Since the young squire is a budding mechanical engineer, he will be particularly interested in this highly imaginative prank. I must agree with TigerHawk that the school administrators of today would lack a sense of humor about something like this.
From the AP:
"Jered Weaver and Jose Arredondo combined to no-hit the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday night — and it still wasn't good enough for the Los Angeles Angels.
The Dodgers became the fifth team in modern major league history to win a game in which they didn't get a hit, defeating the Angels 1-0. Weaver's error on a slow roller led to an unearned run by the Dodgers in the fifth."
I have been meaning to post this article from the AP and my comments about it for a week. I am going to intermingle my commentary with the article and I'm fairly certain you won't have any difficulty telling who is who.
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control
By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers
Sat Jun 21, 3:14 PM ET
Is everything spinning out of control?
No. Why do you ask?
Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
Yes, yes - levees burst from time to time. Anyone that lives in that part of the country understands it could happen. I can only speak for myself but my home value is stable because I don't live in a hyper-inflated coastal region and I manage to pay for college tuition for our two children, our health care needs as well as our gasoline usage while continuing to move financially forward. In case you didn't notice (since it isn't getting a significant amount of coverage in the media) we are winning the war against Islamofacism and yes, it will continue for some time. But make no mistake - we will prevail.
If Horatio Alger is spinning in his grave it's because of "news" stories like this one.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
"The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche" is alive and well, no thanks to the doom saying minions of the Fourth Estate.
The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."
Don't get me started.
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.
An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.
This is the most overused and least relevant straw man question in polling. It is, by it's very nature, designed to provide a negative result which means very little.
"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."
I am sorry Mr. Truxal finds the current state of affairs to be "pretty scary" but his assessment that things haven't been getting better only pertains to him. The vast majority of people in this country live in greater affluence than their parents and grandparents. And I'm not quite sure how being in the basement during a tornado and having very little power to make it change go together.
Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.
We consider ourselves to be fortunate and we are extremely generous in sharing that good fortune when natural disasters of this magnitude strike anywhere in the world. The United States is always ready to lend a helping hand.
Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.
Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?
It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.
I vote for "freakish late-spring deluge". I also agree that New Orleans is a national embarrassment, but not for the reasons you might expect. For anyone to have as much advanced notice as New Orleans had and fail as utterly to evacuate the city as they did only speaks to their ignorance, incompetence and stupidity. You live in a city that is below sea level. If you can't handle the fact that major storms and flooding will occur occasionally - then move.
Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.
When is someone going to demand that China and India control their "runaway consumption of food and energy"? I have noticed that food prices have risen but it seems like a huge increase only because prices have been relatively flat for the last 16 years. And here all this time I thought ethanol was a "green" solution to our energy situation. Since we have virtually legislated new domestic refineries out of existence and we're not allowed to drill for oil, yet, what did you expect? By the way, those people who need to eat those crops can have them if they are willing to pay more for them than the ethanol plants. I believe capitalism still works that way. Or they might even consider growing their own. I also remember hearing that Sam's Club limited rice sales for awhile to three 40 pound bags per customer. How much rice do you eat in a year?
Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.
Well, at least now, with the Heller decision, DC residents can defend themselves when the lights go out. The same thing goes for California as New Orleans or Iowa - if you can't abide the weather - move. And do us all a favor and send a postcard when you find Nirvana.
Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.
OK, so you can't go to Europe. Big deal. We live in a very large, very beautiful country and few of us have seen it all. If some airlines want to charge for luggage, fly an airline that doesn't and we'll let the market sort it out.
Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.
Good God! A writers strike - heaven forfend! Try something new and pick up a book for a change. Newspapers and video stores? Next thing you know we'll be subsidizing buggy whips.
But there's always sports, right?
The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too. Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating. Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.
Gee, sport stars doing drugs. In this day and age? My perpetual innocence has been wounded. Find 'em, bust 'em and boot 'em. Sorry - but that's how it should work. And anyone that is surprised about NBA refs has never watched a basketball game.
It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.
Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.
American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.
"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."
But your point is every step back has been accompanied by two steps forward, right? Why should this time be any different?
Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.
I'm not quite sure what the point of this observation is since by my reckoning it's about a 50-50 split.
This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.
"Uncontrollable"!? Since when has history ever been controllable?
Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.
Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.
We have finally stumbled on the truth - "Surely people know how to fix problems now." Indeed, they do and always have. Government, if the opinion polls are to be believed, is the problem, not the solution. We have always had the ability to do things for ourselves in this country, if we only will.
Maybe. And maybe this is what the 21st century will be about — a great unraveling of some things long taken for granted.
Or maybe what will take place will be the greatest growth of freedom in history powered by a capitalist world economy which will catapult mankind to new heights we can only imagine.
Pull on your boots - we've got work to do.
I'm not sure what to make of Sigur Ros. I went from never having heard of them to hearing them on NPR's All Songs Considered to reading about them on National Review Online to seeing the video below on The Telegraph's website - all in the space of three days. Go figure. You can't buy buzz like that.
And the best part is it seems to be well deserved. If you like the video below you can download a free MP3 of the song "Gobbledigook" at the band's official website.
To say I am pleased by the Supreme Court's ruling would be an understatement, though 5-4 is a little too close for my tastes.
John Podhoretz has an interesting take:
Scalia the Grammarian - 06.26.2008 - 1:41 PM
"There will be a great deal to say about today’s landmark Supreme Court decision, the first in American history that explicitly finds in the Constitution a personal right to keep and bear arms and overturns a 32-year-old ban on handguns in the District of Columbia. What strikes this non-lawyer, as I read Justice Scalia’s majority opinion, is how anchored it is in the elementary logic of grammar. Because of the odd sentence structure of the Second Amendment — which states, in its entirety, that “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” — those who have opposed the idea of an individual right to keep and bear arms have resorted to fancy linguistic explanations of how its first half is an implicit limit on the right enumerated in the second half. In other words, they argue that the right to keep and bear arms can only be understood in the context of a citizen militia — which is to say, an army composed not of professional or drafted fighters but rather of ordinary citizens who would therefore have to own and house their own weaponry to use in case of war.
In 17 remarkable pages of crystalline logic, Scalia destroys this argument, and in a most novel way — by arguing against the dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens, which follows it. And in a tribute to one of the West’s great logicians, Scalia makes continual and pointed reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s examination of the way arguments over the use language can be used to obfuscate rather than enlighten. Alice, our stand-in, is forever seeing through the silliness of the world around her by commenting on how nonsensical it is. So, too, Scalia:
Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command. The Second Amendment would be nonsensical if it read, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to petition for redress of grievances shall not be infringed.”
You cannot, in other words, use the words of the first half of the Second Amendment to change the meaning of the second half. The prefatory clause can only clarify what follows it. It cannot logically reverse it. As he says later, about an argument made in part in a brief filed by academic linguists that the Second Amendment allows an individual a gun to serve in a militia and to hunt game but for no other purpose:
A purposive qualifying phrase that contradicts the word or phrase it modifies is unknown this side of the looking glass (except, apparently, in some courses on Linguistics)….[I]f “bear arms” means, as the petitioners and dissent think, the carrying of arms for military purposes, one simply cannot ad “for the purposes of killing game.” The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the mad hatter.
This is ratiocination of a very, very high order. Scalia once again demonstrates that he is, probably without question, the most distinguished and vibrant public intellectual in the United States.
"When the stormtroopers wear clown shoes instead of jackboots, it's easy to forget that they're still stormtroopers."
- Glenn Reynolds commenting on the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal
"But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
-Edmund Burke
The young squire and I picked the first cherries of the season yesterday. M'Lady is busy drying them and deciding what to do with the ones still on the tree. It is a bumper crop this year. Last year the tree got bit by a late frost and produced a dozen cherries - which the birds ate.
It's kind of difficult to judge just exactly how many cherries there are in this picture. We purchased the colander specifically for various canning chores because it is 16 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep!
Fred Thompson writing over at Townhall has this to say about the recent Supreme Court Guantanamo habeas corpus ruling:
"In reading the majority opinion I am struck by the utter waste that is involved here. No, not the waste of military resources and human life, although such a result is tragically obvious. I refer to the waste of all those years these justices spent in law school studying how adherence to legal precedent is the bedrock of the rule of law, when it turns out, all they really needed was a Pew poll, a subscription to the New York Times, and the latest edition of “How to Make War for Dummies.”
It is truly stunning that this court has seen fit to arrogate unto itself a role in the most important issue facing any country, self-defense, in a case in which Congress has in fact repeatedly acted. This was not a case where Congress did not set the rules; it did. But the court still decided – in the face of overwhelming precedent to the contrary – to intervene. This decision, or course, will allow for "President Bush Is Rebuffed” headlines, the implication being that the Administration was caught red-handed violating clearly established Constitutional rights when in fact the Administration, and the Congress for that matter, followed guidelines established by the Supreme Court itself in prior cases.
People can disagree over whether Congress got it right, but at least members have to face the voters. What remedy do people have now if they don’t like the court’s decision? None. If that thought is not enough to cause concerned citizens to turn out on Election Day to elect a new president, then I don’t know what will be.
I also find it just a tad ironic that in a case involving habeas corpus, which literally means that one must produce a body (or person) before a court to explain the basis on which that person is being detained, the decision of this court may mean more fallen bodies in the defense of a Constitution some of these justices ignored."
Examples courtesy of The Surrealist Compliment Generator:
"The goats you buy shed a perfume that makes Marxism so terribly clear to me."
"Your petulance is seduction unto extinction."
"The perils of your eyelashes torture my libido into a state of crass belief in Roman Catholicism."
"The seared runes crossing your divided consciousness do speak of contemptuous cardinals setting a Spanish villa ablaze."
"You are the sound of one lip kissing."
"Timepieces could not know your age."
"So charmingly heathen, your skin is like a teardrop on a popsickle."
"What beautiful negligence you wear!"
"Your intelligence attains the grand summation of molecular motion at absolute zero."
"Free speech is part of what makes America great, and singular. It is what leaves America unbent when the rest of the world is cowering. Americans will die for freedom - for the freedom to say what they like, be who they are and to bend the knee only if they choose to do so, and then (usually) before no one but the Creator.
And they’ll die helping to bring that sort of freedom to others.
You don’t surrender your right to speak freely in some misbegotten effort to legislate “niceness.” To do that is to admit you are too frightened to be free."
- The Anchoress
"Our beloved country, freedom's last redoubt, civilization's only power capable of resisting the advancing tide of barbarism, keep of Castle Earth, is seriously contemplating elevating to the presidency Barack Obama, an effete academic weakling, a messianic soothsayer, perfervid followers in tow, who believes America's collective soul is broken and that He has been called to mend it, a caricature Euro Statist whose voting record and public utterances reflect passionate belief in all the discredited far leftist critiques of America (and their attendant fixes), a dreamy naïf with a permanently adolescent world view born of lifelong refusal to work in the real world, a thinly disguised leftist revolutionary who for decades eagerly immersed himself in a vile crowd of crypto-Marxists, quislings, racists, domestic terrorists, and antisemites, and who now simply says, calm as you please, he never really shared their views, a twenty-eight carat tyro whose resume of accomplishments would fit neatly on the back of a Visa card, a man whose scary wife (whom the candidate himself seems to fear) dislikes the country that has showered her with great good fortune."
- James Edmund Pennington
CWCID: American Digest
"Everyone records everything now. It's fantastic and terrifying. We've become an enormous press corp following ourselves around."
- Sippican Cottage
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Canadian Human Rights Commissioners are not getting enough attention and that is exactly what is needed if Canada is going to end this insanity before it gets established. I have read more than my fair share of Soviet history and am conversant with the tactics Stalin used against his political opponents during their show trials in the 1930's. From what I have read about Ezra Levant, Mark Steyn and McLean's situation it would seem that unless this "process" is stopped now it will it will yield much more virulent rulings in the future.
From Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit:
"DOES WINE HELP YOU LIVE LONGER? Well, possibly:
A case for wine’s effect on longevity? California wine makers tend to live very long lives. Here is a look at just a few of them:
Ernest Gallo (EJ Gallo Winery): March 18, 1909 to March 6, 2007
Robert Mondavi (Robert Mondavi Winery): June 18, 1913 to May 16, 2008
Anthony George Diener, Brother Timothy (The Christian Brothers): 1910 to Dec. 2, 2004
Andre Tchelistcheff (Beaulieu Vineyards): Dec. 7, 1901 to April 5, 1994
Louis J. Foppiano (Foppiano Vineyards): Nov. 25, 1911 to present
John Parducci (Parducci, McNab Ridge): January 22, 1918 to present
I don't think this supports any scientific conclusions. But why take chances?"
Or as WC Fields used to say when asked if he wanted some water in his drink "Good God, no! Have you ever seen what that stuff does to steel?"
I have to give it to them - they never disappoint.
David Swanson has a post at Democratic Underground entitled "". He also has a list of these "war criminals" which pretty much includes everyone in the Bush administration, past and present.
What a flaming idiot.
David Warren has an interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen:
"The writings of Canada's most talented journalist, Mark Steyn, went on trial in Vancouver on Monday, in a case designed to challenge freedom of the press. It is a show trial, under the arbitrary powers given to Canada's obscene "human rights" commissions, by Section 13 of our Human Rights Act.
I wrote "obscene" advisedly. A respondent who comes before Canada's "human rights" tribunals has none of the defences formerly guaranteed in common law. The truth is no defence, reasonable intention is no defence, nor material harmlessness, there are no rules of evidence, no precedents, nor case law of any kind. The commissars running the tribunals need have no legal training, exhibit none, and owe their appointments to networking among leftwing activists.
A farce, but a farce that has huge consequences for Canada: for by such methods free speech and free press are being snuffed out. The Left may think they have found the ideal method to silence anyone who challenges their insane, "politically correct" ideas, but have instead created a monster that can as easily eat them next."
I would suggest that these "human rights commissioners" spend some serious quality time with Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" if they want to see how this is going to turn out for them. And a passing familiarity with the history of the French Revolution wouldn't hurt either.
Over the years I have been steadily increasing my geographical independence from "the office". Five months ago I was issued a top of the line BlackBerry with unlimited minutes which has enabled me to "slip the surly bonds" of the office completely. And since I can tether the BlackBerry to my laptop I can connect to the Internet and work anywhere. With gas prices soaring to new record highs there is no time like the present to telecommute - being there virtually is, in many ways, better than being there.
From Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld:
"Evolutionary biology teaches us that evolution happens not by constant, steady change, but in sudden leaps and mutations. Likewise the evolution toward being able to work from anywhere. A recent tectonic shift -- in this case, high gas prices -- is making the world safer for extreme telecommuting.
A Reuters report today highlights organizations that are cutting back the number of days employees are required to physically show up at work because of soaring gas prices. Even employees who are required to be on-site in order to work, such as janitors, are being cut down to four-day workweeks to save gas. White collar workers, of course, are being allowed, encouraged or forced to stay home once a week or more often and telecommute.
One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that's accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it's OK once a week, why isn't it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with "casual Friday" -- its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, "extreme telecommuting" -- working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback -- becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you're out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn't really matter where you are, does it?
The last remaining barrier to the general acceptance of "extreme telecommuting" is purely cultural -- it's our irrational clinging to obsolete rules for how we work. As the cultural barriers fall, more of us will be freed to work from wherever we please, something which mobile technology and Internet communication already enables.
To me, that's the silver lining in high gas prices. "
I have never been fond of popularity polls nor I do care one bit what the rest of the world thinks of the United States.
With that in mind, here is an interesting post from Canadian blogger Ghost of a flea:
"The Telegraph observes European anti-Americanism, describes America as a force for good and somehow concludes Americans need to project a better image in Europe. Americans - most likely inbound from Instapundit - respond in the comments. One of my favourites.
I'm always slightly amused by these inane popularity polls. Anyone who knows just a bit of the history of this country knows that our forefathers thought very little of Europeans. Europeans were considered as corrupt and effeminate (little has changed in 232 years). America was by design the "anti-Europe." The fact that Europeans hate us today means we are doing something right. John Adams must be smiling in heaven."
And some additional musings from USS Clueless:
"(Europe) looks across the water and sees a nation made up of immigrants from all over the world, but especially and mainly immigrants from Europe. Thus he expects us to be just like them.
Yes, the majority of Americans are descended from European immigrants. But those who came here were not the same as those who stayed behind. It was the slum dwellers who came; the "huddled masses yearning to be free". It was the Irish tired of being starved, who abandoned Ireland and moved to a richer place, so that now there are more Irish living in the United States than in Ireland. It was the Dissenters, those whose religions subjected them to legal discrimination in England. It was the Jews, tired of pogroms. It was the Poles, the Czechs, the Italians, the Spaniards, the Swedes. It was Russians and Bulgarians and Greeks and Turks and Georgians. It was the peasants, abandoning the strict class structure of Europe which held them on the ground. It was the city dwellers, who worked 14 hour days in the mills for a pittance, until they died from brown lung. It was the racial minorities, who were routinely oppressed there, and even exterminated. And it was mostly the poor, the underclass, those who felt they were condemned to a life of misery, who seized the opportunity for a better chance and a new life.
They abandoned everything. They left behind family and friends; everything they had ever known. They took a few poor belongings, sold everything else to pay for the steamship ticket. They crossed the ocean and left that all behind; they came to America and started over. They came through Ellis Island, and became Americans. Many of them even left their names behind and took new ones, the better to fit in.
The United States is made up of people whose ancestors hated Europe. They came here to get away from what Europe stood for; they came here because they wanted something different. And they were resolved not to let this nation become another Europe, because they'd seen the worst Europe had to offer.
They left a place which was socially stratified, which had a caste system, and in the US vowed there would be no such system. They left a place full of dictators and tyrannical monarchs, and built a nation where the government answers to the people and can be peacefully ousted by free and fair elections. They left a place where the government told them how to worship, and came to a place where the people told the government to keep its hands out of religion. They left a place where news and history was whatever the government said it was, and came to a place where there was a right of free speech and free press, where a man could criticize the government without disappearing afterwards.
Some of them revolted against European domination and created a nation built on a different philosophy. Others came later and joined it because they liked what it stood for. The most patriotic Americans have always been its first generation immigrants.
They wanted a place where they could work, and succeed, and keep what they had earned; and not have it taken from them for their own good by a paternalistic government.
The people who came here brought with them what was good about the cultures they came from, but they also left a lot behind that which wasn't worth having. The pieces they kept then merged together into a rich and flavorful stew, a true melting pot.
The resulting culture of the United States is emergent. It is more than the sum of its parts, and it is not like any of its parts. The United States is not "New Europe". It isn't immature Europe, which will eventually mature and become just like the old country. The United States is something completely new. We are a foreign country. In a very real sense we are the anti-Europe. And we value other things than Europe does. Those who liked how Europe handled things stayed there. Those who thought it stunk came here.
These differences are not a temporary aberration which will be corrected with time. The United States isn't going to become more like Europe as time goes on; if anything, it will diverge as its culture is yet again modified by an influx of new immigrants, this time from the South and West.
Each generation in America is strengthened by a new flow of immigrants. Now that flow is from Latin America, and Korea, and Japan, and the Philippines, and India, and Viet Nam, and China, and Taiwan; they will bring with them the best of their nations, and they will leave behind the worst, and America will change again. It will change for the better. And it will become even less like Europe. In fifty years, more than half the population of the United States will not be of European descent.
It is no wonder that the Europeans are bewildered by the US, and vaguely frustrated. They expect the US to be New Germany, or New France, or New England. But even New England isn't actually; Boston is not New London, and New Hampshire isn't Hampshire recreated on American soil. New York bears no resemblance to York. New Jersey is nothing like Jersey. Those are only names; the reality is that America is now alien.
As long as Europe tries to see the United States as an outgrowth of European culture spawned in the New World, as long as it looks in the mirror when it thinks it looks west, it will continue to be confused by us as we keep acting in ways they cannot explain."
