There will never be another Apple – and there will certainly never be another Steve Jobs. While his company will no doubt continue to make quality merchandise, the intangible “magic” is now gone from Apple.

In relation to the passing of Mr. Jobs, I received an email from Simon Black of SovereignMan.com. It was such a cogent statement about Steve Jobs, I feel I need to quote it in its entirety here. Enjoy.

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You’ve undoubtedly heard by now that Steve Jobs passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer; it’s been all over the news with wall-to-wall coverage, and iCandle vigils have sprung up all over the world. Jobs is being remembered as a pioneer, a technological revolutionary, a visionary. Rightfully so.

But it’s important to give credit where credit is due, and the world owes a tremendous debt to Steve Jobs for something else. He was perhaps the greatest living example of ‘philanthropy’ in action.

While people like Warren Buffet are pleading with the government to raise their taxes and give away their wealth to sycophantic bureaucrats, Jobs showed time and time again that the best way to improve people’s lives is to create value and be productive.

Steve Jobs was one of the most productive human beings to have ever lived; he started several successful companies which directly employed tens of thousands of people. Indirectly, his businesses improved the livelihoods of millions across the globe, from Chinese factory workers to iPhone app programmers to Apple shareholders.

In building an empire and unimaginable wealth for himself, Steve Jobs enriched the lives and livelihoods of others by creating value. Not by forced redistribution. Not by giving things away. By creating value.

Ironically, just as I write this I am watching President Obama on Bloomberg Television trying to explain how many jobs his new plan will create– 1.9 million in his estimate:

“We’re just going to keep on going at it and hammering away… until… something gets done. I would love to see nothing more than Congres act… so aggressively.”

Politicians would do themselves and their constituents a great service by comparing their own track record for enriching people’s lives against Steve Jobs’ performance, and then kindly stepping out of the way. The path to prosperity is not paved in votes, but rather in freedom: the freedom to create, produce, risk work hard… and be rewarded for your efforts.

If you have the time, I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and read some of Jobs’ own words; there are boundless sources online that will praise his creativity, drive, and intellect, but perhaps no one is better suited to explain Steve Jobs than the man himself.

Below I’ve pasted in some key quotes taken from his 2005 Stanford commencement address, and an old 1985 interview with Playboy magazine that the folks at Zero Hedge dug up. Enjoy.

Jobs on -not- following the crowd:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma– which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Jobs on change and politics:

“We’re making the largest investment of capital that humankind has ever made in weapons over the next five years. We have decided, as a society, that that’s where we should put our money, and that raises the deficits and, thus, the cost of our capital.”

“I think it takes a crisis for something to occur in America. And I believe there’s going to be a crisis of significant proportions in the early Nineties as these problems our political leaders should have been addressing boil up to the surface.”

Jobs on charity… and the importance of failure:

“And that’s the problem with most philanthropy– there’s no measurement system. You give somebody some money to do something and most of the time you can really never measure whether you failed or succeeded in your judgment of that person or his ideas or their implementation. So if you can’t succeed or fail, it’s really hard to get better.”

Jobs on careers:

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. . . As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. . . So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

Jobs on making it count:

Most of the time, we’re taking things. Neither you nor I made the clothes we wear; we don’t make the food or grow the foods we eat; we use a language that was developed by other people; we use another society’s mathematics. Very rarely do we get a chance to put something back into that pool. I think we have that opportunity now. And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

Jobs on [the blue screen of] death:

“[D]eath is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

Well done, Mr. Jobs. Be thou at peace.

• Firstly, the free money. Yes – $25 for free, immediately upon signup here: http://www.paybox.me/r/25bucksfree. That is all.
• Second, be sure to get on the waiting list for Mass Indexer. That is, if you have websites and need their backlinks indexed – among other things.
• Third, check out this very nice free SEO tool (also for indexing) found here.

The PayBox service looks to be a great alternative to PayPal, and you can’t beat free money. Just like I’ve never had sex or pizza I didn’t like, it’s hard to hate free money. And I must say, Backlinkcannon’s free script is quite nice. For one thing, it’s totally free (no tricks) and secondly it works. Enjoy!

• The world of Kevin Kelly is a varied and interesting place. On his site you’ll find all manner of compelling ideas, snippets of wisdom, and just plain cool stuff – including lots of pictures. Not bad for a guy who never went to college. (Again, proving my belief that you don’t need college – or formal education – to do great things.)

• I love low-brow and street art. I am a huge fan of Banksy. So when I saw the mention of Banksy in the summary for the film Exit Through the Gift Shop (about some French guy), I didn’t care what it was really about – I just wanted to see Banksy. It turns out the movie contains a flooring lesson on what is possible when you’re motivated and don’t know any better. (At least, that’s one of the lessons.) Yeah, there’s a lot about Banksy and street art in this movie, but the film turns out to be more about Thierry Guetta than any of the famous street artists who appear in the movie. This is another great Banksy piece, as far as I’m concerned. [See it on Netflix streaming.]

• One of the most important things in life is knowledge of history. So I like to read about what things were like long ago. SurvivalBlog has an article about early-1900′s daily life that you might find to be eye-opening. What does it take to keep a household healthy and running along smoothly on a daily basis, today? Not much in comparison to what was absolutely crucial in rural communities of the early 20th century. Do you have it better, though? You have to read the article to find out. (There’s definitely an argument for “no”.)

So the shop Fleurty Girl is abiding by the legal threat handed to them by the NFL. Too bad that the NFL has to pick on this shop (and I have to assume a few other retailers have received similar letters).

I would agree with the NFL’s action in protecting their trademark…if it was something they came up with. However, I remember seeing the phrase “Who Dat?” used for virtually my whole life. As far as I can remember, it began as a home-grown rallying cry – locally thought up by who-knows-who and hand-printed on posterboard and such, to be help up during games, or scrawled on the back on car windshields with shoe polish. So now the NFL claims it’s theirs?

[In fact, the phrase "Who Dat" has been around way before the NFL or even football...it was part of the vaudeville/minstrel tradition for many many years, and only LATER become incorporated into New Orleans' football culture. Again: it's something that organically grew out of New Orleans' unique way of doing things. It should NOT be allowed to be another opportunity for the NFL to make some extra dollars.]

Ridiculous. Some things need to be left alone. Especially something dear and special to local New Orleanians. Leave us what is ours, NFL.

PS – Buy whatever else FleurtyGirl is selling. Support them!

“We are confident and feel very secure with the current state of the levees,” said John Boudreaux, a spokesperson for Jefferson Parish. “We are as ready as ever, and we want our residents to know that the levees will hold.” Mr. Boudreaux didn’t elaborate on specifics regarding the strength of the levees other than to state that they were “better” and “even more secure than when Katrina hit.”

Mayor Ray Nagin backed up Mr. Boudreaux’s words with an assurance that “everything’s been taken care of”, but he added that residents should have an evacuation plan in case of the worst-case scenario, which would be a close of direct hit by Gustav. “Our residents know that we as a city will do everything in our power to help them, but even though they know that, I just want to say that if they can get out they maybe should,” the mayor said while standing in front of his mayoral evacuation helicopter.

The highlight of the press conference was when Michael Jacobson, chief engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Levee Wall project, displayed the improved levee walls.

“This levee wall employs some new engineering techniques that we pioneered along with some of the city of New Orleans engineers. As you know, New Orleans people take pride in their city and they take great care to do a job right. And that’s what we did – we think the new levees are a tribute to the leadership Mr. Nagin has provided, and we hope to dear God the levee holds this time.”

Officials did not stay to answer questions, but closed the conference with an additional urge to the public to “get the hell out while you can” and the words “good luck”.