September 2, 2026

THE SECOND-ORDER EFFECTS ARE OUTSTANDING:

Posted at 7:18 am by Stephen Green

RULE OF LAW:

Posted at 7:02 am by Glenn Reynolds

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

I’VE SEEN MORE COMFORTABLE GUESTS OF HONOR IN HOSTAGE VIDEOS: The Body Language of This Black Pastor at an El-Sayed Presser Says It All.

Posted at 5:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

September 1, 2026

ONCE MORE UNTO THE MEME, DEAR FRIENDS:

UPDATE:

ANOTHER UPDATE: And Eric S. Raymond is doing just that:

Posted at 10:08 pm by Glenn Reynolds

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Almost as much as they’re excited about this recent development in Roger Goodell’s NFL: Map Shows NFL Teams With Male Cheerleaders Amid Online Scrutiny.

In accordance with the prophecy:

Speaking of the Cowboys, the ghost of Tex Schramm weeps, wonders where it all went wrong for his beloved league.

UPDATE:

Posted at 9:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE WAY OF THE WAR OF ART: My review of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, now up at Ed Driscoll.com.

Posted at 8:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOT ALL GRADUATE DEGREES PAY OFF. And you’ll never believe which ones! Just kidding, you’ll believe it, though engineering is a closer shave than you’d think.

Posted at 8:53 pm by Robert Shibley

MARTINIS AND CULTURE WAR:

In a 1978 address to the National Restaurant Association, Gerald Ford summarized: “The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency—where else can you get an earful, a bellyful, and a snootful at the same time?” Businessmen claimed that their creativity increased post-three-martini lunch. At white tablecloth steakhouses, olives were served as martini accoutrements: as an imported European delicacy, the olive added to the martini’s high-class reputation. The early martinis were smaller at around two and a half ounces, only a third as intoxicating as contemporary versions. The three‑martini lunch emerged from this environment: a perfect accompaniment to a long midday meeting where deals were made and class distinctions affirmed. One can imagine going back into the office after a 1950s three-martini lunch (now equivalent to one martini in 2025) only slightly tipsy and ready to keep working.

But as the three-martini lunch became a symbol of pinstripe-suited corporate America, a target was placed on the martini’s back (and the back of the well-heeled executives who liked to charge their long lunches to the corporate account). In the 1970s, the three‑martini lunch also became a political symbol of runaway capitalism. When stagflation plagued the American economy, President Jimmy Carter denounced business meal deductions as an abuse of the upper class, saying that the “working class was subsidizing the $50 martini lunch.” Conservative writer William F. Buckley Jr. responded that the martini had become “a code word” used not to protect tax revenue, but to attack a pro-capitalist lifestyle that personally offended Carter, an especially prescient attack during the Cold War where being branded ‘anti-capitalist’ was a political liability. . . .

But the business lunch never left, it just changed clothes. Yes, Sweetgreen is less glamorous than the white-tablecloth settings of three-martini lunches. But, the kale salad is just the martini inverted: instead of demonstrating your immunity to toxins, you demonstrate your immunity to pleasure.

How far we have fallen.

UPDATE (From Ed): In his 1980 non-fiction anthology In Our Time, Tom Wolfe wrote:

In the fifties there was the martini. In the sixties there was vodka on ice. In the early seventies there was the glass of white wine. In the late seventies there was the bottle of Perrier, a French soda water. The fashionable American expense-account lunch drink became lighter and lighter, but not cheaper and cheaper. The soda water sold for $2.50 a glass in Manhattan restaurants.

Even someone as brilliant at spotting societal tends and obsessions as Wolfe had no idea of the insane heights where this fad would end up in the 21st century: Would you pay $95 for a bottle of water?

Posted at 8:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds