Legal humor here “Okay. This one is way over my head.” “In these parts, stranger, we don’t settle no vendettas with no balloons.” “Stranger, if this is a gay thing, you picked the wrong town to get pretty.” “Stranger, Jed done asked you nice twice to let him hold your balloon. Jed don’t ask nice…
Author: Alan Vanneman
I guess no Muslims were available
The Atlantic has printed a symposium/sitdown discussing the Obama Administration’s proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, featuring, well, featuring three Jews—Peter Beinart, David Frum, and Jeffrey Goldberg. Pete and Jeff are both in favor of the deal, leaving poor Dave as the odd man out, but I couldn’t help thinking that the Atlantic might have picked…
John Lewis Gaddis—“They Really Believed That Shit!”
Way back in 1978, a dude named John Lewis Gaddis started in his academic career by publishing Russia, the Soviet Union and the United States: An Interpretive History (America & the World), which looked at U.S./Russian relationships from the time of Catherine the Great to Jimmy and Leonid. John probably expected to spend his life…
Gawkermania! Pretty much.
If I understand the odds correctly, it’s about 180 million to 1 that you’re reading Gawker instead of this. But if you are reading this, you may not be aware that there’s a serious suits-versus-shirts contretemps at No Shame Central, after the business boys insisted that the site pull an article about, well, let me…
Mitsubishi apologizes for using slave labor in World War II. Now if we could only get the South to do the same.
Reuters reports that, 70 years after the fact, the Mitsubishi company of Japan has “formally” apologized for using American POWs as slave labor during World War II, putting them 80 years ahead of the American South. Afterwords Will the South ever catch up? Well, that depends on which part of the South you look at.
Stan Getz, Gary Burton, Steve Swallow, Roy Haynes—“Scrapple from the Apple”
Stan on tenor, of course, channeling Charlie Parker, with Gary on vibes, Swallow on bass, and Haynes on drums. Getz was “really” a swing player, but he came up in the bop years, and he definitely had the chops to handle anything the boppers could come up with. In 1966, even though he was making…
Pseudo New Yorker
Legal humor here “Frankly, today’s umpire—and I very much consider myself an umpire of today—finds that calling balls and strikes is the least of his responsibilities. Our real function is to keep baseball vibrant and au courant by reinterpreting its traditions in light of contemporary trends—the zeitgeist of the horsehide, one might say.” “Okay, that…
The Pentagon’s Short- and Long-Term Memory Loss
In a story appearing in Politico, “Obama team split over next steps with Iran”, Michael Crowley writes that a “senior administration official” denied that there was any possibility of a presidential visit to Iran—“we continue to have very serious differences with Iran.” Crowley remarks that “That sentiment will be appreciated by military officials who hold…
Terumasa Hino & Toshiko Akiyoshi—“Straight, No Chaser”
Terumasa on trumpet and Toshiko on piano. Posted by jazzytaka
Edward Gibbon, Part VI
In Part I of this near-random collection of jottings, I remarked that Edward Gibbon, despite his near-obsessive concern with politeness and polish, tells you more about the sex lives of historical figures than virtually any modern historian. I also remarked that his modern-day fans, despite their frequently amazing levels of erudition and enthusiasm, studiously avoid…