Tuesday morning, fresh off an hour and a half conference call, I was well into a typical profane and solipsistic rant about clueless clients and impossible deadlines when Louise walked into the office with tears in her eyes, her cellphone a smoking gun hanging in her hand. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said. “Jay died.”
Jay and Elle at their wedding in May
Not yet 30, Jay Kaplan was her cousin’s youngest son. We knew this brilliant and talented kid well as he had stayed with us after graduating from Dartmouth while interning in NYC. He could do magic tricks that would make your brain cramp. I remember once posing a math question to a gang of cousins I was chauffering to a family reunion, and jay maybe 11 or 12, popped up with the answer in a split second right out of his head. I thought to myself “this kid is sharp.”
Last time I saw him was at his grandfather’s 90th birthday. He came up and started quoted gag lines to me from a silly movie I had made. (one starring Mike McCurry as the gay alien leader) Impressive not only because he remembered the lines, but also that he was one of the two dozen people in the world who had seen it.
Just married in May, he and his wife Elle were living in LA. He worked for the production company that made Little Miss Sunshine, and had just directed a series of very funny and subversive shorts featuring Jason Priestly. Some demo commercials he and Elle had made were inspired. A brilliant future seemed a forgone conclusion.
“Burn the bridges,” the cry goes up, while Obama goes on building bridges as he promised. His latest effort: an invitation to Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural prayer.
The two men hold diametrically opposed views on two hot-button social issues: gay marriage and abortion.
But they hold much more common ground than divided ground. And they are standing together on that common ground
Is there a lesson here for us? That this really is a new political landscape coming into being? That we really do need to work together on the big issues? That we cannot any longer afford the polarization of the culture wars? That we have to get over it and get on with it?
Maybe the culture wars are going away? Maybe we have begun to realize that polarization leads to paralysis and in these dire economic times with America involved in two wars, we can’t afford paralysis? The common ground is more important than the polarized ground.
Sure, Rick Warren is a Southern Baptist pastor and as a Southern Baptist he should be way over there on the right cursing out godless liberals. But Rick has been moving steadily to the center. His work in Uganda with AIDS has been exemplary. When he invited that liberal Senator Barack Obama to speak at his Global Summit on AIDS (December 1, 2006) at his (really, really big) church, this was a move soundly denounced by the right wing. Warren did it again during this election season when he sponsored a forum featuring Obama along with the newly minted social conservative John McCain. (Will McCain return to his more centrist stance on social issues now that there is no election to win?) Warren took a lot of flack from his friends on the right over this association.
Now it is Obama’s turn to take flack over his invitation to Warren. But Obama is up to it. And Obama does this from his own Christian stance. By his own admission, Obama has been deeply shaped by his United Church of Christ background. The right wing are not the only Christians on the block.
“Burn the bridges” say the right wing and the left wing joins in the chorus over this latest invitation.
But wait, is that a new song we are hearing? Right wing and left wing meeting in the center of the bridge? I dearly hope so, speaking as someone who holds left wing political views along side my strong (some would say conservative) religious views. (But never call them right-wing religious views!)
Twenty seven years later. I watched John Walsh’s comments on video and the man is clearly, severely distraught. Twenty seven years later.
You see we love our children and the become so much a part of us that decades later, this dignified man who has fought tirelessly since then to help others is still deeply affected.
John & Reve Walsh, I wish it hadn’t come at such a high price but, I’m glad you’ve gotten the closure you needed and I thank you for your work all these years.
Apparently the US military has been using music to torture detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It is mostly the kind of music you would expect: Nine Inch Nails, Metallica, etc. Loud music played loudly.
I have mixed feelings about this. I am against any kind of torture as a matter of principle, but I think that the line does get a bit fuzzy where methods of “psychological coercion” are concerned.
But this….THIS is way beyond the pale, and the United States must hang it’s head in shame.
If you don’t recognize the name “Doug Engelbart” you are likely not alone. He is the PC industry’s most influential innovator that nobody’s heard of. Doug Engelbart is a mild-mannered, insightful, soft-spoken and charming man. Although he has a dizzying intellect and a tireless curiosity, he never talks down to people or makes them feel inferior or stupid, even when asking basic questions. He is the college professor, PC repair guy and car mechanic you wish you had.
Today is the 40th anniversary of a presentation that Dr. Engelbart made at Stanford University, in which he discussed several innovations that he had invented at Stanford Research Institute. You probably have heard of them: the mouse, hyperlinks, and windows (not the operating system but the concept of multiple virtual workspaces managed by a computer on behalf of the user). I urge to read more about Dr. Engelbart; here and here are a couple of good synopses of his life and career.
I am a huge Doug Engelbart fan. I had the privilege of having dinner with him back in 1985; my boss and mentor at IBM is a close personal friend of Engelbart’s and since we were traveling to Palo Alto on business, a dinner was scheduled for the three of us. I doubt I said more than 20 sentences during the dinner, and most of them ended with question marks; it was too much fun hearing these two men talk about computing and science and philosophy and economics and human nature. I wish I could remember everything discussed that night, but I fear I was too young to truly appreciate the experience.
But Doug Engelbart made an impression on me. He never received the notoriety he deserved, outside of academic circles; it never bothered him. But, if you don’t mind, as you use your mouse to click on your next hyperlink in an open window on your desktop, give a virtual “thank you” to this amazing man.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this kind of crap anymore, but I am still disgusted. It is tough for us Democrats to declare ownership of the moral high ground when Democratic blue-state governors keep publicly demonstrating their sleeziness. First Spitzer, now this:
At least you can argue that Spitzer’s sleeze was personal and only cost the taxpayers a relatively small amount of cash. This moron Blagojevich is turning a major victory for the Illinois Democratic party into a public and shameful greed-fest.
Blagojevich should be locked up in a cell with Sen. Ted Stevens and a couple of guys named Knuckles and Tiny - let’s see how adept they are at negotiating for favors then.
In the blog post Win Ben Stein’s Menorah I asked this question:
If the (to use Stein’s bogeyman) local chapter of Freethinkers wanted to make a display right next to the creche that indicated belief in God was silly, would that be ok too?
Well, Ben Stein didn’t answer the question, but Bill O’Reilly did!
Get that? We don’t celebrate Ramadan because we are founded on “Judeo-Christian” principles! And this display is “political correctness gone mad!”
This is what is frightening about religion. This is why it must be rooted out of government.
