Why won't anybody hire me?
Out on the internet there’s a photo taken in the 1950’s purportedly showing someone’s idea of what the home computer of the future would look like. The photo showed a huge, gray metal monstrosity, covering an entire wall, with dozens of buttons, dials and levers. Pictured also in the photo is the bespectacled egghead you’d presumably have to rent to run the thing.
Continue reading
Anwar al-Awlaki enjoying a smoke after breakfast
First, let me just say that I have absolutely, positively no problem with the way Americans Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn died last week. One minute they’re eating breakfast by the side of the road, the next they are countless crispy pieces littering the bleak Yemeni desert landscape. One hopes that as al-Awlaki was cramming the last date he would ever taste into his mouth, he heard the whine of the falling Hellfire missile and was able to put two and two together.
Continue reading
Eagles 31 Rams 13
In an earlier blog, I made the observation that the season would live and die on the offensive line and the young linebacker corps. So when the Rams defense bum rushed the Eagles on their first offensive series and Steven Jackson blew through the Eagles defense for a 47 yard TD on the Ram’s first offensive series, I was, to say the least worried.
Continue reading
My 9/11 remembrance actually begins on September 9th, 2001. Leslie and I were scheduled to take a long anticipated trip to Alaska. It had been a dream of hers and ever since I’d spent a day in Anchorage in the middle of winter on a layover back to Japan, I’d always wanted to go back there and explore further.
Continue reading
I must admit…I thought last night would never arrive. I say that in the literal, not the figurative sense. Once the lockout began in early March, I swung between anger and despondence. On one hand we had guys making millions of dollars a year playing a game complaining that they were victims of modern-day slavery. On the other, owners who commute to and from practice fields in private helicopters crying “poor”. I prepared myself for the possibility of no football this fall by simply ignoring all NFL related news for most of the summer. In the event that the two sides in the dispute couldn’t figure out how to divide a 9 billion dollar pie and keep the NFL juggernaut rolling, I’d simply stop caring.
Continue reading
My love of books borders on fetish. I love holding them, reading them, possessing them, just looking at them sitting on shelves. When a friend offers to lend me a book I politely refuse because I know I don’t have it in me to return it. One of the world’s most pleasurable smells is that of stack after stack of old, hardbound books in a large library. There are few things that give me more pleasure than reading a book.
Continue reading
The businessman as master of the universe is a relatively new phenomenon. From Roman times, when senators were restricted from commerce (but still made a lot of money through complicated, secret arrangements with those unfettered from such restrictions) through the middle ages, when trade and banking were sometimes considered an affront to God, those whose business is business were at best looked down upon and at worst demonized. It was only after governments (of all sorts) learned that killing the geese that lay the golden eggs was counterproductive, that economic opportunity and prosperity spread.
In ancient times, the Greeks staged plays which, in part, were cautionary tales. They showed how baser human traits of human nature, like hubris, greed and jealousy led men, inevitably, down the path of ruin. The modern Greek tragedy unfolding illustrates that, no matter what the consequences of ignorance, some lessons are never learned. For our own sake, I do hope we as a nation look to Europe and learn some things about the evils of world government, the culture of entitlement and easy money.
Continue reading
It is exceedingly rare that a victory for Barack Obama is a victory for the whole of the American people. The first of May was just such a day. Special operators and intelligence personnel carried death from the skies and delivered it to the doorstep of one Usama Bin Laden. I tip my hat first to the men who actually executed the mission and continue to tip it all the way up the chain of command. Well done, Mr. President. Very well done indeed.
Continue reading
