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.
It’s never been one of my strengths. I always liked math and physics because they didn’t require much memorization — I could just rederive formulas on the fly. One of the reasons that I never seriously considered being a doctor was the amount of memorization required. And I think that for that profession in particular, memory is important, and apparently more so than intelligence or processing capability, because I’ve met doctors who I didn’t think were all that smart, and I don’t intrinsically respect them just because they’re doctors. At least not as much as they and society thinks I’m supposed to.
More thoughts from Rich Lowry:
The government can care for the needy; it can field a military and do much else besides. But it can’t dream. It can’t let its imagination run wild and pursue an individual vision with a ruthless determination. It can’t conjure new and profitable industries out of nothing.
Again, contrast NASA with SpaceX.
Don’t try this at home, kids — a chili contest sends two people to the hospital.
[Via Geek Press]
…never dies. It’s unfortunately a basic feature of human nature that requires logic to overcome, and it’s a battle for every generation.
Modern rocket engines are much safer than the historical examples he cites (e.g., XCOR has never had a hard start, let alone an explosion), and it makes no sense that a single accident would end the industry, any more than deaths on Everest stop people from climbing.
Over at Pajamas Media, I have some thoughts this morning on Steve Jobs and people who really change the world.
[Update a few minutes later]
The business of Apple was business, not politics.
[Update a while later]
Did Jobs die from quackery?
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the WSJ obit.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Lileks.
[Update a while later[
Michael Malone remembers Steve Jobs.
[Update a couple minutes later]
How his philosophy changed technology.
[Late morning update]
The Onion says we’re doomed.
[Update in the afternoon]
Rob Long: The right kind of tyrant.
From David Freddoso:
Those people you left stuck in traffic have a hard time paying their bills and rents and health insurance and mortgages. They worry about things like finding decent schools for their children to attend and making sure they don’t get fired at work, and fixing leaking roofs and chimneys.
You know what they don’t worry about, ever? Smashing patriarchy and capitalism.
So when your organizers go on television and say things like, “It’s revolution, not reform!” and they’re not joking, those words might give some of these narrow-minded people an unpleasant, October 1917 kind of feeling.
Read all.
[Late-morning update]
The pathology of capitalism, new and improved with trutherism.
…is over.
I think this is a good thing. A lot of people hate a la carte pricing, but when you bundle things, there are no signals as to what the real demand for various goods and services are. Also, I don’t like subsidizing other people for stuff that I don’t need.