Pun Salad

• Hans Bader is must-read today, as he notes various Federal agencies
  • requiring businesses in the financial sector to fire employees who have had legal run-ins involving dishonesty; even if the offenses were minor and occurred decades in the past;

  • prohibiting other businesses from using criminal background checks on prospective employees.

  One might ask whether all this Federal micromanagement of hiring/firing decisions might just have an overall negative impact on employment. Only because… y'know… that's exactly what's going on.

• One half of the lefty-reviled Koch brothers, Charles, has a pretty good column in the WSJ today, on the general idea that "pro business" and "pro free market" are sometimes not the same thing, and some businesses, well …
  Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers. This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of our culture.

  What he said.

• I continue to be slack-jaw amazed at pictures coming back from Mars. In case you missed it: here (among other things) is a picture of Curiosity and its tracks, as taken my the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

This 1944 movie is the fifth of six movies in the Thin Man series. (Although we saw it last, thanks to its temporary unavailability at Netflix.) Now we'll have to satisfy our craving for monochrome sophisticated amateur crime-solving some other way.

It's not strictly true that the "Thin Man Goes Home" in this movie. As movie pedants will tiresomely point out: Nick Charles is not really the Thin Man. The "Thin Man" refers to a victim in Dashiell Hammett's original novel. But the movies kept using the appellation, leading to what Wikipedia terms "contemporary confusion."

Glad to clear that up.

In any case, Nick and Nora (and Asta) are on a jaunt to Nick's hometown of Sycamore Springs. Unbeknownst to Nora, Nick is on the track of some nefarious doings. There are a couple of corpses, a wayward painting that turns out to be a key clue, and some funny business with Nick's mom and dad. (You see, Nick's father, a beloved hometown doc, has never been too impressed with Nick's career. Nora remains convinced that this bothers Nick.)

It is a formulaic rehash of other Thin Man plots; as usual the wrongdoers are revealed in a you-might-be-wondering-why-I-called-you-all-here gathering. But still fun.

The DVD came with an amusing cartoon, and a Robert Benchley short "Why Daddy?" Which is not very funny.