“For some people, the most important formative element is place. To appreciate Harry Truman, for example, you must understand the Missouri frontier of the nineteenth century; likewise, you must delve into the Hill Country of Texas to fathom Lyndon Johnson.3 But Benjamin Franklin was not so rooted. His heritage was that of a people without place”
“Judging by the trace of accent in her voice, she had attended one of the Eastern colleges that teach women how to wear Harris tweed and talk with their teeth clenched.””
“The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.””
“What if she had already done it to herself? What if she had shaved away from the surface of her brain whatever synaptic interlacings had formed her gift? She remembered reading somewhere that some pop artist once bought an original drawing by Michelangelo”
“The courtship continued through January 2000, causing Musk to postpone his honeymoon with Justine. Michael Moritz, X.com’s primary investor, arranged a meeting of the two camps in his Sand Hill Road office. Thiel got a ride with Musk in his McLaren. “So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked. “Watch this,” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the accelerator. The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in the air like a flying saucer. Parts of the body shredded. Thiel, a practicing libertarian, was not wearing a seatbelt, but he emerged unscathed. He was able to hitch a ride up to the Sequoia offices. Musk, also unhurt, stayed behind for a half-hour to have his car towed away, then joined the meeting without telling Harris what had happened. Later, Musk was able to laugh and say, “At least it showed Peter I was unafraid of risks.” Says Thiel, “Yeah, I realized he was a bit crazy.” Musk remained resistant to a merger. Even though both companies had about 200,000 customers signed up to make electronic payments on eBay, he believed that X.com was a more valuable company because it offered a broader array of banking services.””
Walter Harris was a British explorer and travel writer known for his vivid accounts of North Africa, particularly Morocco. His works reflect a deep engagement with the landscapes and cultures he encou...
“On December 17, 1915, Burlingham suddenly announced that the parties were near settlement. White Star agreed to pay $664,000, to be apportioned among the claimants according to their scaled-down schedule. In return the claimants agreed to drop all suits both in America and in England, and agreed that the White Star Line had no “privity or knowledge” of any negligence on the Titanic. This last constituted an acknowledgment that the ship’s owners were indeed protected by limited liability and presumably barred any suits in the future. The lawyers for nearly all the claimants went along with the deal. Only a few loose ends remained to be cleared up. The loose ends, it turned out, took another six months. Much of the time was spent trying to divide up equitably the $664,000. The maximum allowed, for instance, would be $50,000 for loss of life under certain conditions”
“From the streets of France to the heart of American evangelical Christianity, the past three hundred years have seen many changes in the nature of redistributive social justice. Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined a centralized power capable of achieving egalitarian equality. Karl Marx wanted to accomplish this dream through the redistribution of resources from the haves to the have-nots. Walter Rauschenbusch Christianized socialism under the banner of “social justice.” Antonio Gramsci believed it was the cultural hegemony, and not simply the haves, which was actually responsible for oppressing the have-nots. György Lukács saw capitalism as an oppressive mindset and not just an economic system. The Frankfurt School developed critical theory to analyze oppression in cultural institutions. French postmodernists, like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault deconstructed language and knowledge as social constructs and power dynamics. Kimbery Williams Crenshaw developed intersectionality, which attempts to construct a new hierarchy based on a matrix of socially constructed victim categories. Achieving social justice has gone from the redistribution of income to the redistribution of privilege, from the liberation of the lower classes to the liberation of culturally constructed identities, from lamenting victimhood to promoting victimhood, and from changing society through politics to changing politics through society. No social organization remains unaffected. Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions” is almost complete. The final stage is to capture the last stand for Western Civilization and conscious of the country”