Ask Grandstander

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by skrable

Della wear new jersey?

Yeah, but check the price tag, look how much Egypt her.

[phenweigh]

Independence Day: An opportunity to display patriotism with fireworks displays or an excuse for obnoxious jerks to blow things up?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by phenweigh

Independence Day: An opportunity to display patriotism with fireworks displays or an excuse for obnoxious jerks to blow things up?

It's a good holiday, it celebrates something worth celebrating. Personally, I view the construction of the US Constitution as the bigger accomplishment, but I'm willing to fuse the birth of the American experiment into one festival and July the 4th works fine for that purpose.

The things I find so cool about this nation's birth are:

A) It was all about the recognition of the worth of the individual and the denial that anyone is born with divine rights to anything. Those are among the greatest ideas ever developed for governments.

B) That it was invented. The American government was the product of people gathering, discussing, thinking....in short, crafting a government on the basis of rationality rather than existing traditions. It wasn't..."Let's make the best of what we are stuck with"..it was "Let's start from nothing and have very good reasons for the somethings we bring into being."

So, even if it is just obnoxious drunks making noise for the purpose of making noise, they are doing so on an appropriate day.

[phenweigh]

Originally Posted by Grandstander

Personally, I view the construction of the US Constitution as the bigger accomplishment, ...

Instead of fireworks, the patriotic act would be to read ... nah, it would never catch on.

What is your least favorite holiday?

[Wiggen]

GS, do you think that because the American Revolution was a revolution from the top down, rather than from the bottom up as is the case with most revolutions, it is distinguishable from them - and if so, how?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by phenweigh

Instead of fireworks, the patriotic act would be to read ... nah, it would never catch on.

What is your least favorite holiday?

Labor Day. It goes back to when I was a kid and always associated Labor Day with the end of vacation and the start of school.

[vtred]

In John Adams biography (David Mccullough) he says that absolutely nothing much happened on July 4th, 1776, but July 2nd was the day that everyone would memorialize forever...wha happened to push the 2nd into oblivion??

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by Wiggen

GS, do you think that because the American Revolution was a revolution from the top down, rather than from the bottom up as is the case with most revolutions, it is distinguishable from them - and if so, how?

The American revolution is distinguished by the masking of the real causes in favor of emphasis on the more dramatic. Despite all the hyperbole Jefferson put into the Declaration, the King was not a tyrant of any sort, his behavior was fairly moderate under the British point of view and by the standards of monarchs of the day. That they believed that Americans should pay a part of the cost of the Brits liberating them from the threats of the French and the Indians, isn't stunningly unreasonable.

What happened was not that the Brits suddenly introduced a series of draconian measures, all they did was decide to enforce the Navigation Acts which had been on the books for more than a century before the troubles began. Before the crack down, an awful lot of Americans had grown prosperous as smugglers and now that prosperity was being threatened.

What I think was really behind the revolution, and it is something which crosses class lines, bottom and top, was that the new continent spawned a new people. Enough time had passed, enough born in America generations were in place, that the colonies were no longer truly British in character. Ben Franklin put it best when he observed that "...we are a new people, we require a new nation." It was that point, the transition from thinking of themselves as British but living in America, to thinking of themselves as Americans, that faciliatated the over reactions to the Stamp Act etc.

A secondary cause was not British tyrany, but British entanglements with the rest of the world. British policy in America was always going to be designed to promote the interests of England above anything else. Because Great Britain was awash with European enemies and had so many fingers in the international trading pie, policy toward America often reflected these concerns rather than simply American concerns. For example, the Brits wanted to keep the Spaniards bottled up west of the Mississippi, and the cheapest way to do that was to make sure that the Ohio Valley region remained full of hostile Indians who were bought off by the Brits. The Americans very much wanted to start their westward expansion and open up the Ohio Valley, but were blocked by Britain's interests in keeping Spain in check.

That...that sort of thing...that's really why America required a new nation...so that they could make policy based on their own interests rather than those of a nation 3000 miles across the Atlantic.

[perfectstormhits]

Wasn't that a hell of a finish at Daytona?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by perfectstormhits

Wasn't that a hell of a finish at Daytona?

Incredible! Amazing! Astonishing! Shocking! Heart Stopping, Pulse Pounding, Hair Standing On End, ripsnortin' hi fallootin' ding blastedess dab gummiest...words just can't describe it, well, except for the words that I just used to describe it.

So, this was automobile racing, right?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by vtred

In John Adams biography (David Mccullough) he says that absolutely nothing much happened on July 4th, 1776, but July 2nd was the day that everyone would memorialize forever...wha happened to push the 2nd into oblivion??

Although not signed that day by anyone other than Hancock, Congress did vote to adopt the Declaration of Independence on July the 4th. While it was the July 2nd vote that determined that the colonies were severing relations with Great Britain, for whatever reasons, the day of the formal announcement of that separation was seen as the nation's official birthday. I think that it is an okay choice. The United States did not vote to become independent, the Congress representing 13 separate colonies did. Two days later, it was The United States passing the declaration measure, the new nation's first official act.

Of course it remains my eccentric conviction that more of a fuss should be made over March 4th, which I think should be national Validation Day and a holiday of stature. It was on that day in 1801 that the head of a government, along with his ministers, appointees and party, voluntarily turned over the power to a group who had been promising to undo a lot of what the party in power had done. It wasn't done at gunpoint, it wasn't done because of a royal command, it was done because they asked the people who were being governed, or at least the largest, broadest cross section of people up to that time, if they wanted to stick with what they had or try something new. The will of the people was honored. The great experiment in democracy worked. Today we take such transferences of power for granted, back then, there was no precedent and no guarantee of good behavior from anyone.

[vtred]

Weekly "what if" fight match-up:

Homerun Derby vs. Slam Dunk Competition?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by vtred

Weekly "what if" fight match-up:

Homerun Derby vs. Slam Dunk Competition?

I think that the idea of the homerun derby is more exciting than the actual competition, I typically get bored and start paying only partial attention not too long after it starts. If someone gets on a real roll, I'll start watching again. The slam dunk contest on the other hand, features more variety and artistry, it's not everyone doing the same thing. If I was interested at all in basketball, I'd probably watch it.

[phenweigh]

Vodka drink matchup: Screwdriver or can opener?



Have you ever wondered how prune juice is made?

[Grandstander]

Originally Posted by phenweigh

Vodka drink matchup: Screwdriver or can opener?



Have you ever wondered how prune juice is made?

I'll go with the screwdriver on the grounds of knowing what it is. I've never heard of a drink called a can opener, I thought that was a type of dive. Is there also a drink called "pop top?" or "pull tab?"


As for how prune juice is made, I'm uncertain, but I think it has something to do with this woman.