Happy Fourth!

I'm actually taking most of the day as a holiday, so there won't be any real posts of substance today (though I might catch up on the things I didn't have time to finish yesterday). If you want a little patriotic essay, Lileks is glad to oblige (scroll down to just past the video).

So have a great day. Remember what, and why, we celebrate, and enjoy the fireworks. And if they happen to get rained out in your neck of the woods, make your own display.

UPDATE: Here's a real display you can watch, set in part to Star Wars music. Hat tip: Don Surber.

Still my all-time favorite Fourth of July quote: "Do they have the Fourth of July in Switzerland?"--many, many students in the summer of '99, right before I left with the college jazz band to go play at the Montreux festival. (I reassured them that the calendars over there did not just jump from the 3rd to the 5th.) Incidentally, the second-most common question I was asked regarding that trip was, "Are you going to have to learn to speak Swedish?"