Products

Pro Tips: A miscellany of smart stuff you might not have seen and might want to know

Published: Mar 04, 2021
Category: Pro Tips

PICTURED (ABOVE): BURJ AL BABAS: TURKEY’S $200 MILLION ABANDONED GHOST TOWN
They built a village of the ultimate McMansion: castles. Nobody came. For the crazy story of this real estate development gone wrong, click here.

STILL THE ONES: THINGS BUTLER READERS RECENTLY BOUGHT IN LARGE NUMBERS FOR HEALTH AND COMFORT
Cell Phone Stand
The best laptop stand
Finger Pulse Oximeter (because Covid’s not going away)
Lypo-Spheric Vitamin C
Allbirds walking and running shoes

MICHAEL CARVIN ‘S TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

Michael Carvin — who is, incredibly, a partner at Jones Day in Washington — appeared in the Supreme Court representing the state of Arizona on behalf of its obviously suppressive election laws. In his brief, Carvin argued that a state’s authority to control the time and place of elections is nearly limitless. If Arizona’s arguments prevail, any state would be empowered to ignore any federal voting-rights statutes. In oral argument, he did not distinguish himself.

First he said what many Republicans believe but don’t say out loud — especially at the Supreme Court.

JUSTICE BARRETT: What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?

CARVIN: Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game. And every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretation of Section 2 hurts us, it’s the difference between winning an election 50-49 and losing an election 51 to 50.

Then Elena Kagan dismantled him. “Mr. Carvin, I have a number of hypotheticals for you,” Kagan began, lethally.

KAGAN: So the first one is that the state decides that each county can have one poll place, and because of who lives in larger counties, that creates a disparate impact that black voters have to wait in line for 10 times the amount that white voters do, two-and-a-half hours instead of 15 minutes. Is that system equally open in the language of the statute?

CARVIN: I would think not. “Equally open” means takes into account demographic reality. If you have one polling place for five people and one polling place for 5 million people, obviously, in the latter situation, those people do not have an equal opportunity to vote. So, no…

KAGAN: Okay. How about — how about this one? A state has long had two weeks of early voting, and then the state decides that it’s going to get rid of Sunday voting on those two weeks, leave everything else in place. That — black voters vote on Sunday 10 times more than white voters. Is — is that system equally open?

CARVIN: I would think it would be because, let’s think about it, Sunday is the day that we traditionally close government offices.

KAGAN: It’s a — you know, it’s an exception –to have government workers come in on a Saturday too. That’s not — that’s not a real problem. Can we go — just go on to another one? The state says we’re placing all our polling places at country clubs. And that decision means that black voters have to drive 10 times as long to the polls and have to go into places which, you know, are traditionally hostile to them… And this: 9 to 5 is okay, but 10 to 4 would not be okay? Is that the idea?

CARVIN: Again, these are all hypotheticals that have never existed in the real world because —

KAGAN: You know, this doesn’t seem so fanciful to me.

PRO TIP: DO NOT SAY “YES”

If you get a call from a number or person you don’t know, don’t answer with “Yes.” If it’s a scam call, that response may be recorded and used as your agreement to … something.

READING YOUR CHILD A PICTURE BOOK? SUGGESTION: DON’T SHOW THE PICTURES.

Brinton Parson is the head of Alexander Robertson, an excellent small Junior K through 5th grade school in Manhattan. In her monthly blog, she makes a suggestion that I haven’t seen in the articles about the fate of some Dr. Seuss books.

Bruno Bettelheim wrote a wonderful book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. Among other things he encourages reading to young children from books without pictures (or not showing the illustrations during an initial reading), allowing children to create their own mental images before seeing another’s interpretation. Once illustrations are introduced, there is a great deal of value in truly beautifully illustrated children’s books, those in which the pictures alone can transport children to wonderful, imaginary places.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS

One day in 1965, Al Kooper found himself in a studio watching Bob Dylan record.

Kooper was told to get in there and figure out an organ riff.

He balked. He’d never really played the organ.

The project that day was “Like a Rolling Stone” — a song so extravagantly brilliant that it’s been ranked The Greatest Song of All Time.

A few years later, he founded Blood, Sweat and Tears.