Do you remember the line about how all clever economists were
tall, with the exceptions of Milton Friedman and John Kenneth
Galbraith? Clever or not, the 6’8” Galbraith was one of the
wittiest of economists, and under a pseudonym once wrote a book
mocking academic jargon called The McLandress Dimension. The
Dimension in question measured the amount of time a person could
spend without thinking of himself, scored from 100 (1 second) to 1
(60 minutes).
Today’s winner is unquestionably the new junior senator from
Massachusetts. I once received a six-page letter from her, the gist
of which was that I had written an article on bankruptcy law and
had failed to cite her. She is the kind of person Tom Wolfe had in
mind when he wrote that university buildings have windows which are
hermetically sealed, for otherwise the stench of ego would blast
the birds from the trees.
