The Dude: It’s all part your sick Cynthia thing, man. Taking care of her fucking dog. Going to her fucking synagogue. You’re living in the fucking past.

Walter Sobchak: Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax…You’re goddamn right I’m living in the fucking past!

I believe that this is evidence of just how much a part of the zeitgeist Lebowski has become… Oh, and for the record I think that Koufax is kinda zeitgeist-ish as well.  Just sayin’.

[Update: I found out that the entire script of the Big Lebowski can be read on the web.  The URL for the scrips, and I want you to read the URL, is http://web.mit.edu/putz/Public/big_lebowski.txt ... fucking double-plus-awesome, eh?]

Israel Is A Hideous Entity In the Middle East Which Will Undoubtedly Be Annihilated

Obviously, a perk of being an Ayatollah is that you can use Twitter without governmental interference.

Before I got to Kabul, I had received an email from the escort officer assigned to me, saying that since Kabul is a “high danger” area, the embassy wanted me to rent from a private security company known as “Afghan Logistics” an armored Toyota “4 Runner” and hire both an armed security guard and a bullet proof vest at 20,000 Afs (roughly $450) daily. I was to be reassured that the rates included the driver’s salary, fuel and taxes. No bullets were stipulated. I guess they were extra. However, the daily rate was only for 8 hours and overtime was at double rate, Kabul being presumably more dangerous at night. But my embassy escort officer said, these arrangements were both necessary and standard procedure, and with them I would thus be reasonably well protected.

I declined. My doing so was not a sign of bravery but a calculation that such a display would mark me as a worthwhile target.

Brilliant?  I’m not sure.  But it is an interesting idea.

Later on in the same article, when Mr. Polk has moved on to talking about some of the dangers that exist in modern day Kabul, he makes what I think is a very apt description of the Taliban…

We think of the Taliban as a coherent unit. No doubt it is partly that. But it is diversified in command structure because of the weakness of their embattled communication system. So whatever the “center,” which is presumed to be far away in Quetta, Pakistan, decides may not be known in a timely fashion, if at all, by more or less isolated cadres. Moreover, the organization has many, perhaps not always wanted, part-time volunteers. Although they may operate in the name of the Taliban. Many of these people are not auxiliaries but opportunists. Because of an insult or the presence of a target, groups of young thugs often carry out assaults or kidnappings on their own. Such events are different from the well-planned attacks (like the one on this hotel a few years ago) involving suicide bombers and commando units. The aim of the independents is not political; it is either revenge or money, or both. This makes their danger unpredictable.

The thinking of scriptural fundamentalists seems, to the secular-minded, or even to the sort of person like me who feels the constant presence of God in his life but does not believe Him to be partisan in His love, as lunacy on stilts.  It is also cruel beyond measure.  Fundamentalism is the thief of mercy.

What a great quote.

Some pages later Goldberg describes what he says, after being arrested in Gaza, during an interrogation by Arab who is accusing him of being a spy.  Goldberg insists that he is a journalist working on a story the possibility of Jews and Arabs coexisting in the same stretch of land.

I told him I thought that there must be a way to create on this narrow ledge of land a place for Jews and Muslims to live in peace, side by side, without perfect justice, but without murder, either.  Now, I know Jews better than I know Arabs.  I think the Jews –not all, God knows, but many– are readying themselves for this day.  But I don’t know about the Arabs.  There are people who tell me they know the answer, but I don’t trust these people.  In the Middle East, people who say the have the answers often don’t know the questions.  So what I’m doing (and if I keep talking without pause, maybe you’ll forget about torturing me, or at least give me m cell phone back, yes?) is searching for the right questions.

So far this books is filled with writing that is making me think, and making me want to keep reading.  Wow.

Wired: You say that the Job Control Language you developed for the IBM 360 OS was “the worst computer programming language ever devised by anybody, anywhere.” Have you always been so frank with yourself?

Brooks: You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.

To many people this is one of those things that makes them say “duh”.  However, it seems to me that the American education system still teaches students that making mistakes (i.e. failing) is a bad thing.

My point being: that even though this may seem like something that is obvious, it needs to be applied more often than it is to daily life, work, and education.

Another point that was made which I found interesting was…

Wired: You’re a Mac user. What have you learned from the design of Apple products?

Brooks: Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, once said that his method of design was to start with a vision of what you want and then, one by one, remove the technical obstacles until you have it. I think that’s what Steve Jobs does. He starts with a vision rather than a list of features.

I’ve never really thought about it like that… But it makes sense.  Right?

“Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay.”

I love that sentence!  I want to make it into a business card or something.

“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”

I think this is totally true.  That is all.

(For those who care: Mr. Bezos was talking about the new Kindle on Charlie Rose‘s show when he said this.)

“The Mere suppression of the rebellion will be an empty mockery of out suffering and sacrifices, if slavery shall be spared to canker the heart of the nation anew, and repeat its diabolical deeds.”

-Representative George Julian of Indiana, Quoted in The Americans 1998 Ed.

If only people spoke like this in Congress nowadays.

At the time that Julian said this, Abraham Lincoln had stated that though he disliked slavery, he did not really believe that the federal government  had the consitiutional power to abolish it where it had already existed.  Lincoln had not yet issued he Emancipation Proclamation.

“My Paramount object in this strugle i to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery.  If I could save the Union without freeig any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving other alone, I would also do that… I have here stated my purpose according to my view of offical duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expresed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free”

-Abraham Lincoln, quoted in Fifty Basic Civil War Documents

It is clear that Julian really understood that even if the North won the Civil War if it failed to end slavery, as an institution and an issue, it would only be a matter of ime before the free North and the slave states were at it again.

Smart guy, eh?

 ~ Anaïs Nin