Footnote: The “pilot” (the guy throwing the plane) is Joe Ayoob, who replaced Aaron Rodgers as the quarterback at Cal in 2005.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wedcZp07raE]
World Record Paper Airplane Throw
Keeping Up With the Kennedys
Why doesn’t this guy have a reality show:
The son of Robert F. Kennedy has been charged with harassment and endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly clashing with two nurses who tried to stop him from taking his 2-day-old baby boy from a Westchester maternity unit, NBC New York has learned.
According to a Mount Kisco, N.Y. police report obtained by NBC New York, Douglas Kennedy, 44, took his baby from the newborn unit of Northern Westchester Hospital on Jan. 7, against the instructions of hospital staff who told him the infant needed to stay there. He faces misdemeanor charges. . . .
While holding the child in his right arm, Kennedy kicked [a nurse] in the pelvis with his right foot, knocking her backward onto the floor, police said.
As he did this, Kennedy fell onto the floor with the baby in his arms. Kennedy then got up and ran “down the stairs with the infant until he was stopped by security and escorted back to the infant’s room,” the police report said.
This comes on the heels of a new book by a JFK White House intern “revealing” that Douglas Kennedy’s Uncle Jack used to pimp the interns to service presidential aides as well as his own family members.
At least the author lived to tell the tale of her sordid encounter with the Kennedys. Not everyone was that lucky.
You might also remember Douglas’s brother David, who died of a drug overdose in 1984, or his brother Michael, another in the family’s long line of alcoholics, who died by skiing into a tree, but not before distinguishing himself with a statutory rape allegation involving the family’s 14-year-old babysitter.
I could go on with this but you get the point: thugs, pimps, alcoholics, drug addicts, rapists . . . maybe calling Teddy a murderer is a little strong, but he did kill that girl. It’s hard to imagine a more appalling bunch of degenerates.
The Kennedys make the Kardashians look like America’s royal family.
As the Crow Flies
Let me tell you something about crows: Sometimes they fly in a big circle. Sometimes they fly every which way.
Whoever invented “as the crow flies” to mean “in a straight line” must have never seen an actual crow . . .
See You in Hell
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE]
Next year I’m going to live tweet the Oscar In Memoriam segment so I can tell you which celebrities are in Hell.
See you at the movies!
Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him. — George Santayana
Dilbert: Anecdotes for Morons
David Foster Wallace’s Last House
Via Curbed LA on the occasion of what would have been DFW’s 50th birthday today.
What a depressing abode! I’m ready to drive out there right now and hang myself . . .
Things You Can and Can’t Do
Things You Can Do
Discriminate against Asians in college admissions.
Things You Can’t Do
Use “Chink in the Armor” as the headline for an article on the New York Knicks.
Behind Every Great Product
Excerpts from “Behind Every Great Product: The Role of the Product Manager” by Martin Cagan, Silicon Valley Product Group:
Behind every great product you will find a good product manager, in the sense we describe here. We have yet to see an exception to this rule.
Product ideas can come from any number of sources. Your job as product manager is to evaluate these product ideas and decide which product ideas are worth pursuing, and which are not.
The art of product management is to combine a deep understanding of your target customer’s needs and desires with the capabilities of your engineering team and the technologies they have to work with in order to come up with a product definition that is both compelling and achievable.
Of the hundreds of possible and even desirable features in the product, which are the few that are actually essential to the success of the product?
The owner of the requirements and the person ultimately responsible that those are the right requirements is the product manager.
Aside
Harvard Business Review: Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma
When there are many approaches possible, the shortest path to exceeding expectations rarely goes through meeting expectations. — Ward Cunningham
“Am I a Success or Failure?” Is Not a Very Useful Question
To be overly preoccupied with the future is to be inattentive toward the present where learning and growth take place. To walk around asking, “am I a success or a failure” is a silly question in the sense that the closest you can come to answer is to say, everyone is both a success and a failure.
Management by Getting Out of the Way
Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!
Sick Day
A full day of sleep, systematic overdose of cold medicines, and phlegm reduction techniques (like hocking and nose blowing) that tend to be disruptive to people when practiced non-stop in the workplace can really help in battling a tough cold.
It’s also a perfect excuse to close your eyes, curl up in a ball and hide from the world, which is my preferred leisure-time activity anyway . . .
Ask HW: How Can I Tell If My Nose Is Too Big?
Great question!
Try slamming shut the back hatch of a minivan. If the hatch nearly breaks your nose off the front of your face, as happened to one of my neighbors recently, then your nose is definitely too big.
Gary Carter, 1954-2012
Gary Carter obituary: Baseball Hall of Fame catcher dies at 57
Gary Carter and I went to the same high school — Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, CA.
My freshman yearbook has a picture of a Carter as a senior. Or another way to look at it is that Gary Carter’s senior yearbook has a picture of me as a freshman.
That’s all I have on this.
RIP Gary Carter.
Matt Who?
We Caught a Break at Chili’s Last Night
We got to Chili’s around 8 o’clock last night but it was still very crowded. People were waiting outside.
“How long is the wait?” I asked the hostess.
“About 25 minutes.”
I said to my posse, “I’d rather not wait 25 minutes but I could do it if I had to. What do you guys think?”
My wife said, “Put our name on the list and we’ll talk about it outside.”
“Paul — party of three.” The hostess gave me one of those devices that beep and light up when your table is ready.
At the same time, a gentleman came up to the desk to turn in his device. “We can’t wait anymore,” he said.
“Maybe you could give us his device,” I suggested after he left. “Where was he on the list?”
She went down the list of names. “Second,” she said. “Yeah, I could do that.”
“Thanks.”
My son said later, “You were just joking, right?”
“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think she would do it, but let that be a good lesson for you. If you ask for something, you might get it, but you’re not going to get it if you don’t ask.”
Here’s a Good Mandate
Remember, we’re supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who’s going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.
Here’s a good mandate: Let’s mandate that every time a government official says that the government is going to “help” some category of voter, he or she has to say who they are going to hurt in the same sentence. Because it has to be someone.
Dilbert: Arrogance in Meetings
