Apple Roller Award For The New Millennium!

Yes, it's already the first anniversary of the dreadful death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian handcart merchant whose public suicide to protest harassment by local officials set off the revolution and overturning of the government in Tunisia, and from there THE ENTIRE EPIC SWEEP OF THE ARAB SPRING.

There is no step in life scarier than suicide, and I can think of a LOT of easier ways to do it. But you have to admit, it really makes a statement. And this time THE WHOLE WORLD HEARD IT. I'm sorry it had to come to this for him and his family, but he did and incredible job of dropping a match into what was obviously -- in retrospect -- an open powder keg.

I picture him looking down from wherever self-immolators go when they die, and saying the Arabic equivalent of "Wow, did I do all that?"

Millions of people will remember this forever.

I am creating the Apple Roller Award to honor an ordinary guy who decided he couldn't take it any more, and in protesting it took down one brutal, repressive government after another. The beauty 0f it is that we have no way of knowing where it will all end up. This could just be the beginning.

Color me impressed.