Robert Fabbio

Digging through my accumulated debris I unearthed a March 3rd, 2003 edition of Information week. Nothing caught my attention except the headline, "Entrepreneur's Next Big Thing", a story about Robert Fabbio, one of the founders of Tivoli. His newest venture was Veio, an "systems management" appliance.

The article noted his runner up in the Imelda Marcos competition, male division: 100 pairs of shoes, 50 watches, and 30 suits. 

Searching the web for traces of Veio I came up with nothing except a link to some nice music videos.  Fabbio himself has moved on:

In 2006, Mr. Fabbio left the technology industry to focus on healthcare and launched WhiteGlove Health where he is able to uniquely apply his technology background to address the many challenges found in the healthcare industry today. ~http://www.whiteglove.com/about-us/management-team/49-robert-fabbio.html

I Hate Actors!

I was at a garage sale the other day when I spotted a book, I Hate Actors by Ben Hecht.  Ben Hecht is the author of Gaily, Gaily and Front Page/His Girl Friday. I'd never heard of the book before.  The $3 asking price was more than I.  They accepted $1 and I was on my way.

There's actually more to the story of course.  I was driving east on Northern Blvd when traffic came to a halt.  I never got to see what caused the problem.  If I were enterprising I would have parked the van and taken my trusty camera in search of an answer.

Diverted through Roslyn side streets I came out on Glen Cove Road.  (Guinea Woods Road, the original name of Glen Cove Road, was changed in a fit of cultural correctness decades ago.  Natives still say "Guinea Woods" to flaunt their primacy.)  I was just about to forget about the estate sale when I noticed the sign across the road said Lakeville Estates.  The turnoff from Glen Cove Road into the area with the estate sale was Lakeville Drive and sure enough I was headed in the right direction.

Not much of interest there other than the book and the book case.  The room looks pretty much as depicted.  Hect's book sans dust jacket was located in the area outlined in red.

 

What is interesting is that the book case rests on a platform.  Below the light line that runs underneath the red box is a set of small cabinets.  To get to the book shelves you have to go up the steps on the right.

I'm not tall.  It was an odd feeling to be staring eye to binder with the books on the top of the bookcase. 

The novel is written from the perspective of a screen writer brought in to rescue a Hollywood travesty, "Sons of Destiny".  Because Hecht was known for his command of the language, especially the vernacular, I was struck by not recognizing several terms:

• "billingsgate and tears" (p  24) - Billingsgate was a fish market in London and represented course language
• "brilliant didoes" (p 27) - "didoes" is defined as a mischievous or capricious act, usually cut didoes.  The original citation with origin unknown is 1807.  Odd I thought because the immediate association would be with Dido, the ancient queen who killed herself after being jilted by Aeneas.   Hardly a prank.  (A late friend used the same spelling, but procounced it Dee-Doh as it was a condensation of her first two names, Diane Dorothea.)  
• "false Tarquin" - Merriam-Webster.com was no help.  My attempt to to submit my citation was frustrated I because I could not authenticate against Facebook, Yahoo, or AOL.  Their loss, but not yours:

  I was trying to understand the phrase, "false Tarquin" (p 84) in Ben Hecht's novel, "I Hate Actors", Crown Publishers, 1944.  "Go on," the Tweed ace nodded, like false Tarquin, "just tell the truth."

  The reference is probably to Tarquin the Proud, the last legendary King of Rome, a vile person if his wikipedia entry is to be believed.  His rape of Lucretia is probably reflected in the context of the story where a woman who bore a child out of wedlock by a recently deceased actor is providing the true alibi for a suspect for whom a false alibi has already been provided.
  
  Had I not been so alienated from popular culture I might have thought the reference was to Tarquin Anthony "Quinn" Blackwood, a character in Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles.  Saved by my naiveté.

2012 Presidential Debate #1

The debate spawned a torrent in the Twitterverse.  Of the best,(CNN's 25 Funniest Tweets) these were the ones I thought memorable:

Phil Plait ‏-- After reading all the variations of the debate drinking games, I have decided to simply remove my liver and set it on fire.

Tara Ariano ‏-- Frankly, neither candidate is working hard enough to land the immigrant feminist small business owner non-voting socialist vote.

Fired Big Bird -- If you don't vote Obama, Mitt Romney is going to be eating me by the end of November.

Dave Weigel -- This is like watching a tax law professor debate an investment advice infomercial host

A members of a listserv to which I was added through no fault of my own passed along two famous quotes about economics, both of which were unknown to me:

Thomas Sowell:

"The first lesson of economics is scarcity. There is never enough of anything to satisfy everyone who wants it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. "

From Frans de Waals' book, "Chimpanzee Politics" :

"...Harold Laswell's famous definition of politics as a societal process determining 'who gets what, when, and how'..."

Septermber 3, 2009: Hoffer Quote, DeepWater Horizon, Freedom Communications

I finally got around to reading the September 3, 2009 edition of the New York Times.  It had been yellowing in the back seat of my car.  I figured it was mellowed enough.

It was an interesting read: SEC investigation of its own failures to find Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, an overview of Ted  Kennedy's posthumously published autobiography, the murderous bank robbery in Iraq by security forces, and two bits that caught my eye:

1) An announcement of BP's discovery of huge oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.   Seven months later BP, the rig, and teh word "disaster" would be linked in the news.

2) This quote from Eric Hoffer, the self-taught "stevedore philosopher": "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves."  It is in much the same vein as the atheist claim that atheists are acting on a higher moral level because they are doing good by choice and not be fear of divine retribution.

3) Although not as memorable as the Hoffer quote, there was a note in the financial section that Freedom Communications, founded by the staunch Libertarian, R. C. Hoiles, was filing for bankruptcy.  For a firm which had as its founding principle the sanctity of private contracts, bankruptcy protection should have been an anathema.  The article points out that debtors who charged a higher rate for understood that their higher rate was predicted on greater risk and a place further back in the repayment queue.