Intelligent design?

After receiving frequent forwards from a buddy, I finally went and subscribed to the daily quotes at gratefulness.org for myself, and was happily surprised to find that today's quotation is by Mary Catherine Bateson, "Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain."

Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and G.B. was one of the mentors of Stewart Brand, founder and editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, the Last Edition of which turned out to be a life changing document for me. An interesting chain of events. Intelligent design? I don't like the weaponized way in which that phrase is being used in my culture, but...

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet

By Maureen Dowd, New York Times, September 20, 2008
"Now that he’s finally fired up on the soup-line economy, Barack Obama knows he can’t fade out again. He was eager to talk privately to a Democratic ex-president who could offer more fatherly wisdom — not to mention a surreptitious smoke — and less fraternal rivalry. I called the “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin (yes, truly) to get a read-out of the meeting. This is what he wrote"