JUST READING
I’ve always heard about the conflict of the Federalists & Anti-Federalists but never came across much about it. Finally got it together and read LIBERTY’S BLUEPRINT by M. Meyerson, who clarifies it nicely. During the time it took to write & ratify the Constitution, anonymous authors wrote about eighty essays that were published in the New York newspaper weekly. Signed Publius, it was mostly John Adams & Alexander Hamilton who wrote them. Naturally, an antagonist soon appeared under the name of Brutus, to take the other side of the arguments. The biggest nut the framers of the Constitution wrestled with was mostly how much power was to be given to the individual states versus the power of the Federal government. Madison’s in depth study of all previous governments was a great asset to the essays and helped the statesmen understand the pitfalls of each. Some of the questions were pretty basic, like should we have a president? Who would elect him? Surprisingly, they were not elected by popular vote originally, but by one of the houses. I guess it took years to get it all finished. They spent a lot of time on the power of special interests, but couldn’t believe that would become our method of government.
Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob. (Anonymous).
HYPOTHESIS
Also just finished a DVD of Smithsonian about the history of earth. It’s kind of interesting to note that each stage of development kind of correspond to the current stage of most of the other planets of our Solar System. What I’m thinking here is our search for life on other planets even outside our own system has to coincide with a very narrow time frame in the development of a planet. In other words, our planet is 4.5 Billion years old, yet we only became cognoscent of the possibility of other cultures in the last 50 years. If our planet continues it’s evolution (After all, we all are destined to die, even planets) it will destruct in a few billion more years. Maybe human life forms may only be around for another several hundred years and then die off. You can see the very small window of opportunity for us to emit a signal during the entire billions of years of a planet’s life. For two planets to coincide at their apogee is a far probability.
HAIKU (JL2)
Look! How did my lawn get covered with diamonds?
Oh. It’s only snow crystals in morning sunlight.
THE GARAGE DILEMMA
The great American garage has always been a big problem for me and I usually try to convince my clients to use a carport, for several reasons. One, a modern car is actually waterproof, unlike the buggies of the past. Especially in our climate where we don’t have to shovel snow off it in the mornings. Two, sure as hell, the garage will be filled up with junk of some kind and there you’ve lost your car space. A recent study pointed out that 50% of Americans can’t park in their garages, and this was a National study (Snow country). Told you so! The auto is an integral part of our lives, so why not make it easy to access? Third, there is no third. A carport just gives a more open and light feeling in a house. In some instances on small narrow lots, I’ve even had to use the carport as an entry to the house. In my condo, only three of us out of 28 can use the garage.
SHOPPING
I recently went shopping for pants, which I do about every ten years. My last pair of Levi’s were marked “Relaxed Fit”. Now what in hell does that mean? It Wasn’t until I got my new jeans (Regular Fit) that I realized that “Relaxed Fit “ meant “Fatty Fit”. Can’t we just be a bit more honest and call it like it is? How about “Skinny Ass Fit”? “Kind of Normal Fit”, or “Old Wide Ass Fit”?
THREE MILES
There is a statue in the square of Delft, Holland of Hugo Grotius, a lawyer around 1600. He is famous for his writings on international law, among other things. Most of what we currently use today was based on his thoughts of it. One item that might interest you is his concept of International waters being three miles from shore. The reason for this is at the time, that was as far as a cannon could fire in those days to defend their country.
HATE REVISITED
My wife just came across my original Hate List of only about five items. But one of them is still driving me nuts. It’s that almost everyone in the US ends a telephone conversation with “Bye Bye”. Now where in hell did that come from? Are we all infants and still need coddling? You’ll never be able to stop yourself from doing it but just begin
noting how many people do it. Or more of a challenge, see how many people don’t say “Bye Bye”.
Bye Bye.
