The Frailty of Life...

One of the truly fine people I have encountered in the ActiveWords Odyssey is Marc Orchant. This morning I was stunned to learn via an E-Mail from Robert Scoble that Marc had suffered a massive coronary yesterday morning.

Marc and I had talked on Friday morning. He had told me what I needed to do vis a vis setting up the iMac and where to buy the best Ram at the best price.

I recall staying with the Orchants when I drove from Orlando to Seattle. Sue is an enormously talented artist who specialized in painting on silk. After Gnomedex we drove all over Seattle, had a great breakfast and I dropped them at the airport.

He was to be here in Seattle on Friday and we were to have dinner.

Please keep him, and his wonderful family in your thoughts and prayers.

Comments

[Jim Bruggeman]

Not to rain on the party,but this post somehow reminds me of the global fragility of life, and the dangers ahead ... because those who govern us don't know excrement from shoe polish ... or are too greedy to care. Our lives are in the hands of uncaring, avaricious, even murderous incompetents. Catch the video for the nouveau political comic The Shooting War. A fture not too far fetched and are we please with everything else?: The subprime mess is weighing on the world economy; Monday's stock market may dive; recession - if the Merrill Lynch folks are savants - is just around the corner; and China is your Santa Claus. Director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, has it right when he recently mused, "If one wants to analyze the globalized market capitalism of today, the essential tools reside in the intellectual toolkit Marx and some of those who inspired him created ...Even globalization is only a historical stage of market capitalism as Marx imagined it.Capitalism cannot satisfy us. It is a means that must remain in the service of human development. Not an end in itself. A single example: if we do not vigorously question the dynamic of capitalism, do you believe we will succeed in mastering climate change?" A startling admission by the director of this bastion of global capitalism. But, here we are, with what we think is a firm bead on reality: more prosperous and freer than ever before?