The Economic Times here in Bangalore has a great obituary of Gore Vidal.
It includes an anecdote in which Vidal skewers Saul Bellow and his multiple wives, followed by the sentence
Never married himself, Gore . . .
Probably, like Liberace, just never found the right girl.
Even in an entire city full of motorists honking at one another, our driver this afternoon distinguished himself as the greatest horn blower since Horatio.
We were stopped in traffic at red lights, and he’d still sound the horn a couple of times just to stay limbered up . . .
When the world says “Give up,” hope whispers “Try it one more time.”
What the market does is to reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby to minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game. The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color-the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.
It is this feature of the market that we refer to when we say that the market provides economic freedom. But this characteristic also has implications that go far beyond the narrowly economic. Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated – a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates this source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement.
The cab drivers here are either highly motivated to get you to your destination or completely insane. Or possibly both.
“Roads” and “lanes” aren’t well-defined. A lane is any relatively flat piece of ground, paved or unpaved, that you can take possession of and defend with headlight flashing, horn honking and aggressive refusal to yield.
Thoughts I’ve had more than once:
Don’t kill yourself striving for 100% coverage of code with automated unit tests. But take a few minutes to increase your coverage by 1%.
Most likely, that means going from 0% to 1%. And that’s the biggest improvement of all.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke
I’ve got good news and bad news . . .
The good news is there’s a new TV network just for dogs called DOGTV!
The bad news is the only thing I like to watch on TV is hockey and DOGTV doesn’t have hockey. 🙁
— Lightning 
ideasspotter: 75 Startup Tools and Apps
Ed Ruscha has resigned as a MOCA trustee, as have John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie, leaving no artists on the museum’s board.
“Art” and “artist” are words that get tossed around pretty lightly. Ruscha‘s work — and the same goes for Baldessari and Kruger — consists of modifying photos and other images, often by writing words on them.
It’s like lolcats, minus the occasional wit.
Opie is a photographer whose work is less interesting than the average high school yearbook.
Yesterday, the image below was posted on the MOCA Facebook page. It’s an actual museum piece called “Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt).”
Yes, it looks like a pile of dirt, but if you click the image to enlarge it, you can see that it’s actually — a pile of dirt!
This is risk-taking art, the risk being that the cleaning crew may accidentally sweep it up and throw it in the garbage.
No doubt the four retiring geniuses can put forth a critical theory, based on “the process of creation,” to explain why a pile of dirt becomes “art” when placed within the walls of a museum. I say good riddance and take your dirt with you.
If we spend enough money on home decorations, maybe we’ll finally have a chance to be happy . . .
My boy is playing NBA 2K12 and points out that my Where’s Waldo shirt looks like the Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) throwback uniforms.
“Where’s John Wall-do?” he says.
Ha ha. I get my comeback opportunity a few minutes later when his game player passes to a teammate, who scores, but his player doesn’t get credit for an ssist.
“HOW CAN THAT BE ANYTHING BUT AN ASSIST FOR ME?!” he shouts in disbelief. “That’s bad programming.”
“Oh I doubt that,” I say. “The people who program video games are a lot smarter than the people who play them.”
I’m spending a couple of weeks in Bangalore at the end of the month. Travel is the most depressing thing in the world, beating out listening to other people talk about their travels.
Bangalore has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia. It’s like the Silicon Valley here in California, but with monkeys and malaria.
My boss has cautioned me to drink only the bottled water from the hotel, never the bottled water at the office.
“They refill the bottles at the office with their own water,” he said. “The hotel will give you two bottles a day, but I tipped the staff a dollar a day and they left extra bottles in my room. That’s a lot of money over there.”
I’m seriously thinking about tipping two dollars a day just to see what the heck happens . . .
My bizness is taking me to Bangalore, India, at the end of the month. I got vaccinated for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, polio, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis.
I’m now immune to everything, including your consultations.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbnJo88kuP8]
Richard Feynman: Cargo Cult Science — a commencement speech from 1974 in which Feynman explains in a clear, entertaining way what real science is all about.
6 Walmart Heirs Hold More Wealth Than 42% of Americans Combined
Everyone gets what they deserve, that’s my motto.
Of course the Walmart heirs have a lot of money. They’re fortunate enough to be the descendants of a man who got a $20,000 loan from his father-in-law, plus five grand he’d saved up in the army, bought a store, turned it via a lifetime of hard work into a retailing empire and left his estate to his family.
It’s a great American, Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches story. Meanwhile, 42 percent of Americans don’t work, don’t pay taxes and collect entitlement checks, and Mother Jones gives us the absolutely priceless information that they don’t have as much money as the Walmart heirs.
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in 1962. By 1980, Walmart had 276 stores, 21,000 employees and $1.248 billion in annual sales.
If, over the course of those 18 years — 1962-1980 — you or someone in your family had recognized a good thing when you saw it and bought some Walmart stock in 1980, every dollar you invested would now be worth . . . hang on, let me pull up Google Finance on my iPad . . . over $500! So $1,000 would get you $500,000 . . . $2,000 and you’d be a millionaire without working a day in your life.
Sam Walton is in heaven now. I’ll see the rest of you whiners in Hell . . .
“The calls not to politicize the tragedy should be starting in an hour, but by 1:30 p.m. tomorrow the issue will have been politicized. Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if the shooter’s high school classmate is interviewed within 45 minutes.”
“It’s like clockwork,” said Gerson, who sighed, shook his head, and walked away.
I know a lot about dogs. I can strike up a conversation with anyone, but only if they have a dog with them.
Stephen Covey, the author of the best-selling book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” died early Monday morning at 79 years old, according to The Associated Press.
Here are the seven habits:
One way to assess the value of advice is to ask, “Would anyone advise the opposite?” If the answer is no, then all you have are platitudes and truisms.
Let’s try it:
You get the idea.
By selling more than 25 million copies of this book, and becoming known as one of the leading business thinkers of his time, Covey revealed the vacuousness of the modern mind, although I don’t think that was his intention.
R.I.P. Stephen Covey
