One idea I've had that I haven't mentioned before is to have a tribute week every now and then where everyone changes their avatar to the person they admire most, but I fear that we'd end up with 1/4 Darwin, 1/4 Einstein, 1/4 Jesus, and 1/4 miscellaneous.
Hogan worked for DEC at one time, and I once met him briefly in the Marlboro cafeteria, probably around 1979. His are some of the science fiction books I remember most fondly. I still remember the ending from Inherit the Stars, and I can almost but not quite remember the hero's name.
You may be selling Jobs a bit short. He was the Thomas Edison of our time.
You have to be kidding me. No-one will know who Jobs was in 2091; they'll still know who Edison was.
I've been reading Isaaacson's biography of Jobs and just came across this near the end:
Isaacson writes:
Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead, he was a genius. His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical. He was, indeed, an example of what the mathematician Mark Kac called a magician genius, someone whose insights come out of the blue and require intuition more than mere mental processing power. Like a pathfinder, he could absorb information, sniff the winds, and sense what lay ahead.
Steve Jobs thus became the greatest business executive of our era, the one most certain to be remembered a century from now. History will place him in the pantheon right next to Edison and Ford. More than anyone else of his time, he made products that were completely innovative, combining the power of poetry and processors. With a ferocity that could make working with him as unsettling as it was inspiring, he also built the world's most creative company.
And he wasn't just a business man. Jobs is listed as one of the inventors on 212 different patents (Edison has 1093 patents).
But I agree with you rather than Isaacson. Jobs worked in an arena of short product lifetimes, and nothing he invented was iconic in the same way as movies, the phonograph, and light bulbs, so I don't see why he would be remembered by anyone but historians a century from now. Still, he was responsible for products like Apple II, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. He bought Pixar, drove animation technology forward, and made the company successful. He created industries like on-line music stores and app stores. It is for these reasons that I agree with Isaacson in ranking him way up there with Edison and Ford.
However you felt about Salty in life (Salty was one of his on-line nicknames, and that's the name that has stuck with me), I'm sure we all appreciated his wit and indomitable spirit. He participated here for quite a while and contributed a great deal to the debate.
He's gone now, but if you read the obituary he left this life with grace while, evidently, still being true to himself. Those of us who are able should post whatever heartfelt appreciations we can muster to the condolences section at the end of the obituary:
Re: Appropriate for this thread for certain values of "great."
This isn't the topic, but hearing about Camping's passing I was curious how followers had reacted to the failures of his prophecies and found this article:
I found this paragraph particularly enlightening - it explains a lot of discussions here:
I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me this was a prophecy rather than a prediction, maintained that he had never claimed to be certain about May 21. When I read him the transcript of our previous interview, he seemed genuinely surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. It was as if we were discussing a dream he couldn’t quite remember.
After his career Ralph Kiner did New York Mets television broadcasts with Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy for years and years, and at end of each game he interviewed a ballplayer on Kiner's Korner. Nolan Ryan began his career with the Mets and Kiner broadcast Ryan pitching many times.
I haven't seen it mentioned yet so I'll just add that Shirley Temple continued working in the entertainment industry after her film career ended, mostly television, and she also served as a United States diplomat. My favorite film was Captain January.
I might have related this story once already. Paul Nimoy, Leonard's nephew, was on my high school's tennis team in 1969, and after the season he invited team members to a barbecue at his house where his uncle would be attending. Having never watched Star Trek, and having only a vague idea of who Leonard Nimoy was, and not really knowing Paul since he was on the JV and I was on the varsity, I did not attend, to my everlasting regret.
quote:Mrs. Reagan was a fierce guardian of her husband’s image, sometimes at the expense of her own, and during Mr. Reagan’s improbable climb from a Hollywood acting career to the governorship of California and ultimately the White House, she was a trusted adviser. ... Mrs. Reagan was a trusted adviser to her husband, President Ronald Reagan, and a fierce guardian of his image. She championed efforts to fight drug abuse and Alzheimer’s disease.
PS: As was said way back in Message 271, maybe the tribute thread can be used for tributes, and if someone wants to discuss how horrible were Thatcher and Reagan they can open a thread over at Coffee House.
Probably unknown to most here, she won Wimbledon in 1998. In her losing Wimbledon final effort in 1993 she cried and was comforted by the Duchess of Kent during the awards ceremony. She has died of cancer at the young age of 49.
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