Category Archives: Uncategorized

The New York Times‘ Matt Phillips covers the latest Wall Street concern which may impact the rest of us:

The so-called yield curve is perilously close to predicting a recession — something it has done before with surprising accuracy — and it’s become a big topic on Wall Street.

Phillips explains that the yield curve is the difference between interest rates on short term and long term US government bonds, taken over time. Interest rates are set through the dance of bid-ask – that is, if there is insufficient demand for a bond offering at a given interest rate, then the rate has to be boosted by the seller in order to make it attractive to buyers.

Matt explains why long-term bonds have higher rates:

Typically, when an economy seems in good health, the rate on the longer-term bonds will be higher than short-term ones. The extra interest is to compensate, in part, for the risk that strong economic growth could set off a broad rise in prices, known as inflation.

If, on the other hand, a collapse in prices is suspected by the bond traders as a whole, then the higher interest rates are not necessary to entice their dollars^[1].

Which is a long-winded way of saying that the bond market is getting very nervous about the future. Since the GOP is currently running things, and is so completely incompetent at actual governance that they aren’t even capable of botching it, it’s a telegraphed signal of under-confidence in the current leadership.

In other words, we may indeed be seeing the Trump Recession in the future.

Take a look at the article, it’s interesting and has a number of caveats I’ve chosen to omit. And it makes sense that bond traders are getting nervous, given the ludicrous hijinks taking place in Washington.

¹All of this is predicated on the notion that the US Government always pays off its bonds. There have been enough sacred cows found shot behind the barn during this Administration to make this bit of traditional wisdom just a wee bit suspect, in my amateur opinion.

Another batch of people’s pride…

During the recently passed winter I was ill with some sort of combination of infection (which antibiotics merely lessened) and head cold and who knows what. During this period, I noticed my thinking, as reflected in my typing and sometimes my speech patterns, was on a definite cycle of maybe half a sentence, or a couple of seconds. Perhaps the working buffer with which I pretend to understand how our brain works had been foreshortened by my illness.

Therefore, this article D-brief on how nouns tend to interrupt our thinking and speaking patterns rang a bell for me:

The paper’s authors explain that it’s not just a study into verbal tics, but more of a window into how our brains process and create language. “When we speak, we unconsciously pronounce some words more slowly than others and sometimes pause. Such slowdown effects provide key evidence for human cognitive processes, reflecting increased planning load in speech production.” A gap between words, or having to result to filler words (such as uh or um), literally suggests certain words tax our mental faculties more than others.

And which words were those? Nouns (“a person place or thing,” as per Schoolhouse Rock), as opposed to verbs (which tell us “what’s happening”). Across languages and cultures, speakers universally slowed down before uttering nouns, and only one of the nine languages showed any slowdown before verbs, despite these often being more complex than nouns.

The authors went to great pains to make sure they studied speech from “linguistically and culturally diverse populations from around the world,” choosing languages from the Amazonian rainforest (Bora and Baure), Mexico (Texistepec), the North American Midwest (Hoocąk), Siberia (Even), the Himalayas (Chintang), and the Kalahari Desert (Nǁng)…  plus English and Dutch. They also wanted to make sure they studied examples of spontaneous, naturalistic speech — nothing read out loud or memorized.

Sure, it’s not the same thing – but it’s interesting how the individual contents of our thoughts can have greater or lesser impact on our language processing capability.

Here’s a lovely MG Midget.

And a lovely family sedan.

Andrew Sullivan in New York, second part of his weekly tri-partite column:

This is a difficult time for writers. We’re a strange breed that is particularly dependent on liberal democracy to survive. Why? Because, at our most fully realized in the nonfiction world, we’re about argument not propaganda, persuasion not coercion, and our ability to write things someone else doesn’t want printed — Orwell’s definition of journalism — is dependent on a free society to sustain it. It is a very rare event in human history that writers have the kind of freedom liberal democracy allows for — almost unheard of before the last couple of centuries, and still a fringe phenomenon in the wider world. Which is why it’s so dismaying that even an organization like the ACLU is beginning to wobble on free speech, that Twitter mobs are so insidious and pernicious, and that “social justice” now includes the hounding and ostracism of writers who will not tow the party line.

Yes, a difficult time, indeed. Idiots on Twitter and then you’re asked to be a towboat for the intangible. How much further into Hell will Andrew descend?

Obloquy:

1. censure, blame, or abusive language aimed at a person or thing, especially by numerous persons or by the general public.
2. discredit, disgrace, or bad repute resulting from public blame, abuse, or denunciation. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Remembering Charles Krauthammer,” Andrew Sullivan, New York:

Being a dissident on the right as I became — particularly in the new century — was to invite ostracism and obloquy from the mainstream conservative media. But not from Charles. It wasn’t because we didn’t have disagreements.

Over the years the National Rifle Association (NRA) has delighted in grading our legislators in the context of 2nd Amendment absolutism, or, inversely, gun control, by assigning a letter grade as if the legislators were in a school and needed to be corrected in their thinking in the failing cases.

A subtle application of dominance theory.

But apparently something has gone amiss for the NRA, because they’ve taken down the grades. WaPo’s Philip Bump has the story:

Last week, though, the Washington Post reported a change in the NRA’s presentation of its letter grades. Although evaluations for current races are online, past grades — once available to members — no longer are. When a Post reporter called the NRA to find out where the past grades had gone, the person who answered the phone said, “I think our enemies were using that.”

Indeed? But how? Everytown for Gun Safety is a gun control organization, and thus an adversary for the currently radical version of the NRA. Here’s the hint:

Why did Everytown compile the data? In a statement, the organization explained that “the NRA wanted to hide this information from the public. Everytown thinks it is important that voters see it.”

Imagine watching the letter grades change for a Democratic legislator who is hungry for campaign contributions. Imagine seeing them trend from F to A. Wouldn’t that make you wonder if this legislator is unduly influenced by NRA contributions?

Looks like the NRA is trying to protect the legislators they’ve bought. After all, they’re expensive and you can’t just have them disappearing. Follow the link to the WaPo story if you want to play with the data, because WaPo’s run a brush through it for you already.

This sure reinforces my inclination. It’s all about the President’s slack judgment:

President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday morning that the U.S. “Cannot accept all of the people trying to break into our Country” and called for migrants to be “immediately” deported without a trial.

“When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came,” he said. His tweet did not mention people coming to the U.S. to seek asylum, which is legal to do.

“Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order,” he said, adding in another tweet that legal entry to the country should be based on “merit.” [NBC News]

Sigh. Mr. President, without the Due Process you frown upon, how do we know the facts of each case? Perhaps that person you want to deport without due process is an American citizen? This what due process is partially about.

Tell you what, how about we do the same thing to Melania and her son, eh? Obviously, the passport is a fake. We’ll just send her back.

This is why I’ve decided Trump gets a new name: President Irrelevancy. Rather than clasping themselves to his knees, all the legislators should just ignore his opinions, commentary, dull-minded wit, and even his signatures. They’re all based in ignorance.

I shan’t even bother with vulgarities. Trump has become such an irrelevancy, such a pit of abominant amateurism, that just noting his opinions and judgments are irrelevant is more than enough.

For readers local to Minnesota, the company name Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, better known as 3M, is a storied name and the local corporate research powerhouse. But it appears that it, too, has supped at the forbidden soup-bowl of profits-above-all in regards to the recent legal settlement regarding water pollution. Carrie Fellner reports in The Age:

As a leading international authority on toxic chemicals, Professor John P. Giesy is in the top percentile of active authors in the world.

His resume is littered with accolades, from being named in the Who’s Who of the World to receiving the Einstein Professor Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Professor Giesy was credited with being the first scientist to discover toxic per- and poly-fluoroalkyl [PFAS] chemicals in the environment, and with helping to persuade chemical giant 3M Company to abandon their manufacture.

But Fairfax Media can now reveal that Professor Giesy was accused of covertly doing 3M’s bidding in a widespread international campaign to suppress academic research on the dangers of PFAS.

A trove of internal company documents has been made public for the first time following a $US850 million ($1.15 billion) legal settlement between the company and Minnesota Attorney-General Lori Swanson. They suggest that Professor Giesy was one weapon in an arsenal of tactics used by the company to – in a phrase coined by 3M – “command the science” on the chemicals.

It’s a disappointment and a shame on 3M to engage in a form of doublespeak that obscures the company’s responsibility in the manner. And what of Professor Giesy?

To the outside world, Professor Giesy was a renowned and independent university academic.

“But privately, he characterised himself as part of the 3M team,” alleged the State of Minnesota.

“Despite spending most of his career as a professor at public universities, Professor Giesy has a net worth of approximately $20 million. This massive wealth results at least in part from his long-term involvement with 3M for the purpose of suppressing independent scientific research on PFAS.”

Professor Giesy’s consulting company appears to have received payments from 3M between at least 1998 and 2009. One document indicated his going rate was about $US275 an hour.

In an email to a 3M laboratory manager, Professor Giesy described his role as trying to keep “bad papers out of the literature”, because in “litigation situations they can be a large obstacle to refute”.

Professor Giesy was an editor of several academic journals and, in any given year, about half of the papers submitted on PFAS came to him for review.

“Some journals … for conflict-of-interest issues will not allow an industry to review a paper about one of their products. That is where I came in,” he wrote in another email.

“In time sheets, I always listed these reviews as literature searches so that there was no paper trail to 3M.”

If true, I would be very careful about trusting Professor Giesy.

Some more ’50s mobile design art. This one was impeccable.

NASA has a new mission coming up to speed called TESS:

NASA’s next planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is one step closer to searching for new worlds after successfully completing a lunar flyby on May 17. The spacecraft passed about 5,000 miles from the Moon, which provided a gravity assist that helped TESS sail toward its final working orbit.

As part of camera commissioning, the science team snapped a two-second test exposure using one of the four TESS cameras. The image, centered on the southern constellation Centaurus, reveals more than 200,000 stars. The edge of the Coalsack Nebula is in the right upper corner and the bright star Beta Centauri is visible at the lower left edge. TESS is expected to cover more than 400 times as much sky as shown in this image with its four cameras during its initial two-year search for exoplanets. A  science-quality image, also referred to as a “first light” image, is expected to be released in June.

Here’s the test pic:

I’m looking forward to more out of this telescope.

Someone forgot the popcorn.

The weakest facet of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) is the thematic material. Let me explain. This is a fantasy film about a special class of people called the Peculiars. They have, much like those in, say, the Heroes TV series, peculiar and varied natural abilities.

In this scenario, a group of Peculiars who desire immortality kidnap a member of a special sort of Peculiar called Ymbrynes, who can control time by ‘looping’ it. Their experimentation goes wrong in a ghastly manner, and the members of the group are transformed into invisible monsters. These monsters, however, discover they can recover normality by eating the eyeballs of other Peculiars – and then use the Ymbrynes to continue their search for immortality.

Typically, Peculiars exhibit their abilities as children or young adults, and to safeguard them from the normal run of humanity, the Ymbrynes will gather a group and construct a time loop around them. Normal people aren’t aware of the loop and cannot enter, but Peculiars who know the exact geographical entry point may enter the loop. While in it, they do not age, and while the loop repeats, apparently on a daily basis, for so long as the Ymbryne who created it is around, the inhabitants of the loop are not constrained to repeat themselves. In effect, they achieve an aging delay.

But if they leave the loop, their years will rapidly catch up with them.

Jake’s grandfather has told him stories about monsters for as long as he can remember, and now, a teenager, he thinks his grandfather’s a bit loopy himself. But when his grandfather is killed outside his home in Florida, and his eyeballs eaten out, Jake nears a mental breakdown. A chance find by a neighbor of an unmailed letter addressed to Jake during the clean out of the house suggests Jake was to be told to visit a small island off the coast of Ireland, to see Miss Peregrine. His parents, in consultation with Jake’s psychologist, agree, and Jake’s father takes him to Ireland.

On the island, they find the home is a ruin, destroyed in World War II by a Luftwaffe bomb. But Jake, led clandestinely by the time loop inhabitants, stumbles into the time loop and is soon meeting Miss Peregrine and her group. But, unbeknownst to Jake, he’s been tracked by one of the wannabe immortals, and soon the time loop is infested with invisible monsters, and Miss Peregrine is taken prisoner.

And what makes Jake a Peculiar?

From here on in it’s a basic action-survival tale. In fact, that’s the entire story, the fight for survival by the innocent, if not precisely innocuous. But there’s a couple of problems.

First, we don’t lose anyone with whom we’ve built an attachment. Such losses are important for driving home the dangers that can arise when doing something morally right in the face of opposition from the self-interested. One our society’s key survival traits is the willingness to give up one’s life for one or people in the group, and by killing off a character who’s engaged in that activity, the deadly seriousness of the business of protecting the group is brought to the fore.

My second problem with the tale is that these sorts of stories need to illuminate problems relevant to the Normals, i.e., the audience, or they will not relate to the story and it will not succeed. Certainly, the fight for survival is relatable, but it’s also old. It’s so old that it’s almost a cliche, and in order to make it appeal to a novelty-oriented audience, it has to bring some new facet to the theme. This story really doesn’t, because having one’s eyeballs consumed may be repellent and gauche, but it doesn’t really reach a more fundamental level of meaning. By contrast, in the Heroes TV series, the main characters may have been immortal, mind-readers, or able to fly, but by making them the Outsiders, their interactions with the normal people as well as each other illuminate themes that are important because they ask questions relevant to audiences of today, from xenophobia to government overreach, conflicting loyalties to the limits of honesty when pursuing government office.

Then there’s the problems with story integrity. The Peculiars in the time loop do not age physically, but they do mentally – or at least one would hope so if they retain their memories. Yet, it’s not clear to me that the Peculiars, outside of Miss Peregrine, are maturing despite their static bodies. That immediately raises questions about the social dynamics of the groups.

It’s a leaky ride into the sunset.

Another story integrity problem has to do with the Normals. While it’s one thing to blame mythical creatures such as poltergeists for some of the activities of the Peculiars, when the invisible monsters wreck an amusement park in search of Peculiars to consume, one would expect more than just a simple police investigation. And what about the sunken cruise liner docked in the port? Shouldn’t that raise an eyebrow? What about the parents of the children?

It’s all very unfortunate, because, technically, it’s a well-made movie. I particularly enjoyed Miss Peregrine’s character, but, outside of Jake’s father, all the characters bring something to the story. The special effects are all in good fun. The problems lie in the story, and thus it’s just a mediocre, if fairly fun and quirky, movie.

As the State Fair is right down the street from us, the annual celebration of old cars is going on right in front of us. Here’s a few pics. We’ll start with this lovely dark maroon showboat:

Next, baby blue:

Then some flash:

More to come….

D-brief‘s Lacy Schley notes an interesting experiment in memory in sea slugs. The researchers trained some sea slugs to react in a certain way to shocks, then …

RNA representation. Source: Wikipedia

The researchers then extracted ribonucleic acid (RNA) — the cellular messenger that carries out the genetic instructions of DNA — from the nervous systems of both the shock and non-shock groups. They took this RNA and injected it into a third set of slugs that hadn’t had to deal with any shocks or taps. Seven of these slugs got the shock group’s RNA, seven got the non-shock-group’s RNA.

Next, the team tapped these RNA-injected slugs on their tails. Those that had received the shock group’s RNA responded almost exactly like the shock group: They recoiled for about 40 seconds.

“It was as though we transferred the memory,” [team lead David] Glanzman said in a press release.

It’s fascinating, but raises the complicated question of kinds of memory. Why? Schley notes Glanzman’s findings are at odds with most theories and suppositions about memory:

Most neuroscientists would agree that memory, particularly long-term memory, is something that lives in the synapse — the gap between neurons. But this study, combined with Glanzman’s previous work, suggests the nucleus, where RNA carries out its DNA transcribing, could be the key to decoding how memories are stored.

There’s an implicit suggestion that all memories work on the same mechanism. But what if they don’t? This memory theory discussion needn’t be an exclusive or situation, but possibly parallel mechanisms.

And, of course, these are growing everywhere except where the Arts Editor designated mushrooms to grow.

For a quick snap that came out amazingly well. They’re hiding under the hollyhocks, which are giving us reason to hope for a stellar ‘hock season. This pair are a little to the east of the above.

Quite pert, I think.

SCOTUS is once again avoiding the big issues in Lucia vs. SEC, where they ruled that the SEC judges are improperly selected, and David Savage in the Los Angeles Times explains the issue that was avoided:

But his case reopened a profound dispute over the chief executive’s power to control and remove officials throughout the U.S. government. Since the late 19th century, Congress has extended civil service protection to the vast number of federal employees. Some top appointees are also protected from firing except for “good cause.” They include Mueller, who under the regulations can be removed by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein only for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest or other good cause.”

Usually, administration lawyers defend federal agencies like the SEC in matters before the high court. But in this case, Trump’s lawyers switched sides and urged the justices to rule against the SEC and say the president has the authority to “remove” all officers of the United States.

“The Constitution gives the president what the framers saw as the traditional means of ensuring accountability: the power to oversee executive officers through removal,” Solicitor Gen. Noel Francisco told the court in February. “The president is accordingly authorized under our constitutional system to remove all principal officers, as well as all ‘inferior officers’ he has appointed.”

Firing at anyone will sounds like a power trip to me – and may unduly influence folks who need to be politically neutral in their jobs.

Continuing coverage of the aftermath of the homicide of Philando Castile, Falcon Heights City Hall reports on the success of its Policing & Inclusion initiative:

The City of Falcon Heights has been recognized with a 2018 City of Excellence Award from the League of Minnesota Cities at the League’s Annual Conference for its “Policing & Inclusion Community Initiative.”

The City was recognized in this year’s “Population 5,000 – 19,999” category.

In the aftermath of the shooting of Philando Castile, an African-American male motorist, the Falcon Heights City Council appointed a Task Force on Inclusion and Policing. A group of 11 residents and non-residents with diverse perspectives set out with a mission to “articulate, affirm and operationalize our values as a community to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for residents and guests of Falcon Heights, with an emphasis on policing values, policies and procedures.”

Beginning in December 2016, the Task Force embarked on 13 regular meetings to create sets of recommendations for inclusion and policing by deliberating with interested residents through five Community Conversations, and consulting with experts in four priority areas (policing, police-community relations, citizen oversight boards, and joint powers authorities). Individual dialogue sessions, attendance at Council meetings, and involvement in community events were other ways the Task Force remained visible and available to the Falcon Heights community.

Recognizing the need for community healing following the tragic shooting, the five Community Conversations consisted primarily of small group circles guided by restorative values fostering deep and self-reflective dialogue. More than 180 people participated in the conversations, and following the conversations participants identified the role they play in injustices and connecting with people in their community as valuable take-aways.

Input from the Community Conversations was considered by the Task Force and included in its final Policing and Inclusion recommendations to the Falcon Heights City Council, which were adopted unanimously.

The City of Falcon Heights reported the “Policing & Inclusion Community Initiative” has improved the quality of its policing, provided an innovative way to handle difficult societal issues such as race, and creatively involved citizens in the decision-making process.

There’s definitely a bittersweet quality to the announcement, but I hope this is more than just city propaganda. Being a relatively small suburb of St. Paul, it’s hard to have much of a real impact, but the symbolism may enhance the overall impact in reducing unconscious American racism. The City employees should regret that they had to do this, but be happy that they did it well enough to win an award.

Steve Benen of Maddowblog notes that the conservative leadership has decided on its message to cover up the fact that it was indulging in sadism when it was separating children from their illegal immigrant parents:

Donald Trump’s family-separation policy has sparked international attention and a swift public backlash, which his Republican Party probably would’ve preferred to avoid less five months before the midterm elections. But as TPM noted, some GOP lawmakers are less concerned than others.

[M]any vulnerable GOP lawmakers are fearing the political ramifications of their inaction in the face of public outrage over the mass separation of migrant children and families.

But Rep. Pete King (R-NY) is not too concerned.

“Americans care more about Americans,” he told TPM.

Similar assessments have been percolating for a while, but the New York Republican crystalized the sentiment in a handy, five-word phrase: “Americans care more about Americans.” …

Update: Conservative media is picking up on a similar message, with one host arguing this morning, “These aren’t our kids.”

My suggestion if you run into someone spouting that as a defense?

“Is that what Jesus would say?”

The moment these families are taken into custody, they become our responsibility, and if we damage them, that’s our responsibility, too. To their credit, the Methodists have reprimanded Attorney General Sessions for his part in this tragic episode; it’s now time for the Evangelical Churches to step up to the plate and destroy this immoral defense.

By the kitchen stoop.

It has a slight Impressionistic feel to it.

From WaPo:

The Senate on Wednesday rejected billions in spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration as two Republicans joined all Democrats in voting no.

The 48-50 vote rebuffed a White House plan to claw back some $15 billion in spending previously approved by Congress — a show of fiscal responsibility that was encouraged by conservative lawmakers outraged over a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March. …

Nevertheless, Wednesday’s outcome was startling because one of the opposing votes came from Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who does not normally buck the White House or GOP leadership. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a moderate and one of the Republicans who most frequently side with Democrats, cast the other GOP vote against the cuts.

Burr claimed to be unhappy about cuts to the U.S. Forest Service. In this we see the abnormal amount of power wielded by just a couple of Senators these days, and apparently Senator Flake is also starting to figure out that he has a lot of influence, just so long as he’s willing to say and mean No! But just how big a deal was this bill in and of itself?

Democrats had accused Republicans and the Trump administration of targeting important programs with the rescission cuts, but Republicans countered that most of the money was sitting unspent, in some cases in expired accounts that couldn’t be tapped.

Independent analyses said that since most of the money would not have been spent anyway, the actual spending reduction in the package was closer to $1 billion. That’s a tiny fraction of the federal budget. But in a midterm election year conservative lawmakers saw the rescissions package as a way to show Congress’ commitment to reining in spending at a time of drastically rising deficits and debt.

To my eye, it looks like the Democrats just wanted to say No! to any Republican initiative, and to their surprise got a little help from the other side. While it may seem petty, they have precedent in the six years of Republican obstructionism during the Obama Administration.

More importantly, a statement was made by rejecting this rescission bill. A deal is a deal, and this sort of thing is reneging on it. Not that I’m surprised that Trump would renege on a deal, as that appears to be the story of his life. But I suspect the bill was put together with zero Democratic input, and they were quite right to vote against it in that scenario. Let the third-rater Republicans rot in their little hellhole of broken immigrant families and and tax breaks for the wealthy.

At least according to my Arts Editor.

I just think it looks a bit exotic.

I cannot do better than ‘snowbeast’.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) revels in one of the oldest and most important themes of Western stories, the importance of blending cultures. The idea of integroup alliances, of intermarriage, and, later of accepting differences as an advantage, rather something to be loathed or disdained, is one of the pillars underlying the strength of Western culture. The idea that everyone has something to contribute, as ‘everyone’ expanded from English white males to slaves, then to females, then the Irish and the Germans, etc etc, is the bedrock of the success of Western culture. Implicit in that concept is the freedom to intermix with other cultures and explore options outside of the older, usually gender-oriented, assigned roles.

This movie recapitulates the history that moved from earlier cultures and their explicit confidence in their own superiority, and how that attitude can make for a rocky existence, and to that of today. Toula is, at age 30, the spinster daughter in a large, extended Greek family, awkward and under-confident. Becoming desperate to do something with her life, she undertakes computer courses (in the 1980s, a big deal) and, with the help of an aunt, strikes out in business in a tourist agency. Encountering success, she becomes a little more confident, but still can’t believe it when a stranger, a schoolteacher named Ian, walks into the tourist agency and starts talking to her, because, to her, he’s gorgeous.

The courtship is fast, but soon they encounter the great rock of culture chauvinism, embodied in her father, Costas. He’s a Greek immigrant who arrived with $8 in his pocket and his wife, and now owns a successful restaurant and heads up a large family – and believes the Greeks are the basis and pinnacle of civilization, with Greek being the mother language. America? It’s primary cultural contribution is Windex.

Now he finds his daughter is dating, is becoming engaged to, a non-Greek!

Needless to say, he grumps, he throws obstacles in the way, he presents alternative suitors to Toula, but Ian and Toula persist, and in the end Costas enfolds Ian, as well as Ian’s family, in his arms, grudgingly convinced that perhaps Ian is worthy of his Greek daughter, and bringing the audience to the climactic wedding and reception.

Perhaps suggesting this recounting of history through the conversion of Costas seems to be a bit much, but the echo of one man’s persuasion as an example of the larger culture’s central pillar of tolerance, unconsciously or not, reminds the audience of the large and serious issues that face cultures which incorporate many ethnicities against the instincts of the human animal – and that those issues can be resolved by good-hearted folks who work together.

Light-hearted, unafraid of poking at stereotypes and suggesting there may be something behind them, and only slightly predictable, this is a lot of fun.

Just a couple of random pics of a cloud.

On the issue of civil assert forfeiture, Ilya Somin notes on The Volokh Conspiracy that SCOTUS may impact the issue in the near future:

Yesterday, the Supreme Court decided to consider Timbs v. Indiana, an important constitutional property rights case. As my co-blogger Eugene Volokh and Reason’s Damon Root explain, the case will address the question of whether the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment applies against states, as well as the federal government. If the Supreme Court decides that the Clause does apply against the states, it will also have to consider exactly what kinds of fines qualify as “excessive” and to what extent the Clause applies to asset forfeitures, as well as more conventional fines.

Like Eugene and Damon, I believe the case for “incorporation” of the Clause against the states is extremely strong, and should command widespread agreement on the Court. The other issues are somewhat tougher. But there is still a strong argument for using the Clause to impose significant constraints on at least a wide range of asset forfeitures.

The Bill of Rights was originally intended to restrict only the federal government. But, as leading scholars on both right and left have come to recognize, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment sought to apply the Bill of Rights against the states, as part of their more general effort to curb state governments’ abusive mistreatment of minorities and others, most notably recently freed African-American slaves. As Eugene describes in some detail, the Supreme Court initially refused to apply the Bill of Rights to the states, even after the Fourteenth Amendment. But has gradually ruled that nearly all of the individual rights listed there are in fact incorporated. Multiple lower court decisions have ruled that the Third Amendment – one of the few provisions not yet addressed by the Supreme Court – should be incorporated, as well.

Here’s hoping. Somin seems cautiously optimistic, and at some point notes that Justice Thomas appears to share my view that forfeiture is basically punishment without due process.

But, more importantly, civil asset forfeiture undermines faith in our democracy, as it’s basically arbitrary seizure of property. The damage that does is well out of proportion to any good it may bring the system, and it’s also a temptation to corruption, to boot. Not all tools are good tools.