“Well, if I had a drag coefficient of 0.27, I’d have it tatooed on my chest. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean.” “I like to tell my patients, ‘there are no small rides.Only small minds.” “Just by existing, you’re adding four feet of usable road space in New York City. I think…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Good News!
Good news indeed! You may remember the unfortunately still with us William J. Bennett, once secretary of education and later drug “czar”—doing the same bang-up job in both positions—who has been harrumphing about the decline and fall of the “West” for the past thirty-five years and now is illustrating it by harrumphing on behalf of…
Walinsky Does Trump
Over at Politico, Adam Walinsky gives good head with the following: “I was RFK’s Speechwriter. Now I’m Voting for Donald Trump. Here’s Why.” What follows is a depressingly accurate account of Hillary Clinton’s Putin-phobia, her school-girl earnest conviction that Mr. Putin “needs to be taught a lesson.” Mrs. Clinton, with all her vaunted knowledge of…
Pseudo New Yorker
“OK, I should have said ‘I know a deep-sea short cut.’” “Unless he thinks we’re krill I think we’ll be OK.” “I don’t have an irrational fear of the great cetaceans. I have a rational fear of the great cetaceans.” “Well, for one thing, we’re both mammals. That should count for something! “I know they…
Rachel Rodgers—“Straight, No Chaser”
Yes, more “Straight, No Chaser”, this time from a young flautist. Posted by Rachel Rodgers, who also has a site here
Stadia Mania! Why the heart hath reasons that Reason knows not of
It’s no stretch to say that “Reason” magazine does not ♥ public funding of sports arenas. You can get a fair sample of Reasonette bile regarding sports arenas here. And I agree: public funding of sports arenas—most egregiously, the fabled NFL franchises—makes no economic sense. Yet it happens, constantly. So it must make some sort…
Pseudo New Yorker
“I don’t mean to rush you, but the C Train will be here in two minutes.” “Why I don’t I just start you off with a couple of bowls of our Port Authority vichyssoise? And maybe some sardines?” “As a matter of fact, I have heard all the jokes—thank you for asking. But I love…
N. Gregory Mankiw is lower than a snake in a wagon’s track
N. Gregory Mankiw is brilliant and prominent, a professor of economics at Harvard University, author of a best-selling introductory economics textbook, and, under President George W. Bush, chair of the president’s board of economic advisors.1 So why he is talking total bullshit on the estate tax in the New York Times? Well, as Greg tells…
A Wall of Shame for the Party of Shame
Wash Post columnist Robert J. Samuelson has a column up arguing that spending $25 billion for Donald Trump’s “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful” wall is a great idea, because building one would facilitate a grand compromise on immigration reform: “If we could buy an immigration bargain for $25 billion, or even a bit more, it…
Benny Troschel—“Straight No Chaser”
It’s “Straight No Chaser” month at Literature R Us. In fact, I may give this tune of Monk’s a two-month workout, for it seems to be remarkably popular. I guess I wasn’t paying attention. In any case, it’s Benny Troschel working the trompete, with Christopher Olesch on vibraphon, Felix Henkelhausen on bass, Artemiy Kosarev on…