RIP. A true legend. But why is it always the good ones? why not Mugabe or Gaddafi?
– comment posted on a news site announcing the death of Steve Jobs
Do bad people live longer than the good? Although anecdotal data is often misleading, consider that Fidel Castro is now 85; Robert Mugabe is 87. Mao Tse Tung died at 83 after killing millions of people. Joseph Stalin perished of natural causes at 78 despite a lifetime of smoking and hard drinking and slaughtering more human beings than Adolf Hitler.
Even that not-so-bad appear to benefit from the sheer insatiability of their appetites. Silvio Berlusconi is 75 and still attending bunga-bunga parties. Is being “bad” associated with some potent vitality, some nearly unquenchable life-force which makes its possessor resistant to the Grim Reaper? The idea of the durability of evil and the transience of good has been around for a long time. The proverb, “only the good die young”, may have come not from the Billy Joel but from classical literature.
In Greek mythology, Trophonius was a son of Erginus. According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, he built Apollo’s temple at the oracle at Delphi with his brother, Agamedes. Once finished, the oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, their greatest wish would be granted. They did and were found dead on the seventh day. The saying “those whom the gods love die young” comes from this story.
Some ancients believed that life was so full of suffering, that death in youth was a gift from the gods. It’s a sentiment echoed in AE Houseman’s To An Athlete Dying Young, which talks about the advantages of dying at the height of fame.
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
Perhaps Berlusconi is more concerned with the brevity of other things besides his garlands. The desire to keep going, to keep accumulating may explain why we observe so many old men in positions of power. Powerful old men are the outcome of a process of competitive survival. Individuals with a single-minded intensity to survive; who calculate all the angles; cover all the bases, who will do anything, betray any one and pay any cost to survive are likely to outlive those who yield. Wicked old men are the human equivalents of those scarred old predators in the wild who have grown to an enormous size by their sheer skill at shredding all in their path.
People who “look out for number one” are often contrasted to those inclined to sacrifice themselves to a ‘greater cause’. Against the saying “only the good die young” can be set the military warning “never volunteer for nothing”. Showing an aptitude for destroying machine-gun nests usually results in the hero being repeatedly employed in this hazardous undertaking until with statistical inevitability his luck runs out.
Warfare has been regarded by some as a process of ensuring the “survival of the unfittest”. Take a given population, extract those with perfect eyesight and perfectly developed physiques and put them to work storming heavily defended islands fighting hand to hand with busido warriors or parachuting behind enemy-held lines to try consequences with the SS while putting the 4Fs in a position of relative safety will inevitably increase the relative frequency of the 4Fs.
The inverse relationship between longevity and enterprise is captured in the story of Achilles. His choices were to die young on the battlefield or live to a ripe old age at home. The National Postal Museum has an epigram which is the American equivalent of Achille’s choice. “Don’t be a show-off. Never be too proud to turn back. There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.”
The men who couldn’t — or wouldn’t — stop being bold supposedly became the Lost Generation of World War 1. The “flower of a generation” supposedly died and left only the weeds to carry on. There is a view that Europe killed off its best men in the trenches between 1914-1917 bequeathing the world to leaders who were statistically far below the former norm.
Yet evidence suggests that whenever war does not supervene that it is the “bad” who are more likely to die young. Lisa Berkman and Leonard Syme of Johns Hopkins followed a sample of nearly 7,000 adults in California and found that on average people who were happily married, had lots of friends and went to church lived longer than those who didn’t.
If so then perhaps Steve Jobs lived longer than he would have if he had not been sustained by his vision and his family. He survived a long time against a dread ailment. Disease and mischance are not deflected by malice any more than they are forestalled by virtue. But the good life may make what we have of it more worth living.
Maybe it isn’t that “the good die young” in particular, simply that we notice it more when they do. And we notice it even if they are old. One broadcaster, commenting on the death of Winston Churchill remarked that even though he lived for nearly a century, “I wished this day would never come.” It comes, but when the day dawns for the good man not all the tears of parting will be of sorrow.
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
Walt does better poems IMHO. Does that bode ill for our resident bard?
My expiration date comes up this April. Does that mean I was only average Bad?
What did Mae West say? ‘When I’m bad, I”m BAD, but when I’m real bad, I’m very good!”
Steve Jobs was not sustained by his family. His pile of money bought him a liver transplant and a couple more years. It is not easy to get a liver transplant if you pancreatic cancer, you basically have to pull strings. That is because a liver is precious thing to waste on a pancreatic cancer patient, who has a death sentence.
Steve Jobs was a devout Buddhist who subscribed to the idea that the basic state of man was one of suffering, and that state of suffering is a constant to be worshiped. No avenue for charity exists for Buddhists like this. Suffering is part of the human condition, and it can’t, and shouldn’t be relieved.
Jobs axed Apple’s philanthropic division, and he never gave a dime to charity, purposefully. That’s because Jobs was a Buddhist. Charity is simply something a lot of Buddhists oppose on principle.
Nevertheless, Jobs was a Marxist. As is the Dali Lama. This is a conundrum at first, and at once it becomes clear that only Christianity could truly originate and inform Marxism. Marxism is an eschatological faith oriented toward end-times, exactly as Christianity is. Buddhism will have none of that, considering it all pointless.
Nevertheless, Steve Jobs and the Dali Lama are quite notable Buddhists and Marxists. They welcome and champion a highly state-controlled world. They like the world if they can game it.
R.I.P., putz.
When I’m good I’m very good, but when I’m bad I’m better.
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
… she lived to age 87, vamping all the way.
Wretchard says: And we notice it even [if] they are old.
Ronald Reagan lived to be 93, Mother Teresa was 87, John Paul II was 84, Benedict XVI is presently 84, Elizabeth II is 85, Billy Graham is 92. A mixed group, to be sure, but certainly proof that some good people do live to a ripe old age.
what an awesome clip of nation saying good by to a truly great leader and man.
Thank you for posting.
Even if bad people are often extremely vital, their behaviour may counteract that vitality by making their lives more dangerous than the norm to increase the probability of their death at any time. Wretchard lists four infamous dirty rotten scoundrels with long lives. On the opposing team, Pope John Paul II, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa and Bernard Marcus (still alive) are all famous people of good character with equally long lives.
If you could define one population of dead dirty rotten scoundrels and another population of dead straight arrows – and you took a large random sample of lifespans from both – I’m guessing that the sample mean life spans and the variances of those sample means would not be statistically different.
…meter going into red…
OK, Cowboy, who deserved it more, Steve Jobs or Mickey Mantle?
Apple’s mastermind led a valuable and productive life up to the end. Statistical utility of the Mick’s treatment, questionable. Morality, questionable too, primarily because he drank himself into a new liver. I daresay pancreatic cancer wasn’t Steve’s fault. As for charity I am sure he paid retail if that makes you feel OK.
Did you like Mantle better? Why? Why does that matter?
If Jobs had got another thirty-odd years instead of another “few,” we would all be measurably better off. Mantle? No more home runs.
But gee, let’s save the livers for the Christians or those who tithe, or people on Cowboy’s “People I Like” list? Is that where you’re going with this?
Let me tell you, I give blood and platelets (mostly Plt.) all the time. Assuming a nazi, communist or jihadi isn’t the recipient, I don’t care who gets it. May it profit them, even a Democrat! I also have the honor and good fortune to boast that I am being asked to give bone marrow, for the second time, to an anonymous leukemia patient in PA. Of course I will give, gladly and over the objections of relatives: it could save a life. The first time the guy only got nine months out of it, I hope it was not my fault and the second guy makes it all the way.
If I could have saved Steve Jobs, with anything I can spare, I would gladly have done so.
I have to ask, Cowboy, seriously, with sincerity and respect:
What the flipping fudge do you know about it? Huh?
Show me Jobs’ CPUSA card and I’ll apologize. Till then…words fail…try to be a better person than you are, Cowboy.
Nichevo: “The first time the guy only got nine months out of it, I hope it was not my fault and the second guy makes it all the way.” Admirable act, and admirable sentiment as well, but . . . all the way to where? To the end? The first guy made it that far, too. It’s less likely to have been your fault, and more likely to be to your credit, that he got nine months instead of, oh, maybe three. Or one. Or none.
Cowboy made a nice philosophical point about Marxism’s rise only being possible out of an eschatological faith like Christianity. I would go further and say that Marxism could only have arisen out of, and in contradistinction to, a faith that depends upon a creative, caring diety, like . . . Christianity. Marxism is a faith that relies on the primacy of man to direct himself away from the abyss we all sense in some form or another–the first, and irresistible, temptation was “You will be like God”–and hence, while I never really thought about it before now, the possible significance of “i-Pad, i-Pod, i-Phone.” I’d never heard until yesterday that Jobs eschewed charitable giving, but now it occurs to me to wonder whether the irony was lost upon Jobs himself, whose new liver was a final act of charity from a stranger who got Jobs two years out of it–which ended up being all the way.
“Showing an aptitude for destroying machine-gun nests usually results in the hero being repeatedly employed in this hazardous undertaking until with statistical inevitability his luck runs out.” During WWII infantryman Audie Murphy described himself as a fugitive from the law of averages.
4. PA Cat: Ronald Reagan lived to be 93, Mother Teresa was 87, John Paul II was 84, Benedict XVI is presently 84, Elizabeth II is 85, Billy Graham is 92. A mixed group, to be sure, but certainly proof that some good people do live to a ripe old age.
King Solomon advised a middle path, somewhere between the guy who lays down on a grenade to save his buddies, and the guy who throws those grenades, sometimes perhaps dropping it in his own trench from all the excitement.
Ecclesiastes 7:14-17 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness. Be not righteous over much; neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself? Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?
–
“If the rich could hire someone else to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living.” -Jewish Proverb
Big dogs die to young and small yappy dogs live forever out of spite.
Blade Runner, “like tears in rain.”
Do other creatures have knowledge of Time? How could we tell? Perhaps that was the knowledge we got from the Tree.
What gifts were lost in the mud of the Somme or at Gettysburg?
Maybe it isn’t that “the good die young” in particular, simply that we notice it more when they do. And we notice it even if they are old.
I did a little mental exercise. Off the top of my head, I tried making a list of (im)famous and truly evil people in the world of the present and recent past. The list came quite easy; Bin Laden, Gaddaffi, Mugabe, Castro, Kim Jong Ill, etc. That list practically wrote itself. Then I made a list of famous “good” people, people who changed the world for the better; Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mother Terrisa… I had to really wrack my brain to try and come up more people beyond that. The problem wasn’t finding good people, those I could find easily enough, but coming up with good people that achieved national or global recognition was a real problem.
The reason, I think, is that good people are “a dime a dozen”. Someone from this category has to be really exceptional to gain notoriety. Evil people, from the petty tyrant to the bloodthirsty monster, are still aberrations and their mere presence on earth is noteworthy.
KRB
depends on one’s bearing stressing situations, beside the appreciation of the “good” and of the “bad” is relative to one’s interests, and or to a group’s interests, I’m sure that Stalin was confortable with his appreciation of policies, also that Bunga Bunga doesn’t see what’s wrong with his behaviour…
Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech
Apple co-founder Wozniak on Jobs’ final days
“Steve spoke to me of the illness more recently than a few months ago as something that really did bother him, that he did not like the fact that he had been close to death, and sort of survived,” Wozniak told “The Early Show” from his home in Los Gatos, California.
“It kind of surprised,” said Wozniak. “He’s got a logical mind that understands, you know, as he is quoted as saying, that death is really an affirmation of life as part of the circle, and, you know, once you have a healthy thinking like that, you aren’t necessarily bothered by that. But he spoke like he was very bothered by it.”
Woz is refering to what Jobs says in Commencement Speech given 5 years ago when he had been diagnosed as cured.
Jobs recounts three moving stories from his life.
Advice to students:
“Find what you love, do what you love, …don’t settle.”
—
Jobs saved Apple from Oblivion by replacing a dead end operating system, followed by replacing a dead end cpu.
…and turned Apple into the most valuable company in the World.
No doubt many Apple employees regard Job’s achievements almost priceless gifts.
Millions of users are grateful, also, including Rush Limbaugh.
Earnest K. Gann wrote that one of the smaller tragedies of war is that so often the most reluctant are sent overseas to tackle the foe while those most likely to thrill to the sound of the trumpet are left at home to guard the whorehouse.
This represents blind bureaucracy in action, turning the crank and plopping out a set of mimeographed instructions that have to be followed. The power of that copying machine is truly awesome. I recall one officer who wanted to remain at the Pentagon (clearly a really serious case of Potomac Fever) but instead got transferred to the West coast, despite the direct intervention of the Secretary of the Air Force.
Last night TNT chose to change its schedule and instead of cop show reruns presented a film from over a decade ago on the story of the creation of Apple and Microsoft. Neither Jobs nor Gates comes out looking very nice in that story. Jobs refuses to take responsibility a child he fathered and Gates is a disorganized guy who liked to take bulldozers for joyrides in the middle of the night. But they do come off as being driven, and at least they refused to be at the mercy of a copy machine.
Well I don’t know if it makes much of a difference, but from what I understand most people who met Jobs thought he was an a**hole. From a distance, genius can be an excuse for such behavior, but it’s not as forgivable when you experience it first hand.
And what about George Burns? Granted, Gracie was the “gooder” of the two, but George wasn’t that bad, was he?
George Soros is 81. I keep waiting for that monster to go to his just reward.
I want to defend an aspect of Jobs that few people will; his stand on corporate philanthropy. I think, by rejecting the concept, he had a more ethical and principled view on philanthropy than anyone else in public life today.
Philanthropy is something that has great meaning when it is done personally and privately. The giver relates to the need, and takes an active part in meeting the need. The one receiving the aid knows that he is being helped by other individuals, not nameless, unknowable sources, a condition that breeds entitlement.
Also, giving should be done quietly, secretly, and not for public adoration. This was one of the great Christian commands that is widely ignored. “But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.”
In other words, from even a purely Christian view, anything done loudly and publicly for the honor and recognition of men (what we now call PR) is not morality; it’s just trying to buy good feelings like any other commodity, and there’s nothing religious about it at all. Giving with a pure heart entails sacrifice; if you are getting a return in public praise, there’s nothing sacrificial about it all.
So what is “corporate philanthropy”? Contrary to our legal definition, corporations are not people; they do not have souls to save. What sacrifice does it entail for a corporation to give away money? It’s actually means nothing since any excess isn’t really their money at all, it’s the money of their shareholders. Giving away other peoples money in order for the CEO to get praise for himself isn’t moral; that’s much more akin to theft. A moral and ethical way of dealing with excess money is to return it to the actual owners, the shareholders, and then let THEM decide what to do with it, including giving it to philanthropy if they choose. THEY are individuals, THEIR giving has meaning. Corporate “giving” has no meaning; it occurs only because CEO’s and boards love to soak up all the praise at benefit dinners that they get when they hand out bundles of cash that isn’t theirs to people who are mostly their well connected friends and neighbors. (all of these boards are incestuous)
Steve Jobs was virtually the only man in corporate America who had the courage, vision, and independence to stand up and say “This is all BULLSHIT.” If a corporation has extra money, it is their ethical duty to *Either* plow that money back into doing more of what they did to earn the money, OR give it back to the shareholders who own it. Handing it out to so-called philanthropic enterprises is just an attempt to buy approval from leftists and others who despise the capitalist system. It never works. But people are so scared of the disapproval of the rent seeking class of professional parasites that run things like the United Way that no one has the courage to stand up in public and point this out.
No one except Steve Jobs. His greatest strength, I believe, is that he never sought public approval from others for what he did and what he believed. He simply did what he believed in his heart was right, and let his results speak for themselves.
“Gates is a disorganized guy who liked to take bulldozers for joyrides in the middle of the night”
I read Mario Andretti’s accounts of his early racing exploits behind his parent’s back, and commented to my wife how unlike me that was, namely, that I was too much of a goodie two shoes to think of such things.
…then I remembered things I DID do!
Funny and surprising to realize the massive distortion of reality in my own mind about my own self!
“George Soros is 81. I keep waiting for that monster to go to his just reward.”
All that keeps me alive is the desire to live long enough to pee on peanut Carters grave. I have a 6-pack of Billy Beer in storage but I doubt that it’s potable after all this time. Shiner Bock will have to do.
“Joseph Stalin perished of natural causes at 78″
If you include Lavrentiy Beria among the forces of nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavrentiy_Beria
Is the argument above affected by Survivorship bias?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Fidel Castro might be 85, but he was still a CIA operative. He was an actor.
With Time Running Short, Jobs Managed His Farewells
Mr. Jobs himself never got a college degree. Despite leaving Reed College after six months, he was asked to give the 2005 commencement speech at Stanford.
In that address, delivered after Mr. Jobs was told he had cancer but before it was clear that it would ultimately claim his life, Mr. Jobs told his audience that “death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.”
The benefit of death, he said, is you know not to waste life living someone else’s choices.
“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”
In his final months, Mr. Jobs became even more dedicated to such sentiments. “Steve’s concerns these last few weeks were for people who depended on him: the people who worked for him at Apple and his four children and his wife,” said Mona Simpson, Mr. Jobs’s sister. “His tone was tenderly apologetic at the end. He felt terrible that he would have to leave us.”
As news of the seriousness of his illness became more widely known, Mr. Jobs was asked to attend farewell dinners and to accept various awards.
He turned down the offers. On the days that he was well enough to go to Apple’s offices, all he wanted afterward was to return home and have dinner with his family. When one acquaintance became too insistent on trying to send a gift to thank Mr. Jobs for his friendship, he was asked to stop calling. Mr. Jobs had other things to do before time ran out.
“He was very human,” Dr. Ornish said. “He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That’s what made him so great.”
Another origin of “only the good die young” is the myth of Biton and Kleobis.
Really clean and fantastic user friendly style and design. FYI: Hugohosting-dot-com – Free Webhosting. Earn up to $25 by refer to other.
Death is the answer to the question of life.
And it’s the only secret that everyone will keep.
We should have done more, seen more, been more, while we were here…and had the chance.
c @ 2: Marxism is an eschatological faith oriented toward end-times, exactly as Christianity is.
Pretty broad brush you got there, Cowboy.
I don’t think that end-times have much of a bearing on most Christian theory or practice today, and even in Marxism it’s necessarily more theory than practice, insofar as that’s how you read Marxist dialectic.
If you took this similarity seriously you’d be saying these are both creeds centered on sharing and charity. Differing only in details of some transcendental end-points.
What about progressivism? It’s the Republicans who traditionally have believed in technological progress. Does that make conservativism an eschatological creed?
I take Jobs as more of a huckster and showman, he managed to put a cult of personality over a technology company. The Mac never did succeed, but with the iPod, iPhone, iPad Jobs and Apple managed to move into two very slow-moving fields, music and telecom, and pick up a lot of loose change. AOL was another case (sic), where they made crazy money, for a few years, by leveraging the teleco infrastructure. Pixar being the third, where Jobs moved animation forward much faster than the studios, just by believing in it.
Jobs was never a details guy, but had good luck on the big issues. That’s almost the definition of a good CEO, when it comes right down to it. If he didn’t give to charity, I’m sure he paid mondo taxes, and the rest of Apple staff paid more. Selah.
“Do bad people live longer than the good?”
They seem to but I think it because nobody gives a damn if the bad die young; which they do in droves, just check the FBI NCR stats. Gangers and dope dealers usually get it before thirty. The footsoldiers of sin have a short life expectancy.
Perhaps it is the bad AND lucky that seem to last forever, sort of a Darwinian selection thing.
The affecting music for the video is the Jupiter movement from The Planets by Gustav von Holst. It was also used to good effect in the tv movie To Play the King, starring the devilishly talented Ian Richardson. There it was background music for a speech to the people by the English king.
Read this and then tell me why any Marxist deserves to go on living.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44808274/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/
I was just thinking that for some reason, Senators and Supreme Court Justices seem to never die. And even when they finally do, the damage they caused lives on forever.
It is true that the sun shines on both good and evil men, but we are commanded in the sacred writings to love good and hate evil; thus, in my humble opinion, the evil man is at a disadvantage – in this world – and in the next.
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Proverbs
Not the first time that Cowboy has wasted his/our precious blogily fluids.
Eh, no need to run the Billy Beer through your digestive tract, just pour it straight out of the can – no one could tell the difference.
Kae Arby’s exercise to think of good and bad people is illuminating. One problem is perhaps that the bar to be “good” is kinda high. To some people Reagan and Churchill were on the bad side. As Cowboy reminds us in this very thread, Jobs has more than a few detractors. So does Bill Gates for that matter.
Or take Mickey Mantle, since he came up here. He became controversial later in his life – if he’d been hit by a bus when he was 40, he would be more universally “good.” If the Grim Reaper had come for Morgan Freeman last month before he beclowned himself by calling the Tea Party racists, more people would have said “there goes one of the good ones” than will say it whenever he does makes his curtain call. And if Ted Kennedy had drowned instead of Mary Jo…
Of course, some people get their evil out of the way young. Lenin was what, 52 when he died? And Che didn’t make it to 40, but both of them did more than enough evil for a lifetime.
Jobs was not so hot but he did get lucky on a few products in the last years of his life… Remember in the 90′s Microsoft had to prop Job’s (Apple) up because they were on the verge of Bankruptcy (I think it was a 300Mil bail out) and that would have lead to Microsoft becoming a true Monopoly, Being in the Tech field and servicing the Apple among others I can tell you it was one of the worst pieces of cr@p, parts from the factory had a higher than 30% failure rate, Apple charged top dollar for the cheapest piece of sh_t, the iPod and iPad are the only items that really pushed Apple up otherwise it was a lousy product and company and still is inferior, it’s all just a “Name/Status” cult similar in ways to Islam.
I don’t think it’s true that the good die young. I never intentionally hurt anyone in my entire life, and I’m still kicking. My life abounds in good works. When I was a boy scout I helped old ladies across the street, even when they didn’t want to go. So I reject the notion that we good guys are necessarily, by providential decree, doomed to an early departure time.
The flower strewn Elysian fields
Where heroes go to play
Seem not to have the yearly yields
They had once in their day
The fields are bare, the flowers gone
Soft winds no longer blow
No longer birds announce the dawn
No more the golden glow
That once enrapt the hero’s face
That maidens found so pure
Is gone for good, and now the race
Is for the old, for sure
JMH@36: Since you’re around, RE my @72 (It’s a Wonderful Life), is your “Larry the PM” thesis a Gates or a Ballmer phenomenon?
Like Walt @ 38, I think I’m a decent guy and lived more years than Adolf Hitler (of course Hitler killed himself…).
Off Topic:
The Bad News: The world’s economy is going down the toilet.
The Good News: People are getting fed up and beginning to protest against criminality in Wall Street and by the Federal Reserve, refer to:
http://theweek.com/article/index/219947/occupy-wall-street-the-lefts-tea-party
Unfortunately more bad news can be found if you follow the link shown on the protest sign in the above URL, i.e.
http://PSLweb.org
That’s right, they’re old fashioned communists who didn’t read the memo that the Soviet Union imploded on 8 December 1991. Many of these “protesters” are hard-Left bad guys mixed with moonbats. Even a stopped clock is correct twice a day.
Putting hagiography aside for a moment.
The famous Jobs ” reality distortion field ” is a polite way of saying that he was a skillful liar and thief.
He even lied at his Stanford commencement speech.
The reality was that he was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and advised to have surgery immediately–with prompt surgery his particular form of cancer is quite curable with a survival of 15+ years.
Jobs refused surgery and all other treatment– instead he he took herbs and saw witch doctors.
He did not tell Apple share holders nor the SEC about his cancer.
9+ months later he finally agreed to surgery – and claimed that he was cured.
When people wrote about his looking ill and frail he claimed it was nothing — just a minor bug and a slight ” hormonal imbalance ”
Next he bought himself a liver transplant and jumped the queue to get one out of state.
He did not tell Apple share holders about his new serious illness–the story was eventually broken by WSJ.
When he got caught back-dating his stock options he blamed his CFO and lawyer and threw them under the bus.
The story is that he appointed Al Gore to Apple B o D to buy protection from the SEC.
Jobs was a very skillful hustler and show man — he was great a recruiting and driving talent and taking credit for their work
–those who worked for him saw him as a creative sociopath and narcissist
–he could have been a very successful politician.
He was a great marketeer who created a cult that enabled him to charge a huge margin for pretty machines that were assembled in sweat shops in China.
Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Allisvanity.jpg
Now back to the hagiography.
People say that they feel like they did when John Lennon died
Who was John Lennon?
Oh yes the guy who claimed that
“THE BEATLES ARE BIGGER THAN JESUS”
It is in the genes of men and women that the winner, the conquering hero, gets the women. The warrior who returns from combat with a Silver Star and a snappy uniform will attract willing women. Even the guy who LOOKS like he’s off to war gets a better chance. I grew up in Pensacola, home of the Blue Angels and the Navy flight schools and local women were all over those fly boys! A new school teacher with decent looks had a 50% chance of not finishing her school year contract because she would snag her a flight student. Remember the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”? That’s one reason I moved to San Francisco after college – less competition.
Combat does reduce one’s chances of coming back alive but not as much as you might think. For US military, 1998 to 2008 “The overall mortality rate for active-duty service members is about 73 per 100,000.” This is about twice that of a similar civilian age cohort, according to Army Times. One advantage is that those joining are healthier than the average civilian.
So, due to women, we’ll continue to have heros.
Thanks gals.
In the course of writing a book about the 2nd Marine Division in World War II, I had the privilege of interviewing many of the division’s veterans. One, Capt. John Murdock, the commander of B Company, 1/8 Marines in the battle for Betio (Tarawa operation), told me he was periodically given the choice of rotating a certain number of the young men in his unit to the United States. Before the landings at Betio he culled the unit of all the 8-balls, slackers, and incompetents, keeping the good marines for further duty. In other words, the worst were sent home; the best stayed and saw more combat.
The 8th Marines assaulted the beaches of Betio on the second day of the landings, wading through 600 yards of open water against arguably the most concentrated automatic weapons fire ever encountered in an amphibious operation. B/1/8 lost over 50 percent of its strength in the water. More were killed or wounded in the brutal fighting that took place once the survivors of that calvary-like trek across Betio’s water approaches made it to the beach. B/1/8 was more than decimated: it was nearly wiped out. Butthe survivors took their objective. Murdock showed me the casualty list he compiled after the island was secured. More than half the listed names in the company had KIA or WIA hand-written after them; a couple were listed as MIA, never found, washed out to sea after sinking into the water, the bodies eaten by sharks; or blown to atoms on the beach.
“These boys,” he told me, “were the best of the best. All of them.”
what about the kid in this vid, good, bad or indifferent?:
http://minx.cc/?post=322313
Whitehall @ 42 said:
“It is in the genes of men and women that the winner, the conquering hero, gets the women. The warrior who returns from combat with a Silver Star and a snappy uniform will attract willing women.”
I wish this was always true. However over the years, I’ve noticed this weird tendency for extremely beautiful women to be attracted to scumbags. Logically, extremely beautiful women should be attracted to virile military types. Come to think of it, the military guys that I know tend to have plain-Janes as wives. There’s a mystery here….
Interesting tidbit… Somebody might be trying to take out our killer drones with a virus, refer to:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/
I’m hoping this is simply due to someone being stupid with pornography and infecting the machines with a common spam virus.
The idea that “those whom the gods love die young” doesn’t just come from Trophonius apparently. It’s also in Isiah 57:1, as a friend pointed out.
There is also 2 Kings 22:20. The idea is the same — that happy are those who do not live to see the day of trouble.
Now it may be that if you are the bad guy, then the time of trouble is in fact your heyday — your “happy time”. So perhaps what the good guys ought to do is pray, not to be taken away while peace remains, but precisely to live in a time of crisis, “to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them”. What immediately comes to mind were Winston’s thoughts as he became Prime Minister, just as the Blitzkrieg in the West was beginning.
It was like he sensed that somewhere in deep time it had been fated that he should cross swords with Hitler; that he was born for the hour and that if he could not do it, then no one could in the way it should be done. Who knows what the truth is. Steve Jobs, whether he was hero or villain (see debate above) was probably correct when he argued that “we connect the dots after the fact” and rarely before.
“I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” Winston Churchill
It saddens me greatly that evil men keep coming to power in this world. This sadness is counterbalanced by a truth which repeatedly escapes the notice of evil men – that the will of good men – and ultimately the power of good men – is invincible. In the end Almighty God will wage war – with the good men of liberty – against the evil men of tyranny.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
WRT to Job’s “reality distortion field” –
“Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had given them only $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak’s share was thus $350.[49]“
Eggplant,
Women run with rascals when they don’t have heros. Our society’s lack of challenges the last few decades allows them to turn to bad boys as surrogate heros.
That said, to be on the losing side of a war will deplete the supply of good men, but not fatally. During the American Civil War, the South lost perhaps a quarter of its military age men. Still, intermediate and long term fertility is seldom affected.
Face it, men are expendable.
@32 ridgerunner
Hear, hear. Won’t sell much of that fact based stuff in the media academic complex though. They’ve got the Marxists pegged as the good guys.
Neither and both, it was part and parcel of MSFT’s internal culture, an attempt to let the best technical people focus on technical problems while other people who were “smart but not good devs” (dev being Microspeak for programmer) would handle coordination, planning, feature design, etc. Of course that eventually put the less-technical people in charge of things, and those folks began to believe the successes were their fault. And they tilted the rewards and promotions their way, along with structural changes that propgated the philosophy that devs weren’t properly trained to be higher level manager – you needed the “cross-group” skills inherent i the PM position to be a General Manager or a VP. In the end, it pulled more and more people towards “management” functions of dubious value and away from the actual engineering that created the products.
There are strong parallels with the US economy, where our elite institutions have held that MBA and JD degrees from Ivy League schools are needed for the highest levels of management in our nation. The results have been equally bad, putting people with no idea of how to actually produce in charge and drawing people who otherwise might have been productive into unproductive overhead careers in law and bureacracy.
Another parallel, which would be more Ballmer than Gates, was heavily skewing the rewards to a handfull of “top performers” in a highly competitive company. When you have to be in the top 20% to get the big bucks and you are surrounded with smart, ambitious, hardworking peers, ultimately the only way to “win” is to cheat. Cut corners and roll the dice. Some people will roll craps and get fired. Others will roll a lucky 7 and get promoted. Some roll lucky two or three times in a row, watching more and more of their peers fall away at each level, becoming more and more convinced of their superior skills. But all they are is lucky. Pretty soon, you’ve selected your entire management chain for luck, not skill. Luck is not – pace the vikings – a repeatable skill. Eventually everyone rolls craps. MSFT’s top management started rolling craps a few years before the US Banking industry did, but both played and lost the same game.
41. Victor said…
The reality was that he was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and advised to have surgery immediately–with prompt surgery his particular form of cancer is quite curable with a survival of 15+ years.
Jobs refused surgery and all other treatment– instead he he took herbs and saw witch doctors.
—
—
“Since Steve Jobs’ resignation as Apple CEO in August, many of the basic facts of his disease have been widely written about. Jobs had a rare form of pancreatic cancer, Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors. The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post both feature solid pieces with additional detail about this disease.”
—
—
Thanks for that, Victor, maybe we’ll be able to learn more about the disease from accounts from some of the leading doctors in the field.
Neuroendocrine Cancers can be frustratingly complex and elusive, in that the disturbance of the endocrine system alone produces maddeningly variable effects.
My wife has Carcinoid Tumors of the liver, meaning unlike Jobs, surgery is not an option. Can’t find any other sources of origin, which is extremely rare, only about 60 reported in the literature, so maybe the unpleasant task of reading through Job’s travails sic will shed some light on something useful for us.
WRT to healthfoods, etc. The first thing my niece remembered when I told her was a visit she made to our farm when she was young. We’d gathered a bunch of Mushrooms to eat, and she remembered that Aunt Sally became violently ill.
You never know.
I lost my best friend here to a very rare form of Cancer.
He spent quite a bit of time in Micronesia living on irradiated fish.
w @ 49: Face it, men are expandable.
FIFY
If need be, one man can do the most critical fathering duties of some number of others.
One can have a fine argument about the eugenic effects of war. I suspect that historically, they were neutral to positive. When you start excluding the faulty from battle, however, … I dunno. As long as you give modest priority to promoting the very best taking them off the front lines (not to mention letting them lead the lower levels away from unnecessary carnage) I suspect the negative effects on the lower-level troops are near neutral, even so.
–
jmh @ 51: Another parallel, which would be more Ballmer than Gates, was heavily skewing the rewards to a handfull of “top performers” in a highly competitive company.
Yeah. In regards to this and to “Larry the PM/Manager” these are old, old problems. In the 1960s (!) IBM invented the “dual ladder” system to try to keep techs in tech and let managers manage and reward both appropriately. It didn’t always work, but simply by giving official recognition to the issue, it was immensely helpful. And those were IBM’s glory years, rather than the outsourcing zombie they are now.
Where I’ve been (and that’s a lot of places) there is serious trouble getting management to recognize just who *is* doing the difficult, critical, or valuable work, in quality or quantity. So, you end up promoting the tall guy with the deep voice, or the girl – no, not that, but the lesbian who is politically non-threatening. See enough of that, and an early exit doesn’t seem all that bad.
We perhaps don’t understand death. We fear it. Is it a friend?
On the Threshold of Eternity
See beyond death’s thin veil.
On threshold of eternity.
Death is bridge to eternity.
Passage to other side.
Death no enemy but mere
birth pangs of infinite life.
Don’t fear death, but know it.
Friend come to welcome to:
Life of joy everlasting.
Life of infinite peace.
Some of death’s gifts
given by God.
© Presbypoet, September 15, 2011
Inspired by Henri Nouwen’s question,in book on spiritual formation.
In one of my unpublished novels, the hero finds himself in heaven, but is sent back to earth to fulfill a purpose. He is sent to live fully whatever life is given him. This is not his purpose, but how he is to live. If he is not afraid to die, he can truly live.
This is one of the hard paradoxes. To live a full life, yet also be prepared to die. We think death is defeat. So we sell out to gain longer life, a life without purpose. It is interesting how Hezekiah (one of the good kings), is told by God he will die. He bargains with God for more time, and gets 15 more years. Hezekiah is told disasters foretold will not happen in his lifetime. He is OK with that. He says “At least there will be peace and security in my days.”(2nd Kings 20:19)
Do we sell out for “peace” in our time? Kick the can into the future? So it is nothing new. What is our life worth? To truly live, you must be prepared to die. What is your price?
“Yeah. In regards to this and to “Larry the PM/Manager” these are old, old problems. In the 1960s (!) IBM invented the “dual ladder” system to try to keep techs in tech and let managers manage and reward both appropriately. It didn’t always work, but simply by giving official recognition to the issue, it was immensely helpful. And those were IBM’s glory years, rather than the outsourcing zombie they are now.”
Origin of inspiration for Microchannel Architecture, no doubt.
#54 presbypoet
Do you know J.S. Bach’s aria “Komm, du süsse Todesstunde” from BWV 161?
Performance here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUYWHUZSkE4
German text and translation:
Komm, du süße Todesstunde,
Da mein Geist
Honig speist
Aus des Löwen Munde;
Mache meinen Abschied süße,
Säume nicht,
Letztes Licht,
Dass ich meinen Heiland küsse.
Come, sweet hour of death,
when my spirit
laps honey
out of the lion’s mouth;
Make my departure sweet,
do not delay,
O last light,
so that I might kiss my Savior.
Bach wrote the aria in 1715, when he was only 30 (he died in 1750 at the age of 65), so it was not the work of an elderly man. On the other hand, Bach had lost both parents by the time he was 10 and then lived with his oldest brother, so he was certainly familiar with untimely death. Anyway, your poem reminded me of his music.
Nichevo,
I sympathize, and in fact I am a peer with your sensibilities, regarding your point of view when you ask who is more deserving of a liver, Mickey Mantle or Steve Jobs? I rather doubt Mr. Jobs would have anything to do with your question. His answer would most likely be, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” He by the way does have a valid point with this observation. Supposedly livers are doled out on the basis of need to those who are deemed deserve them most and who would make the best fit with them, there is certainly not a free market in them. But all this is a sham as anyone with enough money and prestige, as Mr. Jobs and Mr. Mantle both have proven, easily end-runs around the rules.
Josh,
Progressivism and Communism are cousins, both variants of socialist utopianism. The endgame is to create a heaven on earth; there is an eschatology. Immanetizing the eschlaton, and all that. They do present as competing versions of Christianity, and they draw on familiarity with Christian doctrine and tradition to fuel their acceptance. It is no surprise Marxism (along with all the other 19th century utopian visions) were born in Europe at a time Christendom was experiencing a crisis of faith. It severs the Promised Land from God and grafts it onto the promise of humans.
I apologize for coming on very strong and impolitely with my expressions of disgust for Steve Jobs. Obviously he is not a man I admire, to say the least, so my reaction to the question of “Why do the good die young?” was a hot and hastily emoting of, “Why are we discussing Steve Jobs on this one?” To give the man his due, he was a force in bringing the PC to the masses, long ago. His work at Pixar was inspired. I do admire these two achievements of his.
To his detriment, Steve re-took Apple and turned it into a boutique that designs overpriced SWPL. Apple is in fact a frivolous company anymore, a design house that ought to be located in Paris, France next to Christian Dior, not Silicon Valley. Among corporate CEO’s you’re hard pressed to find a more ruthless, uncaring S.O.B. than Steve Jobs was. This is a source of wonderment. Gawker aggregated all the Twitter feeds asking, “Where were you? (when you heard the news of Steve Jobs death)?” It was incredible to behold all the Apple fanboys competing to pour out their sense of utter devastation and loss for the man who epitomized exactly the kind of thing they profess to despise the most: the heartless capitalist. The Occupiers were leaving their self-erected Obamavilles to head down the Apple stores and burn votive candles around hastily constructed shrines. This is madness. This is a mental disease.
Meanwhile you’ve got Alan Mullaly in the news, CEO of Ford Motor Company, and the Koch brothers, who have done more to provide good work and income to Americans than Steve Jobs or Apple ever did or ever will. And they’ve funded charitable trusts, educational trusts, fine arts trusts, and sought many ways to do something that would have had Steve Jobs sneering: give back to the community. The whole point of the Apple fanboys’ protests out on their Obamavilles is premised on this very idea. Fat cats must pay their fair share. You’ve got to give it up for the less-privileged. They aim to structure the whole of American society around these redistributive notions based on fairness, based on who “deserves” a helping hand.
They say as much every other minute, as they tweet from their iPads, interspersed with other tweets telling us of their profound sense of loss at over Mr. Jobs, their hero. They seek to out-do each other on greater expressions of hate for Mullaly, the Kochs, etc. Those evil capitalists! Jobs, who firmly opposed lending a helping hand to anybody at any time, on principle, is their fanboy hero. It is unbelievable to behold.
Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins, we will live.
- Pistol, “Henry V” Act II scene 1
Mr. Fernandez,
Thank you for showing that video of Sir Winston’s funeral. I have many times read about the tribute paid by the London dockers in dipping their cranes to the vessel passing by carrying his coffin. Now I’ve seen it.
I’m saddened by the fact that both Sir Winston and those London dockers are both gone, never to return. They were better men than either their sons or grandsons have proven to be. We in the West desperately need a reawakening of the type of spirit they once had in facing dire danger.
Sir Winston called World War II “the unnecessary war.” I suspect he would have called our impending economic tsunami “the unnecessary fiscal crisis.” As in the earlier case, a combination of anger, revenge, sloth, greed and political/fiscal dishonesty have led us once more to the edge of the abyss.
I can hope that a man like Sir Winston might emerge to lead us. I have much less hope that the people he would need to lead have the brains or spirit to follow good advice. An American nation stupid enough to elect the current inhabitant of the White House is in very serious trouble, and the British are in worse shape than we are. We have some very hard times ahead.
25. Doug
29. Josh
Although I have never used an Apple product, I have nothing against them.
It seems to me,though, that Jobs’ philosophy ["have the courage to follow your heart and intuition”] derives from Dorothy [The Wizard of Oz] and Walt Disney [When you wish upon a star...]- so he probably did the right think in saving a hunk a dough by not continuing at Reed. He used his G-d given talents as best he could [as we all should]- maybe if he gave more Charity he would have ended differently.
“I grew up in Pensacola, home of the Blue Angels and the Navy flight schools and local women were all over those fly boys! A new school teacher with decent looks had a 50% chance of not finishing her school year contract because she would snag her a flight student. Remember the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman”? That’s one reason I moved to San Francisco after college – less competition.”
Actually, in San Francisco, a lot less competition. A straight man in San Francisco who cannot get a woman either isn’t trying, or has some really remarkable bad qualities about him.
One of the few times I’ve openly whistled at a woman was in SF, coming up from the subway, seeing an almost perfect specimen of the fairer sex. To my complete surprise, she turned around, ans said, “Thank you. That’s the first time in ten years someone has whistled at me in this neighborhood.” If not for being happily married, I would have taken that as a great beginning….