Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    BTW PZ, I have ordered a couple of books for you C/O the university:

    Interference – biological science fiction by Sue Burke,
    and the manga Yokohama Shopping Log, in a genre intended to be soothing for the reader (Iyashikei, literally ‘healing’). It follows the few remaining humans and androids during the twilight of the world, with a rather pleasant, calm ambience.
    It was either that, or ‘Aria The Animation’ (another famous iyashikei) about singing gondoliers in a coastal town on a terraformed Mars.
    I think you needed something soothing.

    “Athena’s song” .https://youtube.com/watch?v=PvBjGgzhfP0

  2. larpar says

    I have to spend Labor Day laboring. Our trash pick up service went bankrupt or something. No pick up for the last three weeks and sporadic service before that. Can’t get ahold of anybody. The local TV station and newspaper couldn’t reach anyone for a statement. So today I have to get all the trash out to the curb for the new service to pick up tomorrow morning.

  3. robro says

    Sounds like anti-labor day. You go, dawg. Wish I could join the anti-labor party but first I have a 4+ hour trek to take my significant other to the airport to fly to London. After I get home this evening I have to start packing up the kitchen for the redo starting Wednesday. No rest for the wicked, I guess, and I guess I was pretty wicked at some point.

    Does Labor Day recognize the labor of the folks who went through labor to labor for 20 years or so to raise a child? That’s some hard labor from what I’ve seen.

  4. Akira MacKenzie says

    Going to spend the day sitting on the patio, drinking diet root beer and painting my battlemech figures while listening to my podcasts.

  5. birgerjohansson says

    Our labour* day (British spelling) is May 1st. Spring has usually not advanced far enough for many outdoor activities unless you live in the extreme south (aka Stockholm).
    Right now I am enjoying a Lincoln Rhyme detective story.
    Also, fuck the Swedish xenophobe party. I am saving celebrations for after the election September 13th.

    In addition, the 25th anniversary of Dubya ignoring two separate terror warnings from NSA is coming up. I suggest you celebrate it by kicking the @☆¿° in the crotch.

  6. Silentbob says

    @ 3 robro

    That would be Mother’s day dude. But, poetically, you do not get a day off.
    X-D

  7. StevoR says

    I’m going to hop into bed and read a book or two.

    Which book(s) and would you recommend it / them?

  9. imback says

    @5: The current US Labor Day was chosen to forestall celebrating May 1, the anniversary of the Chicago Haymarket riots in 1886. From https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2004/09/why-do-we-get-labor-day-off.html

    For a while, Labor Day had stiff competition from May 1. In 1884, the American Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions declared that, by May 1, 1886, the eight-hour workday should be in effect across the land. When legislators and employers failed to comply in time, the result was a general strike and the bloody Haymarket Riot in Chicago, which caused the deaths of eight police officers and led to the hangings of four labor activists.

    Though May 1 became an important day for Socialists and Communists, state governments and less radical labor leaders feared that the date was too emotionally charged. In 1894, after President Grover Cleveland ordered the brutal suppression of the Pullman Strike, he realized that he had to do something to curry favor with the labor movement, which viewed him with contempt. Worried that a May 1 holiday would encourage rabble-rousing in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot, he followed the lead of several states and made the first Monday in September a federal holiday in honor of the workingman. The political maneuver didn’t achieve its desired effect, however: Cleveland lost the Democratic Party’s 1896 presidential nomination to William Jennings Bryan.

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