Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, December 2, 2022
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79 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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I’m in tech and for years now I’ve been periodically pitched blockchain technology or, sometimes, “The Blockchain”. I haven’t attended a conference in several years but for a decade or so at virtually all of them there would be sessions devoted to how blockchain would revolutionize medical records, or transform the way people ordered and paid for goods in the supply chain, or… well, SOMETHING AMAZING. And I have been part of several big projects were consultants involved would trot out a very polished pitchman to talk about how we should incorporate blockchain into what we were doing. These weren’t sketchy firms either. Twice, for two different projects several years apart, it was IBM. And I would always ask them the same question, “what can you do better with blockchain that you can’t do with the tools we have now?” And I never got a real answer. Never. Just words strung together. I’ve been skeptical of technologies before that succeeded in the end, but I’ve never run across one where the enthusiasts couldn’t even explain why we would use the technology if it succeeded. Today Krugman has a column examining the current state of play. An excerpt:
What was your first paying job?
What did you take away from that?
—–
My first actual job was at a convenience store. I was 16.
I learned that when stocking shelves you always rotate the product so the label always faces the potential customer. It’s called “facing”.
I learned how to fake pleasantness well enough so that other people read it as genuine even if I was in a pissy mood. Also, that faking pleasantness sort of makes you feel pleasant and it’s okay to just go with that feeling.
I learned that stealing a frozen pizza even when no one sees you do it is incredibly wrong, and that act will cause you grief and torment, and will change your path. It taught me that even slipping in 3 dollars and 59 cents or whatever the price was back into the till doesn’t undo what you did. I stole. I broke trust. I was dishonorable. I was deeply ashamed. I vowed to myself to never do anything like that again. I kept that promise.
I learned I needed to confess and own up when I had fucked up.
@de stijl:
Paperboy for “The Advertiser”, a free paper that was nothing but advertisements and went to every house. I was 11 or 12? Then I graduated to the Chicago Daily News. I was 12 or 13, I think. My most important lesson came about when the paper started advertising that the price of the paper was going up but that they were doing it so they could afford to pay the paperboys more. I was so excited. Then I got my raise. I don’t remember the exact numbers, and they would be in 1972 dollars anyway, but it was like 3%. I quit the next day.
I watched PBS Newshour last night. Judy Woodruff interviewed Mike Pence.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/pence-on-his-jan-6-experience-confronting-trump-and-how-his-2024-bid-would-be-different
She was game. She was prepared and asked hard questions. However, it was totally aggravating. He was also prepared. Mike Pence was rehearsed, oleaginous, deceitful, deflective, full of whataboutism, and a host of other unlikeable qualities.
He is going nowhere.
@de stijl: My first paying job was at Publix Supermarket as a bagger when I was 16. My most memorable lessons were all related to customer service. I have taken those with me wherever I worked, though they are usually applied as if workers in other departments are the customers. My career has gone fairly well, and I am usually well-liked. I think those lessons are a contributing factor.
@de stijl: Paperboy, age 12. Delivered the Suffolk Sun, a morning Long Island newspaper in the sixties.
I enjoyed it. I was always a morning person. The quiet of the early morning is still my favorite time of day. Worse thing I did was toss away the occasional advertising supplements that took time to fold into the usual newspaper. I didn’t have time for that extra unpaid work.
@de stijl: I was 15, worked in a toy factory. The toy company was called “Gay Toys.” It is no longer called that.
It was a decent job, the work was easy, it was a small group of us and we all became friends. I’m still in touch with a couple of the guys. What did I learn? I guess just the value of showing up on time and putting in an honest day’s work.
@de stijl: What was your first paying job?
Busboy in a small family owned German restaurant.
What did you take away from that?
Mainly 3 things, #1: Take care of your waitresses, doing everything you can to make their job smooth and worry free. Do that and one can walk out having made top dollar (I made out like a bandit in ’74 dollars, on a wkend night I would easily clear $75)
#2: Some people are just born assholes, their appearance in your section was inevitable, and no matter what you do you can not make them happy, because making you miserable is what gives meaning to their joyless existence. And while dumping a whole trayful of ice water on their heads is always an option (never the coffee, never) one’s best bet is to just walk away. They aren’t worth the trouble.
#3: I have anger management difficulties and working in a restaurant only exacerbates them. So, don’t work in restaurants. I managed to last a year at that restaurant, (did a stint at another German restaurant about 5 yrs later working in the back but it was no better than being out on the floor).
NOW I get an edit function: No edit function, forgot to say I was 16.
No need for this now.
It’s a good thing the rest of the world is there to keep me humble. I posted about blockchain earlier and I led off with “I’m in tech…”. Later, I went back to the column in question and decided to take a look at the “Reader’s Selection” comments. The second one led off with “I’m in tech…” – and was so embarrassingly wrong it made me cringe.* Reminds me not to get to far over my skis.
*It was about how 20 years ago Linux was the “next big thing” and now you never hear about it. When people pointed out that there are many variants of Linux thriving today, that virtually 100% of internet equimpment and smart devices and that 78% of mobile phones use variants (Android, Debian, Red Hat, etc), she just doubled down, essentially saying “But those things aren’t called Linux”.
@MarkedMan: A rose by any other name….
@de stijl:
15, working as a busboy and dishwasher[1] at a “Fine Victorian B&B” (seriously.. we had people flying in to the middle of nowhere for dinner).
What did I learn?
1) How to deal with sexual harassment.
2) How to hold my tongue and get the job done.
3) How to stand up for myself (I was the first to quit when the place was sold and, on the first night, the new management screwed over the customers–who were paying $100 or more per couple in 1985 dollars. Within 2 weeks the entire staff had quit–including the former owners three sons).
=========
[1] I pre-served customers (soup, aperitif, hors d’ oeuvres), cleared plates, filled water glasses (never touching them!), and hand-washing the liners, silver, and crystal. All while being bitched at by the bitch in the kitchen downstairs, and poked and prodded by a couple of the waiters.
Free speech absolutist does the right thing.
Musk suspends Ye’s Twitter account for ‘incitement to violence’
My first job was as a stock clerk, wearing a candy-striped smock in the Toys ‘R’ Us in Oxon Hill, Maryland. In order to get the job at age 16, recently dropped out of high school, I signed up for the draft. In 1970. (Yes, I know.) I later got that canceled, confessing to an excess of patriotic fervor.
$1.60 an hour regular time, time and a half over 40 hours, double time on holidays. I was the stocker for the doll aisle. Not the Barbie aisle, the Cabbage Patch Kids and Baby Go Bye Bye. I used to swing from the high overstock shelf that hung on chains. I was so good at my job, seemed so hard-working, and I was, that when I quit after enduring Christmas and into Spring, the manager called everyone off the floor so he could hold me up as an exemplar of what a stock clerk should be. I was hooked on work.
Apparently no one ever figured out that I was the guy who’d used a Sharpie to improve the anatomical accuracy of Kens and Barbies. Or that I was responsible for the infamous lynching of a (White, relax) Cabbage Patch doll. Sort of the opposite character type as @de stijl:, a born sociopath, early mischief leading to deepening work-place criminality. Je ne regrette rien.
@Scott:
I’m confused, or rather I think elon is. I mean, free speech absolutism is the current practice in America. After all, how many of these deplorables, including the Orange deplorable, have been arrested, tried, convicted, imprisoned, tortured, or executed for what they have said?
I has a sad, I was kinda hoping for martyrdom:
Damned right, only she gets to threaten people (with the loss of their voting rights).
@Scott:
Except not, because the nazi stuff only got Ye a 15 hour lockout. What got the account suspended was posting an unflattering photo of Elon and mocking him
@MarkedMan: There’s quite a lot of patent applications out there falling along the same lines: “Robots!/drones!/autonomous vehicles! + blockchain==> ????===> Success!”
The addition of blockchain to a system with communication in order to provide security continually trips over the same problem: using proof-by-work to validate a link is a) an energy hog and b) takes a damn long time. Using proof-by-stake may solve some of these problems but introduces other problems.
Plus the fact that there’s been a lot of chatter already out there on the topic in the way of published articles so good luck trying to get around the prior art.
@grumpy realist: I’m speaking outside my area of expertise but I’m skeptical that blockchain offers substantially better security over alternatives that are vastly more efficient and are already in place and tested, and wouldn’t require stem to stern changes in every system associated with it.
Here’s an example of an actual conversation.
IBM Rep: You can use blockchain to trace an individual item along the whole supply chain, identifying the precise date and time of every handover!
Me: In what way is that any better than what FEDEX, UPS, or any other major shipper gives me today?
IBM Rep: Well, you will know that every transaction reported actually happened!
Me: First thought: If someone is trying to commit deliberate fraud with respect to shipping information I can think of lots of ways to do that, blockchain or no blockchain. Second thought: Why would a shipper collude with a supplier to lie about delivery dates? Third thought: So the best example this guy can give me for the marvels of the blockchain is a theoretical and untested system that will require every potential shipper and every vendor along the entire supply chain to completely change their ordering, fulfillment and delivery systems, all so that if they lie to me about whether something has shipped I might be able to find out a few hours earlier?
Grocery stockboy. As I recall, the minimum wage was around $ 1.50 then. However, my work got noticed by some customers, who later offered me better jobs.
At age 15, I started working for my father as a filing clerk. Boring.
Alex Jones has filed for bankruptcy.
Appeals court shuts down Trump’s lawsuit against the FBI over the Mar-a-Lago documents.
@MarkedMan: I find it hilarious that the crypto-boys continually push blockchain as the way to remain anonymous in their transactions….just in time for the Feds to use the blockchain to track down individuals.
There’s also the fact that the main time the crypto-boys claim crypto-currencies would be useful is under anarchic conditions like war….which are the circumstances under which the infrastructure necessary for crypto-currency would have probably been blown to bits. How many currency transactions in Ukraine right down are being done using bitcoin?
(bitcoin is exactly what a bunch of tech bros with no experience of history or the real world would come up with. It’s not surprising that there’s a huge overlap between them and professed Libertarians.)
@de stijl: “What was your first paying job? What did you take away from that?”
Moishe’s Deli in Berkeley, CA. And from that I learned that of all the ways to kill yourself, one of the happiest is a diet of pastrami and chopped liver on challah with Russian dressing and tomatoes.
A Federal appeals panel Thursday overturned the order creating a third-party special master to review 11,000 documents seized at Mar-a-Lago, clearing investigators to use the records in the criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!AsT3UHUivznsgYReVgr2Y7q5IyyAuw
@Mu Yixiao:
Thank Dawg for edit. You beat me to it by thhhhhaaat much!
@de stijl:
About 13-ish, straw bossing haying crew (pun intended) and milking (200+ Holsteins). When I was in town, took over delivery of a couple of thousand morning paper to neighborhood carriers in Seattle. Advantage of am delivery was that no one noticed 15 year old without a license driving around. Sometimes sunrise can be magical.
Bailing straw always seemed a lot dustier than hay. I hated it. Preferred hay even if it was heavier. Started at 12. Also did (outdoor) painting that year. Learned that repetitive outdoor work in the heat isn’t much fun and that you should treat the aunt who shows up with lemonade or iced tea for a break like a goddess.
Steve
I’m getting excited about the World Cup. Looks like the next round will have teams from all continents, big countries, small countries, rich countries, and poor countries. I was in a cab in Washington, D.C., in 2002 with a driver from Cameroon shortly after Senegal beat France. He was so excited that a former colony had beat the old country! “They are dancing in the streets in Dakar till the sun comes up!”
Let’s have more excitement. I will drink beer for those who can’t.
@grumpy realist:
I’m reminded of a mordant piece by Kamil Galeev.
Basically in Russia, if you have assets in cryptocurrency it’s wise to keep very quiet about it, lest unpleasant men do unpleasant things till you hand over your crypto key.
“And then they let you go?” asks Western CrytoBro.
Oh sweet summer child.
Like the recent trend in those quarters of nonsense along the lines “monarchy is the best protector of the liberty of property”. They might try a google search with the terms “Charles I” and “forced loans”. Just for starters.
@de stijl:
First paying job, junior sales assistant in a furniture store.
I decided I’d only go sofa in that career. 🙂
Nick Fuentes is sooooo over Marjorie Taylor Greene.
http://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-nick-fuentes/
Nick asks: “How are you going to be the face of Christian nationalism when you’re a divorced woman girl boss?”
And, he says, an adulterer. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
@Slugger:
England are playing Senegal on Sunday.
I might watch that, now we are into the knockouts.
@JohnSF:
How well you couched that sentiment.
@CSK:
Meooww!
Pass the popcorn.
@CSK:
I thought I should chair.
@grumpy realist: I’ve got this great investment for you that completely eliminates the need for any government regulation or oversight. Everyone involved can be anonymous and all the transactions cannot be traced to an actual person. Yes, one of the greatest selling points is that once set in motion, no one can find out anyone else involved. To understand it requires astounding levels of computer science, but, assuming you even can grok that you have no way of knowing if the specific instance of this technology has been implemented the way it is supposed to be or if it is just a simulated front for scammers.
Now, can I have your credit card number?
Dishwasher at a medium sized restaurant at 16. Started at $1.75/hour around 20 hours a week and thought I was rolling in dough (before that was paperboy and golf caddy).
Was an eye opening experience. Saw what working for a living would be like.
Quit the summer I graduated high school and joined the Navy.
@JohnSF: It always seemed to me that the waves of religious persecution that have periodically swept over the world have very coincidentally [sarcasm] occurred just when some King or Queen needed a gigantic infusion of cash. The pograms of Jews and Huguenots also involved the confiscation of all their lands and properties. When Philip the IV became too indebted to the Knights Templar because of the wars he funded, he suddenly found that they were satanic sodomites who needed to be immediately put to death and all their assets confiscated for the crown. And it’s long been taught that King Henry VIII left the Roman Catholic Church over the whole divorce thing, but is seldom mentioned that he was deeply in debt because of his unsuccessful wars in France, that he had taxed everyone (except for the exempt Catholic Church) in the land to pay for those wars to the point where he had rebellions flaring up, that he had reduced the purity of the gold in his coins and so devalued it inflation was running amok, when he suddenly discovered that he had religious convictions that necessitated he form his own church, mandate that everyone join up outlaw the existing immensely wealthy church and, yes, confiscate all its assets, including the tithes and fees that were paid to it on an ongoing basis.
@JohnSF:
Maybe we should table that motion.
A few days ago some people were discussing a beautiful electric car modeled after a 1950’s era Porsche. Can someone point me to that website? My google-fu has failed
@Slugger:
I’m so sorry watching insipid, boring games has not provided any relief to your malady.
I have to admit something. I attended several games when the Snoozefest was held in Mexico in 1986. The best part was the long, long wait before the game (we drove in early to beat traffic, along with everyone else), when I took out a book and read in the meantime. I’m not entirely sorry I went, but I’d never do it again. In fact, I’ve never attended a single soccer game since.
For the record, I’ve never indulged a strong impulse to tell a rabid fan “Have you ever been to a Snoozefest Final? No? I have.” I figure the millions of hours they endure on this game is punishment enough.
@MarkedMan:
https://www.emvauto.com/eroadster
It’s a concept car, not in production.
@Scott O: Thanks!
@CSK: Again? How many does that make? 17?
First Paying Job:
I was 17 but hired at a call center back in 1989 because I would turn 18 less than a month after I was hired. I looked like a Time Life Operator (headset on head) for around 10 years (not kidding, 10 years until I left the job to go to UC Santa Cruz and obtained my BA Degree). For a brief period of time one of their clients was Broderbund and I was one of 3-4 folks on a team that was supposed to provide tech support the for U-Force Nintendo Peripheral. It was a failed product, but a hands free game control attempt way before the Wii came out, then I provided some video game support for other Broderbund games along with dealing with the jillion other clients that the call center had a contract with. THQ bought out the Broderbund games, and if I had a car I would have worked for THQ for a spell, but no car and having to commute from the San Fernando Valley to Calabasas, hah…no way I could make that work.
My Takeaway:
My takeaway is to be as polite to people on the other end of the phone as you can be, even if they are as useful to you in helping you resolve an issue as tits on a bull are because I walked 10 years(!) in their shoes and know what the job at a call center is like.
@MarkedMan:
The link is in a comment I directed to EddieinCA in yesterday’s or the day before forum.
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is personal bankruptcy. His show’s parent company filed last summer.
@de stijl: Hauling hay at age 16. $0.05 a bale or between $5 and $10 an hour. I learned that working with friends is fun even when it is hard, dirty work. Of course, I haven’t worked with non-work friends since I quit that job when I got out of HS. I also later learned (in comparison) that customers are the worst and jobs with very little contact with them are much much better!
@Kathy: My major malady is susceptibility to enthusiasm. My local MLS team plays exhibition matches against Chivas every couple of years. The town becomes festooned in green, white, and red flags, and I like it. Es divertido, verdad.
@MarkedMan:
There’s that aspect.
And most historians these days think need for cash was a key factor in the Henrician Reformation; and why the monastic properties ended up in the hands of the aristocracy, NOT the monarchy: because H VIII and Eliz.I desperately needed cash on the barrelhead.
But others also; the utter insecurity of mercantile wealth in most (to use the old fashioned but still indicative term) “oriental despotic” state systems when they became desperate for cash as a retarding factor on economic development.
See the end of the Song dynasty economic efflorescence in China, and the liability to “special taxation” in early modern Islamic empires.
Also a one reason for the late Roman to second millennium primacy of landed aristocracy and eclipse of commerce: predators less able to just walk off with a field vs a chestful of gold.
They can steal the crops, but not the soil.
Hence: castles.
It’s interesting that the flourishing of commerce was often in areas where the powers of monarchs (and to some extent aristocrats) were constrained: the Italian and German city states.
Venice in particular.
Also possibly that (controversial!) combination of Roman/Germanic/”monotheistic”concepts of law and just dealing tended to give more protection to personal and property rights in western zones (both Europe and N. Africa).
For instance Russian economic history was radically affected by Moscow rather than Novgorod coming out on top in the post-Tartar system.
There are also links to a subject touched on in yesterdays forum, which I missed at the time: the socio-economic position of Jews in the post-Roman world.
Medieval European monarchs liked having Jews as a source of loans, and as a financial/mercantile group, because they were NOT protected by canon law or usually by “folk specific” laws.
Different inherited ethnic legal systems is a really weird feature of late classical/early medieval Europe.
@Slugger:
Is that like the Bud Bowl but with bottles of Scotch?
On other things, I’m doing chicken milanesas in chipotle sauce, white rice on the side. And also a second attempt at stuffed potatoes, this time I hope I remember all the steps and ingredients…
Then I have to come into work on Sunday.
And thus Hell Week 1 kicks off early.
@Scott O:
Ooh! Pretty!
John like.
But, the sad thing is, that being electric, it must be an auto.
An auto Porsche-alike? 🙁
Maybe I’ll just wait till everyone’s buying electric and get a second hand Mazda Mx-5? 🙂
OTOH, I do rather like the Fiat 500e.
So many fantasies, so little lifespan.
@Kathy:
As an unusually non-“soccer” fannish Brit, I feel the need to ask.
Snoozewise, what’s your rating, “soccer” vs American “football”?
@Kathy:
My dinner plan for tomorrow is chicken milanese with a lemon butter sauce, with green beans and .. umm .. something else. Not sure yet.
Maybe first course of farfalle pasta with a tarragon and anchovy saucing (Venetian recipe IIRC)
Can somebody help me out here.
I was earlier listening to a BBC radio news piece, which, if I understood it right, said that the House of Representatives can appoint as Speaker anyone by a simple majority vote, i.e. said Speaker does not have to be an elected Congressional representative!
And then becomes 3rd in line to the Presidency!
I thought I was pretty well informed on the US political system, having had an interest in American history for a quarter of a century, but his leaves me saying:
eeek!
WTF?
WTFF?
Is this actually legally correct?
@JohnSF:
Apparently it is correct, though all past Speakers of the House have been members of the House.
My first paying job was a newspaper route for the Rochester Times-Union. The afternoon paper. Five days a week. 5th grade, 6th grade? Don’t remember. I would have been 12 years old in the 6th grade. Child labor laws required me to get a work permit from the State of New York as I was under legal age to actually hold a paying job. I was a businessman. Had to buy the papers and sell them to customers and collect the subscription price once a month. Door to door. I learned real quick that people would lie about paying me next week just to get me to leave the paper for another few days. Started out with a bike with a big basket just for newspapers that I bought from the kid that was giving up the route.* Wasn’t long before all the ball bearings popped out of the front wheel of the bike. Had to walk the route.
The one grocery store I worked at when I was in Junior College (’66-’68) was union and paid $5 hr to stock shelves when minimum wage was $1.70/hr That’s $40+/hour today if the inflation calculators I checked are accurate.
*Got to think about that. Where would I get the money to by a used bike? Maybe my dad loaned it to me.
@JohnSF: The only two sports I will watch on television or in person are soccer and baseball. What do they have in common? Well, once a period has started (half for soccer, half inning for baseball) the play continues without commercial breaks until that period comes to a natural conclusion. In American football play is dictated by how many opportunities they can generate to sell you things. I find it incredibly boring as a result.
@JohnSF:
Well, I call them “sucker” and “real football.”
As to your other questions, yes, anyone who’s voted Speaker by a majority of the entire House, not only the party in the majority, gets to be Speaker, third in line for the presidency (or second, depending on how you count), and maybe even has some power over the Capitol Police, and surely gets some sort of discount somewhere.
I don’t know if it includes a salary, though.
BTW, some anti-McCarthy wingnuts are buzzing about their brilliant idea to nominate Benito El Cheeto. They haven’t said any names, but the way they are hinting can mean nothing else.
Surprisingly, it’s not as bonehead a move as it seems. Benito has less than zero chance to win a vote in the House. But such a vote, if it ever happens, will put lots of GQP reps on the spot, and give the Toddler lots of targets to vent his bile at.
@JohnSF: There’s also no rule that a dog cannot be the Speaker of the House.
(The dog would get skipped in the line of succession though, because of age. There is no accommodation for “dog years”)
@MarkedMan:
TBH I find both soccer football and American football both usually a bit boring.
The first these days seems to default to long sequences of midfield passing, then back to the goalie, then more passing, then a brief attempt at an attack, then either back to the midfield ponk-ponk-ponk or, lose possession. And then the other side do similar. 🙁
But then American football: a minute of intense action!
Everything stops?
A whole other team comes on? WTF?
Action!
They charge upfield! Yay! Why is everyone hitting everyone else?
Why are they all in suits of armour?
Why has everything stopped AGAIN?
Ahah! They kick! They charge!
and…
Time out? WTF is this Time Out BS?
Sorry Amballers and soccerists.
There is only ONE game.
@MarkedMan:
OTOH if you want a game that is pure zen tedium, at times, but also utterly wonderful, at times: Test cricket.
@CSK: And the summer before last and last winter…
Seriously, he files bankruptcy every time he figures out his goose is cooked. For this company and that company and then the other…
@JohnSF: I think that it’s part of the whole vision that there would never be a time in American when one of “their type” would be elected to office. As long as the speaker is one of “them,” how does it matter which one of them it is?
@JohnSF: Yes.
Top level rugby is magnificent I agree (club level…varies 🙂 ).
Boring sports to watch in no particular order: cricket, baseball, golf, tennis
Exciting sports to watch in no particular order: hockey, rugby, (American) football, basketball
Those lists probably tell you more about my personality than I’m aware of.
@Just Another Ex-Republican: They do, but that’s OK. I prefer the pace of baseball. Different strokes and all that.
@JohnSF:
Think of NFL football as semi-polite, non-lethal warfare with enforceable rules. The sides take turns (but both can score). The main objective is to reach the other side’s “capital” and spike the ball and engage in childish celebration 😉 The secondary objective is to kick the ball through the goal posts (those famous goals posts that move so much in debate, BTW). The defense’s main objective is to stop the offense. The secondary objective is to take the ball from the offense.
The stop and start nature of the game lets me surf the web (do people still say that?) while the game is nominally on. I can even pay little attention to it while it’s going on, and just listen for an excited announcer and know to look. Or I can flip between games. Or, when watching with other people, we can talk a lot during the game without distracting from anything relevant.
@Gustopher:
A dog would be a terrible speaker. They’d try to please everyone, and follow everyone.
A cat would be much better. Think about it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Have you folks ever considered having a constitutional convention to re-fettle things for the modern era?
BTW: This is a joke, sort of.
Our constitution is way woolier.
But I LIKE Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords. 🙂
And the hereditary principle is a bit of a firebreak.
At least we can’t have a pack of ERG-ist’s appoint J.Random Trump as successor to the Crown in the event of “an unfortunate accident”.
But no wonder the Continentals look at both us UK-ians and you US-ians and are puzzled as to what’s going on in both cases.
@Kathy:
The near universal reaction of all Brits (and most other non-Americans) to American football is “FTSLOG stop p!ss!ng about and get on with it!”
@JohnSF:
I’ve seen a football game at a stadium only once. Miami vs Seattle, divisional playoff at the Orange Bowl. One thing that struck me as really weird, was when the players and officials would just stand around, often talking, while waiting for the commercial break to end.
We got seats next to several nice Dolphins fans who liked to talk. So it was a nice time. One even let me borrow his binoculars whenever Seattle had the ball. We sat rather near the field, behind an end zone.
It’s way better to watch in on TV, IMO.
@JohnSF: Also there’s the fact that certain financial shenanigans wouldn’t have been developed unless there was a king with lotsa power and even more debts.
See: Louis XIV and John Law.
(Why doesn’t Wikipedia have an article on John Law? Grump.)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Jones has been hiding his assets in shell companies for some time now.
@de stijl:
When I was 15, a friend of my father paid me $100 to help him put down cement floors in the garage he was building in his back yard. I learned that I never wanted to do construction work for a living, but that being able to look at a finished, useful, attractive thing and think “I built that” is extremely satisfying.
@grumpy realist:
On the flip side, I’ve always wondered about the people who cache gold, so that they’ll have “hard currency” when the Apocalypse comes.
For a long time now, the value of gold has been entirely detached from its intrinsic properties. Gold is worth whatever people are willing to pay for it, no more nor less. Which varies a lot over time, and is usually way more than its value added as a material in most industrial applications. Which makes it precisely as “hard” (as far as I can tell) as paper money. And when the Apocalypse does come, and people who have guns/bullets/food/water/shelter/tools are offered gold for some of that, do you think they’ll trade?
@inhumans99:
Lode Runner was the best video game ever.