Pun Salad

You say you're 230 years old? Wow, you don't look a day over 221!

• If you're looking for interesting July Fourth mythbusting and trivia, check Janice Brown's Cow Hampshire. She also recommends this short essay from on the Declaration, and Pun Salad seconds that in a totally enthusastic manner.

• Or, if you're in a more partisan mood, check out Patterico's analysis of the late Katherine Graham's admission:

  Her example was the disclosure, after the bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, that American intelligence was reading coded radio traffic between terrorist plotters in Syria and their overseers in Iran. The communications stopped, and five months later they struck again, destroying the Marine barracks in Beirut and killing 241 Americans.

  Comments Patterico: "So as the Fourth of July approaches, be proud that we live in a country where newspapers can make stupid decisions that can get us all killed."

  Myself, I have mixed feelings about that.

• Over at Cato@Liberty, Will Wilkinson makes the case for a Declaration of Cognitive Independence.

  So, this Independence Day, why not pick up a political book you know you'll disagree with. Or write a short essay giving the best argument you can think of for a position you find abhorrent. Or really listen to what your annoying brother-in-law thinks about the war at the family picnic. We could all be a little more rational, and a little more free, if only we really wanted to be. Dogmatic, whole-hearted commitment does feel good. But there is more to life than feeling good. There is truth, for one thing. And there is freedom—self-command. We're all jerked around by our own minds. But we can be jerked around less.

  Good advice. Although neither of my brothers-in-law is particularly annoying.

And if you do that at UNH's Cowell Stadium in Durham, New Hampshire, come on by and say hi. (UPDATE: Uncertain weather, may not happen.)