Events

I've had quite a few tasks on my plate since returning from the Ancestral Homeland Monday night, including preparing for the Messiah performances I've got next weekend. I've finally gotten a quick breather to put up some photos. First, this guy sat next to me on the Tube from Heathrow: This is the view from my hotel room (recommended!): And dinner Sunday was, of course, at my second-favourite pub in the world. Bap with fresh-roasted pork loin, apple sauce, and spicy mustard? Fantastic. Dogs? Five....

Crain's has a good description of why the Court denied certiorari on an assault-weapons case but chose to hear an affirmative-action case this term: The assault-weapons case from Highland Park, Illinois, is a perfect example. The case came to the Supreme Court through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. It raises a substantial and important issue of federal law. That would be enough for justices who think the Illinois law is unconstitutional to grant cert if they really wanted to, as...

That's just ahistorical and wrong, according to Josh Marshall. No, Trump is more like Mussolini: Mussolini's speeches have a mix of chest-puffing, hands at the waist swagger, hints of humor, hands to the crowd to calm themselves no matter how excited they are. Frankly, they're almost operatic in nature. The mix of violent rhetoric with folksy hypotheticals and humorous jabs unites the two quite nicely. The problem of course is that Trump has trended in an increasingly racist and xenophobic direction as...

I've had some strange online conversations recently. Just today, one of my friends posted quote from comedian Michael Che: You can’t have whatever you want, all right? I know the Forefathers said you had a right to own a gun, but they also said you could own people! One of my friend's other Facebook friends commented: "Check your facts. 'Slave' and 'slavery' were never used in the Constitution." Well, that is literally true but irrelevant to Che's point. The 3/5 compromise and the return of fugitives...

It turned out, whatever the UK Border Force agent reported on Sunday, by Monday HM Customs and Immigration had decided I'm not a risk. Registered Traveller status granted.

I'm in the Ancestral Homeland on a my last-ditch effort to maintain American Airlines Platinum status for 2016. If that sounds bizarre and pointless to you, then you have some empathy for the UK Border Force agent who interviewed me for fifteen minutes this morning. Usually my UK entry interviews are about ninety seconds. I'm here four times a year, I always go home, and...well, that's basically all they've ever been concerned about. Until today, for the 23 years I've been visiting the UK, I have never...

Saturday nights are not busy at O'Hare, which lets me get better photos of the holiday decorations:

Today I'm at Le Cordon Bleu learning sauces. Full report later. 

Stuff to read (or watch): Yesterday, Labour shadow foreign secretary Hilary Bent made the case to the House of Commons for bombing Syria. Republican leaders still don't believe (or pretend not to believe) that climate change is happening... ...even while glacier data shows conclusively that it is. Waukegan, Ill., may open a Ray Bradbury museum in the library building he frequented as a child. Chi-Raq is probably a really good film. Back to the mines.

This is cool. Explains CityLab: Entomological unease aside, this poster of the planet’s 140 metros should make a fantastic holiday gift for the city-obsessed nerd. Made by Neil Freeman, an artist and urban planner who runs the site Fake Is the New Real, the roughly29 by 23-inch, black-and-white sheet stacks train systems with the largest ones at top… ...and the most basic at bottom. Take a look at the artist's designs and find your metro.