Monday, June 17, 2019
Guess which side of the color line we were on this time?
In a nutshell, 504 is a federal designation "meant to give students with mental and physical disabilities — whether attention deficit disorder or a broken arm — a fair shot in public education." And sure enough, "White students in New York City are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a 504 designation that allows extra time on the specialized high school entrance exams. White students are also twice as likely as their black and Hispanic peers to have the designation. Students in poverty are much less likely to have a 504 for extra time." According to the New York Times, "students who have this extra-time provision are about twice as likely to receive offers from specialized high schools."
There
are so many reasons to celebrate America's Favorite Epidemiologist,
even if today were not her birthday. But, it is and we do.
. . .
John Galliano's clothing, Chick-fil-A
sandwiches, Woody Allen movies -- it seems that we face more moral
dilemmas today than in the past in making our choices. It may be the glut of information that is
now available about behavior or opinions, sometimes private sometimes
public. In any case, we seem to be asking Do we? or Don't we? in so
many areas of daily activity.
How about the family that owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Peet’s Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Pret A Manger, and Keurig among other familiar brands? Nazis. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
. . .
How about the family that owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Peet’s Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Pret A Manger, and Keurig among other familiar brands? Nazis. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
. . .
It
was my first trip to London, April 1985. I had taken a day trip to
Oxford and returned to Paddington Station, home of the bear whom I have
yet to encounter. In those days, and for years to come, when
electronics had not taken over our lives, I traveled with 2 or 3
paperback books for long plane rides or train rides. As this was my
second overseas trip ever, and the first unaccompanied, I underestimated
the amount of reading that I would do. So, I needed a book.
WH
Smith operates large book and stationary stores throughout Great
Britain and prominently in airports and train stations. Its shelves at Paddington Station were arranged by genre, making it
easier for me to focus on mysteries/thrillers, my favorite diversion not
requiring a knife and fork. I picked a book by an author taking a lot
of space, although unknown to me. Thus began my devotion to Anthony
Price, whose death was reported today. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
I
can't recall which of his 19 books, all featuring David Audley of the
British Secret Service, I started with. It was somewhere in the middle
of the series, but I eventually read every one, usually acquired on
subsequent trips to London, because Price never caught on here,
unfortunately. When a decade or more went by without the appearance of a
new work by Price, I offered the 18 that I held (the last or
next-to-last had been a library copy) to Otto Penzler, owner of The
Mysterious Bookshop, 58 Warren Street, probably the finest of its kind,
who showed no interest.
If you enjoy spy novels, I strongly recommend Anthony Price. His novels are more plot-driven than John le Carré's character-driven
works and far more thoughtful than Ian Fleming's post-adolescent
fantasies. While Amazon has Kindle versions of almost all the books,
Libby, the otherwise excellent electronic platform for the New York
Public Library, has none. And, the Library's physical copies appear to
be kept in the reference section only, not in circulation.
Nevertheless, if sophisticated Cold War skullduggery appeals to you,
take the trouble to track down Price's work.
. . .
. . .
I continue to follow the aftermath of the Oberlin College libel verdict, which I consider unsupportable in law. The most typical discussions indict the wrong-assed conduct of the students and some over-caffeinated administrators.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/
However, I await public soul-searching by some of the same
commentators when and if they ever choose to examine the events in Phoenix, where
"Police Draw Guns on Family Over Report of Stolen Doll," as part of the
headline read. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
Guess which side of the color line we were on this time?
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
To
celebrate my young bride's birthday appropriately, we joined her two
brothers, one wife and one companion for a big steak dinner at etc.
steakhouse (sic), 1408 Palisade Avenue, Teaneck, New Jersey, last
night. It offers proximity for one couple, respect for dietary rules
for three of us and a bring-your-own-bottle policy that benefits all six
of us.
The value to the customer of a BYOB policy is evident in these comments from an industry publication. "Restaurants generally mark up a bottle of wine from 200 to 300 percent
over its retail sales price. You can therefore reasonably price a bottle
that retails around $20 at $60 and $80. . . . It is standard practice to mark up the most
popular wines on a list closer to 300 percent, while marking up less
impressive sellers closer to 200 percent." https://www.musthavemenus.com/
. . .
. . .
While
some of the moral dilemmas cited above are resolved by people willing
to forgive and forget, that isn't the attitude of Harvard University.
It revoked the offer of admissions to an 18-year old applicant who was
certifiably an asinine jerk when he was 16. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/
I
think Harvard is making a mistake. Let's see if, unlike the White
House, it can be shamed into doing the right thing. But, this is about
Stuyvesant High School and the attempts to effect a better ethnic
balance in its student body. Once we stray from cold, hard numbers in
determining admissions, we introduce so many opportunities to
discriminate for other bad reasons. Imagine how some of us would have
fared if we were measured for obnoxiousness at every turn, not just on
blind dates? Confer the pickle experienced at Boston Latin, their
Stuyvesant, using grades along with a test. https://www.wgbh.org/news/
. . .
. . .
No sooner than the pixels dried on the screen that I saw this article. https://www.nytimes.com/
In a nutshell, 504 is a federal designation "meant to give students with mental and physical disabilities — whether attention deficit disorder or a broken arm — a fair shot in public education." And sure enough, "White students in New York City are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a 504 designation that allows extra time on the specialized high school entrance exams. White students are also twice as likely as their black and Hispanic peers to have the designation. Students in poverty are much less likely to have a 504 for extra time." According to the New York Times, "students who have this extra-time provision are about twice as likely to receive offers from specialized high schools."
Another bite out of the meritocratic dream.
. . .
. . .
Here
is another little bit of bad news: "Hillary and Clinton," starring
Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow, is closing after only 77 performances
on Broadway. We saw it Saturday night on short notice and were thrilled
and delighted by this gimmick-free exploration of marital and political
issues. I was about to tell you to go see it, but it is set to close
this weekend, even as you sit back with your pipe and slippers and dip
into my prose.
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Chicago-based Toby McMullen is here to do some stand-up comedy gigs. Since he has only spent a few weeks in the Holy Land in his nearly-30 years, I had to pull out all stops in the short time I would have with him. So, we had lunch at Wo Hop, 17 Mott Street, and mission accomplished. We shared beef chow fun ($8.25), crispy honey chicken ($12.50) and brown rice ($1.75). If this seems like a modest amount of food for two big eaters, please note that Wo Hop not only delivers it good, it delivers it big, leaving us more that satisfied.
To arrange for the evening's entertainment including my young bride, we visited the TKTS booth across the street from Lincoln Center (David Rubinstein Atrium, 61 West 62nd Street), a hidden treasure right under our nose, yet ignored by most of us. While it had a large selection of shows available at healthy discounts, the Upper West Side's Power Couple had seen almost all that we considered worth seeing. We settled on "Oklahoma," called by the New York Times a "wide-awake, jolting and altogether wonderful production," and a classic that might give Toby perspective on the American musical theater.
Mission Unaccomplished. All three of us, with very disparate cultural and generational perspectives, simply didn't like the show. We variously recognized the innovative staging (more often feeling like a barn than a theater), the wonderful score and the daring casting of Ali Stroker in a wheelchair leading to a Tony award. While the New York Times review saw this production as "a mirror for our age of doubt and anxiety," we were merely anxious for the show to end.
Thursday, June 20, 2019
Lunch was with the City College cabal, seeking a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020 who might keep the incumbent's share of the vote nationally to 36.5%, just as he got in 2016 in New York State, where we knew him best.
. . .
I met Tom Terrific for an early dinner at Tim Ho Wan, 610 Ninth Avenue, the superb purveyor of dim sum. He had hot and sour wonton soup ($5.80), then we shared two plates of baked BBQ pork buns ($6 for 3 pieces, the best item on the menu), pan fried noodles ($5.80), deep fried eggplant with shrimp ($5.80 for 3 pieces), and steamed rice roll stuffed with minced beef ($5.80 for 3 pieces). I did not even suggest looking for ice cream afterwards.
Although, even if we had room for dessert, we had to rush off to attend a staged reading of a new play by Kim Sykes, Tom's gloriously multi-talented wife.
Friday, June 21, 2019
The United States Supreme Court just ruled that a cross erected on
public property in Maryland in 1925 to commemorate soldiers who died in
WWI did not violate the First Amendment ban on the establishment of religion. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said that over time "the Christian symbol . . . took on an added secular meaning" and, in any case, where older monuments are at issue, it can be hard to identify "their original purpose."
Thank you, thoughtful conservative legal scholars. We can and should discern the original intent of the framers of the Constitution all over the place, but don't ask us to identify the original purpose of those Marylanders way back in 1925.
. . .
. . .
There is an intriguing new study of "civic honesty," measured by what happened to 17,303 supposedly lost wallets, with or without local currency, turned over to banks, police stations, hotels and the like in 355 cities in 40 countries. The researchers found that, with rare exceptions, wallets containing relatively larger amounts of money were returned to their "owners" more frequently than skinnier wallets.
"Both non-experts and professional economists were unable to predict this result." Which I guess is a good result all the way around.
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