Thanksgiving Niagra Falls Style

When Steve and I left Cape Cod on Wednesday, we went home via Niagra Falls.
Nothing like Thanksgiving in Canada! It was dark when we arrived, but the falls are lit at night so we walked down the hill to take a look. This is the American Falls.

This is the Horseshoe Falls.

We stayed on the 31st floor of a 51 story Hilton. This is the view out our window to the left. That is the US in the distance.

And to the right. The casino is where we ate our Thanksgiving meal. This is not the first time we've eaten Thanksgiving at a casino. (I think we did it in 2007 in Phoenix). The best thing about this one, Ontario is a non smoking province. Yeah!

I'm a little turkey

Thanksgiving Cape Cod Style

We made a quick trip to the Cape to see the kids and grandkids. While there we managed to sneak in an early Thanksgiving meal. Obviously it was delicious! Amber cooked it! She also made a homemade apple pie for Steve's birthday.

A post with pictures

We took the girls on a hike today. Catherine wanted to take a picture of us. I think she did a pretty good job.

This is what the end of our hike looked like. Two tired little girls that wanted Grandpa to carry them.

Michael and Mary got tired of helping Amber cook. They decided to take a snack break.

More Facebook Comments

Facebook has clearly become that rarest of software animals: a bonafide killer app. Meaning it has changed how computers are used on a broad basis. People spend hours in it, and now certain phones are being marketed essentially as Facebook devices.

I expect social scientists to form a new branch of study based on Zuckerberg's creation. One potential topic: does Facebook complement one's friendships, or supplant them? Or: how our resistance to personal privacy is being eroded away.

One entrepreneur is delivering a service ("Social Guard", I believe it's called) which performs background checks on one's community of online friends - the idea being to ferret out the imposters and predators who falsely represent themselves as something else.

If dangerous predators lurk among it's users, Facebook gives a whole new meaning to the term "killer app".

Aunt Jena is so sad

The girls looked at Aunt Jena's blog and saw her fishing with Uncle Tommy. Mary was very concerned that Aunt Jena didn't catch any fish!

DWTS and Political Science 101

Most people erroneously believe the United States is a democracy. If that were so, every bill would need to be subjected to a nation-wide popular vote. We would spend every minute of every day reading bills and voting on them, and as the Founding Fathers observed, voting ourselves direct payments from the federal treasury!

Our form of government is actually republican. We are represented by others who vote for us. Even their votes are not democratic: the distribution of power in the Senate does not match the population, the President can veto decisions, and the courts can disallow votes based on constitutionality (decided by judges who are appointed, not elected via popular vote). Another example would be presidential elections in which states essentially vote based on their population weight. Ii's possible for a candidate to lose the popular vote, but win in a landslide in this winner-take-all state scenario.

Liberals tend to gravitate toward the popular vote due to its perceived fairness. Conservatives tend to support the republican mechanisms due to the original intent of the constitution.

This is where Dancing with the Stars comes in ...

The show has been controversial this year due to the unexpected results of the show's popular voting feature. Bristol Palin, for example, has survived longer than most feel is fair due to her good showing with the popular vote.

Here's the irony: liberals love the popular vote, but in this case, the fallacies of this approach are benefitting a conservative family. Should we admit that pure democracy has some margin of error? If we do, can we also concede the possibility that the popular vote in the last presidential election may also have been an anomaly?