Florence Lawrence: The First Movie Star

Interesting fact: Prior to 1910, movies did not list the names of the cast members! Actors were just nameless faces on the screen . . .

Continue reading HW’s True Hollywood Stories

My son and I are enjoying a weekend nap . . .

“Thanks, Dad,” he says.

“What are you thanking me for?”

“Nothing really . . . just everything . . .”

John Maynard Keynes said in his masterful The General Theory: ‘Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.’ (Or, to put it in less elegant terms, lemmings as a class may be derided but never does an individual lemming get criticized.)

— Warren Buffett

[James] Dean died before he could fail, before he lost his hair or his boyish figure, before he grew up.

— Donald Spoto, Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean

One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best; that is known by those who want to be long loved.

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: ‘Die at the right time!’

— Ibid.

The creationists’ fondness for ‘gaps’ in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.

— Richard Dawkins, “Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant”

I’m 46 years old. I’m no longer young. I hate it when people ask how old I am, but it’s only going to get worse.

So far, I feel like I’m aging more gracefully than a lot of people — without the use of hair coloring, ponytails, earrings, sports cars, and cosmetic surgery.

I’m still married to my first wife.

To the dads of several of my son’s friends, I pose this question: If you are in fact a bald, middle-aged fat-ass, how long can you pretend to still be young and hip?

Slate summarizes an article from the American Journal of Cardiology (emphasis added):

Transcendental meditation may prevent death from hypertension. In a study, hypertensive elderly people who used TM were 23 percent to 30 percent less likely to die than those who relied on other relaxation methods or drugs.

What is the difference between transcendental meditation and regular meditation? It must be pretty good if it makes people “less likely to die.”

My son is looking over my résumé, including the part where it says I’ve worked with lots of different languages.

“You don’t know a lot of languages,” he says.

Continue reading I Know Lots of Different Languages

I remember being told less than two years ago that if you kill Osama bin Laden, thousands more bin Ladens will rise in his place. I didn’t think so myself; he looks like a one-of-a-kind guy to me, as does Saddam Hussein. But if people rise up to take his place they’ll be killed as well. There are more of us than there are of them, and we are smarter, cleverer and more tolerant; and we, too, believe that our culture and civilization mustn’t be offended, defamed, raped and defiled.

— Christopher Hitchens

Hi Mom!

Happy Mothers Day!

I know you were sad when I left, but I live with a loving family now, so you don’t have to worry about me.

Say hi to Dad.

Love, Lightning

P.S. Here is a picture of me with my owner.

I recently sold a house in Laguna for $3.5 million. It was on about 2,000 square feet of land, maybe a twentieth of an acre, and the house might cost about $500,000 if you wanted to replace it. So the land sold for something like $60 million an acre.

— Warren Buffett

. . . that I’d already noticed:

You know, nobody really cares what you have to say about anything.