Who2 Editorial Blog

Notes and Commentary from the Editors

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

The Last of the Anti-Hitler Heroes

Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager has died in Germany at age 90. He was the last survivor of the July 1944 plot that came within a whisker of assassinating Adolf Hitler.

Among his co-conspirators was Claus von Stauffenberg, the German military hero. Von Boeselager got the explosives, and von Stauffenberg planted the briefcase bomb during a strategy meeting at Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" headquarters. At the last moment an aide moved the briefcase and Hitler was shielded from the bomb's blast by a heavy oak conference table.

Von Stauffenberg and dozens of co-conspirators were rounded up and executed over the next few days, but none of them identified von Boeselager and he survived, unsuspected.

It's quite a story. Tom Cruise is playing von Stauffenberg in the film Valkyrie, which is due out later this year. As it happens, von Stauffenberg was one of Who2's earliest profiles, because he's a member of the early loop Celebs Missing Fingers.

Deutsche Welle and The Daily Telegraph both have useful articles on von Boeselager's life.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 2:05 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wes Anderson, Almost 40

Filmmaker Wes Anderson -- the quirky director of Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited -- enters the last year of his 30s today. He's 39.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:35 PM 0 comments

Thank You, Diane Rosenschein!

Diane, you are truly a goddess of proofreading. Never stop sharing!

Those checks should clear customs any day now.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:06 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Barbaro's Fifth

Late, great racehorse Barbaro was born five years ago today.

Barbaro won the 2006 Kentucky Derby, but two weeks later he shattered his leg while running in the Preakness Stakes, the second race in the Triple Crown. Despite state-of-the-art treatment, he died in January of 2007 of laminitis. That' the same crazy horse-hoof illness that got Secretariat.

His jockey, Edgar Prado, has just published a memoir, My Guy Barbaro.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:21 AM 0 comments

Nebraska Rebel

Interesting story in The New York Times today about Ernie Chambers, the senior senator in Nebraska's legislature. He's being forced out by term limits after nearly 40 years in the legislature.

As The Times puts it:

Liked or not, Mr. Chambers, a black, divorced, agnostic former barber from Omaha with posters of Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass decorating his office, managed to rise to an ultimate level of power in a mostly rural, white conservative state on little more than sheer determination to do so.

Here's the full story.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 7:07 AM 0 comments

Monday, April 28, 2008

Happy Semiquincentennial, James Monroe!

It's the semiquincentennial of President James Monroe, born on 28 April in 1758.

Monroe is remembered for a lot of things (including, endlessly, the Monroe Doctrine). But at Who2 HQ we tend to think of him as the first non-Founding Father president.

The previous four presidents -- George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison -- all were significant leaders, in thought and deed, in the American Revolution. Monroe was only 18 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, so it's not exactly his fault. It's true that he rose fast -- he was the youngest member of the Congress of the Confederation, which voted to ratify the Treaty of Paris and make a victorious peace with the British -- but in general, his contributions came later.

However, Monroe did fight in the Continental Army, was wounded at the Battle of Trenton, and spent the winter of 1777 with Washington at Valley Forge. (Aside: 200 years later, a different James Monroe won the Congressional Medal of Honor by diving on a grenade in Vietnam.) And as president from 1817-25, Monroe was yet another Virginian in the top office.

Monroe also continued a tradition started by Jefferson and Adams: Dying on the Fourth of July. The tradition was short-lived; he was the last president to die on that day. Calvin Coolidge is the only president born on July 4th, in 1872.

Finally, about that word "semiquincentennial": It sounds a little bogus, but it's the real deal. A centennial is 100 years, so a quincentennial is 500 years -- and the "semi" is added to make half 500, or 250 years.

And it's vastly preferable to the alternative, bicenquinquagenary.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 5:49 AM 0 comments

Friday, April 25, 2008

Edward R. Murrow +100

Happy 100th birthday, Edward R. Murrow.

You stud.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 2:10 PM 0 comments

Snipes and Taxes

Yikes! Actor Wesley Snipes given three years in prison for not paying his taxes.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 5:18 AM 0 comments

Wallis Simpson, Inspirational Thinker?

Yesterday we were chatting about Wallis Simpson, the somewhat slippery woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up his crown.

Today we discover that the Institute of Leader Arts has declared her an icon of modern self-actualization.

Her plan was simple. Get to England. Meet the prince. Get him to fall in love with her. Divorce her husband. Marry the prince. Clearly she was committed to her 'impossible dream' from the start...

Simpson's strategy may have been deceitful and without moral principles, but without a doubt, it was an amazing demonstration of the power of the principles of strategy in an entirely non-business and non-war situation.

Wow.

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 4:41 AM 0 comments