Greatest Music Video Ever

I am going to post videos I've come across. Here's the first. It's from Japan. Lovely.

Etymology of "Genius"

Genius -- Comes from the Latin word of the same spelling for the deity which watches over each person from birth. This spirit gives one "wit and talent." The root of this is in the Latin word "gignere" which means "to produce" and that comes from the proto-Indo-European foundational word "gen" which means "to produce," too. So you can see how the word "genes" fits in here.

Going back to the idea of a deity which watches over each person from birth, consider the word "genie" which shares an origin with "genius." A genie guards over you and makes you look smart.


Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Impact of Ayn Rand on Tea Party Folks

Maureen Dowd on the impact of Ayn Rand on the Tea Party folks in Congress like Paul Ryan:

"Indeed, Congressman Ryan has said the reason he got involved in public service was 'by and large' because of Rand, and he has encouraged his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged.

You’d think that our fiscal meltdown would have shown the flaw in Rand’s philosophy. She thought we could derive morals from the markets. But we derived immorality from the markets.

She wrote about Nietzschean superheroes who made things. She died before capitalism evolved into a vampire casino where you could bet against investments you sold to your clients, and make money off something you didn’t own or that existed only on paper."

Guy Kawasaki, on the iPhone

"$188 worth of parts, manufactured in a plant where workers tend to commit suicide, hitched to America’s worst cell phone network. But this is not how Steve Jobs pitches it"