Semi Truths

“I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end.”

—Douglas Adams

In his seminal work, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams imagined an intergalactic and interactive guide to, well, Life, The Universe, and Everything. In his series of novels (”the increasingly inappropriately-named Hitchhiker’s trilogy”), Douglas forecast an electronic guide whose entries were made by writers travelling all over the galaxy. Read the rest of this entry »

At Cornell University in 1959, a nineteen year old student named Lenny Lipton sat in the library at Willard Straight Hall and read a poem by Ogden Nash about a “realio, trulio, little pet dragon“. As anyone who has ever been nineteen knows, it is a serious and sentimental age. Lenny later found himself thinking about dragons and lamenting the end of his childhood as he walked down the hill to the city of Ithaca to meet a friend for dinner. No one was home at his friend’s apartment, so he just let himself in (remember, this is 1959) and while he was waiting, sat down at a typewriter that belonged to his friend’s roommate, Peter. Lenny wrote down his own poem about a dragon and lost childhood fantasies and left the sheet in the typewriter.

Peter, a performer and concert organizer at Cornell, found the poem, added some words, and set it to music. A few years later, when Peter joined the emerging folk music scene in Greenwich Village, he founded a group with two other friends and that piece quickly became part of their repertoire. Peter tracked Lenny down to give him co-writer credit before the group recorded and released the song on vinyl. By early 1963, their record reached #2 on the popular charts and has been sung thousands of times since. Why, you probably know most of the lyrics yourself…

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I saw the President of the United States on Larry King Live last night. He spoke forcefully about the necessity for the the U.S. to work with the United Nations on building a global alliance for peace and security, especially in Iraq and North Korea. He spoke movingly about AIDS in Africa, and how we need to do more to relieve suffering. He had thoughtful things to say about tax reform, international relations, moral authority, and the shuttle tragedy. He was erudite, relaxed, commanding, and inspiring. The President I am talking about is, of course, Bill Clinton.

You can see a transcript of the interview here.

You can hear a five-year-old parody (too many Monica jokes) of Larry King interviewing President Clinton here.

SLATE.COM has put together a very nice tribute page to Bill Mauldin, featuring works by other cartoonists honoring his work, his life, and his characters. See the site at Daryl Cagle’s Professional Cartoonist’s Index here:

TRIBUTES TO BILL MAULDIN