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August 27, 2017

AT AMAZON, save in Storage and Home Organization.

Plus, late summer savings in Patio Lawn and Garden.

REALLY? BECAUSE I THINK I’VE GOT A HANDLE ON IT. “Do the Star Tribune reporters on whose beat this falls lack GOP sources? Do they not want to upset Senator Klobuchar? Do they not think it would be of interest to readers? Are they too lazy to do a little digging when Klobuchar isn’t handing out press releases? I find it hard to understand.”

RED VS. BLUE:

THE MEDIA DID ITS BEST TO CARRY HER ACROSS THE FINISH LINE, BUT SHE WAS TOO HEAVY A BURDEN: Hillary Clinton didn’t lose because of the media, and her supporters can’t accept it.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: She’s 98. He’s 94. They Met at the Gym. ““Age doesn’t mean a damn thing to me or to Gert. . . . We don’t see it as a barrier. We still do what we want to do in life.”

OUT: TRANSSEXUAL MARRIAGE. IN: TRANSTEMPORAL MARRIAGE. “She noted that people have accepted the marriages of interracial couples and gay couples, and they should accept the weddings of spouses with big age differences, too.” Hey, she’s 27, he’s 72 — a little transposition error, that’s all.

Plus, the older-guy advantage: “Not a lot of guys call. Men my age will text you and want to meet at a dive bar. So I was really surprised when he called, and when I picked up he was really polite. He asked me how I was doing, how my day was. So it was just pleasant.”

I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT WAS THE BEST CONSUMER-FRAUD CASE SINCE THE NEVERENDING STORY: “A class action that seeks only worthless benefits for the class and yields only fees for class counsel is no better than a racket and should be dismissed out of hand.”

Plus: “By the way, Sykes ‘is considered to be near the top of Trump’s short list’ of potential Supreme Court nominees, according to a Politico article from last January. She used to be a justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and ‘was part of a legal movement that helped set in motion a conservative transformation of the judiciary in her home state.'”

Note also that this was a victory for class-action-reform crusader Ted Frank.

IT’S ABOUT TIME: Rick Moran: Is the IRS Scandal About to Break Wide Open?

TWEET OF THE DAY:

ANY TECHNOLOGY DISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC IS INSUFFICIENTLY ADVANCED: Richard Fernandez: The Coming Age of Magic.

Two hundred years ago the average person probably understood virtually everything he encountered in daily life. Today the average person is surrounded by objects far more complex than the Apollo 11 guidance computer. Under those circumstances, as help desk workers all over the world will attest, technical ignorance is the rule rather than the exception.

Modern smart devices are purposely designed to be operated even by an idiot. Technology has allowed the burden of intelligence to be shifted away from the user to the machine. As a result people routinely use tools they barely understand implicitly believing they will work. It works but there’s a danger. As Arthur C. Clarke famously observed, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. In our high technology present an increasing percentage of the global population must relate to their world in terms of magic.

The classic characteristic of magic is wish fulfillment. Sigmund Freud argued that “the motives which impel one to exercise magic are easily recognized; they are the wishes of men … At bottom everything which he accomplished by magic means must have been done solely because he wanted it.” Psychologically it is a most unscientific world. Desires replace the laws of physics.

Ironically that primitive attitude accurately describes the contemporary public attitude toward technology better than rationality.

Well, the political class has spent decades quite deliberately fostering irrationality on the part of the public.

BE THE HELP: Cajun Navy’s on the way: South Louisiana springs into action to help Texas amid Harvey floods.