POWER IN YOUR POCKET
If you own a Palm Pilot, you've probably heard someone comment: "Hey, that's a great toy!" or "What can you do with that toy?" - The operative word being "toy." I don't know about you, but I would take great umbrage at being accused of playing with toys. I'm as serious about my hand-held devices as anyone, and would hold my head up when I flash my Palm Pilot around. Yet, I’m still deciding between Palm and Pocket PC.
ARISTOTLE, EINSTEIN, AND AYN RAND
2005 is a twin-centennial for Rand and Einstein. Today, February 2, is the centennial of Ayn Rand’s birth in 1905. This week, scientists around the world launched a series of commemorations of the centennial of the annus mirabilis, the “miraculous year” of 1905, when a 26 year-old unknown clerk in a Swiss patent office published five papers in an obscure journal that revolutionized science and changed the way we look at the universe. In one of these, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein introduced his Theory of Special Relativity. Yet this was an incredible misnomer - for what Einstein did was replace one absolute - time - with another - the speed of light. This misnomer is one of the great social tragedies of modern times.
HAND HELDS: PALM OR POCKET?
This is the first in a short series on buying the ever more popular hand held computers. They help you keep track of information that you need, like phone numbers and expenses. They're a lot neater than scraps of paper - and a lot less likely to get lost, as well. They keep you entertained during boring meetings, plane trips and bus or rail commutes. And "beaming" your name and phone number is a lot cooler than just handing someone your business card! But like with every other tech thing, "they" have to make it complicated by giving you a panoply of choices and possibilities - and platforms, especially since the release of Windows CE on the Pocket PC platform several years ago. WinCE/Pocket PC competes with the granddaddy of PDAs, Palm Pilots, and the vast majority of PDAs on the market are based on one of these platforms. So buying a PDA requires more consideration than buying a digital camera.
GLOBAL FREEDOM AND DRUNK COAL MINERS
Notice how quick President Bush’s father was to explain to the press that we don’t have to take seriously what his son said at his second inaugural about “ending tyranny in our world”? Thanks for sharing, Dad. What you really made clear is why you never had a second inaugural yourself.The speechwriter who wrote Bush the Elder’s first and only inaugural address (where he pledged to achieve a “kinder and gentler nation,” and Nancy Reagan exploded in anger, whispering to her husband, “Kinder and gentler than what?”), Peggy Noonan whined once again in the Wall Street Journal today about GW’s “overweening” idealism, and that his speech had no “historical context.” I guess Peggy, like her former boss, didn’t pay much attention to the news last year.Perhaps the most important story of 2004 was the achievement of democracy in so many countries. Every “realist” squish in Washington has the vapors over GW’s suddenly becoming a radically dangerous Lone Ranger cowboy - when what’s really happened is he’s acting on the old political adage that if you discover a parade that’s going where you want, get out in front and lead it. GW’s second inaugural address was the Vision Statement. What is needed now is the Business Plan, how the vision is to be actually implemented. For an insight into Bush’s Business Plan for Ending Tyranny, we can look at the drunk coal miners of Donetsk.
ANTI-DEMOCRACY DEMOCRATS
Something had better jog the liberal mind from its obsessive Bush-hatred. The liberals, on both sides of the Atlantic, are in imminent danger of repeating the great shame of many of their ideological grandparents in the middle of the last century, who became unthinking apologists for Stalin's terror and tyranny. This coming Sunday, the Iraqi people are holding an election -- the first real election in the 6,000-year history of this ancient people. But the cynicism and indifference of liberals to this extraordinary event should shock the conscience of decent people, because Iraqis are marching through shot and shell to gain this first chance at self-government.
SHORTING THE EURO
When Ted Turner compared Fox News to Hitler this week, a Fox spokesman commented that “Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind - we wish him well.” It is time to feel such sympathy for other famous businessfolk who have similarly lost their minds - such as Warren Buffett.The legendary investment guru has allowed his newly acquired left-wing politics to idiotize him. Just like Turner, he sets up an assumed liberal populism as an envy-deflection device, ends up hating America and the capitalist system that made him wealthy - and becomes a fool in the process.To be clear: only a fool would bet long-range on the euro now.
JOHNNY AND THE TSANTSA
For years it was a fantasy of mine to be a guest on the Tonight Show. I was writing a book entitled The Adventurer’s Guide, and I fantasized I would appear on the show promoting the book by showing Johnny Carson a tsantsa, a human shrunken head. This fantasy came true on November 16, 1976. I found myself standing behind that famous multi-colored curtain, holding a small black box, and hearing Carson introducing me. Perhaps professional entertainers would not be nervous behind that curtain, but I was almost paralyzed. That old Chinese warning to be careful for what you wish for, as it might come true, hit me hard. So when the curtain parted and I stepped out into the lights, it was in a total daze that I found myself in that chair sitting next to Johnny Carson with 20 million people watching. And with one brief look by Carson into my eyes, the daze was gone. Somehow I felt comfortable and relaxed. Somehow those 20 million people weren’t there, and it was just me and this friendly fellow having a conversation. Johnny Carson had this almost magical ability to put you at ease - on national television. I believe that within almost everyone there is a dream of adventure - a dream of doing something truly memorable, thrilling, and special. Johnny Carson gave me the opportunity to provide encouragement to people so they could fulfill that dream. As millions of Americans commemorate his passing, I’d like to renew that opportunity, and encourage you to get out into the world and follow whatever dream there is inside you.
TAKING BUSH SERIOUSLY
It must have been a scatological moment for dictators around the world, as they soiled themselves watching George Bush’s inaugural address on global television. They must have known this was coming, for GW has been telegraphing his punches for a long time.That’s why they put all their hopes on GW’s defeat last November. They knew John Kerry would never come after them. Now they know George Bush will.The appropriate reaction to Bush’s Inaugural Address yesterday is: awe-struck. This was a Babe Ruth moment, pointing to where he wanted to hit the ball and swinging for the bleachers. I couldn’t help laughing when I read Peggy Noonan’s petty, small-minded essay in the Wall Street Journal this morning, grouchily complaining about Bush’s “mission inebriation.” She didn’t like the speech because it was so much better than any she wrote for Ronald Reagan.I saw three of Peggy’s former colleagues - White House speechwriters for President Reagan - at one of the Inaugural Balls last night, and they all agreed that Bush’s Second Inaugural will be seen as one of the historically greatest of any American President.So Peggy can cluck, and British newspapers can smirk, but anyone with an ounce of common sense had better start perceiving the reality behind the Left’s myth about GW. You can be sure folks like Hugo Chavez and Aleksandr Lukashenko have no such illusions.For they know, as do their fellow dictators such as Robert Mugabe, Kim Il-Sung, Than Shwe, Ayatollah Khameini, and Fidel Castro, that there is now a bulls-eye painted on them by someone scary-smart and scary-serious who happens to be the most powerful man in the world.
TO WIN IN IRAQ WE MUST WIN IN IRAN
It has been quite clear for some time now that al Qaeda and the other major terrorist groups — Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Jamaa, etc. — are all working together, and have been ever since we went into Afghanistan. The war in the Middle East — for it is a regional war, not merely a battle for Iraq — cannot be analyzed at the level of the individual terrorist groups, because the terrorists are part of a larger context. The organizing center is, as Spanish Magistrate Balthazar Garzon publicly put it, a "directorate" located in Iran, that works closely with Iranian intelligence organizations, including the Revolutionary Guards. Those organizations, in turn, work with their counterparts in other friendly countries.
WE’RE ALL CRIMINALS NOW
I’m writing this from a place called Mea Culpa City. It’s not a lot of fun being here, but it’s where I have to live until I finish this essay. It turns out that I have wronged a friend. The silver - well, pewter - lining is that in attempting to rectify it I learned how easy it has become for the Federales to turn any of us into criminals.The Cato Institute in Washington has just published a book on this: Go Directly To Jail: The Criminalization Of Almost Everything. It documents how the federal government now views its jurisdiction as limitless - which means almost anything you or your business does can be a federal crime. The Cato book paints a frightening picture - but the truth is, it’s much worse.It’s worse because of the depraved collusion between politicians and their buddies in the media to demonize and criminalize someone on the front pages of newspapers. This of course is not exclusive to Washington. States are on to the game as well. New York’s Elliot Spitzer has turned the State Attorney General’s office into his private Gestapo. But he’s New York’s problem. Federal agents and federal politicians are a problem for all of us.