A Wednesday Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, September 2, 2020
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84 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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The Florida headline of the day-
Florida severs ties with Quest Diagnostics after failing to report nearly 75K COVID-19 test results
‘Just passed a guy in a jetpack’: sightings at Los Angeles airport fuel concern
So. Much. Winning.
Yep, you read that right. By their own admission, they shot him after he dropped the gun. Really guys? That’s the best story you can come up with?
The Mole Agent: the story of the most unusual documentary of the year
I hope I get to see this one.
@Bill:
I’m curious how much of this is FL having played fast and loose with their data from the beginning and are now shocked, SHOCKED to see businesses have followed their lead. FL’s been pretty damn clear they has a… unique way of viewing and counting COVID cases as it was news from the beginning they cooked the books. DeSantis is yelling at Quest because the data’s “unusable” for being old (over two weeks) but notifications were still made and FL hasn’t actually been using the data they way it’s supposed to be.
This feels like the minion did exactly what the boss wanted, only to find the boss screaming at them for being so incompetent to do what they were told. Politically useful too – it’s not FL’s fault, they didn’t get the data in time! As Quest is a major – if not THE major – company down there doing testing, all this means it’s anyone wanting a COVID test now probably must pay out of pocket since the gov or insurance won’t cover it. Guess what’s about to happen in time for the election?
The
Whoever said Karaoke would prove to be the death of mankind may be rightheadline of the day-Thirty cases of COVID-19 — and counting — linked to Quebec City karaoke bar
@KM:
You’re probably right but I’m not studying the matter. When it comes to Covid 19*, I pretty much stopped listening to Governor Desantis is saying about it.
*- Except for headline of the day material of course
@OzarkHillbilly:
That was all over the aviation blogs yesterday, with about as little information.
So here’s my wild speculation: someone made a helium balloon shaped like a guy in a jetpack.
On serious aviation news, all three major US carriers (American, Delta, and United) plus Alaska, have eliminated change fees. Southwest never had them.
Change fees were always a cash grab, nothing else but. Often the fee to change a ticket cost more than the ticket.
Expect basic economy, non-refundable fares to become the new normal fare, and the formerly normal fares to become bundled again.
@Kathy:
Eh, apparently it’s possible though very, very stupid. idiots like to do this sort of thing near the airport for reasons known only to themselves. Maybe he got a thrill buzzing by planes like he’s Maverick sans the cockpit??
@KM:
You can get stunning photos and video of airplanes with a drone near an airport. But that’s dangerous. Most drone vs commercial jet collisions would be harmless, but a few might not be, like if the drone went into the engine, or struck a flight surface (like a tail elevator) in the wrong place.
They can also distract the pilots at just the wrong time. It’s amazing how many accidents, many fatal, have taken place because one or both pilots overlook a single thing (like setting the flaps, or lowering the landing gear, or using the wrong auto-throttle setting).
There’s a sterile cockpit rule that under 10,000 feet, pilots must concentrate only on flying, to the exclusion of all else. So no chit-chat, no interruptions, no sipping coffee, etc. Drones operate well below 10,000 ft.
News you may have missed:
Death Valley record heat
“It’s not the heat but the humidity”. Las Vegas and other desert areas are getting both. This could be an effect of a tropical storm out in the Pacific.
“California’s Green Blackouts” “If you eliminate fossil fuels, power shortages are inevitable” (WSJ) Another flopperoo by the Governor. I thought they could borrow power from other states. What happened to that process? Imagine it’s 104 degrees and your power goes off! They had been warned some time ago to fix this. Death Valley could see record highs: 130 degrees. Hotter than Hogan’s goat! Heat waves of Biblical proportions!
“Pentagon has off world vehicles not made on this earth”, (Andrew Daniels Popular Mechanics) That could interest Elon Musk. Imagine tearing one of those engines down. The slow release of classified records continues as members of Congress demand more information.
“Space Weather Update: C2 solar flare, SC25 slowly ramping up?” Could this affect the already unusual lightning that some areas have been getting?
“Bright fireball explodes over the city of Linyi, China’s Shandong Province” ( Watchers) A meteorite? Or something else?
Trump refuses to participate in global vaccine project because it involves “multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.”
@Tyrell:
When I lived in SoCal in the 1980s this was common: an unusual heatwave would cause a lot of people who didn’t normally use AC to turn it on and the grid would be overloaded and we’d have blackouts.
(Or, like my wife’s family at the time, it would be 100+ and there was no air because the house never had it).
So this is not new.
What is new is the larger number of very hot days, which is kind of hard to blame on the governor (and yes, other factors as well).
At a minimum it is crazy difficult to take these “CA is a hellhole!” arguments seriously given the number of people who live there and came from elsewhere to do so.
I don’t want to live in CA because it is expensive and crowded (and it would be neither if it was actually hellhole).
@Steven L. Taylor: “Nobody goes there anymore. it’s too crowded.”
By now it’s been a little over 30 days since Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine began phase 3 trials. This means that only now some of the volunteers have received the necessary second dose and results of infection become meaningful (if you caught it after one dose, that does not invalidate the effectiveness of the two-dose vaccine, see?).
News have been sparse. last I heard was that by mid-August, only around 60% of the target number of volunteer subjects had been inoculated with the first dose. I hope by now they’ve reached the target of 30,000.
Of those, a number won’t get the vaccine, but rather a placebo. This is how controlled, double-blind trials work. Not only does the subject not know whether they got vaccine or placebo, neither does the person giving the shot, nor the people tracking their progress (that’s the double-blind part). A list is kept of who got what, as that’s necessary to gauge effectiveness, but that’s kept secret from those conducting and participating in the trial.
What all this means, is that by the end of September we can expect all volunteers to have received both doses. I don’t know how long the trial will last. The volunteers are counseled to keep on taking all due precautions because 1) the vaccine may not work and 2) you may have gotten a placebo. I suppose COVID-19 tests will be done on the volunteers several times in the following months.
After the data gathering part of the phase 3 trial ends, then the results need to be studied. This is harder than it seems. If X didn’t get sick, was that because the vaccine worked, or because they were not exposed. The comparison will be the relative infection rate of those who got the vaccine vs those who received the placebo.
That is also complicated. volunteers are recruited all over, therefore the infection rates need to be compared to the average in each region. That average varies through time, too, rising or falling due to various reasons (masks!).
It will take time. The point is, unless there’s some near-miraculous 99.999% effectiveness after two doses, there’s no way the vaccine can be certified safe by November. More probably January, and more likely by March.
Well, the big news out of Massachusetts is that incumbent Edward Markey roundly defeated Joe Kennedy yesterday in the primary. The vote was 55.5%-45.5% in favor of Markey, which I guess qualifies as a landslide, at least according to one definition.
Joe is the first Kennedy to lose an election in Mass. I suspect a lot of people were offended by his arrogance in assuming Markey’s seat was his for the taking.
Markey was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s favored candidate; Kennedy was Nancy Pelosi’s, so the implications are wide.
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly
@Kathy:
Oops! I missed two words. “There’s no way the vaccine can be certified safe and effective by November.
@CSK:
I reserve the right to change my mind on this, but I think too much is being made of this contest. (And the only truly weird part to me is that I do not know why Pelosi thought it necessary or wise to get involved in the first place).
To me, the story is: the incumbent won re-nomination and was only really in a race because he faced a Kennedy in Mass. The progressive v. centrist narrative is potentially interesting, but not what a lot of people want it to be.
This morning there is a story npr is running about no- knock warrant victim, Breonna Taylor. The prosecutor’s office had evidently offered a plea deal to Taylor’s ex- boyfriend, who was busted with a small of narcotics, to name her as a co-defendant in his case. The gentleman, according to the report, has been in trouble for drugs before, and is looking at substantial time in prison. They are claiming that he is a “major trafficker of narcotics” even though from what I’ve gathered, only a small amount of drugs was recovered at his house. His lawyer Indicated that there was no reduction in sentence in naming her as a co-defendant. Looks like a cheap shot to get her name into the court of public opinion. Assassinating her character, to try and excuse what happened to her, further victimizing her family and friends.
The Latina Progressive Who Faced Down Texas Republicans
A nice piece on Lina Hidalgo, the county judge of Harris County.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Well, it’s going to be a big deal in Massachusetts because a Kennedy lost, for the first time in three generations.
I’ve seen speculation that Pelosi endorsed Kennedy as a reward for the help he provided in November 2018 in flipping the House to Democrats. And she did choose him to give the response to Trump’s state of the union address back in January 2018, so she may have been thinking about his future prospects even then.
@CSK:
Sure, but that is ultimately a narrow issue, and really just a story of the moment.
(I am just not convinced that the whole AOC v. Pelosi narrative is really all that significant here, but again, I am open to having my mind changed).
@Tyrell:
No disrespect, Tyrell, but this is the comment of someone who has never lived in Southern California. We’ve had rolling blackouts due to heatwaves going back to when i was a kid the early 1970’s. As Dr. Taylor stated, the governor has nothing to do with that. What is new is the sheer amount of additional days over 105 degrees. This is new. This is the new normal.
But it’s not just Los Angeles. Phoenix recently broke a record for number of days over 110 degrees in a year. No. That’s wrong. They didn’t break the record. They obliterated it. The previous record was 33 days of 110 degree heat in a calendar year. On August 29th, they hit their 50th day of 110 degrees this year. It’s down to a balmy 103 today. But this upcoming Friday (113), Saturday (112), Sunday (111), and Monday (111) will add to the record. They could end up with 70 days of more than 110 degrees. That’s almost 20% of the year! That’s insane.
The Arizona Governor can’t do squat about that either.
But climate change isn’t real.
@Tyrell: For those who are wondering why the astounding news that extra-terrestrial vehicles have been discovered was reported in Popular Mechanics and not breaking news on every channel in the world, a little background:
The PM article is basically a summary of a New York Times article that reports on a classified military program that researches vehicles and equipment we come across that are not identifiable. Could they have come from space aliens intent on anal probing an unsuspecting humanity? Sure, anything’s possible. It seems more likely, though, that the Russians or the Chinese are building one off spy probes.
The hook for the article comes from a second hand quote from Senator Harry Reid, long a UFO buff, claiming that he was aware of material in the US Military’s possession that was of extraterrestrial origin. Astounding! Whatever the original source of that quote, here was Reid’s response:
The Times and PM both updated their articles to reflect this, but you can’t stop the interwebs.
@EddieInCA: San Antonio has had a hot August. In fact, the number of August degree-days has been steadily increasing for the last years.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yep. To me this was the only interesting thing here. We’ll probably never know, but it wasn’t because of a whim. Either Markey pissed her off big time, or someone called in a rather substantial favor on Kennedy’s behalf.
As the “Kennedy Name” having such value, I think to a lot of people, including me at 60 years old, this generation of Kennedy’s is more associated with whack job anti-vaxers than long time public service.
Irony thy name is Wikipedia–
The person who attempted the murder is Naomi Ishikawa. Naomi Ishisaka is the columnist.
I have a long editing history at WP and I don’t think Fanfanatic (I have never encountered this editor but he is experienced at Wikipedia) was being malevolent when creating the article, but this is just another example of editors creating/writing stuff based on own their interpertaions. It is called Original Research and it is not supposed to be done but I run into it all time and from experienced editors who should know better. Many of them who take great umbrage at me cleaning this kind of stuff. I have run into that at least 3 times this summer but nothing like the fiasco above.
@Mu Yixiao:
Meaning that project will remain untainted by Trump’s attempts to politicize the CDC and generate good headlines at the expense of good policy.
I think this is good news. Not as good as a normal administration’s untainted CDC working with WHO, but better than this administration’s CDC.
Walk a Mile with a Camel
@MarkedMan:
I didn’t know the US military had either lunar rocks or samples from the Stardust* mission. Those would be the only materials of extraterrestrial origin I’m aware of.
Oh, there are meteorites, some of which might have originated in Mars and possibly other rocky worlds of the Solar System. I suppose the military could have some of those.
Then, too, if the Theia idea of lunar origins is right, some of those lunar rocks might be more of terrestrial than extraterrestrial origin.
*Not to be confused with the Empire’s Stardust Project.
If you believe the Daily Mail, Kellyanne Conway is being bombarded with offers (up to $15 million) to write a book about what it was like to be Trump’s most trusted factotum. She’s also being offered astronomical sums by Hollywood for her life story, because, apparently, it has all the elements necessary for a big screen lollapalooza.
@Bill:
The late Philip Roth tried valiantly to get Wikipedia to change some incorrect info about him. They refused, because they said they had two sources that said it was true.
@MarkedMan:
Pelosi was repaying him for the work he did helping to flip the House in 2018.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I believe that’s Section 83:144b, “Cycling while black.”
@Tyrell:
I doubt I’ll need much imagination, the forecast is for 105 F in LA this weekend, and we have been getting some brown-outs. Also the air is chewy with smog, smoke and pollen. And for what my relatively modest home costs I could buy most of Arkansas. Also the state income tax is brutal. Oh, and droughts and wildfires and earthquakes.
And yet my wife and I could live literally anywhere on Earth outside of North Korea, and we choose to live here. Looked at from a different perspective we are willing to ‘pay’ a penalty in the six figures just to not live in, say, the aforementioned Arkansas.
Kind of makes you wonder just WTF is so awful about Arkansas, doesn’t it?
@Steven L. Taylor: “At a minimum it is crazy difficult to take these “CA is a hellhole!” arguments seriously given the number of people who live there and came from elsewhere to do so.”
Better a hellhole than a shithole, I always say* and I’m pretty sure I know where the people attacking California live…
*Actually I’ve never said this before and believe I just made it up, but it seemed to demand that kind of rhetorical device and being a Democrat I can’t carry off “As my pappy used to say”…
@OzarkHillbilly:
Betcha a dollar the gun was a throw-down.
@Steven L. Taylor: “(And the only truly weird part to me is that I do not know why Pelosi thought it necessary or wise to get involved in the first place).”
Especially since she put draconian rules on consultants helping candidates going after Democratic incumbents in the house. That really hurt her credibility with certain members of the congress..
@wr: Indeed.
@Michael Reynolds: “And yet my wife and I could live literally anywhere on Earth outside of North Korea, and we choose to live here”
In fact, as I recall, you left Tiburon or Sausalito to live in LA, which suggests to me that you really need to take that “man woman camera person TV” test…
@MarkedMan: And that’s a good thing. To paraphrase one of my Korean students, somebody else’s mom should get the chance to be proud sometimes.
@wr:
Oh, sure, in Tiburon I had a sweeping view of the Bay from Angel Island to the Golden Gate, but here I have a sweeping view of the giant concrete cistern we are pleased to call Silver Lake. In the other direction the mountains, sure, but better still the 5! A neighbor recently cut down a tree which means I could literally sniper drivers on the freeway. That’s LA, baby.
@Michael Reynolds: Thanks for your attention and reply. The weather we are having down here is 90’s with the real feel in the 100’s. Humidity is 80-90 %, so it is sweltering for sure. This is normal for this time of year. Years ago we did not have the “comfort index” or the “real feel”. Just the straight temperature. It was just as miserable back in the 1969’s and ’70s. Air conditioning did not get widespread as far as residential until the 1980s. Schools did not get ac until the ’90s. Many a day in August and September the students would go outside and find a shade tree to read under.
A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19 — and an Interesting New Theory Has Emerged
@Tyrell:
Growing pains. The US Western Interconnect is on pace to get to all renewables in a reasonable time. (If you don’t know that the US has three essentially independent power grids, you’re not qualified to have an opinion.) The Cal legislature and Cal ISO are doing the right things. Transmission capacity is lagging behind. The federal Bonneville Power Administration and Western Power Administration control and won’t share critical transmission facilities that would make things work better.
Today in amusing Twitter threads:
Al Green, the singer, tweeted “Who did this?” with a laughing emoji, regarding photos of Walgreen’s Pharmacies where someone had covered up the W with a photo of Al Green.
People responded with “Al Green Walgreen’s ads”:
Love and Happiness (courtesy of Prozac).
Take me To The Walgreens
Let’s Stay Together 6 Feet Apart
For The Goodtimes 12 pack of Budweiser only 7.99
For Valentine’s Day, say you are Still In Love With You with a box of Hershey Chocolates.
Everything’s Gonna Be Alright Vicks Cold & Flu Cold Syrup 9.99
@Monala: I read that yesterday, and it’s very interesting, especially since it fills in some blanks as to why people on high blood pressure medication have such varying responses (some meds show a protective effect while others seem to make covid worse).
A lot of ignorant people are passing around the statistic supposedly showing that only 6% of people who died from coronavirus actually died from it, because the others had additional conditions. This is utter nonsense, and it came from the insane and stupid QAnon conspiracy. Read this thread for an explanation of why this is nonsense.
Hmmm. I can see the link when I edit it but it’s not appearing. So here it is in raw form.
https://twitter.com/badcovid19takes/status/1300478066448269317?s=21
@Monala:
Thanks for the link.
I think I will increase my intake of milk.
@Teve: These conspiracy types are utterly exhausting.
I like this response to that particular nonsense.
First recorded death from Covid caught at Sturgis has happened.
I am wondering how long it will take the CDC to repair the damage its been doing to its own reputation.
This, right here, is incredible. The CDC is asking states to expedite approvals for distribution facilities (checks date in CDC letter) for a Nov. 1 operational date.
Please, someone with a science background tell me: is it possible that a vaccine that has not yet even been approved as safe and effective can be tested, produced, and distributed in less than 60 days?
USC prof “cancelled” for saying “that” in Chinese during class.
Business communications prof was discussing “filler sounds” (e.g., “umm… uhhh…”) in different languages.
A few of you will know exactly where this is going. 🙂
ETA: The website is horribly right-wing and immature, but the facts of the situation are interesting.
@Jen:
Short answer: yes.
Real answer: It’s very unlikely.
Moderna has already started mass production, or is ready to (as I understand). So that’s taken care of. Distribution will be expensive, because the vaccine requires around -4F if I recall correctly. But there are means for doing that.
The rub lies not even in whether the vaccine is effective, but in how effective it is.
It’s not unusual for clinical trials that produce dramatic improvement in patients to be cut short, and the drug in question approved for general use. But it is rare for such dramatic results to take place. There are many confounding variables, side effects, etc, which usually require careful study of the data to draw conclusions.
Now, a vaccine will likely have few and mild side effects. But it’s also harder to determine its effectiveness in a short time. If you have 1,000 patients with AIDS and give them X, you can easily gauge improvement, say in white blood cell count, after a few days, certainly after a few weeks, especially compared to a control group. Not so with vaccines. If 20,000 people get the vaccine and none get sick, that’s a very strong indicator, but you have to make sure they had a chance to get infected.
If 10,000 get sick, that doesn’t make the effectiveness 50%. It might be lower, but the remaining 10,000 were either careful or lucky. It might even be higher but those on whom it doesn’t work were over-represented in the vaccine group.
The whole thing could be sped up with human trials. Assuming we know what constitutes a dose sufficient to infect someone, then you just apply the vaccine, in two doses 28 days apart, wait from days to weeks for the immune response, then expose the volunteers to the virus, and measure infection rates after two weeks (keeping the volunteers isolated throughout).
The big problem is such a trial with a deadly disease, for which there is no cure or effective, proven treatment, would be highly unethical. The smaller problem is that it would take at least 6 weeks, maybe more, and you still need to study the data to draw conclusions. So say 8 weeks, 56 days, which means if you started the trial today, with a full slate of volunteers, you’d have results by the end of October.
Realistically, with a need to recruit volunteers, think December through January, if you started now.
So, it does no harm to be prepared to go early, but chances are it won’t happen.
I’d be delighted if the Moderna vaccine proves 100% effective and this can be proven in a short time, but that’s not even a remotely realistic expectation.
More likely, Trump the Thief will insist on rolling it out in time for getting reelected, and will keep his fingers crossed for no immediate side effects. Whether the vaccine is effective, or has major side effects, or even makes the illness more deadly, would be of no concern to him, if pushing it out before it’s ready gets him reelection.
Wear a mask, and maybe drink more milk.
As noted by a couple of you above, the Former Reality Show Host won’t participate in the global research for a vaccine. Digby’s response from yesterday.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I don’t know if you ever get to the True/False film festival down the road from you in Columbia, but if you have the chance it’s well worth the time. The Mole Agent was an entry this year, and it was every bit as good as the article suggests.
@Michael Reynolds: “That’s LA, baby.”
Been there. Done that. 30 years. Never a day I didn’t wish I were north…
@Kathy:
When I’ve heard of this, it’s always been for treatments for high fatality diseases and for people who already have the disease. This is because if the treatment ends up having long term fatal or debilitating side effects in say 3% of those treated, but saves multiples of that who were going to die without it, the cost benefit ratio is quickly apparent. But with C19 having a one percent fatality rate and a vaccine being given to people who don’t yet have the disease, the math is far, far different.
@Mu Yixiao: The one thing I learned when attempting Mandarin before giving it up in despair is that of the four pronunciations of any word, one of them will be obscene, and that will inevitably be the one I came up with. Very glad the bulk of my international business is now in Europe — Dutch is much more fun to learn
@Mu Yixiao: I find his suspension this incredibly offensive and frustrating. The way he pronounces it doesn’t even sound like the N word. And I can vouch for native Mandarin speakers with Shanghai accents rendering this as all but indistinguishable from that offensive word. To this day I remember the first time I witnessed an excited colleague explaining something and struggling to find the right word and suddenly barking out, “N*, n*, n*”. My reaction was visceral.
@Mu Yixiao: Having listened to the tape, I have to admit that “hearing” the slur would have been a stretch for me and finding fault an even bigger one. Still, USC is free to handle this whatever way they see fit. Their circus, their clown car.
In further “if I didn’t laugh, I’d cry” news from the courts,
Well, it’s probably a bad sign when:
(a) the judge says “poppycock” in his ruling.
(b) and cites The American Heritage Dictionary in his ruling.
(c) the guest in this woodshed visit was a U.S. Attorney arguing that the arresting CPB agent can also be impartial immigration hearings examiner, overturning 20 years of precedent.
A.B.-8., et al. v. MARK A. MORGAN, Acting Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, et al. [Memorandum Opinion, No. 20-cv-846-RJL (D.D.C. August 20, 2020)]
Mississippi has designed a new flag, dropping the Confederate image for a magnolia and 20 stars representing itself as the 20th states. It’s a nice design. Voters will have a chance to approve it on November’s ballot. Link
@wr:
Could you elaborate? I am always interested in stories about why people would say, “I wish I lived somewhere else,” every day for 30 years. What kept you there?
@MarkedMan:
Yeah, that’s the problem with vaccines.
I suppose, and this is mere supposition, that you track infection rates in volunteers and see how they compare to infection rates in their demographic, region, and lifestyle (do they lock down or go to work? do they work in a closed space with lots of people? Did they wear a mask properly? etc). Then see if those infected got the vaccine or the placebo.
It’s not that you cant measure effectiveness, it’s that it takes time.
And it’s not just infection. If some who got the vaccine are infected, do they develop symptoms or not? If they do, how severe are they? If severe, what’s the mortality rate?
Say the Moderna vaccine does not prevent infection, but results in 99% asymptomatic cases. Then by all means roll it out, but beware and still take precautions. such a result wouldn’t slow down the pandemic, but would reduce the mortality rate. It may not end long term damage, as some damage has been reported on people who were asymptomatic (which needs more study, BTW, and is understandably not a priority). Not to mention if overconfidence resulted in, say, 100 million new cases, that would still make 1,000,000 people sick.
So add checking if the vaccine produces mostly asymptomatic infection, how contagious are those who were vaccinated? As contagious more contagious? Less contagious? Not contagious at all?
You can’t rush these things.
When Trump visited the USS North Carolina in Wilmington, NC today, the ramp leading onto the ship was tented, presumably so no one would see him stumble and struggle up it.
thread
@wr:
My favorite is “alpaca”. With the right tones it’s “mud grass horse”.
With the wrong tones it’s “Fuck your mother”. 😀
@CSK: if you search Twitter for “trump ramp NC” you get a shit ton of people saying thngs like “I’ve seen that boat for 35 years and it’s never had a tent on that ramp”.
@MarkedMan:
Shanghai accent is very distinctive (from what I understand–I can’t tell the difference). When you get out to Suzhou the pronunciation of the “na” is somewhere between “ni” and “nei”.
The first time I heard it was in the lobby at work (probably my first week there). I walked into the teachers’ area and asked my American colleague (who’d been there for 6 years at that point) “Why are they saying “nigga”?” He looked at me strange for a second or two and then realized what I was asking and explained it.
I made a point with all of my classes to tell them to break that habit if they’re talking with westerners–for exactly the reason referenced in the article.
I only learned a little Mandarin, but I did get in the habit of using a few common phrases (bu zhi dao, cha bu duo, xie xie, etc.,). At times I’d find myself saying “na ge… na ge…” with a Suzhou accent. My biggest fear was that I’d have a layover at O’Hare and be standing at the McDonald’s counter and say “I’ll have a Big Mac, Fries, and… na ge… na ge….” and then find myself promptly dead. 🙂
But yes. I’m just as frustrated at the small-mindedness of the students–especially since they’re probably the first to shout “racism” if you imply that Chinese are different than Caucasians, and then scream “cultural appropriation” if you say that we’re the same.
@Monala:
Nice design. But they should remove the “In God We Trust”. Best-practices for flag design says “no words” (even though that’s broken all the time).
@Mu Yixiao:..Best-practices for flag design says “no words”
Here they are. Fifty Nifty State Flags. By my count 26 have the name of the State, either in “The Great seal of the State of ……” or somewhere else on the banner. I kinda’ like the bears on the Missouri Flag. I am partial to the New York State flag. I guess because I was born in Rochester and spent the first 13 years of my life on the shores of Lake Ontario.
No words. New Mexico #1! I am enchanted!
@Mister Bluster:
Here are the “rules”.
@Teve:
I know! Too funny. Has Team Trump come up with the usual feeble-witted spin yet?
While Trump’s proposition is plainly illegal, (IMO) his purpose is intended to cause chaos at the polling place.
@Mister Bluster:
Not a fan of The Big Bang Theory?
@Bob@Youngstown: the duplicate is usually for later and people get arrested for that.
Dear Trump supporters, please listen to Our President and vote twice in the same county. All of you, please.
Well it’s not letting me edit for some reason. I meant to say the duplicate is usually detected later.
@Teve: I don’t know what the process is in NC but this is what would happen in OH: Voter who has already cast an absentee ballot, appears to vote in person on Election Day. Poll employees refuse to issue a ballot because the records show the voter has already voted. The voter insists that there was been an error and demands a provisional ballot so that the error can be corrected later. Voter then fills out forms stating that he is certain that he never sent in the absentee ballot. The upshot is that he will be able to cast a provisional ballot. A decision on whether to actually count his provisional ballot will require the board of elections to search through all the security envelopes to try to find proof that the voter’s absentee ballot was actually received. All this demands extra time and effort by election official both at the polling place as well as at the county BOE.
Now multiply that by several tens of thousands and it’s not hard to see the chaos created both on Election Day as well on the days following.
Voters doing this at the president’s suggestion, might be charged with attempted election fraud, but will probably not be aggressively prosecuted if the claim that they (being an older adult) just innocently forgot, hence there was no intent to defraud.
@Michael Cain: “I am always interested in stories about why people would say, “I wish I lived somewhere else,” every day for 30 years. What kept you there?”
Work. The TV biz was in LA and that’s where you had to be to work in it. Now my writing is almost entirely done for overseas entities, so it doesn’t really matter where I am. Got a full-time teaching gig in NYC, so that’s where I am.