Apple hits another one out of the park

Nicely summarized by Graceful Flavor

Apple announced that its third quarter profits jumped 73% to 818 million, or $0.92 PDS, on sales of $5.41 billion. These results compare to revenue of $4.37 billion and net quarterly profit of $472 million, or $.54 PDS, for the same quarter last year. Gross margin was 36.9 percent, up from 30.3 percent in the year-ago quarter.

What else is there? Just another fantastic performance by what might be the best management team in technology. Does this make me a fanboy? Do I see the world through Apple-goggles? Let me put it this way: whether you love or hate or are just indifferent to Apple, if you chose not to recognize the financial performance that’s going on, quarter-after-quarter, then you’re a moron. What we have here is a company at the top of its game, a stock that has a huge emotional/speculative bias towards it and a management team that knows how to trickle the PR/news out just right to keep the engine humming on all twelve.

Apple is, to the best of my limited knowledge, the only company other than my own that I'd want to work for.

Universal Health Care

Thanks to Bro. In Law for the link to this Jane Quinn column in Newsweek:

Prepare to be terrorized, shocked, scared out of your wits. No, not by jihadists or Dementors (you do read "Harry Potter," right?), but by the evil threat of ... universal health insurance! The more the presidential candidates talk it up, the wilder the warnings against it. Cover everyone? Wreck America? Do you know what care would cost?

To summarize, the current state of health care in America is worse than you think in terms of the quality of the care provided and the cost. The state of health care in the countries providing universal coverage is better and cheaper than what we have here.

In California, Sheila Kuehl is proposing a single-payer system. Background here.

Pandering to John

Gore Vidal, on Evelyn Waugh's writing:

[he's] our time's finest satirist... [writing] in a prose so chaste that at times one longs for a violation of syntax to suggest that the creator is fallible, or at least part American.

I've never read Evelyn Waugh, but I'm a huge fan of Gore Vidal.

Social Networking (or navel gazing)

I'm on Twitter. It's fun. Low overhead way to keep in touch with folks. I started off fairly engaged, now posting less than once a day.

Pownce is sort of like Twitter, but not. I'm on there too. Posting way less. I have invitations, if you're interested.

My interest in these things is understanding what people find useful and how The Job might find them useful. I don't have an answer yet.

Happy iCal Day

iCal, for you PC users out there, is the calendar program provided on every Macintosh. The default icon for iCal is to our left. It is a modest pleasure that the date is our birthday. (Sadly, the icon updates to display the current date once you open the program. So, we only check our calendar on 7/17.) Our age can be determined by subtracting 1 from the number of years that Disneyland has been open.

Impeachment

From Bill Moyers Journal

A public opinion poll from the American Research Group recently reported that more than four in ten Americans — 45% — favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half — 54% — favored impeachment for Vice President Cheney.

This is another great show. A discussion between a liberal and a conservative - the conservative drafted one of the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton - about the failures of Congress and to a lesser extent, the media, to hold our imperial president accountable for his expressed disregard for the constitution.
One of the points made is that impeachment is not a constitutional crisis. It's the cure for a constitutional crisis.

Happy Fourth, from our friends in (1939) Downers Grove