July 20th is chock full. In addition to the first Apollo landing, it’s also the day that Viking 1 landed on Mars, in 1976. And in the non-space category, it’s sixty-one years since the failed attempt on Hitler’s life (an alternate history of what would have happened had that succeeded might be interesting). Also, it’s been a dozen years since Vince Foster’s body was found in Fort Marcy Park, and his killer and the location where his demise occurred remain unknown.

Better than blogging? The mind boggles at the concept.

Better than blogging? The mind boggles at the concept.

Better than blogging? The mind boggles at the concept.

Have you ever gotten a call from a credit card company purporting to be from their security department asking to verify a charge? Asking to call a special number for the fraud/verification department? With the person who answers asking for personal identifying information such as mother’s maiden name?

I have multiple times. I ask the credit cards to authenticate. Do the credit card companies authenticate? No.

They tell customers never to give out such secret personal identifying information to strangers. Now a stranger calls and asks for it. Oops.

A credit card fraud department, should ask the card customers to call the main customer service number on the back of their cards and press a button for the fraud department.

Otherwise, the bank may find its fraud department outsourced. Without permission.

London has “won” the right to be bankrupted and disrupted by a bunch of athletes and their fans. I watched all of the cheering, and couldn’t figure out whether it was because they had gotten the bid, or because France had lost it. I have mixed feelings on the matter, because while having an Olympics is one of those things that I’d wish on my worst enemy, the French (particularly in Paris) seem much too unhappy about it for me to truly feel angst about their “loss.”

Unsurprisingly, at least one poster at Samizdata is quite unhappy, as he so eloquently expresses.

That was the title of a Fox News column I wrote three years ago. It’s still appropriate:

It is instructive, and educational (particularly for those who haven’t seen it since high-school civics class, if then) to read aloud Jefferson’s work of genius, the Declaration of Independence. In so doing, we are reminded of the principles on which this country was founded, the offenses committed against our ancestors by the English king, and the reasons that we forged our own nation.

Note also that this is the 142nd anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, and for better or worse, helped preserve the young nation that had begun (in Lincoln’s words) four score and seven years before.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

Professor Reynolds has some related thoughts.

That was the title of a Fox News column I wrote three years ago. It’s still appropriate:

It is instructive, and educational (particularly for those who haven’t seen it since high-school civics class, if then) to read aloud Jefferson’s work of genius, the Declaration of Independence. In so doing, we are reminded of the principles on which this country was founded, the offenses committed against our ancestors by the English king, and the reasons that we forged our own nation.

Note also that this is the 142nd anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, and for better or worse, helped preserve the young nation that had begun (in Lincoln’s words) four score and seven years before.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

Professor Reynolds has some related thoughts.

That was the title of a Fox News column I wrote three years ago. It’s still appropriate:

It is instructive, and educational (particularly for those who haven’t seen it since high-school civics class, if then) to read aloud Jefferson’s work of genius, the Declaration of Independence. In so doing, we are reminded of the principles on which this country was founded, the offenses committed against our ancestors by the English king, and the reasons that we forged our own nation.

Note also that this is the 142nd anniversary of the Union victory at Gettysburg, and the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, which gave the Union control of the Mississippi River and cut the Confederacy in half. It was the beginning of the end for the southern cause, and for better or worse, helped preserve the young nation that had begun (in Lincoln’s words) four score and seven years before.

[Update at 10:40 AM EDT]

Professor Reynolds has some related thoughts.

It’s easy to forget on a July 4th weekend that the signing of the Declaration of Independence is not the only profound event that we should commemorate on that day. One hundred and forty two years ago, in a little town in southeastern Pennsylvania, the back of the Confederacy was broken. Today is the anniversary of Pickett’s Charge, a disastrous event that represented a watershed–it ended the supremacy of Lee’s army of Northern Virginia and cost them the Battle of Gettysburg, and ultimately, combined with the fall of Vicksburg the next day to Grant, the war itself. Here‘s what I wrote two years ago on the one hundred and fortieth anniversary.

Yesterday, July 2nd, was the anniversary of two critical turning points in that battle, the day before the denoument on Cemetary Ridge–the last-minute defense of Little Round Top, and the suicidal charge of the Minnesotans that broke a gray advance. Powerline has more.