A Few Random Thoughts

It's been a down and up week for me business-wise (as opposed to "up and down", as the week started slow and ended up well), and as tonight is the first free night that I've had this week to actually write/blog with any sense of real energy, I figured I might as well take the opportunity to do so before my limited reserves crap out altogether. So here goes:

• I'm up to page 700 in Paul Johnson's masterwork, "The History of the American People", a 1000 plus page comprehensive opus of the United States from its earliest beginnings. Every once in a while it is good to read stuff like this, as it puts into proper context the amazing story of this truly unique nation. Never before has a nation such as the United States existed, a nation predicated (for the most part) on merit, as opposed to birth. The United States was and is the first nation ruled by those with ability and guts, versus noble birth. As a result, America has managed to have great men (and women) attain leadership positions in government, business, law, and academia (well, maybe not so much in the latter of late) based on merit and not some kind of patrician or royal bearing. Sure, there's plenty of cronyism, but it gets found out sooner or later. (See Michael Brown at FEMA.) Americans demand competence; they usually get it. In Johnson's book, he makes the point that one of the reasons the American colonies were able to win the war of independence was that the British suffered from poor leadership both in the military and in the British government. Quoth Johnson: "George III employed second-raters and creatures of his own making, mere court-favorites or men whose sole merit was an ability to manage a corrupt House of Commons". Contrasting mediocrities like Lord North and George Grenville, Lord Townshend, Gens. Howe and Corwallis with Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Franklin, and it becomes readily apparent that all the ability and brainpower was on the side of the colonial rebellion. Interesting stuff.

• "Pioneering don't pay", said Andrew Carnegie, and I have to agree. Carnegie achieved unbelievable heights as a businessman and innovator, coming from nothing as a poor Scottish immigrant to the wealthiest man in the world once he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan, who in turn turned into U.S. Steel. But what Carnegie meant by this observation didn't have to do with the westward expansion of the United States at the time, but rather inventing. Thus this quote made me think of two "pioneers" in the world of technology: Shawn Fanning and Bob Moog. The former was a college kid who found a way to reduce music from a CD to a digitally transmittable file, thus sparking a conflagration in the music world over whether file sharing of intellectual property was legal or not. Inevitably Fanning and his company Napster lost, and we haven't heard much from Fanning since. But one must give credit to the kid for coming up with a technological breakthrough that has changed the music industry forever. Mores the pity that he'll never profit from it, but such is the lot of the inventor and/or scientist who makes the breakthrough but can't navigate the business end of things. Similarly, Bob Moog invented the synthesizer, but went out of business in the early 70's, unable to properly mass market the unweildy and wildly expensive Moog IIIC to the consumer. Pioneering may not pay, as Carnegie rightly said, but where would we be without pioneers all the same?

• "If I have an apple and you have an apple, and we trade apples, we still only have one apple a piece. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we trade ideas, now we both have two ideas"--George Bernard Shaw

• Jennifer Aniston officially irritates me. Okay, she got dumped by Brad Pitt. Big deal, happens to the best of us. I wish she'd show some class, keep a stiff upper lip, and quit yakkin' about it to every celebrity magazine and talk show out there. She's a mildly attractive girl, but not even close to Angelina Jolie when it comes to sex appeal. But she really could've shown a great deal more class, and gone up the scale of appeal, if she hadn't endeavored to talk to anyone and everyone about getting thrown over the side by Brad Pitt. Shaddap, shud-n-up, Jen. Spare us the victim role. You're looking increasingly pathetic. Angie Dickinson slept with JFK (which I find infinitely more interesting and salacious than Brad cheating on Jen) but she hasn't said a word about it to the press over four decades. It may not have been the classiest thing to do, but it certainly showed a great deal of class for her not to open her mouth about it all these years. But behavior like that has gone the way of the horse and buggy. Sad.

I'm officially crapped out. G'night, y'all.