He grabbed Steinfrau's nose. There was nothing for it now; he had to hang on, hang on for dear life, or else the mad German would be gone and there would be no way to prove his innocence. Steinfrau tried to roll up the window of the moving cab, but with a massive lunge he managed to jam his free hand in and around the crank; the pressure on his arm was terrible, but the window stopped in mid-rise, and the extra handgrip helped him hang on as the cab increased its speed. They were heading toward Midtown. There was a chance, a bare chance; if he could hook his ankle around the fence at the 59th Street sidewalk café he might be able to slow them down. But would he be able to? People were screaming, throwing things; there were angry shouts from theatregoers and commuters, traffic cops pointed at him and swore. Steinfrau seemed to be egging them on, damn him.
"It's not like that in the magical world, 'Arry," Hagrid said, voice lowered in concern. "Y'see, when Vol... well, when You-Know-Who set up a trust deposit insurance scheme, 'e didn't account for rising interest rates. And 'e didn't give codflakes about whether it would influence currency issues abroad, or take into account nominal seasonal fluctuations in the GNP as accounted for in Dumbledore's rules. See, that's what makes him so evil, Harry; by doin' this he unpinned meaningful values from real estate an' just left 'em floatin', an' so the loss in equity was inevitable
And Alatar ignored Pallando's warnings yet again, and opened the first McDonald's; and so another cult began. And Pallando wept; and stood alone upon the parking lot, and called to the West, and said, 'O great Powers! Can even the sorrows of Nienna grant us pity for this evil deed?'; and he threw himself upon the pavement. Yet from the West there came no reply
progress has achieved wonderful things, too. Paving. Asphalt. Smog. Car alarms that wake you up in the middle of the fucking night. Carcinogenic food. The Exxon Valdez. That stereo in the apartment upstairs. Hydrogen bombs. Hormone-injected meat. Artificial coloring. Alarm clocks (and a society so dependent on measured time that we need alarm clocks). Television, and a society that has replaced "How can we improve the human condition?" with "Hey, did'ja see the Simpsons last night? Huh huh". An Internet where people like us can waste away their free time instead of going out and having a life. Yeah! Progress! I love it! Get me the genetic splicing kit! I want to make a new kind of trout!