I get very, very frustrated when I . . . hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger.

Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective.

— Rudy Giuliani

. . . but something I just learned is that area codes were originally assigned according to the population density of the city or region, with the lowest numbers going to the most populous areas. Keeping in mind that phones in those days had rotary dials, and higher numbers therefore took longer to dial, the thinking was that areas with the most people should be the easiest to call.

That’s why New York City got area code 212, Chicago got 312, Los Angeles got 213, etc. (Zero actually counts as a high number — a 10, essentially — because it takes the longest to dial.)

Conversely, the area code for the entire state of Alaska was (and still is) 907.

I ponied up the 50 bucks to join the XNA Creators Club and so far I’ve been able to code and deploy some rudimentary 2-D games on our Xbox 360.

“Can you program a football game?” my son asks.

“No . . . first of all, I’m just learning this stuff, and second, you can’t expect one person to duplicate the efforts of dozens of people over a period of years.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of The 300?” he shouts.

“Yeah. They all died.”

“But they gave a valiant effort!“

After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest [Dick] Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of ‘72?

— George McGovern

Wow, that is a provocative question. It really made us wonder if we’ve been wrong all these years. Accordingly, we went back and checked. Turns out the real loser was McGovern, just as we had thought!

— Best of the Web Today

Pictures from my son’s 8th grade trip to Washington, DC.

Maybe you’ve noticed that most software sucks.

Maybe you’ve wondered — if you work in the software business — why our aspirations are so low compared with the possibilities of our profession.

Maybe you’ve wondered what, if anything, could be done about this.

Here’s a fun story about the benefits of really holding people accountable for the shoddy quality of their work.

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote about King Xerxes, who in the 5th Century BC ordered a bridge of boats to be built across the Hellespont:

A moderate gale destroyed the flimsy structure, and the King, thinking that to publicly rebuke the contractors might have a good effect on the next set, called them out before the army and had them beheaded. In the next ten minutes he let a new contract for the bridge. It has been observed by ancient writers that the second bridge was a very good bridge.

Res ipsa loquitor.

My boy repeats something he just heard on the Angels-Twins telecast: “The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.”

Sensing a teaching moment, I ask him, “Do you know who Hubert H. Humphrey is?”

“No,” he says. “But you do, so it’s all right.”

…Let me get this straight, we sent how many tanks and planes over there, it?s already been one full day and they still haven’t made it off of those beaches.

Give me a break. How much money is being spent on that army again? Well I know I won’t be cheering for the abolition of fascism in Europe if this continues…

— Posted on June 7, 1944

The West reveals here a hatred of itself, which is strange and can be only considered pathological; the West is laudably trying to open itself, full of understanding, to external values, but it no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure.

— Pope Benedict XIV, “If Europe hates itself”

Absolute moral certitude through the ages

I read today where someone called the new pope, Benedict XVI, “a tremendous intellect” because he speaks 10 languages and has written 40 books.

I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s say it is. What are the 40 books about? His unquestioned acceptance of everything he’s ever been told?

Continue reading Frequently Wrong But Never in Doubt

A little-known sketch of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland . . .

My boy is doing a school report on Patrick Henry. Something I didn’t know about Patrick Henry is that his wife went insane in 1771 and was subsequently kept in a straitjacket in the basement of the family home.

Continue reading Patrick Henry’s Crazy Wife in the Basement

Hammerin’ Hank Hammurabi here, bringing you today’s Peloponnesian League matchup between the Akkadians and the Assyrians. Sargon the Great gives the Assyrians some much-needed leadership . . .

And his hair was perfect!

I found this amongst some pocket change . . . a new entry in the Lewis and Clark Westward Journey nickel series. According to the U.S. Mint web site, the design depicts a 55-foot keelboat with Captains Lewis and Clark in full uniform in the bow.

I can make this out on the enlarged image, but on an actual nickel — maybe it’s my failing eyesight, but the only feature I can see clearly is the sail, which to me looks just like one of those brontosaurus burgers that tips over the Flintstones’ car at the drive-in . . .

. . . everything can be taken from a man except one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

— Anne Frank

On this date — September 2 — in 1944, Anne Frank was among 1,019 people on the 68th and last train from Holland to Auschwitz. Anne and others hiding with her had been betrayed and captured a month before and held in the Westerbork detention center.

Continue reading The Blog of Anne Frank

On this date in 1884, the cornerstone was laid for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. (We got the statue for free — the pedestal we had to pay for.)

One of the most historic fundraisers was the Pedestal Art Loan Exhibition, to which Walt Whitman, Mark Twain and others donated manuscripts for auction.

Emma Lazarus donated a poem called “The New Colossus,” which sold for $1,500, but was mostly forgotten until 1945, when it was inscribed over the main entrance at the base of the statue.

Continue reading This Date in History

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defense of western countries. . . . Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough.

— George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism,” May 1945

The National World War II Memorial opened today in Washington, D.C.

My dad served in World War II. He’d be so proud and excited if he hadn’t been dead for 25 years.

Continue reading World War II Memorial Opens

On this date in 1775, the first shots in the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington and Concord . . .

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, are sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heros dare
To die and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson