The Weekender, May 27, 2022

The Now I Know Week in Review

Monday: The Eye Shield That Keeps the Grumps Away: There's a chapter in my first book that basically boils down to this: when you're happy, you smile. But if you're not happy, and you force yourself to smile, you'll get happier. That doesn't really make sense -- our brains shoudl be able to tell the difference between cause and effect. This is a story of a similar case of cause-and-effect reversal that starts with our faces.

Tuesday: Until Death Do Us Reunite: This re-run is a touching story, despite the title and subject matter.

Wednesday: I Guess You Could Say He Was Too Sharp: I don't want to spoil this one for you so if you haven't read it yet, do so before reading the next few sentences. As some of you know,  I'm a lawyer by training -- I don't practice any longer and haven't for well over a decade -- and as a result, I know just enough to get myself into trouble. (When writing, I mean; I'm not a criminal.) This story threw me for a loop. The protagonist is charged with a crime that, per all accounts, doesn't violate any written law. And that shouldn't be possible. In 1812, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if you want to charge someone with a criminal offense, there needs to be a law enacted previously that the person's actions violate. That doesn't appear to be true in this matter, which happened after 1812. Maybe that 1812 case didn't apply to state governments at the time, I'm not sure, but I'm digging into it. 

Thursday: When North Dakota (Briefly) Tried to Secede From the United States: Look back 150 or so years and politics, by modern standards, are absolutely bonkers. (Today's politics are also screwed up but but in a totally different way.) This is one of those stories. 

And some other things you should check out: