Leaders are made,
they are not born.
They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay
to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi
Image of the Day
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| Via the National Review |
One of my indulgences during my college days, getting away from the stresses of study and work, was the soap opera of professional wrestling. I realized very early the outcomes were staged, but it didn't matter; I liked creative storylines, like how they managed to get two babyfaces (good guys) to feud when Andre the Giant got a dinky trophy while champion Hulk Hogan got a huge trophy: Andre felt disrespected. I still recall the first time I saw the Blade Runners on TV; former bodybuilder "Flash" Borden was huge but fellow bodybuilder "Rock" Hellwig was massive, and I still remember the announcer calling him "the big one". The two eventually went separate ways with Hellwig taking on the Dingo Warrior character in WCCW and then emerging as the Ultimate Warrior in the marquee WWE. Borden as Sting migrated to the rival NWA/WCW promotion; Warrior made a brief appearance in WCW after his multi-stint, volatile relationship with WWE, but retired in 1998.
Hellwig truly lived his character, eventually taking on Warrior as his legal name. He became a motivational speaker and an outspoken conservative (in terms of conservative values, not common politics; I have to admit having an acquired taste for his unique blog rants). WWE and Hellwig had a stormy relationship, including compensation disputes, rights to the character, etc. And then in 2005 WWE released an unflattering retrospective of the Ultimate Warrior which seemed to me the point of no return.
But over the past year it seemed like a thaw was in the works when his character was added to a licensed video game. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as the headlining act, an event that precedes the annual signature PPV, Wrestlemania. There was talk he had signed a legends contract with WWE. While the rest of the country was watching UConn beat Kentucky for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, I watched Monday Night Raw as Hellwig climbed into the ring to give a final kayfabe (in-character) promo. I had no idea that 24 hours later he would collapse and die in Arizona. When a co-worker mentioned at work the next day, I was shocked. He did more with his character in retirement than most active wrestlers do with theirs. I'm glad that he was able to reconcile with the WWE's McMahons. I'm going to miss his rants; my thoughts and prayers are for his surviving wife and darling daughters.
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| Bladerunners Jim Hellwig (Warrior) and Steve Borden (Sting) via The Real Sting |
Facebook Corner
(Cato Institute). Throughout history there has been a consistent fear of bank runs, particularly regarding large institutions during times of crisis. The financial crisis of 2007–09 was no exception. The interventions of the authorities in response to these runs, however, raise a number of questions. In this new paper, Vern McKinley considers the facts surrounding each of the runs, and assesses how the authorities responded
One predictable element of any crisis is the uncertainty caused by government intervention. Government policy is part of the problem, not the solution. Populist bashing of banks has been a constant throughout American history. There always the rallying cry of the Statists like Rahm Emanuel: don't waste a good crisis.
(Cato Institute). Does the presence or absence of federal research spending really determine an industry’s rate of technological progress?
Supercomputers, advanced batteries, the Internet, Google, cordless innovation, solar panels, fluorescent lights, optical digital recording, radar, Siri, satellites, advancements in bioengineering and astronomy, are all things that happened because of government funded research. There are a lot of other things that most of us take for granted as well. The problem is that most government funded research does not have immediate commercial applications. The author of this article takes advantage of this fact. He took three such examples and created a strawman argument to support his position.
Talk about lipstick on a pig; the idea that politicians and bureaucrats are able to allocate science funding fairly, effectively and efficiently is no less a fatal conceit than government can micromanage the economy. The idea that government invented, for example, the Internet has nothing to do with today's Internet economy. If anything, adoption of certain federal standards provided constraints on Internet expansion. The idea that applications for the federal government do not have a parallel in the private sector is pure hubris. I notice that the "progressive" cherry-picks his technologies and doesn't raise nonsense like shrimp on a treadmill and Robosquirrel.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Steve Kelley and Townhall |
David Cook, "Permanent". This is my favorite American Idol alumnus performance; it's a moving tribute to his then dying oldest brother Adam, suffering from brain cancer.
