“The wary humor Israelis felt about Kissinger’s style was reflected in an old matchmaking joke that was told about him at the time. Kissinger decides to play matchmaker and informs a poor peasant that he has found the perfect wife for his son. ‘But I never meddle in my son’s affairs,’ says the peasant.
‘Ah, but the girl is the daughter of Lord Rothschild,’ says Kissinger.
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to Lord Rothschild. ‘I have the perfect husband for your daughter,’ he says.
‘But she’s too young,’ Lord Rothschild protests.
‘Ah, but the boy is a vice president of the World Bank.’
‘Well, in that case…’
Then Kissinger goes to the president of the World Bank, saying, ‘Have I got a vice president for you.’
‘But we don’t need another one.’
‘Ah,’ says Kissinger, ‘but he is the son-in-law of Lord Rothschild.’”
An Israeli joke about Henry Kissinger told during Kissinger’s “shuttle diplomacy” in the wake of the October War. As quoted from Walter Isaacson’s 1992 book Kissinger: A Biography, published by Simon & Schuster (which I recommend).
“Richard M. Nixon and Spiro T. Agnew celebrate their nomination at the Republican National Convention, June 1968.” Taken by White House Photographer Ollie Atkins. From the Oliver Atkins Photograph Collection.
Nixon Vice-President Spiro Agnew, who resigned in the midst of the October War in 1973 and was replaced by Gerald Ford, was famous for his alliterative insults. Here’s a passage from a Time Magazine article about him:
“In a 1969 speech against war protesters, he said, ‘A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.’ ‘In the United States today,’ Agnew told a 1970 audience in San Diego, ‘we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.’ He went after ‘pusillanimous pussyfooters’ and ‘vicars of vacillation’ and ‘the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.’”
Neat! This is called a Pedersen Bicycle.
[Image from PedersenBicycle.com]
“When asked about whether he ever considered moving RIM to Silicon Valley, [co-founder of RIM Michael] Lazaridis said: ‘I had to have this company next to University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier, a university down the street, because I knew that we needed to draw this talent to grow. There’s something about having the proximity to the students and university in terms of brand awareness. In fact, when we first leased our building here right next to the university, we could put a sign up, and I remember they were asking, “Do you like this sign? Do you like that sign?” I said, “Actually, I don’t care about that. What’s important to me are the signs on the back of the building… All I want is the students to know where the building is.”‘” [Grid7 - Build something. BIGGER. - FAW #10: Mike Lazaridis of Research in Motion, via Slashdot]
This whole interview with Mike Lazaridis of Research in Motion hits some really good points. I love my neighborhood here for many important personal reasons. But Laziridis provides a reason that makes sound business sense and had crossed my mind, but I hadn’t thought out thoroughly. Locating near a school (especially this one) provides a great talent base that doesn’t have a lot of professional experience. That means they don’t expect to make a lot of money and have some potentially revolutionary ideas. The kids with the collection of fancy internships, which I’ve had a few of myself and I think are probably overvalued by most employers, will be welcomed by large businesses. Those round pegs left over are a volatile but potentially very valuable resource for the entrepreneur…
The other things that Laziridis talks about (including the importance of shop class) are worth thinking about too. The NYT magazine excerpt from University of Chicago PhD holder Matt Crawford’s forthcoming book Shop Class as Soulcraft put a lot of things that I’ve been thinking since before high school into words. I am at a time in my life when I have the freedom to make some outlandish choices.
Time to start a(nother) business.
I’ve been thinking about switching from Tumblr to Wordpress for a while and last night I did it. It took maybe an hour to get everything set up and import all the Tumblr posts into Wordpress. I appreciate how easy it is to post things on Tumblr, but I like having the control that Wordpress gives me. Tumblr is republishing the RSS feed of the Wordpress blog so Tumblr isn’t going away, but the new URL of the blog is http://www.wampuscat.org/wordpress/ and the article feed is http://www.wampuscat.org/wordpress/feed/.
I just read an article in Chicago’s New City Summer Guide that has a great summer trip idea. Take the Metra north to Kenosha, Wisconsin, ride about 35 miles to the ferry terminal on the south side of Milwaukee, and take the ferry to Muskegon, Michigan. Camp at Pioneer County Park just north of Muskegon or at Muskegon State Park a little further north. Reverse trip to return.
The trip the article author actually takes goes to Muskegon and then continues south to South Haven, where he takes a bus back to Chicago.
The possibilities with the ferry are endless. A warm summer weekend spent riding around and sleeping on the east shore of Lake Michigan (where the wind keeps the biting bugs away).
Competitive Cyclist’s blog calls these the “two best bike racing articles you’ve never read.” One from Rolling Stone in 1986 about Greg Lemond in the Tour de France, the other from National Geographic in 1988 about that year’s Tour written by Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle. CC’s blog post has more to say about both.
[Photo by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, from the National Geographic article]
Ah, Internet2. Just a thought about downloading the Ubuntu 9.04 ISO on the University of Chicago network from the Argonne Labs servers. It got as fast as 21 MB per second. (Here are the university members of Internet2.)
