Happy Independence Day - 4th of July!

[Gorgon]

The redcoats will be back. Enjoy while you can.

[Blarghagh]

It's unification day! We sent the browncoats running!

 

Wait, wrong universe. Happy 4th all.

[HoonDing]

The redcoats will be back. Enjoy while you can.

[Malcador]

Wow, we went to war and threw out the Brits, a country nearly everyone in the colonies descended from and still had family in over a 3 pence per pound tax. Now consider what our current tax burden is. WTF happened?

Being a superpower isn't cheap, man.

 

Not bashing, just... puzzled.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Malcador

[Keyrock]

 

Never mind those new fangled pretender anthems.  Here's THE CLASSIC:

 

 

Off-topic, and certainly not meant to disturb y'all's Indepence Day celebrations but...

 

It really is ironic how that song with the lyrics...

 

"Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land

To go and kill the yellow man

 

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.

 

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man said "son if it was up to me"

Went down to see my V.A. man

He said "son, don't you understand""

 

... ended up seen by many as a tribute to the greatness of the USA.

 

Not bashing, just... puzzled.

 

That's precisely what makes it the perfect anthem.  It satisfies both the sheeple and those fed up with the bogus crap that goes on in the US of A.  So, whether someone's mindlessly 'Murica proud or "damn, ****'s kinda ****ed up" they can both sing the same song.  It's perfect.

Edited July 4, 2014 by Keyrock

[Keyrock]

Happy birthday!

The best part of that picture is that he's still got the beer in his hand.  That's dedication.

[ManifestedISO]

The stoic orange traffic cones ... "hey, watch out, there's mud here." 

 

I love that OP music video ... second to nada. Back to back world war champs! 

[Guard Dog]

 

Happy birthday!

The best part of that picture is that he's still got the beer in his hand.  That's dedication.

 

Yeah but it looks like the can in his hand is open. That's not dedication, it's just dumb. Unless he plans on finishing it once that dirty water gets in. Now THAT would be dedication!

[Keyrock]

 

 

Happy birthday!

The best part of that picture is that he's still got the beer in his hand.  That's dedication.

 

Yeah but it looks like the can in his hand is open. That's not dedication, it's just dumb. Unless he plans on finishing it once that dirty water gets in. Now THAT would be dedication!

 

That's exactly what I meant.

[Gorgon]

 

 

Never mind those new fangled pretender anthems.  Here's THE CLASSIC:

 

 

Off-topic, and certainly not meant to disturb y'all's Indepence Day celebrations but...

 

It really is ironic how that song with the lyrics...

 

"Got in a little hometown jam

So they put a rifle in my hand

Sent me off to a foreign land

To go and kill the yellow man

 

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.

Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.

 

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man said "son if it was up to me"

Went down to see my V.A. man

He said "son, don't you understand""

 

... ended up seen by many as a tribute to the greatness of the USA.

 

Not bashing, just... puzzled.

 

That's precisely what makes it the perfect anthem.  It satisfies both the sheeple and those fed up with the bogus crap that goes on in the US of A.  So, whether someone's mindlessly 'Murica proud or "damn, ****'s kinda ****ed up" they can both sing the same song.  It's perfect.

 

To be fair he mumbles his way through the words to the point that  everybody got the chorus, no one gets the rest.  It's like Seargent Pepper. 

[Monte Carlo]

Born in the USA, as others have pointed out, is all about interpretation.

 

It's also about Freedom of Speech. A draft-dodger like Springsteen can become a blue-collar hero and make millions (his daughter is a show-jumper, by the way) while he opines on the fate of veterans.

[Raithe]

 

[ManifestedISO]

Lee Greenwood's anthem trumps Born in the USA, anyway, god or no god.

[Nonek]

Commiserations.

[Keyrock]

 

Edited July 4, 2014 by Keyrock

[Gromnir]

am about to head out and celebrate. joyous felicitations to all fortunate enough to be American on this day. to the rest o' you... you has our heartfelt condolences.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Keyrock]

 

[Bryy]

Anyone doing anything exciting this year?

 

We are having some people over and watching fireworks

Cops kicked us and about fifty people out of the park. We all went to the Home Depot parking lot.

 

It was super lame.

[Raithe]

Oh, and just to round out the 4th of July Weekend some fun trivia...

 

 

 

Francis Scott Key lifted the tune for the "Star-Spangled Banner" from a drinking song written in 1770 for a London gentlemen's club. Reusing melodies was a pretty common musical practice in those wild pre-copyright protection days. The original song espoused the gentlemen's love of women and wine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the first century or so of American life, there was no formal "pledge of allegiance." But in 1892, in response to a sense of wavering patriotism, a magazine called The Youth's Companion charged one of its writers, minister Francis Bellamy, to write a Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. It was published on September 8, 1892, after which is quickly skyrocketed to popularity... as did sales for American flags in schools. Bellamy went on a "roadshow" around the country encouraging schools to adopt the pledge and install flags. (To his credit, it seems Bellamy's motives were more aligned with the magazine's love of country rather than hoping to make money off the flags.)

The pledge has undergone a few slight transformations over the years. Originally, instead of putting your right hand over your heart, you'd raise your hand in the classic Roman salute (yes, similar to the salute later adopted by the Nazis). Schoolchildren eventually stopped doing that salute for obvious reasons. Also, the words "of the United States of America" were added to make it clear to immigrants who they were pledging to and "under God" was added during the Red Scare.

 

 

 

 

 

Bald eagle screeches are actually pretty weak - the classic sound is actually a red-tailed hawk.

This bird actually has something else to be embarrassed about besides being bald. Instead of a shrieking "keyahhh," it's more like a run-of-the-mill "meep meep." When it comes to bird calls, the bald eagle is pretty basic. Connie Stranger, a bird expert, told NPR, "Unfortunately for the bald eagle, it has like a little cackling type of a laugh that's not really very impressive for the bird." Meep meep indeed.

 

 

 

 

 

Conventional folklore celebrates the brave settlers who traversed the wild American landscape. Thing is, the land had already been carefully cultivated by Native Americans, according to Charles Mann's book 1491. He writes that, "Rather than the thick, unbroken snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and oak."

Europeans in Ohio discovered woodlands that "resembled English parks -- they could drive carriages through the trees." In the middle of America, colonists found mass expanses of prairie, or "barrens," that Native Americans had cleared to use as "game farm" for the animals they hunted. As James W. Loewen notes in his book Lies My Teacher Told Me, New England colonists regularly set up camp on Native American cornfields rather than carve out new lands for themselves. Settling a country isn't so hard when somebody else has already done it for you.

 

 

 

 

[ShadySands]

I knew the pledge bit already and I think most people know some form of the last one but I do have to admit my knowledge of the bald eagle is lacking

[Leferd]

I suppose it's still better than "GOBBLE GOBBLE!" Ben Franklin wanted the National Bird to be the turkey after all.

[Gromnir]

I knew the pledge bit already and I think most people know some form of the last one but I do have to admit my knowledge of the bald eagle is lacking

is best not to believe everything you read. bald eagles sound like birds. they can scream loud enough to startle people, but their typical call is... hmmm... am trying to think o' something similar. a puppy yipping?  we got some bald eagles near where Gromnir lives, so am quite familiar with them. *chuckle* we had a girl friend we took hiking to see a bald eagle that were nesting near a lake close to our home. nest were goodly sized and in a tall pine. we had never gotten closer than about 50 meters to the bird(s) and the nest-- no reason to as tree were very tall and any closer would have us trying to stare up at the birds from underneath the nest. our "girlfriend" wanted eagle feathers. we pointed out that it were kinda illegal to take bald eagle feathers. "you're an indian. what good are you if you can't get some eagle feathers?" 

 

...

 

in our defense, she were extreme attractive. regardless, the reason for the law is mostly to prevent hunting and disruption o' nests. we saw no real danger to the birds, so we obliged. the ground cover 'round the tree, and most everywhere, were a rather dense straw-colored weed that rose to 'bout mid calf. this made the area a bit dangerous for snakes, so we were treading careful and looking for signs o' venomous reptiles more than feathers. even so, we did not at first recognize just how extensive the eagle's bone-yard were. 'bout 10 meters from the tree, we noticed a duck head... relative fresh. clearly where prey were plentiful, the eagles were not fastidious eaters. looking closer down 'mongst the weeds and it were obvious that in a 10-15 meter circumference 'round the tree, you literal could not step without stepping on evidence o' widespread eagle slaughter-- mostly duck parts, but also fur-covered bits that we assumed belonged to rodents o' varying sizes. 

 

we didn't find any feathers, and our girlfriend were less enthusiastic about searching after we pointed out the litter the eagles had left at the base o' the tree. that being said, it never occurred to us that the bald eagle's call were its defining characteristic. it sounds like a bird... or a puppy. 

 

as for charles mann's book, well, it has a self-evident premise that is worth consideration. there were indeed many thriving cultures that existed here in north america before columbus arrived. pretend like white settlers tamed an empty wilderness is a tad overblown. unfortunately, he kinda went further than necessary. mann, for reasons that seem unnecessary to us, took as a given that white diseases killed off something near 95% o' the indigenous populations. he also insisted that the land-bridge theories o' asian migration to the new world were bunk. dna testing has recently made the land-bridge theories a near certainty, and the 95% number were always... excessive.  there were major tribes o' native americans in ohio before the settlers arrived. the iroquios, delaware and shawnee had "considerable" presence in ohio (as well as others) but they weren't exactly horticulturalists who were beautifying the landscape before settlers arrived, and they didn't have anywhere near the numbers mann would wish.  as an aside, some o' those native americans were understandably a bit hostile towards the invaders. ohio alone is 'bout 112,000 sq km. england is 'bout 130,000 sq km in size. am not certain how mann could possibly imagine that populations that were largely hunter-gatherers were gonna sculpt the landscape to the degree he envisioned 

 

*shrug*

 

don't believe anything you read on the internet. do further research for yourself.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 5, 2014 by Gromnir

[ShadySands]

don't believe anything you read on the internet. do further research for yourself.

 

Always an excellent idea

 

As I said I have no real knowledge of bald eagles or most any birds if I'm being honest

[Gromnir]

 

don't believe anything you read on the internet. do further research for yourself.

 

Always an excellent idea

 

As I said I have no real knowledge of bald eagles or most any birds if I'm being honest

 

we know very little about birds. 

 

...

 

untrue. we does know a fair amount about birds, but such knowledge is largely limited to culinary aspects as 'posed to biology.  nevertheless, we has been relative close to bald eagles, so we can admit that they is impressive looking beasties. the females can be quite large too.  

 

that being said, we agree with teddy.

 

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited July 5, 2014 by Gromnir

[ManifestedISO]

I can't think of any more infamous last words than, 'she were extreme attractive'. Except maybe, 'no one can see us'.