What is the Difference Between Immanence and Transcendence?: A Visual Philosophy Primer

Look at the two following details from 

School of Athens, Raphael, The Vatican

Raphael's mural "The School of Athens." In the first image, a depiction of Aristotle shows him thrusting his arm outward; while, in the latter picture, the figure of Plato points towards the heavens. What do these two images tell us about the interplay between what is at hand and what is out of reach?

Aristotle points his hand outward as a sign of immanence.

Plato points his index finger upward to the sky as a sign of transcendence.

credits: "The School of Athens." Raphael. The Yorck Project:10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202.

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Anatomy of a Scene: Au Revoir Les Enfants (Scene 20)

Movie Still - Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)

In Louis Malle's haunting autobiographical film, Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), figures come out of the Northern European mist as if half-dead, draped in dark shrouds of black. The setting is not Auschwitz or the Western front, but a small Catholic boarding school outside of Paris, Winter 1944, months before the fall of the Third Reich. Malle's focus is not the battlefield, nor is it the concentration camp, but rather, he focuses his exploration on the effects of racism and evil on the lives of young French adolescent boys holed up in a confined space, apart from their upper-class parents. The school's headmaster, Father Jean, has decided to matriculate three new students at the start of the Winter term. What no one knows is that the three new students are, in fact, Jewish stowaways, hidden by the school to save their lives. In this scene (scene 20, according to Malle's screenplay), students are marching to the public baths for their periodic soapy wash. The scene is a mixture of everyday rituals of boarding school life, similar to other scenes in the film, of the boys sleeping, praying, attending class, playing war games, playing the piano, and taking tests. The "normal," almost painterly scenes are punctuated by news from the war zone: talk of hatred against Jews, the Resistance, French collaborators with the Germans, and the impending intimidation enforced by the conquering Germans. Rations are scarce. Even the wealthy schoolboys suffer; their only allowance is jam and sugar which they exchange for cigarettes. France is occupied by Germany but the Resistance is rumbling. News of German defeat on the Russian front has been circulating.

Quote from Walter Benjamin (Illuminations)

"The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up
at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again."

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations

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Photo Credit: pinterest
Benjamin, Walter, and Hannah Arendt. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1986.

Excerpt from My Book of Essays Inspired by New Orleans and New York: "Turning Over a New Leafs [sic]"

Read the rest of the book here.

Setting a crate of laundry on top of the washing machine, I told my landlord, who happened to be standing at the doorway, "I'm turning over a new leafs - I mean, leaf -hah hah, I can't spell." He was doing his Sunday laundry chores as well, convivial as ever, and we were chatting about getting stuff done, the usual small talk between landlord and tenant. My landlord is a 40 something single man who runs his own non-profit; he has light brown hair, average build, and a pleasant smile. We barely see each other; mostly our meetings are necessitated by my late rent checks.

Prose Poem: Quote from My Moleskine

In this post, I include a prose poem fragment found in my Moleskine notebook.

A couple rides the New York City subway.

The empty tomb startles me as I know
it startled Mary

~#~

When wishing upon a star be sure to want what you really desire; for desire materializes

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Location:Cohn St, New Orleans,United States

New Orleans Park on the River: "The Fly"

In this post, I write about a favorite New Orleans drinking spot, crayfish eating spot, and park - The Fly.

A Google Maps Satellite Image of the Fly

Behind Audubon Park lies what locals call the "Fly." The park is a green space alongside the Mississippi River near the Riverbend and the park's terminus. My friend M. Introduced me to it. She was like, "You can take someone down to the fly, murder 'em, throw 'em in the water, and no one would ever know!" The fly is located beyond the levee near the Corps of Engineers headquarters and Children's hospital. An informer detailed an event she witnesses at the Fly. A woman in her mid-forties walked into the river's shore and popped a squat and let loose nature's rain. It was seen by one except the unlucky few who had sat on the Fly's inconspicuous rocky steps enwrapped in wire mesh. One other cool thing about the Fly is its perfect vantage point for watching international cargo ships parade by. One usually does not notice the city's ship traffic because of levy obstruction.

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Location:New Orleans, Louisiana

Sparkling New Streetcar Line on Loyola Avenue in New Orleans

Photo: wallyg

According to Frank Donze, reporting for the Times-Picayune, The Obama Administration approved stimulus money earmarked to construct a new transit line in the city of New Orleans. The city was awarded $45 million to erect the new streetcar line that will run from the Union Passenger Terminal on Loyola Avenue and end on Canal Street, a 1.5 mile stretch. Other routes had been considered by the administration, including a corridor along N. Rampart Street and a line stretching along Convention Center Boulevard (which are still in the works), but in the end, the Regional Transit Authority won the Loyola bid. A stipulation of the money was to enhance existing transit systems in an American city and to provide a connection to existing transit systems, so the New Orleans project seemed to have won the favor of the grant givers, winning out over 30 other cities. The city desperately needs a creative boost to its public transportation system and I am very happy the Federal money was won. RTA has until May 2012 to finish the project. So, wake up New Orleans and get your laissez-faire attitude up a notch.

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Born 1917 and Died 2 Jul 1930, Frederick "Freddie" Killman - A Family History Story

In this post, I write a personal family history story about Freddie Killman (my maternal great-uncle), a boy from New Orleans, Louisiana, who drowned in the Seabrook section of Lake Pontchartrain on July 2, 1930.

Family History is important to me and I think it is important to record stories we learn from our relatives. Here is a story about Frederick "Freddie" Killman, a boy who would have been my Great-Uncle, but tragically, he died when he was only a young teenager. Here is the story I gleaned from Killman family records, and oral history.


Frederick "Freddie" Killman (1917 - 1930)
Freddie was very precocious and loved to have fun. He was very different from his brother Hanky who was serious and hard working. His sisters Ida and Dot loved him and looked up to him. Freddie loved to go with his friends to the Lake Pontchartrain and swim. A man from the neighborhood would drive some of the local neighborhood boys to the lake to go for a swim without their parents always knowing about it.

One day Freddie came into the house and announced to the family that he needed some swim pants to go with his buddies to the lake. His mother, Albertine, was surprised, but let him go anyway. That was the last she ever saw of her son. Everybody knew that there was a deep end in the Lake Pontchartrain near People's Avenue and people were told not to go swimming too far out. Freddie was a mediocre swimmer but he was also a risk-taker so he and another boy ventured out further than they should have.

Freddie had gone with another boy from the neighborhood. Freddie was skinny and the other boy was fat. We don’t know what happened exactly but when somebody heard the cries for help they swam out to get the boys. Freddie was still alive when they got to him but he died at the hospital; his friend died too. Edward Spiehler was a witness to this event (Ida’s husband). Albertine was home frying frog legs, Freddie’s favorite. The girls and Francis were inside. Most of the neighborhood knew what had happened but no one wanted to tell the Killman’s the horrible news. Finally, a neighbor told Albertine and Francis what had happened.

Aunt Nen told me that her Dad didn’t say a word and just left the house. Albertine was left with the kids, so she brought them to a neighbor’s house while she went to see for herself what had happened. Both boys were buried at separate funerals and no one blamed anyone for the deaths. Still to this day, Ida remembers every detail of that day as if it happened yesterday. When she told me the story it made me cry but I realized how much she loved her family and our family. She wondered what her brother would have turned out like. Would he have been just as fun-loving as he was when he was a kid or would he have been serious and sensible?

Born 1917 and died 2 Jul 1930, Frederick Killman (Freddie) seen here on the right in the floodwaters of the 1927 flood in Gentilly, New Orleans with his buddy, René Alberta, who later died of food poisoning.

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A Graphic Way to Text "Where R U?"

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Photograph: The Sheriff at Papa Johns

In this post, I post a photograph of the reigning sheriff of Papa Johns.

I think she ordered breadsticks and then hit the mean streets.

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Signposts: Mardi Gras Irony

A sign at the entrance to the French Quarter in New Orleans tells people do not walk around with glass bottles (but you can put your drink in a plastic cup).

I found it ironic that this municipal sign is attached to a pole on the entrance to Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.

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Trivial Pursuit, Sipping a Bordeaux

Trivial Pursuit is fun if you are competitive. If you want to win. One-On-One combat can be brutal. D and I played last night. We drank her bottle of Bordeaux from France (can you say that fancy style?). We shared the bottle, but for some reason, I have a bad headache this morning, slightly quelled by generous consumption of New Orleans style coffee. Question: Where did Tensing Norgay plant his national flag? Answer: On top of Mount Everest. Now you may think that was an easy question, but it is incorrect if you say "Mount Everest" because the correct, more specific answer is "on top of Mount Everest." Now, that is just pure-dee lame. Ugh. I missed an orange pie because of that, but don't worry, someone did not know who coined the phrase "between a rock and a hard place" but they did know Axel Rose was a member of Guns and Roses. M says I have way too much brain sludge. D has an incredible treasure chest of encyclopedic knowledge, but, both of us did not know the "Orphic Egg" was in Greek Mythology. Do you? It has to do with prophecy and an egg enveloped by a serpent (but nothing to do with Orpheus). Now, it is well known that you should use the spokes to move around the game board. Don't do the circle motion. You will lose. And it does pay off to PAY ATTENTION to the question. Question: What Yiddish word means mentally disabled or clumsy? Answer: Klutz. I heard the question and answered the first Yiddish word to come to my head, Shmuck. I was a shmuck in answering that question incorrectly. I did know, however, that shmuck is Alfred E. Neuman's favorite word. The trick at beating Trivial Pursuit is to get questions RIGHT. Who would have thought? I just thought it was the luck of the pie. Question: What country exports the most coffee? Answer: Brazil. By the way, I wonder how many new neuronal pathways are created in the human mind during one game of Trivial Pursuit. I have this odd hunch, that the game actually destroys pathways, but not as much as eating Ben and Jerry's and watching re-runs of Green Acres. Question: By the way, what Green Acres recurring gag features a passageway to the Douglass bedroom? Answer: "The Sliding Door" gag. Now, if you didn't know that question's answer, don't feel bad, there are loads of Trivial Pursuit questions just waiting for you to feel dumb. But, I don't think it matters. I wonder if the SAT or ACT tests are good for your brain. At least those questions are not based on instant recall of extraneous facts but rather force you to think through an issue. The game is called trivial for a reason. Wouldn't it be funny if you had to write an essay response to a Trivial Pursuit question? I always thought it would be funny if on Jeopardy! contestants had to write a 1,200-word essay on a pre-chosen prompt. Brutal!!! There is one thing to know instantly random factoids, but it is quite another thing to assemble all that brain sludge into a cohesive narrative that can sustain one's attention. Good luck America!

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Mardi Gras: Go to the Endymion Parade

The best way to know New Orleans is to traverse her streets during Carnival.

My friend's D's brother D.

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Repost: How to Survive a 35,000-Foot Fall - Plane Crash Survival Guide - Popular Mechanics

This article is a must-read for anyone who travels 35,000 feet in the air. I especially liked Dan Koeppel's sense of humor. If you don't have time to read the article, or if you need the abridged version, here are some brief factoids gleaned from the article:

• You are more liable to survive a 35,000 foot free-fall by landing in a haystack, snow, or a swamp!
• Landing in water, contrary to popular belief, is just as hard as landing on concrete (water does not compress): SPLAT!
• At six miles up, a free fall will take three minutes and twenty-five seconds. So, you have some time to contemplate your condition (at a terminal velocity of about 120 mph).
• For two minutes you'll be unconscious due to lack of oxygen. Hypoxia will settle in and you will lose your breath until you reach breathable air at about 10,000 feet.
• If you land on your face, you're more likely to survive (albeit in the need of a facelift) than landing on top of your head or the side of your head).
• Children, military personnel, and crew members are more likely to survive a plummet than anyone else.
• "Surviving a plunge surrounded by a semi-protective cocoon of debris is more common than surviving a pure free-fall"
• "118,934 people have died in 15,463 plane crashes between 1940 and 2008."
• 157 folks have reportedly survived a free fall, "with 42 occurring at heights over 10,000 feet"

Koeppel, David. "How to Fall 35,000 Feet—And Survive." Popular Mechanics Feb. 2010: n. pag. Web. 8 Feb 2010.

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Re:”What Makes a Great Teacher”

An article in the latest issue of Atlantic Monthly on what makes great teachers revived my spirit a bit.     After reading the article, I realized that growing up I thought of my best teachers as magical beings, as if they had possessed something we didn’t and they were willing to pass that magic on to us. I know. I had a heavy infatuation with teachers as a kid. So I am biased. And now, I am a high school English teacher. So there is that.
Obviously, good teachers are not superheroes.
     They have foibles just like the rest of us. But, we have to stop thinking that “good teaching” is some mystery that lies in the realm of the unknown. As if the skill of teaching is an intangible thing that cannot be taught. There are qualities that one can detect in a teacher. When you meet a good teacher you realize they are never satisfied. Good teachers say stuff like this to visitors to their classroom: "' You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you — I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.'" Good teachers are constantly re-evaluating their methods and constantly looking for ways to make the learning environment better.

• Good teachers “avidly recruit students and other teachers into the process.” I know this to be true. Good teachers create a vibe that sends the message: “let’s be a part of this.”
• Good teachers maintain focus and ensure that everything they do in the classroom contributes to the learning process. I chuckle at this sign of a good teacher because it reminds me of a teacher I had who would always use every opportunity as a learning moment, to such an extent that we as students were not always aware of it. We might be collecting cool quotes to put into our notebooks, not realizing he was teaching us how to be better researchers.
• Good teachers plan exhaustively and purposefully, planning backward from the desired goal. Yes, I agree this is a good sign of a great teacher. They have broad goals they want their students to reach and make sure every lesson somehow inches toward that goal. The work is in the details. It takes a mammoth amount of creative energy to accomplish this feat.
• Good teachers seem not to complain about the system, but work relentlessly despite the combined efforts of budget, poverty, and budgetary shortcomings. The converse of this is those good teachers often are ground down by bureaucracy and quit due to burnout.

In a nutshell: Good teachers have grit.
      Here is a different video than what I originally had seen on the Atlantic's web site on the "Manager Teacher" (a model I would like to emulate). The original video was taken down and I cannot find it, but this video is sufficient for what I want to showcase. Notice two things: how the teacher has the students' full attention (that did not come out of thin air) and how from the beginning she demands from students to illustrate their understanding of what they need to do. But she is concise and she uses "economy of language" — and then the students get to work!

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A Mardi Gras Prosody: "The Night that Precedes Chaos"

I only had a twenty. Bought a coffee at Camellia grill. Got some change. Holla. Were the elections today?

Getting on a streetcar can only bring one as far as Napoleon avenue; every Carnival goer without a car knows that!

Here we go. The only information I don't have is the route. Saint Charles is blocked. We get off the streetcar. We're taking Freret street.

We are on La Salle/Simon Bolivar now, to Jackson avenue, to turn on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd.

I think we're on Loyola. Will be at Canal in no time. A handsome time to let loose. Now all I have to do is find Taryn.

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Literary Tropes: Into the Woods

In this post, I point out features of literature that attend to the trope of going into the woods.

• The woods are a dark and scary place in fairy tale legend.  Out of a tale in Grimm's stories, Carol Anne is sucked through her TV into the Otherworld in In Poltergeist. The woods lie at a space between goodness and evil, light and dark, good and nice, deception and honesty, justice and wrong. In the woods, characters are inextricably changed forever. Lucy in C.S. Lewis's novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe enters through a wardrobe, not so scary as a monster television, into a wood called Lantern Waste in Narnia. She meets a friendly faun and is forever changed; she becomes a queen, rules the land, but returns back through the wardrobe to the real world, restored to a little girl once again. But, the woods can be simply a place of an obstacle, like Hagrid, the hefty groundskeeper in the Harry Potter series, leads his pupils into the woods to accomplish the task of pulling out mandrakes from the soil, or learning to tame a hippogriff. As a side note: in the film, we get to see the CGI splendor Harry in flight and Malfoy's almost fatal encounter with the creature. In the woods there are fauns, giants, monsters, vampires, wolves, fauns, and humans too. In "woods" stories, the hero undergoes countless obstacles, like Odysseus on his twenty years journey -- a long woods moment -- he didn't want to leave his family and son to fight in Troy, similar to our young men fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. Odysseus is us. We didn't ask for the odyssey of crazy, absurd adventures, asked to eat of the Lotus flower, which makes us forget the purpose of the journey - to return home. And Odysseus does return home, eventually, restoring his home, wresting it from the inhospitable hands of the suitors.
• The woods are like portals. In Celtic mythology, the woods are cracks in the space/time continuum, as in the Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials, Book 2) by Philip Pullman; the protagonist Will slices through London air with a magical knife to enter another world. Going through the woods, we leave our world for a time, to return, changed. Like Thomas Covenant Unbeliever, in Stephen R. Donaldson's epic fantasy saga about a man ridden with leprosy in our world, crosses over into an otherworld (The Land) and appears as a powerful warrior.
• A popular woods motif is taken from William Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream: young lovers run away into the woods, only to be shaken up by the fairy boy Puck who daubs lotion into their eyes, switching identities, transformations are made, all hell breaks loose (don't you get confused reading this story?). I still cannot remember who fits with who in the Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, Helena quadrangle. One thing is for sure: a guy gets turned into an ass and Helena is quite a dog! It is in the woods chaos reigns. The woods lie at boundary lines; we enter into the woods, and come out again, back into life.

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Teaching Journal: A Nonsensical Rant on Teaching Ancient Literature to Ninth Graders

Uncredited Photograph of a Road

Why None of My Students "Dig" Homer (Or Virgil) 

I finally figured out why none of my students likes the Odyssey or the Iliad, or the Aeneid (except in an anti-nostalgic, oh yeah, my parents read that in High School, kind of way; or oh yeah, I am supposed to like this story because my grandfather read it in the original Greek, or oh yeah, someone told me it was good; I'm supposed to like it, like I am supposed to like Catcher in the Rye because my English teacher read it as an adolescent).

There are better narratives to pursue. That’s why. 
I would love to teach Six Feet Under as an epic - or Angel the Vampire with a soul - or even heck, Mio, my Mio by Lindgren. I am flipping tired of Odysseus. He was an unlikeable twat. I really don't like him anymore. Why do we stick to the tried and true "classics"? Folks are swayed by better narratives that fit their current milieu, but we still drill them with Macbeth and Julius Caesar. Here I am teaching about the rage of Achilles where most kids have figured that out living with themselves nowadays is tantamount To Achilles’ rage. I don’t need to teach an ancient greek epic for them to figure out their own narcissistic tendencies. Now, granted, as a ninth grader, I loved the tale of the Odyssey, but my teacher was unique. She did not care if we actually “read” the book. What she would do is weave stories in class based on the epic story relating to events in real life. For example: Penelope. She would talk about the plight of the single mother—something we could relate to in the classroom, because a majority of us came from single family homes. But, even the kids who didn’t read got the gist of what my teacher was saying and passed the tests. Here I am teaching the Odyssey, about a man longing for home, but most kids don’t have a home (at least in the metaphysical sense of the word) so the story is lost on them in the reading, only to come alive when I mention that perspective.
 

But, I am being hyperbolic. 
Both the Odyssey and the Iliad are vibrant tales. Home, loss, anger, curses, fathers, mothers, sex, honesty, revenge, you name it. The issue isn’t the brilliance of this ancient epic, but rather, the children I teach are already subsumed in their own epics. I know I am going to get fire for saying this, but TV shows nowadays—if you scan through them — have their own brand of epic tonality that beats the Ancient Greeks. Take for example Skins — a brilliant TV series from the BBC. The beginning scenes of its first episode about a Telemachus named Tony— the shenanigans of a British teenager—beat out the tumultuous fatherloss of Telemachus in the first four books of the Odyssey. Like I said, it is not that the ancient epics were not good—but heck—I am trying to teach a beautiful epic here, where kids are completely toned out. They won’t read the thing, save for a few of them, who are secretly bitter that they are the only ones reading. I have too much to compete with: Madea, Fuel, Adult Swim, American Idol (okay, here I will say the ancient epics are paramount). I am not sure anymore what makes a narrative great. I am not sure anymore about the CANNON.
 

I will parse my argument out better here: 

... take the epic of the Odyssey. What do we want to teach when we introduce this story? Home? Right? Isn’t that the core of the story? the return home? Why the Odyssey? Why can’t we teach the same theme with something like Skins? I really don’t understand. It is funny: because an epic is more than a thousand years old, it’s legit. But, god forbid we teach a story that is only a few months old. The naysayers will say the ancient epics are better written. But, I say that is a bunch of bulls*&^. I could create a lesson that teaches everything I already teach using film and popular culture: heroes, antagonists metanoia, epiphany, journey, inner journey, archetype, you name it. I think if I teach Ancient Lit again, I am going to only teach the Odyssey, Gilgamesh, and Oedipus Rex as primary texts. Everything else will be excerpts, mixed in with television: Angel, Six Feet Under, Dexter, and Welcome to the Dollhouse. 

What do you think? How do I teach the themes of Ancient Literature? Is it still relevant? Post your comments.

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Poem: "apple-faced kids"

when the clock sounds

the apple-faced kids

rush to class

not to learn

but to whiz in their heads

the wonders of the world

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Apple's New Creation (and I hope it's not called an iPad)

A company known for its draconian tactics to protect internal secrets, Apple is expected to announce its new creation tomorrow (which was sent out to "friends" last week but cannot be found on Apple's site).
Everyone is abuzz. Since Christmas, I have been reading blog forecasts about the secret Apple device. What's it going to be? Apple remains mute. The consensus among the technorati seems to be some kind of multi-touch super-sized iPod on steroids running a version of the Mac OS X operating system.

As David Pogue wrote in his blog, quoting Robert Burns, “There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.” The certainty is so certain all of us are in some kind of suspended state of uncertainty: "What's it going to be?!" I have never experienced such a paradox: an emphatic declaration of a device's existence that may or may not exist. When journalists write about the iPad (I hope they don't name it this, as Mad TV humorously demonstrated), iSlate, iTablet, Mac Tablet, MacBook Touch - or whatever the damn thing's going to be called - it is usually prefaced with the epithet "the probable" or "expected" Apple miracle device. Are we talking about an unidentified flying object or a real thing? I dunno.

The device (which may or may not exist) has been deemed to have any number of features:

• a Kindle killer
vendors will allow consumers to download lush, color graphic books, magazines, and newspapers. I must say if I can read National Geographic in full color and swipe the pages with my finger I want an iThingy too. 

• a Nexus One killer
 If the new device signs on with Verizon who's going to want a Nexus One? I really doubt though that people who will have bought a Nexus One anyway are going to drop it for Apple.

• Video Game Console Killer  
Adolescents and twenty-somethings will supposedly be wowed by the device which will undoubtedly beat anything the Playstation can do (Grand Theft Auto anyone?)

• and even a laptop killer

 Well, if all you do is search the net and check email, then yes a multi-touch device would be an adequate replacement. But, anything more than that, in my humble opinion, is going to need a laptop or a desktop.    

I have read it may have the following features:

• a 3G network with Verizon
• a webcam
• an extended iTunes App store
• games
• streaming TV
• media content from HarperCollins
• the ability to teleport users to fourth dimensions (joking, obviously on the latter)

Whatever "the creation" is, I have the same sinking suspicion as David Pogue, that "there are some aspects, some angles, that nobody’s guessed." Apple has been notorious in the past for concealing its hidden angles. Throughout the company's history, Apple has revealed products that wow the masses and changed the status quo. Here are some notable game-changing features Apple has wowed us with in the past:

• The GUI of the first Macintosh in 1983. The smiley Mac face hits shelves.
  
• OS X (a radical departure from OS 9). Apple starts clean. For real.
  
• the iPod
  
• and, of course, and perhaps most emphatically, the iPhone.

With the company's successes, however, there have been some notable guffaws, 

• the Newton (which seems to be the closest product matching tomorrow's rumored gadget) 
• or the Cube. Now, even though the Cube was a failure, Apple persisted and came up with the Mini. So, if tomorrow's device is some kind of tablet PC, hopefully, it will forgive the tarnish of the Newton.

Amidst the mass of speculation, I think I can offer one piece of clear, objective fact. Whatever is unveiled at tomorrow's press conference in San Francisco will inevitably face the trial of the hoi polloi. If the announcement does not live up to its hype, then Cupertino will surely suffer. People will be quick to say, "Apple has lost its ability to produce cutting-edge products." If the product dazzles, then Apple shares will exponentially rise. But: here is the rub. How quickly can Apple's Research and Development team concoct the next WOW device before the public gets bored of this one (which is not even out yet!)? Apple has always been able to foresee a market niche even before the market realizes such a niche exists. Case in point is the iPhone. Apple realized creating content for the mobile web was the way go even though many phones on the market only had measly WAP access to the net.

Apple's greatest strength is its weakness. Can it continue to foresee market trends? With Google now in on the hardware market, I think Apple will have a tough time in the future staying above the rest. I personally do not think they have lost their edge.

My own prognostication is that tomorrow's device will surely wow us. We will be impressed. I have a hunch though, that by Christmas 2010, the technorati will be buzzing again about another fabled Apple device. The question is, can Apple keep up with this game? What will the rumors be in six months? The flexible Apple device that fits in the palm of your hand, feels like a book, but miraculously is made up of tiny nanomites that feed its internal architecture (thanks GI Joe)!

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