Palo Quotes

Everyone pretends to be normal and be your best friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other's tapes and find out what each of us was really like.

This was the way the night had cashed in. Choices had been made and things happened, and here we were. It was sad, and funny. My life was made of this. Stuff like this.

Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there's any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don't know about...

He was so. So dirty, and just moving in front of me, and cute. I was in love with him, especially because he was talking to me.

I drank from the bottle again and it was a scary plunge because I always wanted to take too much. It hurt, but it was also impressive, like being in the hands of a bigger force. And because of that, a relief.

The wind came in languid gusts like whispered reminders.

There was a moon and it was on the water. A miniature moon rocking on the little waves. I always see nice images like that but I don’t know what to do with them. I guess you share them with someone. Or you write them down in a poem. I had so many of those little images, but I never shared them or wrote any of them down.

Barry had done it with her, the girl I loved, and it had meant nothing to him; Tanya would die and no one would care; and there were billions of bodies alive on earth and they would all be buried and ground into dirt; and Picasso was a master at age sixteen and I was a perfect shit.

I guess in some people's lives, no one tells you what to be, and so you be nothing.

Soy un mago y no un babuino blandiendo un palo

Nisi ti loš, nego su te zaveli. Upa si u loše društvo. Naplaćuješ struju ljudima. A je li ti ikad palo na pamet, dok si čoviku naplaćiva struju, da bi on moga bit tvoj ćaća? Ili tvoja mater? Znadu li ti ćaća i mater šta ti radiš, Nenade? Jesu te oni tako odgajali, da naplaćivaš struju? Znadu li oni di si ti sad razbojniče?

La memoria es el perro más estúpido, le lanzas un palo y te trae cualquier otra cosa.

¡Julio César, deja ese maldito dedo en paz! ¡Ya no vez que está más tieso que un palo!

«No sé cómo será la tercera guerra mundial, pero en la cuarta usarán palos y piedras».

...it can be so boring being you sometimes, and if you were the most special thing like that, it could be really great, but maybe some people say the same thing about you, and you want to tell those people: 'No, you're stupid, it's no fun being me.

Las otras dríadas se fueron, dejándome sola con un gato, un príncipe, y un palo. Suspiré y miré hacia abajo a la madera en mis manos. ―Sin presión ni nada, -murmuré.

He tells me to go away, but I don't think love is anything like water. It doesn't slip off that easily.

You're really dumb," she whispered in my ear. "Yeah?" "Yeah. Why do you think there're eighteen pebbles in my wagon?" And then the last remaining space between our lips was gone and I was falling headlong into her eyes, right there on Palo Verde after dinner. And I can tell you, that was no saint kissing me.

Years later, on a Steve Jobs discussion board on the website Gawker, the following tale appeared from someone who had worked at the Whole Foods store in Palo Alto a few blocks from Jobs' home: 'I was shagging carts one afternoon when I saw this silver Mercedes parked in a handicapped spot. Steve Jobs was inside screaming at his car phone. This was right before the first iMac was unveiled and I'm pretty sure I could make out, 'Not. Fucking. Blue. Enough!!!

He went to the Palo Alto public library to read about rocket engineering and started calling experts, asking to borrow their old engine manuals. At a gathering of PayPal alumni in Las Vegas, he sat in a cabana by the pool reading a tattered manual for a Russian rocket engine. When one of the alums, Mark Woolway, asked him what he planned to do next, Musk answered, “I’m going to colonize Mars. My mission in life is to make mankind a multiplanetary civilization.” Woolway’s reaction was unsurprising. “Dude, you’re bananas.

Si alguna vez voy a regresar a México con el vientre casi a punto de estallar, será no porque esté preñada nada más que de viento ni preñada de un hijo tuyo o del Coronel Rodríguez: será de tempestades y borrascas, de torbellinos, para que cuando los mexicanos me den de palos como siempre lo hicieron y reviente, les llueva, juntas, Maximliano, todas las desgracias y las calamidades que se merecen por haber sido tan ingratos con nosotros.

U jesen može se katkad videti, kako zvezde padaju. Eto, mislim ja tada u svojoj samoći, možda se to trza čitav jedan svet tamo gore? Svet se raspada u komade pred mojim očima? I meni – je palo u deo, da u svom životu vidim smrt zvezda!

Lei era tutto. Primo, costituiva una certezza attorno alla quale tutto girava, una certezza di libertà e un senso di sicurezza. E' stata quello che il grande poeta bengalese che cito sempre è riuscito così bene a descrivere, il palo al quale l'elefante si fa legare con un filo di seta. Se l'elefante dà uno strattone può scappare quando vuole, ma non lo tira. Ha scelto di essere legato con un filo di seta a quel palo.

Ko li će goreti u Paklu? Oni što prodaju, oni što kupuju, ili oni što to gledaju a ćute? Uh, đavo će raditi u tri smene kad mu naiđe naša generacija... Još malo pa nestalo... Na Velikom Balkanskom Vašaru trguje se robusno, bez cenjkanja, načinom koji je još Atila Hun doveo do perfekcije, ali mnogi nisu tu samo iz koristi... O, nikako... Mnogi su tu iz čistog zadovoljstva... Ovo je narod Nebeskih Ratnika, Graničara Hrišćanstva, narod vojnički toliko superioran, da par poslednjih ratova vodi sam protiv sebe, u nedostatku dostojnih protivnika... Pa slušaj, pedeset godina apstinencije teško je palo? Zarđali oklopi vitezova poraženih na Kosovu Polju žestoko su ulubljeni od silnog busanja u grudi...

But as far as true goodness was concerned, that didn't exist - not in the land of cowardly men.

La ética -dijo- se imagina que los médicos somos de palo.

John Seely Brown, the former director of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, once said, “The essence of being human involves asking questions, not answering them.

La juventud ama la impostura como los perritos aman los palos de madera, los huesos que les tiran... ¡y corren detrás de ellos!, se precipitan, ladran, pierden el tiempo...

Ljudi u nešto vjeruju ne bi li zaboravili tko su. Zakapaju se u ideale, gnijezde se u idolima i ubijaju vrijeme raznim vrstama vjerovanja. Ništa ima ne bi teže palo nego da se probude na hrpi svojih slatkih laži, licem u lice a čistim postojanjem. Beznađe? Život u uskličnom obliku. Zato je more, taj tekući, beskrajno povratan usklik, izravna slika života i neposredno utjelovljenje srca.

Jednom sam čučao nasred potoka i promatrao jednog malog pauka kako pokušava prebaciti svoju nit na drugu stranu. On je, činilo se, bio odlučio napraviti najveću mrežu na cijelom potoku i zato je izabrao mjesto gdje je potok bio najširi. Pričvrstio bi svoju nit, skočio u zrak i pao u vodu. Voda bi ga ponijela, on bi iz sve snage plivao, uspentrao bi se na obalu i vratio do iste one paprati. Onda bi ponovo pokušao. Kad se treći put vratio na paprat, do-puzao je do vrška jedne grane i legao; prednjih nogu prekriženih ispod brade, proučavao je vodu. Pretpostavljao sam da je bio blizu toga da odustane - ja sam bio, guzica mi se bila ukočila zbog zime od čučanja u hladnoj vodi. On je ležao tamo proučavajući i razmišljajući. Onda mu je nešto palo na pamet! Počeo je skakati gore dolje, gore dolje, i grana se počela njihati gore dolje. I dalje je tako skakao, skakao... i onda, iznenada, kad je grana bila jako visoko, odskočio je, raširio svoj kišobran - i uspio! Bio je sav ponosan i skakao od oduševljenja, dok skoro nije pao u vodu. Na kraju je ipak napravio najveću mrežu koju sam ikada vidio.

—A la gente —Geralt volvió la cabeza— le gusta inventarse monstruos y monstruosidades. Entonces se parecen menos monstruosos a sí mismos. Cuando beben como una esponja, engañan, roban, le dan de palos a su mujer. matan de hambre a su vieja abuelilla, golpean con un hacha a la raposa atrapada en el cepo o acribillan a flechazos al último unicornio del mundo, les gusta pensar que sin embargo todavía es más monstruosa que ellos la Muaré que entra en las casas a la aurora. Entonces, como que se les quita un peso de encima. Y les resulta más fácil vivir. —Lo recordaré —dijo Jaskier al cabo de un rato de silencio— Sacaré unas rimas y compondré un romance sobre ello. —Componlo. Pero no cuentes con grandes aplausos.

All is indeed a Blessing IF you can just see beyond the veils; for it is ‘all’ an illusion and a test, and one of the greatest Divine Mysteries of this life cycle.” This IS my constant prayer, my mantra, my affirmation, reverberation, reiteration and my ever-living reality.

Shepley trotó alrededor de la parte delantera del Charger, y luego se deslizó en el asiento del conductor. —Todavía estoy tomando la posición oficial de que esto es una mala idea. —Anotado. —Entonces, ¿a dónde? —Steiner. —¿La joyería? —Sip. —¿Por qué, Travis? —dice Shepley, su voz más severa que antes. —Ya verás. Niega con su cabeza. —¿Estás tratando de ahuyentarla? —Va a suceder, Shep. Sólo quiero tenerlo. Para cuando llegue el momento. —No hay momento en el corto plazo ahora mismo. Estoy tan enamorado de América que me vuelve loco a veces, pero no somos lo suficiente mayores para esa mierda, todavía, Travis. Y… ¿qué si ella dice que no? Mis dientes se apretaron ante la idea. —No se lo pediré hasta que sepa que está lista. La boca se Shepley tira hacia un lado. —Justo cuando crees que no puedes conseguir nada más loco, haces algo más para recordarme que estas mucho más allá del loco palo de mierda. —Espera a ver la roca que voy a recibir. Shepley estiró su cuello lentamente en mi dirección. —Ya has estado allí de compras, ¿cierto? Sonreí.

Money fixes everything, even nature, if there is enough of it.

Mencio: ¿Hay alguna diferencia entre matar a alguien con una espada o en hacerlo con un palo? El rey: No hay diferencia. Mencio: ¿Hay alguna diferencia entre matar a alguien con una espada o con un mal gobierno? El Rey:No hay diferencia.

In Oakland, he saw two slum children sword fighting on a slag heap. In Palo Alto, a puffy fop in bursting jodhpurs shouted from the door of a luxurious stable, "My horse is soiled!" While one chilly evening in Union Square he listened to a wild-eyed young woman declaim that she had seen delicate grandmothers raped by Kiwanis zombies, that she had seen Rotarian blackguards bludgeoning Easter bunnies in a coal cellar, that she had seen Irving Berlin buying an Orange Julius in Queens.

Neel cuts in: "Where'd you grow up?" "Palo Alto," she says. From there to Stanford to Google: for a girl obsessed with the outer limits of human potential, Kat has stayed pretty close to home. Neel nods knowingly. "The suburban mind cannot comprehend the emergent complexity of a New York sidewalk." "I don't know about that," Kat says, narrowing her eyes. "I'm pretty good with complexity." "See, I know what you're thinking," Neel says, shaking his head. "You're thinking it's just an agent-based simulation, and everybody out here follows a pretty simple set of rules"-- Kat is nodding--"and if you can figure out those rules, you can model it. You can simulate the street, then the neighborhood, then the whole city. Right?" "Exactly. I mean, sure, I don't know what the rules are yet, but I could experiment and figure them out, and then it would be trivial--" "Wrong," Neel says, honking like a game-show buzzer. "You can't do it. Even if you know the rules-- and by the way, there are no rules--but even if there were, you can't model it. You know why?" My best friend and my girlfriend are sparring over simulations. I can only sit back and listen. Kat frowns. "Why?" "You don't have enough memory." "Oh, come on--" "Nope. You could never hold it all in memory. No computer's big enough. Not even your what's-it-called--" "The Big Box." "That's the one. It's not big enough. This box--" Neel stretches out his hands, encompasses the sidewalk, the park, the streets beyond--"is bigger." The snaking crowd surges forward.

A la gente le gusta inventarse monstruos y monstruosidades. Entonces se parecen menos monstruosos a sí mismos. Cuando le dan de palos a su mujer o acribillan a flechazos al último unicornio del mundo, les gusta pensar que sin embargo todavía es más monstruosa que ellos la Muaré que entra en las casas a la aurora. Entonces, como que se les quita un peso de encima. Y les resulta más fácil vivir.

-¿Por qué intentas salvar a ese escorpión? ¿No ves que está en su naturaleza picarte? La mujer no le hizo caso y buscó alrededor algo con lo que sacarlo. Encontró un palo, se lo acercó y finalmente pudo dejarlo en tierra. -Y es mi naturaleza está salvarlo- contestó

God, tired, all he wanted to do was sleep, be in bed, dreaming of palo verdes in bloom, the yellow blossoms bursting in the blue sky like firecrackers. He wanted to dream soft hands rubbing his skin. He pictured himself melting beneath those hands, like butter or ice cream or anything else that wasn’t human.

La felicidad es caprichosa, salta de una persona en persona como un grillo alternativo; curiosamente puede permanecer en alguien unas milésimas de segundo o quedarse a vivir para siempre, como le pasó a ella. Aquel grillo debió de construir su casa de palo en algún lugar de su alma, pues de allí no se ha ido jamás.

moved from Palo Alto, California, to Whidbey Island,

presero posto con un sospiro e con l’espressione tipica dei primi martiri cristiani quando cercavano di mettersi comodi contro il palo del supplizio.

Eve in Foothills Park, Palo Alto: “She’s a pistol and has the strongest

Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his

45 Y al punto dese por muerto si el alcalde lo bolea, pues ahí nomás se le apea con una felpa de palos; Y después dicen que es malo el gaucho si los pelea. 46

Daba la impresión de ser algo importante, ese deseo nuestro de definir la forma de cada segundo a medida que pasaba, de sacar a la luz todo lo oculto y molerlo a palos.

Ascoltate. In verità i paesani parleranno con gli occhi più che con la bocca, perché chi riceve parola può restituire parola, ma davanti agli sguardi siamo come l'agnello al palo.

Silicon Valley has never been interested in slow and steady growth—an early winning appearance is key to the Palo Alto System.

Ya murió el caballito de palo y ya le olvidaron así que murió

Cerrar los ojos. Cómo quisiera cerrar los ojos y empezar de nuevo y abrirlos después con la tardía lucidez que traen los años pero con la vitalidad que ya no tengo. Dios da pan al que no tiene dientes, pero antes, mucho antes, le dio hambruna al que los tenía. Linda trampa la de Dios. Después de todo, los refranes populares son algo así como un curriculum divino. Se armó la de Dios es Cristo: virulencia y furia. Dios los cría y ellos se juntan: conspiración y acoso. Dar a Dios lo que es de Dios y al César lo que es del César: repartija y prorrateo. Como Dios manda: prepotencia e imperio. Dios paso de largo: indiferencia y menosprecio. A Dios rogando y con el mazo dando: parapoliciales, paramilitares, escuadrones de la muerte, etc. Cuando Dios quiera: poder omnímodo. Dios nos libre y nos guarde: neocolonialismo. Dios castiga sin palo ni piedra: tortura subliminal. Vaya con Dios: malas compañías.

(Of the five Cobb children, Shirley, who ran a bookstore for many years in Palo Alto, was the most similar to her father, which may explain her particularly harsh assessments of him.)

GIGA: Da, ali se pritom nisi ni jedanput upitao: bogzna je li ona kriva, ako je netko stavio ruku na nju i uzeo je? Nije ti palo na pamet, kako sve vreba na jednu mladu ženu, kao na nezaštićenu divljač. Kako su svuda zasjede, himbe, kukavičluci, na svim našim stazama, i kako u njih upadnemo i prevarene i zavedene iz neopreza, nesmotrenosti, iz slaboće, jer i mi smo kao i vi. Zašto tražite od nas, da budemo ono, što vi niste? Zašto vi možete nas mjeriti vagom vaših iskustava na miligrame, a nama mora biti dostatan naš instinkt? Zašto vi znate, kakve su nošnje i običaji po bordelima između Amura i Volge, a mi ne smijemo dopustiti da nas pogladi jedna muška ruka, kad smo već izgubile nadu, da će nas doseći sreća ona, koju tako dugo čekamo? Tvoja je logika apsurdna i egoistična.

Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there’s any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don’t know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other’s tapes and find out what each of us was really like. But then you’d have to watch girls go poo and boys trying to go down on themselves.

El rostro asolado Sin el menor recato, sin la menor discreción —¡Yo, yo!—, obscena, lúgubre. Más vale la mera mirada impúdica del idiota, La cara de palo del hombre que no siente, Los sibilinos ardides del hipócrita

Garcia had traded his Sears electric guitar for an acoustic model shortly after arriving in Palo Alto, and late that spring Barbara bought him a better guitar, and shortly after that, a lovely sounding Stella twelve-string.

She soon found Palo Alto to be too provincial, and tried at every opportunity to lure Rachel into skipping class and driving up to San Francisco with her (the Neiman Marcus there was so much better than the one at Stanford Shopping Center).

She stood. "You just want me all to yourself, don't you?" She stepped into my space. The tips of our noses were touching. "Don't you, Mr. Leo?" Her arms were around my neck. We were on the sidewalk in front of her house, in full view. "What are you doing?" I said. "I'm giving you some attention," she cooed. "Don't you want some attention?" I was losing my battle for balance. "I don't know," I heard myself say. "You're really dumb," she whispered in my ear. "Yeah?" "Yeah. Why do you think there're eighteen pebbles in my wagon?" And then the last remaining space between our lips was gone and I was falling headlong into her eyes, right there on Palo Verde after dinner. And I can tell you, that was no saint kissing me.

The “spendthrift” Hoover was in California at his Palo Alto home putting his own affairs in order, while the great Economizer who had denounced Hoover’s deficits had now produced in 100 days a deficit larger than Hoover had produced in two years.

Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it. If one can afford private security, public safety is of no concern; to the person fortunate enough to own a Gulfstream jet, crumbling bridges cause less apprehension, and viable public transportation doesn’t even compute. With private doctors on call and a chartered plane to get to the Mayo Clinic, why worry about Medicare?

- La mayor parte del tiempo, tengo la sensación de estar representando un papel. + Yo también -alcanzo un palo y empiezo a hurgar en la tierra con él-. O puede que las personas estén hechas de muchas personalidades distintas -sugiero-. A lo mejor estamos siempre acumulando nuevos yoes. Sumando personalidades a medida que tomamos decisiones, buenas y malas, que metemos a pata o progresamos, que perdemos la cabeza y recuperamos el sentido, que nos hundimos, nos enamoramos, lloramos a un ser querido, crecemos, nos apartamos del mundo o lo agarramos por los cuernos, a medida que creamos cosas y las destruimos. Sonríe. - Y cada nuevo yo se encarama a los hombros del anterior, hasta que acabamos convertidos en una inestable torre humana Que imagen tan deliciosa. + ¡Sí, exacto! ¡No somos más que inestables torres humanas!

One of the first people I interviewed was Alvy Ray Smith, a charismatic Texan with a Ph.D. in computer science and a sparkling resume that included teaching stints at New York University and UC Berkeley and a gig at Xerox PARC, the distinguished R&D lab in Palo Alto. I had conflicting feelings when I met Alvy because, frankly, he seemed more qualified to lead the lab than I was. I can still remember the uneasiness in my gut, that instinctual twinge spurred by a potential threat: This, I thought, could be the guy who takes my job one day. I hired him anyway.

Čudna stvar'', mislim, ''videli smo toliko mrtvaca u ratu, i znamo da nas je dva miliona beskorisno palo - zašto smo onda tako uzbuđeni zbog jednog jedinog, a dva miliona smo već skoro zaboravili?'' No to je valjda zato što je pojedinac uvek smrt - a dva miliona uvek samo statistika.

Así va el mundo. Muchos adquieren opinión de doctos, no por lo que efectivamente saben, sino por el concepto que forma de ellos la ignorancia de los demás.

Peace that follows battle is a futile peace. It is time to count dead and to assess which side stands closer to the win.

You want to cry and smile, but instead you just stare and you can’t do anything.

Non volevo parlare con Artù e non volevo vederlo. Salii sul promontorio e pregai gli dei, implorandoli di tornare in Britannia. Mentre pregavo, gli uomini del Kernow condussero la regina Isotta fino alla baia dove erano in attesa le due scure navi. I guerrieri, però, non la riportarono nel Kenow. Invece di ritornare a casa, la principessa degli Uì Liathàin, quella bambina di quindici anni che correva a piedi nudi nelle onde e che aveva la voce flebile degli spiriti dei marinai nei venti salmastri, fu legata a un palo e attorno a lei venne accumulata la legna gettata sulla riva del mare, che ricopriva la spiaggia di Halcwym, e laggiù, sotto gli occhi implacabili del marito, venne bruciata viva. Il corpo del suo amante venne bruciato sulla stessa pira. [...] Anche ora, quando chiudo gli occhi, a volte rivedo quella bambina uscire dal mare. Con il viso che sorride, il corpo sottile sotto la veste bianca aderente e le mani tese ad abbracciare il suo amante. Non posso sentire il grido di un gabbiano senza rivederla con l'occhio della mente, perché mi perseguiterà fino al giorno della mia morte, e anche dopo, dovunque andrà la mia anima, lei sarà laggiù; una bambina bruciata per ordine di un re, in base alle leggi, nello splendido regno di Camelot.

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn’t employ many people and hasn’t done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the “work” is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it’s been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there.

Al fin exclamó a toda voz: —¡Aquel de ustedes que me anuncie una ballena de cabeza blanca, frente rugosa y mandíbula torcida; aquel de ustedes que me anuncie esa ballena blanca, con tres agujeros abiertos en la aleta derecha de la cola… atención, aquel de ustedes que me anuncie esta ballena, y no otra, recibirá esta onza de oro, muchachos! —¡Hurrah, hurrah! —gritaron los marineros, agitando sus sombreros encerados para saludar el acto de clavar la moneda en el palo.

You might be a big deal in Palo Alto, but you're nothing in politics. Because politics involves actual work, not going to Burning Man and billing it as a business expense. We work twenty-four seven, three sixty-five, in cubicles, for government pay, because we've figured out the difference between what's trendy and what matters. You're a bunch of kids burning billionaire's money, making useless toys, thinking it means something. I do more in a day than they'll fit into your entire obituary.

BATALLA Recojo con presteza mis tripas, las meto en su lugar, coso mi panza con mi habitual cuidado. Me lavo las heridas, desinfecto, les mato las bicheras, las pinto, las recorto, las enjuago. Me vendo bien, me enyeso, me entablillo, me zurzo, me algodono, me remiendo, me emparcho. Después, ya más tranquilo, mientras me siento y con un cortaplumas me hago un lindo par de muletas, una oreja derecha, una pata y un brazo, con obediencia espero mi próxima mujer. Mixto, fácil, mansito encantador, al palo.

The Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center, known as Xerox PARC, had been established in 1970 to create a spawning ground for digital ideas. It was safely located, for better and for worse, three thousand miles from the commercial pressures of Xerox corporate headquarters in Connecticut. Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”and “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.

En palabras de Benny Hinn: «Él [Jesús] que es justo por elección, dijo: “La única manera en que puedo detener el pecado es volviéndome pecado. No puedo pararlo solo por dejar que me toque; el pecado y yo debemos convertirnos en una sola cosa”. ¡Escuchen esto! Él, que es de la naturaleza de Dios, se hizo de la naturaleza de Satanás cuando se volvió pecado» (Benny Hinn, This Is Your Day, TBN, 1 diciembre 1990). De manera similar, Kenneth Copeland enseñó: «La justicia de Dios se hizo pecado. Él aceptó la naturaleza de pecado de Satanás en su propio espíritu. Y en el momento en que lo hizo, clamó: “Dios mío, Dios mío, ¿por qué me has desamparado?” Usted no sabe lo que pasó en la cruz. ¿Por qué cree que Moisés, instruido por Dios, levantó la serpiente en ese palo en lugar de un cordero? Eso solía molestarme. Le pregunté: “¿Por qué querrías poner allí una serpiente, la señal de Satanás? ¿Por qué no pusiste un cordero en ese palo?” Y el Señor me dijo: “Debido a que era una señal de Satanás que estaba colgada en la cruz”. Y agregó: “Yo acepté, en mi propio espíritu, la muerte espiritual; y la luz se apagó”» (Kenneth Copeland, «What Happened from the Cross

On October 29 the connection was ready to be made. The event was appropriately casual. It had none of the drama of the “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” that had occurred on the moon a few weeks earlier, with a half billion people watching on television. Instead it was an undergraduate named Charley Kline, under the eye of Crocker and Cerf, who put on a telephone headset to coordinate with a researcher at SRI while typing in a login sequence that he hoped would allow his terminal at UCLA to connect through the network to the computer 354 miles away in Palo Alto.

The kids in the Explorers Club were encouraged to do projects, and Jobs decided to build a frequency counter, which measures the number of pulses per second in an electronic signal. He needed some parts that HP made, so he picked up the phone and called the CEO. “Back then, people didn’t have unlisted numbers. So I looked up Bill Hewlett in Palo Alto and called him at home. And he answered and chatted with me for twenty minutes. He got me the parts, but he also got me a job in the plant where they made frequency counters.” Jobs worked there the summer after his freshman year at Homestead High.

You have to ask what the end game is here — when 25 percent of Palo Alto homes are sold to overseas buyers as investments while the mainland Chinese property market tanks, when Palo Alto schools are known for their suicide rates as much as their academics, when the city that gave birth to the technology industry now can’t even house startups because of its sky-high commercial rents, when Latino and black communities are being wiped from the Western side of the San Francisco Bay Area and Oakland out into the exurbs of the East only to be called back by smartphone to deliver laundry or drive people around.

Solo que, la mayor parte del tiempo -añade-, tengo la sensación de estar representando un papel. -Yo también -alcanzo un palo y empiezo a hurgar la tierra con él-. O puede que las personas estén hechas de muchas personalidades distintas -sugiero-. A lo mejor estamos siempre acumulando nuevos yoes. Sumando personalidades a medida que tomamos decisiones, buenas y malas, que metemos la pata o progresamos, que perdemos la cabeza y recuperamos el sentido, que nos hundimos, nos enamoramos, lloramos a un ser querido, crecemos, nos apartamos del mundo o lo agarramos por los cuernos, a medida que creamos cosas y las destruimos.

Palo's three older brothers had died in the Paraguayan War, conscripted by the Argentinian government, taken off by force along with all the black men of their generation, because, Palo told young Santiago, they needed a way to not only win their war but also rid this country of us in the process, two birds with one stone. Buenos Aires was too black for them, one third of the population, that's enough blackness to swallow you up! to get strong on you! and so they sent our fathers off to war and opened floodgates to European steamships so that white men would pour into the city to replace us, and their plan worked, the bastarda, look at our city now.

The kids in the Explorers Club were encouraged to do projects, and Jobs decided to build a frequency counter, which measures the number of pulses per second in an electronic signal. He needed some parts that HP made, so he picked up the phone and called the CEO. “Back then, people didn’t have unlisted numbers. So I looked up Bill Hewlett in Palo Alto and called him at home. And he answered and chatted with me for twenty minutes. He got me the parts, but he also got me a job in the plant where they made frequency counters.” Jobs worked there the summer after his freshman year at Homestead High. “My dad would drive me in the morning and pick me up in the evening.

The relationship lurched up and down for five years. Redse hated living in his sparsely furnished Woodside house. Jobs had hired a hip young couple, who had once worked at Chez Panisse, as housekeepers and vegetarian cooks, and they made her feel like an interloper. She would occasionally move out to an apartment of her own in Palo Alto, especially after one of her torrential arguments with Jobs. “Neglect is a form of abuse,” she once scrawled on the wall of the hallway to their bedroom. She was entranced by him, but she was also baffled by how uncaring he could be. She would later recall how incredibly painful it was to be in love with someone so self-centered. Caring deeply about someone who seemed incapable of caring was a particular kind of hell that she wouldn’t wish on anyone, she said.

Os declaráis bajo el mal tan postrados y tan yertos, que habláis lo mismo que muertos a los que todo da igual. Y ante seres tan pasivos, en mi corazón se entabla la cuestión de ver si habla con los muertos o los vivos. Tan resignado, tan manso vuestro triste cuerpo va, que a mí me parecéis ya cadáveres sin descanso. Basta de resignación, de pies y de manos presos. ¿No tenéis alma en los huesos ni sangre en el corazón? ¿Campará el pájaro malo, y tendréis siempre a su antojo sonrisas para su ojo y espaldas para su palo? Cuerpo de hombre que se deja pisar, morir o matar, al cuello debe llevar el balido de la oveja. Nadie se deje morir mansa y silenciosamente, para que la humilde frente no le vengan a escupir. ¿Por qué no lleváis dispuesta contra cada villanía una hoz de rebeldía y un martillo de protesta?

Me puse a trabajar al día siguiente, dando, por decirlo así, la espalda a la estación. Sólo de ese modo me parecía que podía mantener el control sobre los hechos redentores de la vida. Sin embargo, algunas veces había que mirar alrededor; veía entonces la estación y aquellos hombres que caminaban sin objeto por el patio bajo los rayos del sol. En algunas ocasiones me pregunté qué podía significar aquello. Caminaban de un lado a otro con sus absurdos palos en la mano, como una multitud de peregrinos embrujados en el interior de una cerca podrida. La palabra marfil permanecía en el aire, en los murmullos, en los suspiros. Me imagino que hasta en sus oraciones. Un tinte de imbécil rapacidad coloreaba todo aquello, como si fuera la emanación de un cadáver. ¡Por Júpiter ! Nunca en mi vida he visto nada tan irreal.

Instead it was an undergraduate named Charley Kline, under the eye of Crocker and Cerf, who put on a telephone headset to coordinate with a researcher at SRI while typing in a login sequence that he hoped would allow his terminal at UCLA to connect through the network to the computer 354 miles away in Palo Alto. He typed in “L.” The guy at SRI told him that it had been received. Then he typed in “O.” That, too, was confirmed. When he typed in “G,” the system hit a memory snag because of an auto-complete feature and crashed. Nevertheless, the first message had been sent across the ARPANET, and if it wasn’t as eloquent as “The Eagle has landed” or “What has God wrought,” it was suitable in its understated way: “Lo.” As in “Lo and behold.” In his logbook, Kline recorded, in a memorably minimalist notation, “22:30. Talked to SRI Host to Host. CSK.”101

Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them.

Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them. “I

The Xerox Corporation’s Palo Alto Research Center, known as Xerox PARC, had been established in 1970 to create a spawning ground for digital ideas. It was safely located, for better and for worse, three thousand miles from the commercial pressures of Xerox corporate headquarters in Connecticut. Among its visionaries was the scientist Alan Kay, who had two great maxims that Jobs embraced: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” and “People who are serious about software should make their own hardware.” Kay pushed the vision of a small personal computer, dubbed the “Dynabook,” that would be easy enough for children to use. So Xerox PARC’s engineers began to develop user-friendly graphics that could replace all of the command lines and DOS prompts that made computer screens intimidating. The metaphor they came up with was that of a desktop. The screen could have many documents and folders on it, and you could use a mouse to point and click on the one you wanted to use.

Tata je sačuvao i hrpu papira. Bilo je tu mnoštvo pisama u vezi njegovog posla oko osiguranja i dokumenata o karitativnim projektima. Negdje duboko medu papirima pronašli smo priznanje iz 1945. godine, kada je služio u vojsci. Bila je to pohvalnica za »herojsko postignuće« koju je potpisao general, zapovjednik 75. pješadijske divizije. Jedanaestog travnja 1945. očevu četu su napali Nijemci i u ranoj fazi bitke palo je već osam žrtava. Na pohvalnici je pisalo: »Ne mareći za osobnu sigurnost, vojnik Pausch napustio je zaštićenu poziciju i započeo spašavanje ranjenika dok su projektili padali u njegovoj neposrednoj blizini. Tu akciju je izvršio s takvom efikasnošću da su svi ranjenici uspješno evakuirani.« Kao priznanje za to djelo, moj je otac, u to doba dvadeset-dvogodišnjak, dobio odličje Brončane zvijezde. Za pedeset godina koliko su moji roditelji bili u braku, tijekom tisuće razgovora koje sam vodio s ocem, ovaj podatak nikada nije izašao na vidjelo. Sada sam bio tu, nekoliko tjedana nakon njegove smrti, učeći od njega još jednu lekciju o značenju žrtve i snazi skromnosti.

È un bene che non si ripeta due volte, la febbre del primo amore. Poiché è una febbre, e anche un fardello, checché ne dicano i poeti. Non si è molto coraggiosi, quando si ha ventun anno. Sono tempi pieni di piccole viltà, di minime paure senza fondamento, e ci si sente così presto vinti, ci vuol tanto poco a esser feriti; e si cede alla prima parola pungente. Oggi, avvolta nella comoda armatura della maturità che s'avvicina, le innumeri piccole punture della vita quotidiana non mi sfiorano che lievemente e sono presto obliate, ma allora - oh, allora, una parola detta a caso sostava a lungo, diventava un marchio rovente; e uno sguardo, un'occhiata di sopra una spalla s'imprimeva per l'eternità. Un rifiuto annunciava un triplice canto di gallo, e una mancanza di sincerità era simile al bacio di Giuda. La mente matura può mentire con la coscienza netta, con un viso ridente, ma in quei giorni, anche il più lieve inganno bruciava sulla lingua, legandoci al palo del supplizio da noi stessi innalzato. ========== «Se ci fosse mai qualcuno che scoprisse il modo di imbottigliare le memorie, come un profumo...» dissi. «Che non svanissero mai, non perdessero mai la freschezza. E quando si volesse, si potrebbe aprir la boccetta, e rivedere il momento...»

One of those was Gary Bradski, an expert in machine vision at Intel Labs in Santa Clara. The company was the world’s largest chipmaker and had developed a manufacturing strategy called “copy exact,” a way of developing next-generation manufacturing techniques to make ever-smaller chips. Intel would develop a new technology at a prototype facility and then export that process to wherever it planned to produce the denser chips in volume. It was a system that required discipline, and Bradski was a bit of a “Wild Duck”—a term that IBM originally used to describe employees who refused to fly in formation—compared to typical engineers in Intel’s regimented semiconductor manufacturing culture. A refugee from the high-flying finance world of “quants” on the East Coast, Bradski arrived at Intel in 1996 and was forced to spend a year doing boring grunt work, like developing an image-processing software library for factory automation applications. After paying his dues, he was moved to the chipmaker’s research laboratory and started researching interesting projects. Bradski had grown up in Palo Alto before leaving to study physics and artificial intelligence at Berkeley and Boston University. He returned because he had been bitten by the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial bug.

Unfortunately, on Christmas morning 1492 the Santa María ran aground on the northern coast of what is now Haiti. Not having any way to refloat her, the crew off-loaded the provisions and equipment from the ship before she broke up. For protection they then built a flimsy fortification on the beach, calling it “La Navidad.” With the consent of the local Indian Chief, Columbus left behind 39 men with orders to establish a settlement, and appointed Diego de Arana, a cousin of his mistress Beatriz, as the Governor. On January 16, 1493, Columbus left Navidad and sailed for Portugal and Spain on the Niña. Everything went well until the two remaining ships, the Niña and the Pinta, became separated from each other. Columbus was convinced that the captain of the faster Pinta would get back to Spain first, thereby garnering all the glory by telling lies about him and his discoveries. On March 4th, a violent storm off the Azores forced him to take refuge in Lisbon. Both ships, amazingly enough, arrived there safely. A week later, Columbus continued on to Palos, Spain, on the Gulf of Cádiz, from whence he had started. Finally, on March 15th, he arrived in Barcelona. It seems that all’s well that ends well, because he was hailed a hero and news of his discovery of new lands spread throughout Europe like wildfire.

Bob Dylan The only time Jobs can ever recall being tongue-tied was in the presence of Bob Dylan. He was playing near Palo Alto in October 2004, and Jobs was recovering from his first cancer surgery. Dylan was not a gregarious man, not a Bono or a Bowie. He was never Jobs’s friend, nor did he care to be. He did, however, invite Jobs to visit him at his hotel before the concert. Jobs recalled: We sat on the patio outside his room and talked for two hours. I was really nervous, because he was one of my heroes. And I was also afraid that he wouldn’t be really smart anymore, that he’d be a caricature of himself, like happens to a lot of people. But I was delighted. He was as sharp as a tack. He was everything I’d hoped. He was really open and honest. He was just telling me about his life and about writing his songs. He said, “They just came through me, it wasn’t like I was having to compose them. That doesn’t happen anymore, I just can’t write them that way anymore.” Then he paused and said to me with his raspy voice and little smile, “But I still can sing them.” The next time Dylan played nearby, he invited Jobs to drop by his tricked-up tour bus just before the concert. When Dylan asked what his favorite song was, Jobs said “One Too Many Mornings.” So Dylan sang it that night. After the concert, as Jobs was walking out the back, the tour bus came by and screeched to a stop. The door flipped open. “So, did you hear my song

«Un portador de agua de la India tenía dos grandes vasijas que colgaba a los extremos de un palo y que llevaba encima de los hombros. Una de las vasijas tenía varias grietas mientras que la otra era perfecta y conservaba toda el agua al final del largo camino a pie desde el arroyo hasta la casa de su patrón; sin embargo, la vasija rota llegaba sólo con la mitad del agua. Durante dos años completos diariamente sucedía eso. Por supuesto, la vasija perfecta estaba muy orgullosa de sus logros, pues se sabía perfecta para los fines para los que fue creada. Pero la pobre vasija agrietada estaba muy avergonzada de su propia imperfección, y se sentía muy mal porque sólo podía hacer la mitad de todo lo que se suponía era su obligación. Después de dos años la tinaja quebrada habló al aguador así: “Estoy avergonzada y me quiero disculpar contigo, porque debido a mis grietas tú sólo puedes entregar la mitad de mi carga y solamente obtienes la mitad del valor que deberías recibir”. El aguador le dijo compasivamente: “Cuando regresemos a casa, quiero que notes las bellísimas flores que crecen a lo largo del camino”. Eso hizo la tinaja y, en efecto, vio muchísimas flores hermosas a lo largo del camino. Aun así, la tinaja se sentía apenada porque al final sólo quedaba dentro de sí la mitad de agua que debía llevar. El aguador le dijo entonces: “¿Te diste cuenta de que las flores sólo crecen en tu lado del camino? Siempre he sabido de tus grietas y quise sacar el lado positivo de ello: sembré semillas de flores a lo largo de todo el camino por donde vas, y todos los días las has regado, y por esos dos años yo he podido recoger estas flores. Si no fueras exactamente tal como eres, con todas tus limitaciones, no hubiera sido posible crear esta belleza”».

John Doerr, the legendary venture capitalist who backed Netscape, Google, and Amazon, doesn’t remember the exact day anymore; all he remembers is that it was shortly before Steve Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on January 9, 2007, to announce that Apple had reinvented the mobile phone. Doerr will never forget, though, the moment he first laid eyes on that phone. He and Jobs, his friend and neighbor, were watching a soccer match that Jobs’s daughter was playing in at a school near their homes in Palo Alto. As play dragged on, Jobs told Doerr that he wanted to show him something. “Steve reached into the top pocket of his jeans and pulled out the first iPhone,” Doerr recalled for me, “and he said, ‘John, this device nearly broke the company. It is the hardest thing we’ve ever done.’ So I asked for the specs. Steve said that it had five radios in different bands, it had so much processing power, so much RAM [random access memory], and so many gigabits of flash memory. I had never heard of so much flash memory in such a small device. He also said it had no buttons—it would use software to do everything—and that in one device ‘we will have the world’s best media player, world’s best telephone, and world’s best way to get to the Web—all three in one.’” Doerr immediately volunteered to start a fund that would support creation of applications for this device by third-party developers, but Jobs wasn’t interested at the time. He didn’t want outsiders messing with his elegant phone. Apple would do the apps. A year later, though, he changed his mind; that fund was launched, and the mobile phone app industry exploded. The moment that Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone turns out to have been a pivotal junction in the history of technology—and the world.

Palo Mayombe is perhaps best known for its display of human skulls in iron cauldrons and accompanied by necromantic practices that contribute to its eerie reputation of being a cult of antinomian and hateful sorcerers. This murky reputation is from time to time reinforced by uninformed journalists and moviemakers who present Palo Mayombe in similar ways as Vodou has been presented through the glamour and horror of Hollywood. It is the age old fear of the unknown and of powers that threaten the established order that are spawned from the umbra of Palo Mayombe. The cult is marked by ambivalence replicating an intense spectre of tension between all possible contrasts, both spiritual and social. This is evident both in the history of Kongo inspired sorcery and practices as well as the tension between present day practitioners and the spiritual conclaves of the cult. Palo Mayombe can be seen either as a religion in its own right or a Kongo inspired cult. This distinction perhaps depends on the nature of ones munanso (temple) and rama (lineage). Personally, I see Palo Mayombe as a religious cult of Creole Sorcery developed in Cuba. The Kongolese heritage derives from several different and distinct regions in West Africa that over time saw a metamorphosis of land, cultures and religions giving Palo Mayombe a unique expression in its variety, but without losing its distinct nucleus. In the history of Palo Mayombe we find elite families of Kongolese aristocracy that contributed to shaping African history and myth, conflicts between the Kongolese and explorers, with the Trans-Atlantic slave trade being the blood red thread in its development. The name Palo Mayombe is a reference to the forest and nature of the Mayombe district in the upper parts of the deltas of the Kongo River, what used to be the Kingdom of Loango. For the European merchants, whether sent by the Church to convert the people or by a king greedy for land and natural resources, everything south of present day Nigeria to the beginning of the Kalahari was simply Kongo. This un-nuanced perception was caused by the linguistic similarities and of course the prejudice towards these ‘savages’ and their ‘primitive’ cultures. To write a book about Palo Mayombe is a delicate endeavor as such a presentation must be sensitive both to the social as well as the emotional memory inherited by the religion. I also consider it important to be true to the fundamental metaphysical principles of the faith if a truthful presentation of the nature of Palo Mayombe is to be given. The few attempts at presenting Palo Mayombe outside ethnographic and anthropological dissertations have not been very successful. They have been rather fragmented attempts demonstrating a lack of sensitivity not only towards the cult itself, but also its roots. Consequently a poor understanding of Palo Mayombe has been offered, often borrowing ideas and concepts from Santeria and Lucumi to explain what is a quite different spirituality. I am of the opinion that Palo Mayombe should not be explained on the basis of the theological principles of Santeria. Santeria is Yoruba inspired and not Kongo inspired and thus one will often risk imposing concepts on Palo Mayombe that distort a truthful understanding of the cult. To get down to the marrow; Santeria is a Christianized form of a Yoruba inspired faith – something that should make the great differences between Santeria and Palo Mayombe plain. Instead, Santeria is read into Palo Mayombe and the cult ends up being presented at best in a distorted form. I will accordingly refrain from this form of syncretism and rather present Palo Mayombe as a Kongo inspired cult of Creole Sorcery that is quite capable

Voli li nekada divlja, a sada dresirana cirkuska životinja svoga krotitelja? Možda da, a možda i ne. Činjenica je da su jedno drugom potrebni. Krotitelj treba životinju da bi se, dok pod snažnim svjetlom reflektora i bježeći od kreštava tuša životinja izvodi svoje umjetničke točke, napuhnuo poput goleme kreketuše, a životinja treba krotitelja da bi u općem kaosu, koji je uvijek nanovo zasljepljuje, vidjela pred sobom neku čvrstu točku. Životinja mora znati što je gore, a što dolje, inače bi joj se svijet začas okrenuo naglavce. Bez trenera bi u slobodnom padu tresnula s visokog postolja i počela bezglavo trčati arenom te, ne pogledavši rekvizite koje joj pokazuju, nastavila gristi, grepsti i jesti sve što joj se nade na putu. Ovako je uvijek prisutan netko tko će joj reći što je uopće jestivo. Ponekad, prije negoli je daju životinji, hranu ižvaču ili je razrežu na komadiće. Tako životinja ne zna što je to iscrpljujuća potraga za hranom. A i avantura u džungli. Ali leopard iz džungle zna što je za njega dobro i što može pojesti: antilopu ili bijelog lovca koji nije pazio. Danju životinja vodi spokojan život, prisjećajući se točaka koje navečer mora izvesti, kada skače kroz plamene obruče, penje se na taburete, raljama nježno obuhvaća nečiji vrat, pleše sama ili s drugim životinjama, onima koje bi u slobodnom lovištu za svaki slučaj vodili na lancu ili onima pred kojima bi se, kada bi imala dovoljno vremena, odmah povukla. Na glavi i na leđima nosi nekakav majmunski komad odjeće, kakav možete vidjeti gdje jaše na konjima koje ukrašavaju kožnatim prekrivačima! A njen gospodar, krotitelj, pucketa bičem! Hvali je i kažnjava, ovisno o okolnostima. I ovisno o tomu što je životinja zaslužila. Ni najlukavijem krotitelju dosada ipak još nije palo na pamet da leopardu ili lavici gurne violinu u ruke. Najperverznije što je ljudsko biće dosada smislilo, ali i vidjelo, medo je na biciklu.

Vemos un insecto palo gigante y un grupo de mariposas cuyas alas parecen hojas de rosal. Entonces me viene a la memoria un artículo sobre mimetismo que leí de joven en la Enciclopedia Espasa, donde se decía que algunos gusanos adoptaban la forma de un excremento de pájaro para evitar que esos mismos pájaros los devorasen. Me pregunté entonces, y me pregunto ahora, si vale la pena conservar la vida a cambio de parecer una mierda. Mantengo hacia el mimetismo una actitud ambivalente. De un lado, me fascina; de otro, me parece uno de los recursos más humillantes de la naturaleza. Hay otro bicho que cobra, para defenderse de sus depredadores, el aspecto de un cadáver recubierto de moho. Están a salvo, sí, pero a qué precio. «No te signifiques, hijo», decían las madres de mi época cuando nos veían salir de casa con la barba y la trenca. No significarse quería decir pasar inadvertido o ser tomado por una caca o por un cadáver en estado de descomposición. Lo importante era que no se fijaran en ti porque, una vez localizado, podías servir de alimento a especies más violentas que la tuya. Había en el servicio militar un sargento que aconsejaba lo mismo que las madres, aunque de un modo más plástico: «Los que estén gordos que adelgacen y los que estén delgados que engorden». No parezcas árabe, en fin, ni negro, ni chino, ni anarquista, ni siquiera socialdemócrata. No te signifiques. Mimetízate. Adelgaza si estás gordo y engorda si estás flaco. No has elegido el mejor momento para ser distinto, muchacho, qué pretendes. Procura no parecer ni sí ni no, ni carne ni pescado. Disimula las ideas, no disientas, no te signifiques, no destaques. Si a un insecto no le parece mal que lo confundan con una rama seca, por qué ese empeño tuyo en parecer alguien. Haz como que bajas las escaleras cuando las subes y como que las subes cuando las bajas. No levantes la voz, guarda las apariencias, adelgaza, engorda, ven, vete, sal, entra. Sobrevive, en fin, finge ser una caca, un palo, una corteza. Y en casa a las diez

know that taking a long walk was his preferred way to have a serious conversation. It turned out that he wanted me to write a biography of him. I had recently published one on Benjamin Franklin and was writing one about Albert Einstein, and my initial reaction was to wonder, half jokingly, whether he saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence. Because I assumed that he was still in the middle of an oscillating career that had many more ups and downs left, I demurred. Not now, I said. Maybe in a decade or two, when you retire. I had known him since 1984, when he came to Manhattan to have lunch with Time’s editors and extol his new Macintosh. He was petulant even then, attacking a Time correspondent for having wounded him with a story that was too revealing. But talking to him afterward, I found myself rather captivated, as so many others have been over the years, by his engaging intensity. We stayed in touch, even after he was ousted from Apple. When he had something to pitch, such as a NeXT computer or Pixar movie, the beam of his charm would suddenly refocus on me, and he would take me to a sushi restaurant in Lower Manhattan to tell me that whatever he was touting was the best thing he had ever produced. I liked him. When he was restored to the throne at Apple, we put him on the cover of Time, and soon thereafter he began offering me his ideas for a series we were doing on the most influential people of the century. He had launched his “Think Different” campaign, featuring iconic photos of some of the same people we were considering, and he found the endeavor of assessing historic influence fascinating. After I had deflected his suggestion that I write a biography of him, I heard from him every now and then. At one point I emailed to ask if it was true, as my daughter had told me, that the Apple logo was an homage to Alan Turing, the British computer pioneer who broke the German wartime codes and then committed suicide by biting into a cyanide-laced apple. He replied that he wished he had thought of that, but hadn’t. That started an exchange about the early history of Apple, and I found myself gathering string on the subject, just in case I ever decided to do such a book. When my Einstein biography came out, he came to a book event in Palo Alto and

her that when he had first raised the idea, I hadn’t known he was sick. Almost nobody knew, she said. He had called me right before he was going to be operated on for cancer, and he was still keeping it a secret, she explained. I decided then to write this book. Jobs surprised me by readily acknowledging that he would have no control over it or even the right to see it in advance. “It’s your book,” he said. “I won’t even read it.” But later that fall he seemed to have second thoughts about cooperating and, though I didn’t know it, was hit by another round of cancer complications. He stopped returning my calls, and I put the project aside for a while. Then, unexpectedly, he phoned me late on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve 2009. He was at home in Palo Alto with only his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. His wife and their three children had taken a quick trip to go skiing, but he was not healthy enough to join them. He was in a reflective mood, and we talked for more than an hour. He began by recalling that he had wanted to build a frequency counter when he was twelve, and he was able to look up Bill Hewlett, the founder of HP, in the phone book and call him to get parts. Jobs said that the past twelve years of his life, since his return to Apple, had been his most productive in terms of creating new products. But his more important goal, he said, was to do what Hewlett and his friend David Packard had done, which was create a company that was so imbued with innovative creativity that it would outlive them. “I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” he said. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he were suggesting themes for his biography (and in this instance, at least, the theme turned out to be valid). The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences combine in one strong personality was the topic that most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to creating innovative economies in the twenty-first century. I asked Jobs why he wanted me to be the one to write his biography. “I think you’re good at getting people to talk,” he replied. That was an unexpected answer. I knew that I would have to interview scores of people he had fired, abused, abandoned, or otherwise infuriated, and I feared he would not be comfortable with my getting them to talk. And indeed he did turn out to be skittish when word trickled back to him of people that I was interviewing. But after a couple of months,

When we reflect on our daily lives, we might look back at a day that was very stressful and think, “Well, that wasn’t my favorite day this week.” When you’re in the middle of one of those days, you might long for a day with less stress in it. But if you put a wider lens on your life and subtract every day that you have experienced as stressful, you won’t find yourself with an ideal life. Instead, you’ll find yourself also subtracting the experiences that have helped you grow, the challenges you are most proud of, and the relationships that define you. You may have spared yourself some discomfort, but you will also have robbed yourself of some meaning. And yet, it’s not at all uncommon to wish for a life without stress. While this is a natural desire, pursuing it comes at a heavy cost. In fact, many of the negative outcomes we associate with stress may actually be the consequence of trying to avoid it. Psychologists have found that trying to avoid stress leads to a significantly reduced sense of well-being, life satisfaction, and happiness. Avoiding stress can also be isolating. In a study of students at Doshisha University in Japan, the goal to avoid stress predicted a drop, over time, in their sense of connection and belonging. Having such a goal can even exhaust you. For example, researchers at the University of Zurich asked students about their goals, then tracked them for one month. Across two typically stressful periods—end-of-semester exams and the winter holidays—those with the strongest desire to avoid stress were the most likely to report declines in concentration, physical energy, and self-control. One particularly impressive study conducted through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, in Palo Alto, California, followed more than one thousand adults for ten years. At the beginning of the study, researchers asked the participants about how they dealt with stress. Those who reported trying to avoid stress were more likely to become depressed over the following decade. They also experienced increasing conflict at work and at home, and more negative outcomes, such as being fired or getting divorced. Importantly, avoiding stress predicted the increase in depression, conflict, and negative events above and beyond any symptoms or difficulties reported at the beginning of the study. Wherever a participant started in life, the tendency to avoid stress made things worse over the next decade. Psychologists call this vicious cycle stress generation. It’s the ironic consequence of trying to avoid stress: You end up creating more sources of stress while depleting the resources that should be supporting you. As the stress piles up, you become increasingly overwhelmed and isolated, and therefore even more likely to rely on avoidant coping strategies, like trying to steer clear of stressful situations or to escape your feelings with self-destructive distractions. The more firmly committed you are to avoiding stress, the more likely you are to find yourself in this downward spiral. As psychologists Richard Ryan, Veronika Huta, and Edward Deci write in The Exploration of Happiness, “The more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce instead a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community.

1.Que sepamos vivir el presente. 2.Que no perdamos el tiempo pensando en el futuro. 3.Que dejemos de creer en la suerte y creamos en nosotros mismos. 4.Que dejemos de hacer montañas de granitos de arena. 5.Que la tristeza nos dé ganas de reír. Que nos riamos mucho. 6.Que cantemos en la ducha, en los bares, en las bodas, en las cenas con los amigos o donde nos apetezca cuando nos venga en gana. 7.Que aprendamos a decirnos «te quiero» sin que nos dé vergüenza. 8.Que nos besemos, nos toquemos y nos achuchemos mucho. 9.Que nos escuchemos tanto como sepamos compartirnos en silencio. 10.Que nos queramos, a los demás y sobre todo a nosotros mismos. 11.Que nos peleemos lo menos posible. Estar enfadado es una gran y estúpida pérdida de tiempo. ¡A la mierda el ego y el orgullo! 12.Que nos dejemos de rollos, de chorradas, de hacer ver lo que no somos, que eso no sirve pa’ ná. 13.Que le perdamos el miedo a la muerte, pero también le perdamos el miedo a vivir. 14.Que decidamos por nosotros mismos. Que nunca dejemos que los demás decidan por nosotros. 15.Que cuando la vida nos cierre una ventana sea cuando más abramos las alas para romper el cristal y salir volando. 16.Que las cosas nos lleven adonde sea, pero que nos vayan bien. 17.Que los cerebros de zafios, hipócritas, memos, mamelucos, corruptos, pesaos, estúpidos, tocapelotas, mentirosos, gilipollas… se reprogramen y entiendan que en la vida no hace falta ser así, que la vida va de otra cosa. 18.Que a las penas, puñaladas y al mal tiempo, buena cara. O mala, que tampoco pasa nada. 19.Que la vida sea siempre un sueño. 20.Y, en fin, que a la vida le demos calidad, porque belleza sobra.