January 14, 2017

I remember Hunter S. Thompson and Nixon, just ordered this one by Matt Taibbi. Rolling Stone was a must read in the Seventies. Haven't read it since. I do remember Taibbi's attack on Goldman Sachs: "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Taibbi's book review of Freidman's latest is hilarious.



Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was my Best Buy $10 off purchase.



Going to check out Hidden Figures tonight.

October 23, 2010

Got to the Greenmarket at around 2 p.m. Really crowded.



The Mutsu apple (also known as Crispin) was introduced in 1948 and is a cross between the Golden Delicious and the Indo apple varieties first grown in Japan, and named after the Mutsu Province of Japan, where it was presumably first grown.



I don't buy many CDs, I bought this one.



Wow, only three hits last night. The better team, the hotter team won. Now the Yankees should sign Cliff Lee and throw the Baseball world into another frenzy. Since my baseball season is now over, time to hit the books. Corruption, Quantum Physics, High Finance, Herman Melville, Ancient Rome and Sports are on the agenda



Speaking of corruption, The New York State Inspector General's Report on the Aqueduct Racino Contract reads like a novel, 308 pages of Lobbyists gone wild and"Pay to Play."



Series of essays on life in Ancient Rome.



They are pretty funny on the radio, let's see if it translates to the written word.



The British side of cracking the atom.



From the Random House web Site:"The Fall of the House of Zeus tells the story of Dickie Scruggs, arguably the most successful plaintiff's lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of Trent Lott, the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Scruggs made a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against “Big Tobacco” and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter day Robin Hood, and portrayed in the movie, The Insider, as a dapper aviator-lawyer. Scruggs’ legal triumphs rewarded him lavishly, and his success emboldened both his career maneuvering and his influence in Southern politics--but at a terrible cost, culminating in his spectacular fall, when he was convicted for conspiring to bribe a Mississippi state judge. "




This is coming out in November. Rolling Stone has an excerpt. Should be fun.



All this talk of scams and Long Cons puts this classic back on the reading list. Here is the E-Text.
"Could you put confidence in me for instance?"

October 3, 2010

The Oktoberfest tastings continue: Hofbrau Oktoberfest. A golden version, tasty and bitter.



Last year's taste test runner-up: Spaten Oktoberfest. Part of the Big Six Munich Breweries.



"Matt" Taibbi's new piece in Rolling Stone is entitled Tea & Crackers. It is funny and a bit scary. The new issue also has an interview with President Obama. Lots of interesting questions ,like:

What has surprised you the most about these first two years in office? What advice would you give your successor about the first two years?
Over the past two years, what I probably anticipated but you don't fully appreciate until you're in the job, is something I said earlier, which is if a problem is easy, it doesn't hit my desk. If there's an obvious solution, it never arrives here — somebody else has solved it a long time ago. The issues that cross my desk are hard and complicated, and oftentimes involve the clash not of right and wrong, but of two rights. And you're having to balance and reconcile against competing values that are equally legitimate.