

Time Wastes Too Fast - mhb
http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/

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riffic
"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human
knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the
possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." -- President
Kennedy, welcoming forty-nine Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962.

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riffic
But in all seriousness, if we ever perfect human cloning, we could really use
about 50 clones of Jefferson to send to troublespots like China, North Korea
and Iran.

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kragen
Wouldn't _that_ be in an interesting nature vs. nurture experiment? Imagine:
Thirtytwo Jefferson and his brother Thirtyfive Jefferson pledge to carry on
the legacy of Kim Jong Il. Forty Jefferson, who has become the Communist Party
leader in Manchuria, warns them to tone down their rhetoric about the United
States, at the same time as publishing an influential book about how democracy
is a fundamentally deficient form of government. Twentytwo Jefferson writes a
series of increasingly unhinged tracts about the benefits of LSD, while
Twentythree devotes his research career to unearthing relics of the Etruscans
in Northern Italy. Eighteen Jefferson moves to San Francisco and becomes
notorious for his sexual escapades, one of which involves a group of Costa
Rican nuns.

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natrius
I sincerely hope this novel is in the works.

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ckinnan
Great piece. Two other interesting facts:

Jefferson had the largest private library in America and its books eventually
reformed the Library of Congress after the capital was burned by the British
in 1812.

Both Jefferson and John Adams died on July 4th, 1826-- the 50th anniversary of
the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

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timr
Also, Adams' dying words were (rumored to be) _"Jefferson still surivives"_ ,
not knowing that his rival Jefferson had died hours earlier on the same day.

History geeks represent.

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nopassrecover
Wow I'm really surprised. I skip nytimes.com articles out of habit (sick of
old-world journalist link bait). I had no idea that there were cool blog(s)
hosted on the nytimes.com domain. I really wish the (domain) included
subdomain.

Anyway, this is awesome. I wish Jefferson were alive today.

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iamwil
You'd be surprised. NYtimes actually has a pretty forward looking IT dept.
They've even released an API

[http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/article_search_api?authChe...](http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/article_search_api?authChecked=1)

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nopassrecover
Awesome. I guess I've been biased by a lot of the stories I've read where the
writing is of poorer quality and less relevance than blogs I read. I think the
problem is that there were too many linkbait postings (i.e. what I saw as
irrelevant to here, or sensationalised) from nytimes.com and so I flipped the
bozo switch on that domain.

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michael_dorfman
Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Best thing I've read all week.

(And from the title, I thought it was going to be about the speedy decline in
the fortunes of Time Magazine....)

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debt
"Determine never to be idle."

That really was fantastic. Amazing illustrations.

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projectileboy
Jefferson had so many accomplishments that it's interesting to see the three
that he picked as his most important:

[http://www.mccullagh.org/image/13/thomas-jefferson-
tombstone...](http://www.mccullagh.org/image/13/thomas-jefferson-
tombstone.html)

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johnnybgoode
Impressive stuff. Unfortunately, Jefferson had faults beyond owning slaves;
it's possible that he unwittingly contributed to the mixing of church and
state.

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secret
How did he unwittingly contribute to mixing church and state? He was a big
proponent of separation. From wiki:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man &
his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that
the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I
contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus
building a wall of separation between Church & State"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_church_and_state#Modern)

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johnnybgoode
No, I know he was a big proponent of separation; that's why I said
"unwittingly". :)

First, here's what I mean by separation of church and state:
<http://bit.ly/Xy9le> (Warning: It's a bit long, but not as long as it looks.)

I suggest finishing that before going to the second link:
<http://bit.ly/133aMi> (Notice especially the first word in the text that
starts with the letter p.)

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sho
_Please_ don't use URL shortening services here.

Apart from that, interesting links, thanks.

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ssn
Simply beautiful.

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weegee
This is art and history combined, it's wonderful. This seems like a format
worth developing more, it could make learning about history easier for kids
(heck, and adults too).

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kragen
Perhaps see <http://www.unowen.net/tegaki/index.php> — a set of hand-drawn
blogs.

