3 People From Throughout History for Lunch

The interview question “If you could have lunch with any 3 people alive or dead, who would they be?”  is supposed to be insightful because who you choose says something about who you admire.  Yet how often have you ever thought to yourself at lunch, “man I wish the people I was eating with were more, you know, admirable?”  It’s not like one gets secondhand greatness by sharing a lunch table with someone else.

I bet that you probably don’t want to have lunch with Lincoln, Ghandi, Buddha, Thomas Edison, Einstein, etc. because it probably would not be very fun.  Don’t you think it would be hard for them to be genuinely interested in talking to you?  I mean, what would Thomas Edison say to me?  Something like, “you live in Minneapolis?  Man its cold there?”  Everyone says that to me already, what would be so great hearing about it from Edison?  If we have to talk about him how is that conversation going to go?

ADMIRER:  So, you invented the light bulb.

EDISON: Yup.

ADMIRER: Ummm… thanks I guess.

(Awkward pause then Admirer’s face lights up)

ADMIRER: Oh hey, I got a question, what do you think of those new squiggly shaped energy saver bulbs?

EDISON: They’re alright.

END SCENE.

We tend to admire people because of what they think or what they accoplish.  Great acts and great words can make someone admirable.  That does not guarentee they are good company.  I haven’t even gotten to the problem of group dynamics with our three choices. I’ve always wanted to get asked this question so I can answer with the names of three friends or loved ones.  Not for any sappy emotional reasons, or because they are my “true inspiration.”  But I know with them that I can have a pleasant meal in good company.  I don’t need the added pressure of trying to impress James Madison, Thomas Pynchon and Hannah Arendt while trying to have a nice lunch.

Arsene Wenger’s secret agenda…

This is how brilliant Arsene Wenger is as a manager.  He is being wooed by Real Madrid, who promise to bring him Cesc Fabergas and Kaka (or Christiano Ronaldo – life is hard at Real).  However, knowing how much money that Arsenal will have to spend once he’s gone (since he’s spent virtually nothing), he fears they will be potential Champions League rivals.  So, what does he do?  He rejects Atletico Madrid’s bid for Emmanuel Eboue, forcing the Gunners to keep a roster slot for his terrible, terrible footballing AND keeping Arsenal from making money off him.  He also spurns his future crosstown rivals in the process.  He’s been biding his time, slowly making Arsenal a non-entity as a football power while biding his time for Abramovich to stop spending, Fergie to retire and Liverpool to go bankrupt to move back to Madrid and dominate a Champions League against diminished English squads.  Man’s a genius.

I DECIDE

Well I’m not sure what terrorists would do in my back yard, but if they were willing to scare off the dog who freely wanders through my yard and the people who use the heated smoking porch in back of the bar/restaurant that backs onto the end of my lot… I could see the upside.

Previously on Lost…

Many of my friends laugh at my suggestion that I trust the creative team of Lost has a coherent road map for their story.  I told them I’d start doubting the show if they kept raising more questions than they answered after the point in time when the promised it would turn around.  When did they promise the show would start to reveal more than it asked?  Season 5’s premier.  I have for your viewing pleasure, a list of answered questions from the first two hours of Lost this year.  For those who are behind on the show and catching up, I will post the answers to the questions below the jump.  Repeat:  SPOILERS BELOW THE JUMP.

Answered questions:

1.  Why don’t the Others age and why do they seem to know so much even though it seems like they can be hurt and killed?

2.  Why did Locke have a vision of seeing the plane crash in Season 1?

3.  Who’s the guy in the Orientation videos?

4.  What was the point of the Hatch?

5.  Who was that dude that Hurley met in the mental hospital who gave him the numbers?

6.  Why did both Dr. Marvin Candle and Montand (from Rousseau’s ship) lose their hands?

7.  What is the illness that Rousseau referred to? (answered before, but confirmed last night beyond suspicion)

8.  How did Mrs. Hawking know that Desmond would visit her in his first time travel experience?

9.  Why did Desmond start time traveling after he turned the failsafe key?

10.  What’s the deal with Christian Shephard?  

11.  How did Richard Alpert know to seek out a young John Locke last season?  

12. Why is Faraday weeping when he sees the plane crash on tv?

13. What are the numbers (It wasn’t revealed for sure, but I think this will be the episode where it becomes clear what they mean)?

Hey, I met her….

Here’s the most unconventional inauguration day post you’ll probably read.  I was absolutely thrilled to see the performance of the John Williams arrangement.  When Senator Feinstein was reading the performers names for the piece, Itzhak Perlman (of course), Yo Yo Ma (do they get any more famous), Anthony McGill (don’t know him, but I don’t know ANY clarinet players), and Gabriela Montero… wait - Gabriela Montero?   I saw her in Nashville last year and I had the pleasure of being last in line for autographs during the intermission for the show.  I got to spend four or five minutes talking with her and it was very strange to see her at the inauguration.

Las Vegas

I am at the airport in Las Vegas and have some yime to reflect on my visit. The Strip has what initially appears to be quite a remarkable economy, with so many different entreprenuers, clients, middlemen, and celebrity talent – it seems like anything is possible. What seems to happen after a couple of days is that the diversity becomes uninteresting, the mesmerizing economy of people appears stale and uncomplicated – it seems like anything possible can possibly be a bore.

Just a Reminder…

Orbitz just sent me an email reminder about my trip to Las Vegas this weekend.  Two questions:  1 – who would forget that they are going to Las Vegas?  2 – Who would forget they were going to take a plane trip more generally?

Rick Reilly on the BCS…

I am beginning to think that the BCS Championship game is never going to happen because I read about how it is a big game coming up, and then the next day I read the same thing.  It’s like groundhog day, College Football is Chris Elliot… only I am denied the satisfaction of decking him in the face.  Instead, I’ll settle for the delightfully snarky column by Rick Reilly.

Michael Lewis on the Financial System…

I highly recommend this article from Michael Lewis of the New York Times on our financial woes.  A heavy handed trivia question: Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Karl Polyani, Charles Lindblom: what do they all have as a common emphasis that Frederick von Hayek, James Mill, Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, and David Rciardo do not?  The answer I am looking for(The question is heavy handed because I presume one could make a lengthy list of answers if one gave it some thought) is that the first grouping of political economists have a much stronger grasp that institutions are not imply means to ends, but create, and are a part of the world we inhabit to the extent that they bring with their own creation their own environmental realities.  

Mr. Lewis’ piece speaks to this divide, and his piece is of the first grouping of economists.  While we would not normally think to branch our political economists in a way such that Friedman and Keynes are familial and both are antagonists of Adam Smith (who is in turn grouped with Marx!) but there is, in my view, something undeniably relevant about seeing economists divided along this view compared to our normal categorization.  Our normal divide is simply how “pro private property” an economist is: but to gauge economist on this is to gauge them on a position, and not deeper understandings.  Our very loss of these deeper understandings is, sadly, evident in our times by the very signs of neglect that reek from our current financial institutions.