1. It’s Tuesday, August 18, 2015.

2. It’s the 180th birthday of Marshall Field, whose department store was a Chicago institution until Macy’s glommed it.

Apparently, Mr. Field was long dead – he caught pneumonia while playing golf in New York on New Year’s Day 1906 – when his stores’ greatest contribution to society, Frango Mints, were introduced to Chicago and points east. (What I learned today: Frango Mints were invented in Seattle.) Macy’s Frango Mints are just not the same. 

3. Carly Fiorina’s slight rise in the Republican polls – although, hey, she’s still in the single digits – comes as a result of her performance in the not-primetime debate earlier this month.

But Andrew Ross Sorkin takes apart her claim of being a successful businesswoman in The New York Times this morning, pointing out what those of us who followed her career remember: She was a key player is the diminution of two major tech companies, Lucent and Hewlett-Packard.

That, and advancing the ignorance of allowing parents to opt out of vaccines, disqualify her for high office, or even for dog catcher. 

4. John Oliver’s take on televangelism might be the best thing he’s done on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight.”

In lambasting the fact that it’s ridiculously easy to be declared a tax-exempt religion and profit handily from that, Oliver is also doing a kind of journalism that is sadly lacking in TV news.

By the way, the good news is that if you donate to Oliver’s Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, the money will eventually go to Doctors Without Borders, an organization doing real good in the world.