I didn't have counties growing up!

Nutty, we still have county sherriffs.

All of the above is why the whole world should fit between Boston and New York. If you can't get to it in 4 hours and/or on an interconnected set of train and public transity systems, why bother??

It doesn't?

We were too poor for counties. We just had rocks.

My best friend, who's Canadian, laughed and laughed when I happened to mention that we elect the County Sheriff in these parts. She thought it sounded like something straight out of the old west.

Here there are counties, cities, towns, unincorporated areas, incorporated areas which aren't technically towns (it's weird). No snow so no worries about snow plows. Because of the unincoporated areas my city is the only town/city in the county. However lots of people live in unincoporated areas in the county, or just outside the city limits. Occasionally there's a push to incoporate more areas into the city but I think the las time that happened the area voted down joining the city.

I don't live in the city, I live in the county, but all my mail has the city's address on it. Plus in one direction I'm about a quarter of a mile from the city. In the other direction, I'm at least 5 miles. Well, if you are following the one road I live off of.

The city wasn't interested in a lot of the area between here and the city limit 6 or so miles up because it wasn't developed, but now it is so I'm sure in a few years there will be a push to expand the city limits.

Both the city police and county sheriffs offices are located in the city, in fact they used to be within walking distance of each other.

Word. All that unincorporated land. I had to move to Oregon before I learned there was such a thing as unincorporated land.

Until about 10 years ago, my parents lived in Unincorperated King County (southwest of Seattle by about 10 miles). IIRC, there's still a smidge of UKC about three miles from me, just on the Seattle border, and no-one wants to claim it, because it hasn't any sewer lines.

This is so weird to a Western NYer, as my area is filled with ________-_______ Town Line Roads. Like, I can think of abut 25 off the top of my head.

Next time a right wing fox news type accuses anti-war USrs of being unpatriotic:

[link]

Note that even after he gave out the information on national TV, Fox begged the Pentagon to let Geraldo stay. God forbid they should put the lives of our soldiers above ratings.

The Boswash megalopolis!!

Heh. I grew up on the north end of it, currently living on the south end of it. Two different worlds.

6 hours between cities - changes the angle on the American "love affair" with cars/oil/gasoline a bit, doesn't it?

meara!

Well, now I'll never know what Jim posted, but just as well. Looks like it would have given me the vapors!

Was caught peeking at CNN during a break at work and warned quickly by a co-worker to stay off the Net at the company I'm temping at. I feel so ill-informed and antisocial. All the more frustrating because I need to have it open for a database we use.

Merkuns have trouble with distances too, sometimes. My Dad used a travel a lot around NY State for work--to this day he can name the county seats of all 62 counties--and once he found himself sharing a Syracuse to NYC flight with an exotic creature--a Texan! Dad has the friendly gene and in chatting, found out that the guy wanted to drive from Boston to New York. Dad said that sounded great and started suggesting the prettiest, most historical routes. The Texan listened and then frowned. "Can I do all that? I only got three days and it's four whole states!"

(Boston to NYC is about 200 miles or so; driven straight through at the breakneck Mass Pike and I-95 speeds, it's about three and a half hours).

Counties in NYC are called boroughs and they're pretty important. There are entire states less populated than Brooklyn (ne Kings) the biggest one--there's four million people there. In New England, NSM. The lines are weird--Barnstable County is just Cape Cod, except for Gosnold which sticks out and is part of Dukes (Martha's Vineyard.) Nantucket is its own county. Hampden and Hampshire are both in Western MA just to confuse people. And the town of Brookline is in Norfolk County but due to annexations is surrounded by another county.

The United States are just that--a federalist system. It makes me laugh ruefully when unAmericans say that "America has the death penalty" or "America's gun laws are such and such" or "America spends x dollars on education" or whatever. All of those things are largely reserved to each state and can vary wildly depending on where you live. I've lived in two of the most populous states in the Union. Neither has the death penalty--Canada was still executing people 15 years after MA had stopped (1962 vs. 1947)--and both have strict (by US standards) gun laws. And there are about ten thousand school boards, mostly funded by local property taxes. The feds do give some money, of course, for things like school lunches and all, but it may surprise a few of you to learn that often it's the locals themselves who resist federal money, with the adage in mind "He who pays the piper calls the tune."

Great thing is that, if you're lucky or rich enough or poor and rootless enough, you often can move to a state you like and flit around until you find a belief system and lifestyle and climate to match your own tastes. Aside from the distances involved for most people, that's another reason Americans are attached to the idea of the road.

Interesting articles:

Translated from 'Der Speigel' via the NY Times. I knew about the German bar on using military force aboard, but didn't know they still had the draft. The Germans have a lot of thinking to do, evidently. Cute that they too seem to be tired of French gloating. And, although this is doubtless the work of a bunch of stupid teenage vandals, it's so not nice for the Brits.

From celebrated leftist columnist Nat Hentoff, "Why I Didn't March This Time", in The Village Voice of all places.

Special for FayJay! McDonald's Protests! When you look at a picture of Ronald McD on his back, his face burnt, and a swatstika drawn on his chest, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. OK, I laugh, but that's just me. Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned boycotts? Or DIY--that Mecca Cola thing sounds like a great idea if you want to make a point. Vote with your wallet and leave the Eeeeevil Companies alone--and unpatronized.

Yay for Jessica Lynch and the four Western reporters!

Moonlit, those essays were really something. Sounds like somebody's been reading Z-Mag.

As for Saddam, this whole touted "live speech"--whoops! Let's let Announcer Guy read it--thing today is very suspicious. To quote Kenneniah re Vern Schillinger in the last episode of OZ, "That mother******'s DEAD!" Let's hope so. But the snake might writhe without its head for a while longer, sadly.

Baby brother shipped out on Sunday morning. We got a call from him and he can't say where he is, but he's definitely not directly in harm's way, although that frontier does seem to move around a bit in this war. He works on the big cargo planes, which are now being loaded with relief supplies for the people. Let's hope they can fly into the country safely as soon as possible.

Edit: Oh yeah, Rumsfeld is a tactless idiot. At least Bush yanked his chain and told him to stay out of Frank's way. Dubya himself seems to have read at least one book--the biography of LBJ, so he's staying out of micromanaging the war. Only way it could be worse. It's about 9:00 in Iraq and a big battle seems to be starting right now. I feel torn between "Yikes" and "God help the civilians" and "Let's roll".