Things I am thankful for today:
- to have been born into the United States, a country that has been blessed with tremendous natural resources, mineral, animal, vegetable, and scenic, as well as remarkable tolerance for people of different races and beliefs
- the American Indians, who welcomed European settlers into this country
- family members who remain alive and healthy
- close friendships with people whom I met as far back as the 1970s
- the friendship of dogs, especially Samoyeds, over the years
- to have spent the early years of my career during a time of tremendous economic prosperity (1980s and 1990s)
- the hard work of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians since the Enlightenment who have made our comfortable modern lifestyle possible
- to have seen my peculiar passion, the Internet, grow from a research curiosity when I started using it in 1976 to a worldwide utility
- to have lived in the age of photography, which has enabled almost everyone to capture and record the world around us
- to have lived in a time when humans can realize a dream that may date back many thousands of years: to fly (and to have been born into a country where almost anyone can get into an affordable aircraft and poke around curiously at low altitudes over most places)
And now off to friend’s farm in Vermont. He says “my aunts cook the Thanksgiving meal to a reference standard.” Weather at KVSF is overcast 600; the instrument approach minimums are 1000′. This will be a trip in a car, another product of recent years for which I am grateful.
I’ve flown IFR in and out of KVSF. Lots of hills. Good decision.
You’re thankful for “the hard work of engineers, scientists, and mathematicians since the Enlightenment who have made our comfortable modern lifestyle possible.” I like your list & the spirit behind it, Phil. My MN Norsk farmer ancestors — and not a few economists — believed it was the work and output of farmers (with one U.S. farmer for every Americans) that have made it all possible. I guess it’s the old “myth of central position.” Perhaps you’re right and they, too, were right, since those farmers were engaged in applied science of sorts & benefited from all sorts of inventions — and also benefited from free (and rich) Homestead Law land & the genetic liberation provided them by American freedom and tolerance.
I’m thankful for, among other things, Phil G’s book — Phil & Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing — with the great large format Polaroid dog pics by Harvey Silverglate’s wife, a book I used to help plan my first campaign blog in 2000 and my first law blog in 2000.
What about an IQ that puts you in the right end of the Gaussian curve? Choose your parents carefully 🙂
Guido: That was the main point of the (in)famous book, The Bell Curve. We live in the only age where having a high IQ is very important. In the Middle Ages, a high IQ peasant was still a peasant and a low IQ nobleman still nudged the peasants into the ditch while he rode by on his horse. Of course, my high childhood IQ is a distant memory now, frittered away with years of watching TV, hanging out with pilots, reading about Drew Peterson in People magazine, etc.