Back to the regular work-week today. As I mentioned last night, I did some work yesterday so I wouldn’t be too far behind, but today combines some of the Monday administrative stuff (I couldn’t go to the bank or post office yesterday, so I need to do that this morning) with the normal Tuesday load. Ah well, this too shall pass.
As for the weekend, not a ton to say about it. I spent a quiet Friday and Saturday evening at home, Sunday up at Mom’s and then at home, and didn’t really do much socializing or anything fun until last night. I think that was probably a pretty good outcome for the weekend, but I also think I need to find a shooting buddy: someone who occassionally thinks it’s a good idea to head up to the range and punch holes in paper for a couple hours on a weekend afternoon. Any readers interested?
I also spent some time yesterday cleaning up the archives around here. They’re now in a consistent format all the way back to the dawn of Dave’s Picks, which means I can start modifying the code that displays them without having to worry about handling more than one flavor of input. Not a big deal from your point of view probably, but there are some changes I’d like to make that will be a lot easier because of the time I spent on that yesterday.
Finally, I’ve got even more links for today. Maybe it’ll be too much for some folks, but what the heck. I had a whole weekend of surfing to build them up.
- Today begins the Northern League Playoffs. The Saint Paul Saints are on the road in Fargo, facing the Redhawks. After clinching their playoff spot, they dropped the remaining three of the regular season up in Winnipeg. I don’t like the sound of that three game skid, but it sounds as though there were playing reasonable baseball, so I’m not too worried. Meanwhile, in the other division, Kansas City and Schaumburg face each other. I think I’d rather face Schaumburg if the team gets that far, but that’s something to worry about next week, I guess.
- Over at Boing Boing, there’s a couple posts about Survival of the fittest mailbox and Fortified Mailboxes, part 2. I haven’t really thought about it for years, but I’ve seen two approaches that weren’t really mentioned for making rural mailboxes harder to destroy. When we lived in Monticello, our mailbox was “hardened” in two ways. The first was that there was a soft shoulder, leading down to the marshy fringes of
Mud Lake
. Anyone trying to run down the post for the mailbox was likely to end up in the ditch, and then have to sheepishly walk up to our house to ask my dad to drive the tractor down there to pull them out (yes, that happened once). The second was that the mailbox post was mounted on bearings, like a lazy-susan. With the proper slant (and periodic lubrication), the weight of the mailbox would make it hang over the road, but if someone hit the box, it would spin around out of the way. That kept it from getting destroyed by either vandals or snowplows. Worked pretty well, as I recall. [boing boing] - Want to know How Tyranny Came to America? Mostly by people ignoring the fact that the US Constitution enumerates powers the federal government can have, and none of those delegated powers are
Social Security, or Medicaid, or Medicare, or federal aid to education, or most of what are now miscalled ‘civil rights,’ or countless public works projects, or equally countless regulations of business, large and small, or the space program, or farm subsidies, or research grants, or subsidies to the arts and humanities, or ….well, you name it, chances are it’s unconstitutional.
Taxes are higher than when we were under British rule and people were throwing tea into Boston Harbor.The U.S. Constitution serves the same function as the British royal family: it offers a comforting symbol of tradition and continuity, thereby masking a radical change in the actual system of power.
And why did it happen? Because the Supreme Court quit acting as a check on Federal power, and started assisting in its growth when it started striking down state laws as unconstitutional shortly after the Civil War, ignoring the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.Taken seriously, the Constitution would pose a serious threat to our form of government.
[endwar] - And on a lighter note, for those who’ve scrolled past my ramblings, here’s a fun little recipe for Twinkie Sushi. It’s like food, only more artificial! [jwz]