“At the beginning of democracy, a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. After a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote..”
He signed it “Uncle Sam”
And if you have NO IDEA how brilliant he was…
….”There are about 100,000 really smart people in America and they run the place”
Which explains this little gem.
In the mornings store staffers at the Apple Store use an iPhone leveling app called “Simply Angle” to precisely set each laptop’s screen at 70°—purposely an “off” angle that is not ideal for viewing, so that a customer will touch the screen to adjust it.
That simple act—reaching out to touch, and manipulate, the object with one’s own hands—is meant to kick off a relationship with the object. You touch it. You physically come into contact with it. And eventually, the thinking goes, when you see how easy and pleasant it is to use, you will want to own it.
Some of the other 311,491,917 (Census 2011, less the 100,000 really smart ones) come up with stuff like this:
One customer, a 19-year-old college student and U.S. citizen, says she went with her uncle to the Apple store to buy an iPad, where a store employee overheard them speaking a non-English language and asked them about it.
“When we said ‘Farsi, I’m from Iran,’ he said, ‘I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,'”
Kindje van God – Spinvis – 2 Meter Sessies – Het Beste van 1987-2009 [Listen]
This Is London – Don McGlashan – Warm Hand [Listen]
Banguela – Miriam Maria – Putamayo Presents: Brazilian Groove [Listen]
Keep Your Head Held High – The Swaggerin’ Growlers [Listen]
Hallelujah Song – Dave Dobbyn – The Islander [Listen]
Hereafter – Parallel Lions [Listen]
Nicholas Baker Et Al – Richard P. Feynman – Los Alamos From Below [Listen]
This Great Achievement – Mico [Listen]
The Fall of Troy – Tom Waits – Orphans Brawlers Bawlers and Bastards – Bawlers [Listen]
I Don’t Believe You – The Thermals – Personal Life [Listen]
HT Virginia Jones (who was too chicken to publish in on her (for genteel folks only…) website
HT Getty ImagesThe Independent, a serious broadsheet newspaper that’s my preferred reading when I’m in the UK, reported on the England:Sweden EM 2012 match thus:
Carroll swivelled on to the ball to exact extraordinary power on the header and the look on his face as he looked into the black Kiev night showed a man who could hardly believe his fortune.
“Fucking hell,” he mouthed and Wayne Rooney, itching for the nation’s hopes to be still burning when he arrives on the scene next Tuesday was up on his feet, wearing the widest grin in the house.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung, my preferred reading wherever I am , reported on the Germany: Netherlands game thus:
Mesut Özil, conditioned by his daily routine at Real Madrid, looked fruitlessly for his teammate Christiano Ronaldo.
Not finding him, he passed the ball to the object most resembling Ronaldo: the right-hand goal upright.
I’ll take wit and subtlety over cliches and vulgarity any day…….
My Mate The Professor is celebrated for his absent-minded Professorness, but I swear he’s improving with age.
We’re away for the weekend with the dragons wimmin and it’s his turn to head off to the bakery in the next village to buy rolls for breakfast.
Quantities are agreed the previous night, instructions are documented (3 white, 9 wholemeal granary) and off he heads (in the car, lazy bugger – I walked the previous day..).
Returns with 7 white rolls.
Ms MMTP rips into him along the lines of “can’tyoureadwhyareyousostupidthisisbeyondbeliefwhatmorecanIdoapartwriteitdownforyou?”, but I’ve found a book that explains it all.
It’s called “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman and documents “positive correlations indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.”
Cognitively sophisticated he certainly is, which means that he’s “slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes.”
I’d dispute the “slightly”, though….
Henry Rollins (if you didn’t know already and you probably don’t..) is an American spoken word artist, writer, journalist, publisher, actor, comedian, radio DJ, activist and former singer-songwriter (with Black Flag)
…the bird getting whacked by the pendulum …no…the gardener with the watering can….no… the Dr Seuss “Cat-in-the-hat” inanimate object …no…the bird disappearing into the bear trap…no…
Bugger, I’ll have to watch it again.
Ms. My Friend the Professor and a Visitor from Hawkes Bay
You Must Be From Away 
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