Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh gives his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

A lot of folks don’t seem to understand the purpose of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh. It’s not a trial. It’s nonsense to talk about “innocent until proven guilty” and “evidence.” Those are terms for a court or administrative law performance. They have little if anything to do with the issue on a judicial nomination.

This is a job interview.

This is a decision whether or not to hire a person to be a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Since it’s a lifetime appointment,¹ you likely want to exercise a little bit of extra care in the hire decision, but basically it’s a decision whether or not to hire a person.

Most of us have been interviewed for a job. A lot…

The common wisdom is that giving away books gets you reviews that gains you the attention of folks who’ll actually buy books. Maybe this works, or maybe you just give away a lot of books and then starve. I don’t know, but I’m willing to give it a try.

However, the primary avenue for book giveaways is still Amazon, and, as far as I can tell (being no fan of boilerplate, I have not researched the matter profoundly on the Big A’s website), you can’t run a  free book promotion there without listing your book with Amazon Select, and to do that you have to agree not to sell digital versions of your work on any other channel. That means, of course, that the millions of readers who prefer the .epub format are left out in the cold, as are other merchants. Bit of the old restraint of trade, eh…

Chuck Berry, c. 1973

The very first concert WC saw in Chicago was Chuck Berry at a small venue – the name of which WC has long since forgotten – on the west side of the Loop, in what was then called the Blues District. Berry was touring in support of his latest album, 1972’s The London Chuck Berry Sessions, which included the unfortunate “My Dig-a-ling,” Berry performed that song twice in his one hour gig.

It was a greatest hits show, with a loose group of local musicians backing him. They were surprisingly ragged at the start of each song. It turned out that was because Berry never told his local backing band the set list, never rehearsed and expected the  musicians to come in on his guitar intro. He did his signature stage hop, a couple of short guitar solos and that was it. Absolutely no patter. The…