...and another thing about Europe:

A European sorting his nuts and bolts and wrenches is engaging in only the most rudimentary forms of thought -- eight millimeters comes before nine millimeters so this goes here. (Places wrench appropriately.) Indeed, Diane Fossey's buddies could do as well.

An American engaged in rationalizing his workshop is a tour de force of complex calculation. Lessee, the 5/8 is here so I need a the 11/16 on the next peg, no, wait, i probably better save room for the 21/32 I use on the Kubota thurble bypass and....

Maybe that's why as kids we could always pick up a little change following Brit sports car down the road, collecting parts.

It's little wonder that dullard Europe is defined as that place which screws things up badly every generation or two and whistles for Uncle to come on across the Atlantic and pull its metric nuts out of the fire.

I am typing this with greasy fingers, by jingo.

"Kennedy to Lie in Repose in Boston..."

No, actually. Not in Boston. Not anywhere else. Nor, for that matter, in any bodily position.

(It's a current AP headline on a piece that draws on Lincolnesque imagery to further sanctify a Massachusetts politician who recently died.)

Sen. Ted Kennedy, RIP

May we memorialize and inter Senator Kennedy with more dispatch and greater dignity than is usual when celebrities die. In due course, when the ceremonies are behind us, will come the time for objective evaluation of the man's actual accomplishments and sins. Meanwhile, we can do worse than try to observe Mark Twain's etiquette for funerals.

"Do not criticize the person in whose honor the entertainment is given...

"Listen, with as intense an expression of attention as you can command, to the official statement of the character and history of the person in whose honor the entertainment is given; and if these statistics should seem to fail to tally with the facts, in places, do not nudge your neighbor, or press your foot upon his toes, or manifest, by any other sign, your awareness that taffy is being distributed.

"If the official hopes expressed concerning the person in whose honor the entertainment is given are known by you to be oversized, let it pass -- do not interrupt...

"Do not bring your dog."

You mean I can't have the Kimber right this second?

I credit the peelegs over on one of the sillier Yahoo message boards for alerting us to this encouraging report on the tempering of instant gratification.

The word "layaway" is emerging from the linguistic graveyard, and those of us who've been around for a while can remember our parents in the pre-credit-card days putting things on "layaway." You fork over part of the cost and the store holds your item until you pay it off. This frustrates the infantile demand to get what you want when you want it, but it also yields the sublime grown-up satisfaction of owning things which are paid for before they get inside your house.

Course, the PAbs over at the ACG board find all this frightening. Credit, even if used stupidly a la Bush and Obama, increases the value of their investments which depends on easy credit and circulating pieces of paper which they can, for a time, pretend to be money.