbrian geography. View of the olive orchard of our hotel 10 k outside Todi, early morning mist:
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington? 
Via 
The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start
London celebrates completion of Europe’s tallest building
Mead: 
Image from 
Photo is Taki's sailboat (or "yacht," if you will) Creole. Very nice.