According to a flyer I picked up in a local convenience store, “a new California law makes it illegal to sell most flavored tobacco products, including vapes and menthol cigarettes — protecting our kids from a lifetime of deadly addiction.” If a kid wants to smoke and vapes are not available, won’t the kid just smoke regular cigarettes like we did as kids? Vapes are probably not good for your health but I have heard that they’re not as unhealthy as cigarettes. I’d rather see kids smoke cigarettes than vape anyway. Not my kid, but your kids and other people’s kids. Smoking is cool. Think Steve McQueen, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, etc. Vaping is, pardon the expression, gay. Still I’m appalled at the idea that individual rights can be violated by the state using its coercive apparatus in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection.… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: James Dean
Can You Die Too Soon?
Some media outlets are using the occasion of Heath Ledger‘s demise to publish lists of stars who died “too soon.” Does anyone really die too soon? Maybe everyone dies at exactly the right time. Maybe some people die too late. [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 James Dean died at age 24. Did he die too soon? Would he have been remembered as fondly if he’d lived to an old age? Better to be a delicious fruit snatched away in mid-bite than something one finds in the back of the refrigerator and says, “My god, we should have thrown this out a long time ago.” It’s never a bad career move to check out in your prime . . . Read more →
Dying at the Right Time
[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. Read more →
A Bruce Lee Christmas
I’ve been reading Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, in which he says that most athletes are not willing to drive themselves hard enough, and that only through extraordinary effort can one unlock the potential of the human body. Read more →