<div><div class="storytext"><p><strong>A <em>New York Times</em> op-ed piece strains to make a connection</strong></p>
<div id="attachment_54824" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/220px-mn-owsley14_ph1_0497164475.jpg"><img class="size-full wp-image-54824" title="220px-Mn-owsley14_ph1_0497164475" src="http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/220px-mn-owsley14_ph1_0497164475.jpg?w=220&amp;h=223" alt="" width="220" height="223" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Stanley at his 1967 arraignment for LSD possession. Photo: San Francisco Chronicle</p></div>
<p>It's true that John Markoff's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-ebook/dp/B000OCXFYM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1300555325&amp;sr=8-5">What the Dormouse Said</a> (Penguin, 2005) quotes Steve Jobs as saying that taking LSD was "<a href="http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/s/Steve_Jobs.htm">one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life</a>."</p>
<p>And it's true that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley">Augustus Owsley Stanley III</a>, who died in a car accident last Sunday in Australia at age 76, manufactured and sold more than 1.25 million doses of high-quality lysergic acid diethylamide before the U.S. criminalized the hallucinogenic drug in 1968.</p>
<p>But to suggest that Owsley was the Steve Jobs of LSD, as Michael Walker does in Saturday's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/opinion/19walker.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=tha212"><em>New York Times</em></a>, seems a bit much.</p>
<p>On the paper's op-ed page, Walker, the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Laurel-Canyon-Rock-Rolls-ebook/dp/B0046ZS5LG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&amp;s=digital-text&amp;qid=1300555497&amp;sr=1-1">Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock 'n' Roll's Legendary Neighborhood</a> (Faber &amp; Faber, 2010) draws several comparisons between Apple's (<a href="http://money.cnn.com/quote/quote.html?symb=AAPL">AAPL</a>) co-founder and LSD's most famous underground manufacturer:</p>
<p><span id="more-54823"></span></p>
<ul><li>"Like Mr. Jobs, Mr. Stanley was fanatical about quality control. He  refused to put his LSD on pieces of paper — so-called blotter acid —  because, Mr. Stanley maintained, it degraded the potency. 'I abhor the  practice,' he declared.</li>
<li>"And like Mr. Jobs's mandate for creating products he deems 'insanely  great,' Mr. Stanley's perfectionism had the effect of raising standards  across an industry — or in this case, a culture. He became a patron of  the Grateful Dead and helped transform them from inchoate noodlers into  the house band for a generation.</li>
<li>"Among the movement's many avenging nerds, Mr. Jobs alone epitomizes Mr.  Stanley's unhinged originality and anarchical spirit — before founding  Apple, Mr. Jobs and his partner, Steve Wozniak, sold illegal 'blue  boxes' that allowed free long-distance calls and later proselytized so  persuasively about the latest Apple gizmo that he was said to project a 'reality distortion field.'"</li>
</ul><p>Owsley Stanley, Walker concludes, "knew a thing or two about that."</p>
<p>You can read Walker's "Electric Kool-Aid Marketing Trip" essay <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/opinion/19walker.html?nl=todaysheadlines&amp;emc=tha212">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Also on</strong> <a rel="external" href="http://fortune.com/">Fortune.com</a>:</p>
<ul><li><a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/09/dr-lsd-to-steve-jobs-how-was-your-trip/">Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/11/7-fun-facts-about-steve-jobs-wealth/">7 fun facts about Steve Jobs' wealth</a></li>
<li><a href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/23/the-speech-of-steve-jobs-life/">The speech of Steve Jobs' life</a></li>
</ul><p>[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @<a rel="external nofollow" href="http://twitter.com/philiped" target="new">philiped</a>]</p>
<span class="fdPrintIncludeParentsPreviousSiblings"></span><span class="fdPrintIncludeParentsChildren"></span><span class="fdPrintExcludeNextSiblings"></span></div></div><p><strong>Read more:</strong> <a class="rssreadon" rel="external" title="Steve Jobs and ... Owsley Stanley?" href="http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/19/steve-jobs-and-owsley-stanley/?section=magazines_fortune" target="_blank">http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/19/steve-jobs-and-owsley-stanley/?section=magazines_fortune</a></p>