We went from a $3-trillion surplus to a $4-trillion deficit. It's like starting with $30K in savings, and four years later, being $40K in debt. Because you used all the money to torch your neighbor's house.
I'm not sure that's recoverable, financially. Not to mention, how long will it take your neighbor to forget? Chairman Mao says, even with the best and most vigilant program, it takes five generations to eradicate a culture. Look at Israel; that hasn't been forgotten in two thousand years.
It's just so stupid. So last-century. I mean -- I work with people from all over the globe, every day. Don't you?
To rebuild that financial base would take a clear vision, good leader, and decades of patient effort. I knew the American empire was ending; I didn't expect it to end so swiftly, on my watch.
Who you gonna call?I was driving into town the day after the election wondering, "I wonder how long we will have roads?"
Ghostbusters!
I have squandered my resistanceThe right thing to arise from these ashes is a global nation. I know bloggers in Pakistan, Poland, Belgium, Buenes Aires, New Zealand. Software and theatre have long been multicultural. History says another nation will arise, but I think the global nation is creeping in on little cat feet, using the internet as its nervous system.
in a pocket full of mumbles
such are promises --
all lies and jest.
Still a man hears
what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest
-- Paul Simon, The Boxer
We'll ignore, for the moment, that Ballmer is gutting Microsoft, so the rate of creep is likely going to slow down.
"When we built the arpanet, cornerstone of the internet," says Ken Harrenstien, "We were building it with Department of Defense funds. One of the design requirements was, it had to be able to withstand direct focussed attack. We weren't able to test our design, though, for 20 years. Not until Desert Storm." He paused. "It passed," he said, with an engineer's matter-of-factness.
Awake!Eugenio always has at least one conscientious objector employed at his theatre. They are an oddly wavery defiant flag of strangeness, in alien waters.
For morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the stone that put stars to flight
We vote with our feet. Art knows no boundaries, connects all. Beethoven belongs to all of us, and Chopin, and Rumi.
"My religion is kindness," says the Dalai Lama.
1 comment:
Funny you should mention Ballmer. I've thought of him as a bully for about four years. I worked with a woman at Corbis who was very competent and self-assured. One of those friendships that lasts while you are co-workers and is easily picked up again two years later when you meet interviewing for the same position. I actually gave her a rave referral for the position, and bcc'd her. So she wouldn't have to worry I may have torpedoed her. Before coming to Corbis she was working at Microsoft, on the same floor as Ballmer. Several times a week, sometimes more than once a day he would leap into her office hollering something like "Whatcha' doing!!?"
This very solid woman became a wreck, and closing her door did no good. She couldn't concentrate, and finally asked her contracting agency to find her a new contract before she went crazy. I don't think she was singled out, It sounded more like it was his standard way of dealing with minions. It sounded to me a very mean and nasty little way of establishing alpha leadership. Of course it is second-hand, but I trust the source.
That series of incidents brings the Bush leadership style to mind. Not in method, but in the bullying aspect.
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