Day: April 22, 2014

Happy Saint George's Day everyone! Grab a pint glass of your favorite English beer, or fix yourself a nice gin and tonic, and enjoy your pretend Englishness today - preferably with the aid of alcohol. There will be readings from Douglas Adams and a half-assed game of cricket later. Until today, Saint Georges Day hasn't really be celebrated around here and I mean to fix that. We are Americans and holidays are what we do. So let the word go forth - today we are all English.

Happy Earth Day. National Geographic gives us the history of Earth Day:

Earth Day began in 1970, when 20 million people across the United States—that's one in ten—rallied for increased protection of the environment. "It was really an eye-opening experience for me," Gina McCarthy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who was a self-described self-centered teenager during the first Earth Day rallies, told National Geographic. (See pictures: "The First Earth Day—Bell-Bottoms and Gas Masks.") "Not only were people trying to influence decisions on the Vietnam War," she recalled, "but they were beginning to really focus attention on issues like air pollution, the contamination they were seeing in the land, and the need for federal action."

In response to this, Richard Nixon actually did a good thing. Indeed, it may have been the last liberal/progressive thing a Republican President has done. They passed the Clean Air and Water Act and established the EPA.