The film claims that Ray Charles gave up heroin in the 60s and never touched it again.

Ray Charles only became a heroin addict after he was a successful singer. He was a pretty successful heroin addict, lasting to age 73, with only a couple of busts and a short spell in jail. After 1963 he made crap records, though John Coltrane gave up heroin by about 1961, but it got him, via the very common liver failure, in 1967 at age 41, though he was a great player right up to the end.

At age 17, Aretha Franklin had her second child.

My college psych prof said that he’d rather have a heroin addict perform brain surgery on him than an alcoholic.

I guess the thing about having a few million dollars is getting to expound about general social issues, business or whatever. People say, “hey, he might know something–after all, he’s rich!” instead of, “jeezus, what a crackpot.”

C’mon, tell us what the next big thing is… plastics?

I’m with Ravi. Huh? Perhaps it will make more sense once I’ve seen the movie… right?

(oops: I think Catullus actually said “O Tempora! O Mores!”)

O Cultura! O Mores!

Come on, Phil; you can do better than this.

I am thankful for one teen pregnancy – my mother’s. She bore me at the age of 17.

I actually *am* 17, pregnant, and a regular heroin user. I used to be a successful, self-employed computer programmer. My blog was widely appreciated for its intelligent commentary. Gradually, I succumbed to the pressures of reader demand. The quality of the posts declined dramatically. It was all downhill from there.

Heh– you really sound like a stodgy old man in this one. Back in the 1970s (which just happens to be when you were growing up), everyone knew the difference between right and wrong, right? And then in the past three decades we were corrupted by evils like Buddhism and Ray Charles.

Same old pattern of unrealistically glorifying the past as you get older.