Time Wastes Too Fast | Hacker News Reader

Time Wastes Too Fast

kalman.blogs.nytimes.com

202 pointsmhb35 comments

"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.

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.

Jefferson wasn't half the intellect that Franklin was.

As far as Jefferson's diplomacy goes, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War .

But lucky for us, they were on the same side. When Jefferson was serving as Ambassador to France during the constitutional convention Jefferson and Franklin exchanged brilliant letters.

Did Franklin give Jeffson pointers on French babes? (Franklin went to France before the American Revolution to get French support. Talk about an old coot in a candy store....)

One can make a reasonable argument that the American Revolution was (in part) Franklin's response to being insulted by the English.

Jefferson wasn't a slouch, but Franklin ....

North Korea and Iran maybe but China? China may not have the best records for human rights but I wouldn't put it in the same league as North Korea or Saudi Arabia.

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.

okay i'm disappointed then. thanks for that. nice to see theres some perspective i need to learn first.

I sincerely hope this novel is in the works.

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.

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.

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.

>I really wish the (domain) included subdomain.

Put in a feature request with pg.

How about it pg: would you accept a patch that showed the subdomain when the domain is nytimes.com?

The look is pretty good. I find that the handmade-aesthetic-webpage is hard to get right.

Old-world journalist link bait?

People who tend to write because they have to rather than because they want to. Each week it seems they have to put out x words and this somehow hurts the quality. I've found they tend to talk about internet/new technology from an outside point of view (heavy use of jargon to try and fit in, quick to sensationalise the negative impact of anything new).

You have to be trolling...come on. You can't possibly believe what you just wrote.

Each week it seems they have to put out x words and this somehow hurts the quality. I've found they tend to talk about internet/new technology from an outside point of view (heavy use of jargon to try and fit in, quick to sensationalise the negative impact of anything new).

An ex girlfriend is a tech "journalist" for a new-world tech blog. What you've described is exactly how the new media outlets work.

Yeah fair enough. I don't like them either :-) It seems both are trying to fit in with a movement they don't understand. I find the kinds of reports we are talking about lack actual content/value.

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...

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.

Yeah I've always been impressed with the quality of the site design at NYT. I suppose they decided it might have something to do with their future at one point.

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....)

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...

"Determine never to be idle."

That really was fantastic. Amazing illustrations.

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

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#...

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.)

Please don't use URL shortening services here.

Apart from that, interesting links, thanks.

Far more tragic I'd have to say is that Jefferson seemed to believe deeply in a smaller, weaker executive branch and then presided over vast expansion of the Executive.

Simply beautiful.

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).

Unfortunately, it makes it difficult to read at work without being conspicuous.

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

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