If He’s Lost Letterman, He’s Lost America
At a time when painful unemployment numbers continue to bear down on the tattered economy, many are frustrated that the nation’s leader is enjoying another luxurious trip. On CBS’ “The Late Show” Tuesday night, David Letterman took a jab at the president, saying: “He’ll have plenty of time for vacations after his one term is up.”
Living in Beverly Hills
LOS ANGELES — Donald Bren’s two out-of-wedlock children testified Monday in the fraud case they brought against their billionaire father that they didn’t lack any material things growing up in Beverly Hills, but that his absence in their lives made them feel angry, hurt and abandoned.
Hey kids, that feeling — is called “life.”
You Have to Neglect Things
Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime. . . . I spent a good deal more of my time for some years trying to work a bit harder and I found, in fact, I could get more work done. I don’t like to say it in front of my wife, but I did sort of neglect her sometimes; I needed to study. You have to neglect things if you intend to get what you want done. There’s no question about this.
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Twitter: 2010-08-24
- RT @Jesus_M_Christ: How do I know Adam and Eve were white? When’s the last time you seen a black man give up a rib? #
- RT @eddiepepitone: Tweets of Nietzche’s wife- God isn’t as dead as our sex life! #
- RT @pattonoswalt: In the future, everyone will be obscure for fifteen minutes. #
I Would Like to Do First-Class Work
I have to get you to drop modesty and say to yourself, “Yes, I would like to do first-class work.” Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. You’re not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do great things by chance. Well, that’s a kind of dumb thing to say. I say, why shouldn’t you set out to do something significant. You don’t have to tell other people, but shouldn’t you say to yourself, “Yes, I would like to do something significant.”
Hostage Standoffs: Another Reason I Prefer to Just Stay Home
MANILA, Philippines — Commandos shot and killed a former policeman who was holding 15 tourists hostage aboard a bus in downtown Manila on Monday, authorities said.
Six of the hostages were killed, hospital officials said.
Pug Photos on Flickr
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What I’d Really Like, Dad, is to Borrow the Car Keys
My son walks into my room and says, “Dad, where are your car keys?”
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Gym,” he says, and starts to walk out of the room again.
“Wait a minute. Where are you going?”
“To the gym.”
“I got that, but you asked me a question and you’re walking out of the room before I answered it.”
“I thought you could give me the answer as I was walking away.”
“Well, I can’t because the keys are in my pocket.”
“Oh,” he says.
“See, that’s what threw me off,” I say, “is I’ve got the keys right here and you’re walking in the other direction.”
“I don’t have time to stand around,” he says.
“You don’t? Well, I don’t have time to figure out other people’s mystifying behavior.”
I Have No Fears
Except aging, death, poverty, diminished capacity, criticism, loss of love and ill health.
Twitter: 2010-08-21
- RT @capricecrane: “Spencer Pratt Writing Tell-All About Ex Heidi Montag.” Chapter One: She marries a douchebag. #
- RT @TheOnion: Obama To Create 17 New Jobs By Resigning And Finally Opening That Restaurant http://onion.com/a0V23H #
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Twitter: 2010-08-18
- My Twifficiency score is 36%. Whats yours? http://twifficiency.com/ #
Overheard at the Office
Twitter: 2010-08-17
- RT @jdickerson: Breaking News: Person unknown to you did something of dubious distinctIon or is no longer missing or married. #
- RT @joshcomers: "Everything’s going to be okay." (First lie to self of week). #
- RT @TheOnion: In Focus: Al-Jazeera Introduces 'Lighter Side Of The News' Segment http://onion.com/dknefU #
- RT @fredthompson: Obama warns GOP planning to privatize Soc Sec. Very upsetting for him. Interferes with the current plan of bankrupting it. #
Aggregating Intellect
A team can aggregate the intellects and elevate the nobility of the group as a whole to create a greatness of effect comparable to, or even surpassing, any individual genius.
Twitter: 2010-08-16
- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to retweet it. #
A Beautiful Mind
Princeton University
Short Books
My kid’s got a summer assignment for AP English — select and read two novels from a list of about 20.
I’ve been telling him since June that I’d be glad to go over the list with him and recommend books that he might enjoy reading but he’s put it off so long now that I’m limited to recommending short books that he might enjoy reading, and that leaves us with Ethan Frome, Wide Sargasso Sea and All the Pretty Horses.
He comes back from the bookstore with Frome and Sargasso, two books about men who marry crazy women.
He ruled out All the Pretty Horses because it’s 300 pages long and “I read the first sentence and it had like six adjectives.”
We Live Like Baboons but at Least We Have Television
Baboons who live in the African plains spend about one-third of their life sleeping, and when awake they divide their time between traveling, finding and eating food, and free leisure time–which basically consists in interacting, or grooming each other’s fur to pick out lice. . . . And as the historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie has shown, in thirteenth century French villages–which were among the most advanced in the world at the time — the most common leisure pursuit was still that of picking lice out of each other’s hair. Now, of course, we have television.
Twitter: 2010-08-13
- RT @alaindebotton: What is most offensive about militant atheists is their seeming lack of sympathy 4 desperation. They seem so… un-needy. #