Tough week! Robin McLaurin Williams died on Monday morning, August 11, and Betty Joan Perske aka Lauren Bacall died on Tuesday morning, August 12. I’ve never seen or heard anyone funnier than Robin Williams, and Lauren Bacall was hot, hot, hot in her day! If you haven’t seen To Have and Have Not, watch it now! (If you have seen it, watch it again!!!)

Lots and lots of pieces about Robin Williams. Here’s the one I have liked best; it’s a collection of tweets from Norm MacDonald.

In passing, I simply cannot ignore the distasteful comments from Rush Limbaugh about Robin Williams. I won’t link to his foul rant about unhappy liberals, but I can’t quite get away from the comment by Joseph Welch, directed to Senator Joseph McCarthy (R.-Wis.), during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, when, defending a young attorney in his firm, Mr. Welch said:

Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Moving on, here’s a frightening story, broadcast on National Public Radio on August 8, titled If a Water Main Isn’t Broke, Don’t Fix It (For 300 Years?). Not too wise from a long range planning standpoint, especially with the ability to borrow at record low interest rate to fund century-plus infrastructure improvements.

Crispin Sartwell wrote Against Consensus for The Atlantic on August 12. And here’s Adam Liptak’s story, On Supreme Court, Does 9-0 Add Up to More Than 5-4?, from the August 11 New York Times, reporting on a new study about the (non)-importance of consensus in Supreme Court cases. Both pieces are interesting, and definitely challenge assumptions. I do like, especially, Mr. Sunstein’s willingness to suggest that consensus does not matter, while he also suggests that in some instances—he’s talking about Brown v. Board of Education and school desegregation—a lack of consensus might have resulted in a more negative situation.

Here’s a long article from Rolling Stone on August 4, The Presidency and the Press, by Reid Cherlin. Very interesting!

From the food department, here are two “how to” posts from Serious Eats, both written by Marissa Sertich Velie:  What’s the Difference between Dutch Process and Natural Cocoa Powder? and Can I Substitute Unsweetened Chocolate for Cocoa Powder? I know you’ve been wondering about these issues!

And finally, for my fresser friends, here’s a USA Today survey of America’s best Jewish delicatessens. Enjoy!!!