Cracks appear on Willis Tower’s 103rd-story ledge — TODAY Been there, done that, took a picture: It was boring. You know what would make it more exciting? If they put up a sign that said ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK and three to five times a year the glass cracked and people plunged to their death. Is that too much? OK, switch it to one plunge every three to five years. Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Oceanside, CA
Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. — Will Durant
Estados Unidos de Converso
People I Thought Were Dead
Chuck Barris – TV host, “The Gong Show” Fidel Castro – Cuban dictator Richard Chamberlain – actor, “Dr. Kildare” Jules Feiffer – cartoonist, “The New Yorker” Rhonda Fleming – actress Pete Fountain – clarinetist Zsa Zsa Gabor – actress Dick Gregory – comedian Lee Iacocca – automobile manufacturer Dean Jones – actor Graham Kerr – The Galloping Gourmet Imelda Marcos – Philippine first lady “Little Richard” Penniman – rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Neil Simon – playwright, “The Odd Couple” Larry Storch – actor, “F-Troop” Rip Taylor – comedian Mel Tillis – country singer/songwriter Grant Tinker – TV executive, NBC Y. A. Tittle – Hall of Fame football player Claus von Bulow – acquitted attempted murder defendant Gene Wilder – actor, “Young Frankenstein” Chuck Yeager – test pilot Updates Chuck Barris – died 3/27/2017, age 87 Fidel Castro – died 11/25/2016, age 90 Richard Chamberlain – died 3/29/2025, age 90 Jules… Read more →
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. — Zen Proverb
More People I’m Sick Unto Death Of
Anyone who “speaks out,” “opens up,” “breaks their silence” or “sounds off.” Read more →
Aren’t They More or Less the Same Thing?
Via The Nation: Read more →
The $100 Tank of Gas
Good Causes
The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle, getting nowhere. — David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge Read more →
Aside
There are no solutions, there are only tradeoffs.
A Spectacularly Bad Job of Rigging the System
If you nevertheless believe that the capitalists have been busily rigging the system in their own interest, you’ve got to admit they’ve done a spectacularly bad job of it. How else to explain the quintuple taxation of capital income, where you can invest a dollar that was taxed the day you earned it, then pay corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes on the income it throws off? Surely any concern that the rich are calling the policy shots should melt away in the face of actual policy. — Steven Landsburg Read more →
Now We Can All Feel Good About Ourselves
Sheryl [Sandburg] wrote the homage or essay or ass-kissing-memo or whatever we are calling the Time 100 writings, about Beyonce. Sheryl talks about how Beyonce has changed the music industry. She’s a leader in song and dance and performance. But there’s exactly nothing surprising until Sheryl adds, “Beyonce does all this while being a full-time mother.” In that little sentence, Sandberg does something very big. Sandberg declares that you can have a full-time job and be a full-time mother. This is convenient. Because now Sandberg is a full-time mom who spends some days away from the kids signing autographs. And running Facebook. And Beyonce is a full-time mom who spends some days away from her daughter on billion-dollar concert tours. So basically anyone who gave birth is a full-time mom regardless of how much of their time is spent on kids. Now we can all feel good about ourselves regardless… Read more →
I’ve Solved the Problem of Economic Inequality
Instead of “economic inequality,” let’s call it “economic diversity.” Then it’s a good thing, right? Read more →
Small Obstinacies and a Few Proverbs
They have dragged out their life in stupor and semi-sleep, they have married hastily, they have made children at random. They have met other men in cafes, at weddings and funerals. Sometimes, caught in the tide, they have struggled against it without understanding what was happening to them. All that has happened around them has eluded them; long, obscure shapes, events from afar, brushed by them rapidly and when they turned to look all had vanished. And then, around forty, they christen their small obstinacies and a few proverbs with the name of experience, they begin to simulate slot machines: put a coin in the left hand slot and you get tales wrapped in silver paper, put a coin in the slot on the right and you get precious bits of advice that stick to your teeth like caramels. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea Read more →
The Unbearable Whiteness of Liberal Media
Via The American Prospect, a left-leaning publication: Read more →
Those Who Think Differently Are Disinvited
Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF, was scheduled to speak this coming Sunday at Smith College, but she withdrew her name after nearly 500 people signed a petition objecting to the policies of the IMF. Similar outcries foiled speaking engagements by former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at Rutgers University and human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis University, among several others. — WSJ.com As Nietzsche used to say, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” Read more →
That L.A. Sunshine
Also featuring the USC Marching Band horn section . . . Read more →
You know, the future’s a huge, gigantic place. I have no idea what’s going on out there, I’m just going to walk into it and see what happens. — Neil Young
Random Thoughts on Paying College Athletes
Where is the money going to come from? Most people seem to think that college athletic programs are big money makers. They aren’t. Despite the big revenue dollars associated with two sports — football and men’s basketball — 90 percent of Division I athletic programs, because of the much larger number of non-revenue sports, operate at a loss. They’re subsidized by the general fund of the university. Paying athletes would require additional dollars to be directed away from academic endeavors: hiring and paying professors, funding research, offering financial aid to non-athletes, etc. Title IX requires gender equity. You couldn’t just pay football players and men’s basketball players. Everyone would need to be paid equally in some sense, even in non-revenue sports. How much money are we talking about? Let’s say at a medium to large school, we have 500 to 1,000 student athletes and we’re going to pay… Read more →