Monday, June 25, 2018
Looking
at my notes, there is so much to cover that I might be able to take the
rest of the week off after I deal with the weekend.
In any case, I enjoyed two scoops in a cup ($4.25), orange and chocolate bourbon pecan. Note that il laboratorio del gelato has very few seats, although there is a lot of floor space to stand around in. Service was efficient; I recall 4 scoopers kept busy.
Sunday, after lunch with other good friends, we went to the really small ice cream counter attached to Bubby's High Line, 73
Gansevoort Street, across the street from the dramatic new building of
the Whitney Museum. It wasn't just convenience that led us there. This
little space, ironically with about the same seating capacity as the
ten times larger il laboratorio del gelato, serves Ample Hills Creamery ice cream, which may be the finest around.
The
counter serves about a dozen flavors at a time, but I don't think that
Ample Hills ever stopped to make a list. I had the wonderful
combination of Chocolate Trip, a medium chocolate ice cream with "Baked
by Melissa" cookie dough, chocolate cookies and chocolate cupcakes, and Ooey Gooey, vanilla ice cream with hunks of St. Louis-style "Ooey Gooey Butter Cake" (with far more hits on Google than you would ever imagine), two scoops for $5.35.
. . .
Vital information about immigration was presented this weekend in this article. https://www.nytimes.com/intera
It teaches us that worldwide "overestimates [about immigration] are largest among particular groups: the least educated,
workers in low-skill occupations with lots of immigrants, and those on
the political right. They overstate the share of immigrants who are
Muslim and understate the share of Christians. They underestimate
immigrants’ education and overestimate both their poverty rate and their
dependence on welfare." How do we get the overestimators to recognize the facts?
. . .
The New York Times
has a bit of a puff piece about Slice, an app that allows pizza
ordering from mom-and-pop joints, in competition with the national
chains. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0
What interested me was Slice's owner statement that "many
of his employees, including those working on data entry, sales and
customer service, are based in Macedonia." I have been to Macedonia,
which is 6 hours ahead of New York time. That might not interfere with
data entry, but I am very skeptical about relying on sleep-deprived
Macedonians for my sales or customer service.
. . .
Feeling good? Headline for you: "Obama-Era Investor Protection Rule Is Dead"
. . .
If you need some comfort food after that, consider:
However, are they "fast-food Frankensteins"? Is that what you would call "a fried egg and bacon held together by a glazed doughnut sliced in half"?
. . .
Maybe you just want to go home and lie down. Regard the minimum annual income needed to buy a median-priced home in each of the country's 50 largest metropolitan areas.
The
Golden State takes on another meaning, with 4 of the 5 most expensive
locations in California, topped by an income of $262,116 needed in San Jose to purchase a median-priced house.
The Holy Land comes in a mere seventh at $97,565. At the other end,
Pittsburgh is the bargain site, putting a roof over your head with an
income as little as $34,555.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
For
the last two years working in the New York court system, I spent one
day a week working with Ilana Marcus, a young, bright, diligent attorney
assigned to a particular judge. We also shared an affinity for Peking
duck and tried to systematically compare them in Chinatown. It's not worth revisiting the results, because Chinatown and its
ducks seem to experience constant change. Now, Ilana is running for
Civil Court judge in Manhattan and she has my unqualified endorsement.
Better than that, she might be running unopposed. That's the end of the
judicial good news for the next decade.
. . .
There
was an interesting Democratic primary race yesterday for a
congressional seat covering parts of Bronx and Queens Counties, an area
that banished white Protestants decades ago. The incumbent was an Irish
Catholic, who held the seat for 10 terms and was considered a likely
successor to Nancy Pelosi to lead the Democrats in the House of
Representatives. The challenger was a 28-year old Latina, a former
bartender and left-wing activist, who won with more than 57% of the vote.
Put aside for now the lackadaisical approach the incumbent
took to the race, although there is a big lesson to be learned (Hello,
Hillary). This contest raises basic questions about representative government to me. While the challenger professed more "radical" policies than the incumbent, I don't believe that their votes on the House floor would differ once bills were actually up for a vote.
Will the people in New York's 14th Congressional District benefit from this change in representatation? Arguably, keeping the wily old fox around, with his knowledge of the ins and outs of the legislative process and its participants, might produce better results for his constituents than inserting a very young and very green (although smart and energentic) outsider. Or, is this outweighed by having a representative more representative in age, attitude, and ethnicity? I led discussions along these lines more than half a century ago in classes on American government and I still find the topic intriguing.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
The Boyz Club gathered for lunch at the Golden Unicorn, 18 East Broadway, one of Chinatown's major dim sum purveyors. As its wagons spin around the floor, they offer the helpful feature of a sign identifying their contents, saving a challenge to your Mandarin language skills. As always, I failed to keep up with the number and variety of the dishes that the six of us consumed. I am guessing that we had 16 dishes, 10 items repeated 6 times. Did we enjoy? What kind of question is that?
Friday, June 29, 2018
Here is another question. Why did the president, in a speech in Wisconsin yesterday, say that he was the first Republican to win Wisconsin's presidential vote since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, when Eisenhower repeated in 1956 and Nixon and Reagan won both times as well? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/politics/fast-check-trump-wisconsin-republican-election-.html
Doesn't the prospect of being considered the worst president in American history sufficiently appeal to his sense of uniqueness?
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