During the week, I contemplated putting in a business plan application for a new iPad at work. Turns out, on reflection, that I don’t really (REALLY) need it and it would be an unwarranted expense.
But Mr Jobs certainly had a gift for creating objects of desire as well as utility. Was he another Beethoven? Possibly in his own way. Click on the link to learn something that you may not have known about the Edison of our age.
I propose that
1) We replace the absentee monarch of Australia (who is also the Monarch of Great Britain) with an elected Australian monarchy.
2) The elected monarch exactly replaces the current monarch in the current constition.
3) The elected monarch has exactly the same powers, duties and responsibilities as those of the current absentee monarch. All the monarch's functions are carried out by his/her personal representatives (as is currently the case): federally by the Governor General, and in the states by the State Governors.
4) The Governor General and the Governors continue to be selected and appointed as they currently are, that is, by the premier with the approval of the monarch.
5) The monarch is elected to sovereignty over Australia for life, but his/her sovereignty is strictly non-hereditary.
6) The elective body is the "college of electors" comprised of the state governors and federal governor general.
7) The election of the monarch must be a unanimous decision on the part of the college of electors.
Hi David, I just finished reading the new biography of Steve Jobs and its a real page turner, especially for people like me who lived through the development of the PC.
Jobs himself is a real mixture – he could be cruel and grasping, but at the same time idealistic and not just driven by making money.
He hated the term “biological parents”, because he regarded the people who actually raised him as his real parents, and the others as “sperm donors”. It was a secret adoption, and his biological parents eventually married and had a daughter, so at the age of about 30, Jobs met his sister for the first time. He also had a daughter which he denied existing for a time, as well as children from his later marriage. (By the way, the first daughter, who he eventually supported, was called “Lucy” which makes anyone of my age smile, because that was what he called the successor to the first Mac computer.
To the end, Jobs said he was 50/50 about believing in an afterlife, sometimes he thought that something must live on when we die, sometimes he thought it was just like an ON/OFF switch (and then said that must have been the reason he always avoided having on/off switches on his gadgets.)
There is an interesting description of Jobs last words from his sister. Mona Simpson which sounds like the start of another journey at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/31/steve-jobs-last-words
amendment:
the name of Steve Job’s first child, and the name of the successor to the Mac computer was LISA, not Lucy.
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