The iPod is one year-old today. On October 23, 2001, Steve Jobs held a special press event to announce that Apple had produced the best digital music player in the world. My own iPod will turn one next month (thanks again, sweetie!).
[via MacMinute]
I remarked to my buddy Brian that “retrophisch” sounded like something out of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, since it reminds me of “babelfish” from that series. Brian responded with a definition, based upon the one for the babelfish:
retrophisch: n. Living organism which is placed in the auditory canal of intelligent life forms. Used as a universal translator. Disadvantage: Translates to pure Anglo-Saxon English, hence the prefix “retro.”
“Are liberals incapable of the kind of practical moral reasoning that foreign policy requires? It seems that they are. Most liberals are content with slogans that cannot survive the slightest scrutiny. ‘Violence never solves problems.’ This is manifestly not true.
“Violence helped to end the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however controversial their use, did solve the big problem of an unyielding Japan. Violence proved equally effective against the Taliban. ‘But you can’t impose democracy at the point of a bayonet.’ This is another liberal shibboleth.
“In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance.” —Dinesh D’Souza
“The Congress of the United States has now given President George W. Bush the authority to enter into preemptive war against Saddam Hussein, which Mr. Bush says is justified. Others have argued strenuously that preemptive war is unjustified and even un-American.
“… It might surprise some that justification for preemptive war is found in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration, got his ideas on preemptive war from John Locke’s ‘Second Treatise on Civil Government’ and used them in the Declaration to justify the American Revolution. … In his work, Locke argued against despotic power or ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ because being absolute and arbitrary it can be used to ‘take away’ the lives of those subject to it. This makes despotic power opposed to self-preservation or ‘the preservation of Mankind,’ which Locke maintained was ‘the fundamental Law of Nature.’ Because this Law was the ‘will of God,’ Locke argued that each human being was duty ‘bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his Station willfully.’
“… Therefore everyone has the obligation to avoid subjecting themselves to despotic or ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ since it renders their own limited individual power to preserve themselves ineffective. … Some argue that even if there is a preemptive war against Saddam, it should not be used to install an American-type democracy. Locke and Jefferson would have disagreed, because American democracy does not allow despotic power or the ‘Absolute, Arbitrary Power’ that Saddam enjoys, which makes him a threat to world security. He can do anything he wants.
“Not so with George W. Bush. His executive power is severely limited by the Constitution, under which power is shared with the two other co-equal branches of government — Congress and the Supreme Court. … Therefore, it is time to place Saddam, or his successor, under the same political power limitations in Iraq as Mr. Bush is under in the United States. This will provide greater security for mankind in this era of weapons of mass destruction — provided it happens before Saddam gets the bomb.” —Allen Jayne
“The House of Representatives packed up and went home for elections, and we can’t say we’re sorry to see the Members go. Senators are lingering for a while longer, but it’d be better if they left too and didn’t return until they’re at least prepared to fulfill constitutional duties, like confirming judges. The best that can be said about the 107th Congress is that it managed to do less damage than usual.” —The Wall Street Journal
Hmmmmm…..motivation?
November is designated National Novel Writing Month; the object for participants: to write a 50,000-word novel, beginning midnight, November 1, ending midnight, November 30 (actually, midnight would be December 1, but trying to convince people of this is like trying to convince them that the new millennium really began at midnight, January 1, 2001 — which it did, by the way).
As the site states, it’s a kamikaze approach to writing, where quantity reigns over quality. Output is the only thing that matters. Gee, maybe I could write a novel this way. . .
“Of course, it’s a tragedy that the peace prize was awarded to Carter and not Reagan. I mean, who did more for world peace? Who did a great deal to end the Cold War? Who did a great deal to disarm and dismantle the Soviet Union, that mortal threat to world peace? Who removed the shadow of global annihilation from us, if only temporarily? Who envisioned a shield, not a sword?
“National Review once opined, many years ago, that, every year, the Nobel peace prize should go to the U.S. secretary of defense: The American military is the number-one guarantor of peace in the world. But maybe something like a Nobel freedom prize would be a more appropriate award for Reagan than a peace prize.” —Jay Nordlinger
There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth over Bush admininstration foreign policy, that the United States is “forcing” its will on the rest of the world, and rather we should just go along with what other countries have to say and just forget about our sovereignty and national security (read: Daschle). After all, what has America accomplished with force that successful negotiation could not top?
“Name, in the past hundred years, a single important triumph for peace and for liberal democracy that was purchased by the jaw-jawing the Nobellians so admire. No rush, take your time. Now, look at what American war-war (and the threat of American war-war) won: the defeat of the fascist attempt to rule the world; the defeat of the Communist attempt to rule the world; the consequent rebuilding of a Europe protected by American arms into a democratic and peaceful continent for the first time in history; the rebuilding of an American-protected Japan into a democratic and peaceful nation for the first time in history; the emergence of a world in which, for the first time in history, the peaceful values of liberal democracy are the ascendant norm. No, no, it remains unthinkable. To imagine American force was a force for good, one would have to imagine America was a force for good. And this, the Bourbons of Oslo will never, never do.” —Michael Kelly
“Fathers’ involvement [with their children] seems to be linked to improved verbal and problem-solving skills and higher academic achievement. Several studies found that the presence of the father is one of the determinants of girls’ proficiency in mathematics. And one pioneering study showed that along with paternal strictness, the amount of time fathers spent reading with them was a strong predictor of their daughters’ verbal ability. For sons the results have been equally striking. Studies uncovered a strong relationship between fathers’ involvement and the mathematical abilities of their sons. Other studies found a relationship between paternal nurturing and boys’ verbal intelligence.” —David Popenoe
“Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster.” —C.S. Lewis (translating the Devil’s words), The Screwtape Letters