No, I can safely say, with conscience clear, that I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I never asked him to make a concert tour, I never bought any of his music, I never encouraged him to do anything he ever did in any way whatsoever. My hands are completely clean. I just wish we could stop hearing about him.
[Update a while later]
You know the bit about how he claimed that he never had a childhood? It appeared to me that he had a childhood that lasted for five decades.
Don’t try this at home, kids — a chili contest sends two people to the hospital.
[Via Geek Press]
The true genius of Steve Jobs:
There are, fundamentally, two subspecies of entrepreneur. One starts from the present, and visualizes the next logical step from where things are now. This type figures out how to make something better, cheaper, or more widely available, and manages to clear the financial, regulatory, and market barriers to getting it into the marketplace. The other visualizes a different world, one in which things are different and better from the way they are now, and then figures out what path of evolution brings us to that world, and, as the last step, what is the least ambitious step possible that will move things toward that goal.
Spaceflight needs a Steve Jobs. It’s not clear yet whether Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos fit the mold. But someone or some group of someones has to create the vision of abundant affordable in-space infrastructure that will finally replace the Apollo model.
[Update a few minutes later]
The man who sold the future.
I agree with their coach. Number 12 is way too high, and it’s way too early to judge. They won’t really be tested until they go to East Lansing in a couple weeks. And they don’t have to play Wisconsin this year, unless it’s for the Big Tweleven championship. If they play and win that game, they’ll definitely deserve to be in the top ten. But I’m confident that even if they don’t win out, we won’t see the kind of late-season collapse that we did in the past couple years.
Reconsidering it.
“Oaf named Homer raises his dysfunctional family in a town named Springfield.”
It was an episode description…
Which is pretty all-encompassing. But hilarious.
Looks like the Lions are being tamed by the Vikings. 20-0 at the half. Hope they can sort it out in the locker room. It doesn’t look like the Detroit of pre-season or the first two games, but I’m just following the game track, so I don’t really know what’s going on. If I were “addicted to football,” of course (as one person stupidly fantasizes), I would have a sports subscription, or be at a sports bar, so I don’t ever miss a game, and be glued to the teevee, but I’m not, so I don’t.
[Update shortly after the second half begins]
Well, at least Detroit is on the board now. Touchdown.
[Update after the beginning of the fourth quarter]
Roaring back. Only down 20-17.
[Update with five minutes left]
They’re tied at twenty each. I suspect the end of this game is going to be grueling.
[Update with two and a half left]
The Lions have taken the lead finally, 23-20. All up to special teams and defense now. Win or lose, this doesn’t look like your father’s Detroit Lions. Another collapse for Minnesota though.
[Update after overtime win]
3 and 0, baby!
Rick Perry: the president’s Middle-East policy is naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous. It’s not like that distinguishes it from any of his other policies. And Marty Peretz says that Obama’s Middle East is in tatters.
Who could have guessed such a thing could happen when you put an ill-educated leftist academic with no real-world experience into the Oval Office?
[Update a few minutes later]
The Peretz piece really is a must-read:
I wish there would be a Palestinian state, not because there is actually a real Palestinian people. I’m not persuaded of that. And, of course, I don’t think that there is a Nigerian people which is why, when younger, I was an active supporter of Biafra, the would-be Ibo state, squashed by an indifferent world in behalf of the territorial integrity of, yes, Nigeria which is breaking apart before our eyes, in part because of the machinations of Muslim extremism. The world will some day have to come to grips with the fact that most governments are not really representative of their peoples. The whole notion of a country’s UN membership being a certificate of legitimacy is morally corrupt. UN membership is an admission ticket to the expensive blandishments of New York.
So I want a Palestine because I want Israelis not to have to burden themselves with an internal population that has neither the coherence of a nation nor a tradition of democratic norms. President Obama is enamored of the current Palestinian narrative, as false as it is self-pitying. This is a simple narrative and an over-simple projection into the future. It assumes that a 1949 map of the cease-fire lines—yes, of course, with appropriate but tiny land exchanges—will assure the peace. I do not think it assures anything except that Israel would be deflected from the art and science of building an ever freer society, a chore—if you’ll forgive me—it has shown some talents in doing. I do not know Obama’s head. Maybe nobody does. But his fervent and fervid clamoring for a simple Israeli route to an independent Palestine misled no people so much as the Palestinians. When he retreated from his formulae, which the PA assumed he could impose on Israel, they were already on an independence high. His somber entreaties could not bring them back to any semblance of reality.
This conundrum of a non-negotiated state for the Palestinians appeals to the ardent déclarateurs. It ignores the fact that free and responsible politics has never been a habit in the Arab world. Read me right: never. There is nothing in Palestinian history to have made the Arabs of Palestine an exception to this stubborn commonplace now being played out again in virtually every country in the region. A commitment is never a commitment. A border is never a border. A peace is never long-lasting. Turkey has now added its serious mischief to the scenario. Erdogan himself will now unravel Cairo’s peace with Jerusalem, as Erdogan has already locked the PA into phantom international politics.
And the president probably doesn’t even comprehend the implications.