Whether famous or not, even unknown, certain people who make their living as performers just have a weird light about them, a charisma that the rest of us don't.

While working in gee-gaw shops on Fisherman's Wharf in the years right after college I met my share of celebrities. Janet Jackson came into the store where I worked during her "Rhythm Nation" tour (boy, am I dating myself or WHAT?). She was sweet and shy and almost unfathomably sexy. From that height we descend to Leon Rippy, who came into the same store a year earlier. Rippy has had prominent co-starring roles in many films over the years, perhaps his biggest as the colonial militiaman who commits suicide after seeing his murdered family in "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson. Anyway, he also had that charisma, and was quite nice, fretting about spending any money lest his wife "kick [his] butt." And from that mid-level we descend to some guy hired as a "Young Elvis" impersonator for a 50s theme party at a former employer. This guy was a nobody, but he had that charisma in spades, and was also a very cool dude, quite nice.

This kind of thing is why these people get work in the entertainment biz, and keep getting it, at whatever level they are situated. This is why it is so sad to run into "actors" and "singers" without one ounce of that wonderful energy, knowing they'll never get anywhere, but seeing the ferocious ambition blazing in their eyes.

...who lost ONE game, their first, on the way to winning the '85 (?) Superbowl. It was widely reported at the time that because of the longer schedule, and their unbroken streak for the rest of the regular season, they had, mathematically, broken the Dolphins record.

So if the Pats win the Super Bowl there will be THREE teams that Mercury "Mushmouth" Morris to welcome into his "neighborhood."

Thanks, Mike, for straightening me out. I could have sworn it was the first game. Oh well, the memory is fading...

But I DO know that after they won the Super Bowl there was a lot of talk comparing them to the '72 Dolphins, which pissed a lot of people off.

This case sounds VERY familiar. In fact, it sounds identical to one I saw unfold first hand as an employee of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. from 1999 to 2001.

Several top engineers, developers and managers for one of Cadence's key products all abruptly quit on or around the same day in the mid-90s (I think it was '95). One of them was the Senior Design Architect for the software applications in question. Less than a month later they founded Avant!, which quickly became a chief competitor of both Cadence and Mentor Graphics, the two top electronic design automation companies. Soon after that, they built an extraordinary HQ in Fremont, modeled after the ruins at Luxor, Egypt. I was working at Matson Technology at the time - ironically in the context of this response one of LamResearch and Applied Materials's chief competitors - and we were right across the street from Avant!

At the EDA industry conference in late '96, one of Cadence's senior developers wandered into an Avant! demo and was stunned to see applications he himself had worked on being demonstrated, albeit under different names. Cadence sued, won, and then had the principles prosecuted. Several of them went to prison.

It is one thing to be inspired by your former employer and, founding your own company and then doing a bit of mildly unethical reverse-engineering. It's quite another to steal reams of code, paste a new name on it, and found a company. And I think Yin and his cohort at AMEC have done the same thing. The similarities are just too striking.

Here are links from the time with greater detail:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EKF/is_n2199_v43/ai_20109593

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0CGN/is_1998_Dec_18/ai_53440161

Last year - or late '06 - "60 Minutes" interviewed John Edwards. During the interview, whenever he spoke of the state of the country, the look in his eyes intensified to a point very near rage. It was clear that this here was a man who had been keeping his real self in check for too long, and had it with campaign consultants tailoring his message to match his suits. It was during that interview that I became convinced that Edwards and Edwards alone can bring this nation back from the brink.

Make no mistake, this man is the real deal. If and when he is elected President the corporatist and reactionary forces in this country are going to be in for a VERY nasty shock. It matters little whether he comes in first, second or third in Iowa. Just being in the top three will keep his momentum going into New Hampshire. Clinton is a disaster waiting to happen. Long-dead Confederates will rise from the grave to vote against her, let alone the very much alive army of inbred, redneck cracker peckerwoods who make up the right in this country - all of it, not just in the South. Obama? Has anyone taken an honest look at this man?? His mentor is Joe Fucking Lieberman for cripes sakes, and his campaign foreign policy advisor is that Cold War stalagtite Zbigniew Brzinski. You know, one of the guys who helped create the Afghani blow-back?? Obama not only lacks experience, he lacks anything other than the ambition to be President.

No, it's Edwards or we're all in serious trouble. I admire Chris Dodd, and I think Biden would make a better President than most people give him credit for, but neither of them have the electrifying spirit that Edwards has been showing. And neither of them are the economic populists that he clearly is. Edwards will break the grip that corporate America has around all of our throats. He is the one to elect. We fail to do so at our peril.