Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, October 23, 2023
·
46 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Spent the weekend building Ikea furniture for the daughter and her sweetie. I’ve realized I’m too old for climbing up and down to the floor 80 dozen times over 2 days.
But seriously, hope everyone here is doing ok.
More at the link.
Question:
It is Tuesday. You get a text from someone saying “We’ll be in town next weekend, and we’d love to see you on Saturday”. Will you be seeing these people in 4 days or 11 days?
@SenyorDave: I probably won’t be seeing them at all. I don’t read texts.
@SenyorDave:
Proximity of the “next” has always been an issue for myself.
50 feet before an intersection my wife says “turn at the next intersection”…. My remark is: This intersection or the one following?
@SenyorDave:
I’d ask for a specific date.
@SenyorDave: One of the things I quickly realized during my time in China was the precision of dates. “This weekend” meant the weekend coming up, full stop, no qualifications needed. “Next weekend” meant the one following this weekend.
It made me realize just how butchered our language becomes here.
My payday is October 26, this Thursday. October 26 is also the next Thursday on the calendar.
This Thursday and next Thursday are the same day.
@SenyorDave:
If you’re told the deadline in the 24th at 12, does it mean noon on the 24th, or midnight when the 24th begins?
A deadline like that caused a fight in the office once.
During the shower earlier this morning, I came to the conclusion that silicon-based life is not possible, because there is no silicon-oxygen gas at normal Earth temperatures.
There are silicon-oxygen compounds. A common one is silicon dioxide, which at first seems to be much like carbon dioxide. Expect CO2 is gaseous at most of Earth’s temperature ranges, while SiO2 is either solid or liquid. We call it sand.
@Kathy:
But then we wander into the weeds discussing and pondering whether “life” and in particular “intelligent life” are only possible in an earth like climate, or is possible at ranges where SiO2 would be in gaseous form.
@Kathy:
But why would something have to breathe in the same sort of way we do? Couldn’t something theoretically evolve to “breathe” sand in some other way?
Two observations for today:
1) I’d never have guessed the multiple rounds of voting to elect Kevin would not be the low point of this Congress.
2) For the nine (9) GQP hopefuls to succeed Kevin, why not have a free for all cage match. The last one standing gets to be Speaker. It might prove slightly less embarrassing than whatever they actually decide to do.
@Kathy: There have been speculations on silicon-based biochemistry. From Wikipedia: Silicon biochemistry
Then there’s the Star Trek episode in the first season: “The Devil in the Dark” (Season 1, Episode 24.)
@Flat Earth Luddite:
You need temps higher than molten rock to boil SiO2. Volcanic events leave behind SiO2 crystals we call obsidian or volcanic glass. Conceivably a planet could get that hot, but then there’d be no solid surface anywhere. And it would be far, far, far closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun.
@Beth:
Conceivably, but how does the stuff get around? Gasses disseminate widely in an atmosphere. Sand just falls to the surface. It doesn’t even float in water.
BTW, your cells don’t breathe in the same way you do. Isn’t that weird? But they do breathe oxygen.
@Scott:
“Damnit, Jim! I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”
@Kathy: The Republicans certainly could use the Thunderdome process for campaign fund raising. Nine men enter, 1 man leaves.
@Kathy:
@Scott:
I am personally voting for a live-action remake of celebrity deathmatch
@OzarkHillbilly: The organizer of an international tech conference was forced to step down over the weekend for basically saying the same thing, and our government is falling all over itself to remove any daylight between us and Netanyahu, I admire these “little” folks for standing up for their principles, but they are probably screwed with no recourse.
@Kathy: @Flat Earth Luddite: And from there to why oxygen rather than nitrogen or neon.
@Kathy:
Kathy,
Tell that to Horta though Dr. McCoy would agree with you.
@Scott: You beat me to it. I read Kathy’s post over an hour ago.
@Kathy: Lucha libre! And have them all wear masks and under pseudonyms like Siclopspo and El Scorpion, unmasking the winner in a surprise reveal.
@MarkedMan:
A pet peeve of mine is some organization or news service saying there is a certain year anniversary when its only the certain year event. Like a LPGA major championship starting in 1972 but its tournament President saying the 2006 edition was the 35th anniversary.
@just nutha:
Neon is a “noble” gas, meaning it reacts with nothing*.
Nitrogen is weird. Alone it’s highly reactive. But once it reacts with another nitrogen atom, forming an N2 molecule, it’s so unreactive it can be used to put out fires.
Now, seeing as nitrogen is one of the essential elements in all living things, this means there are nitrogen compounds that are more cooperative with other elements and molecules. It gets complicated past saying this. Plants can take it from the soil, and some bacteria manage to put it back in there. You can also resort to fertilizers.
Nitrogen is abundant on Earth. It makes up 3/4 of the atmosphere (as ultra stable N2). If it were amenable to form gasses or liquids at Earth range temps that living beings found useful, ti would have done so.
*A side consequence of nuclear weapons was the making of noble gas compounds, using fluorine compounds to do so. It’s worth noting this has never been observed in nature, and that Helium has so far refused to cooperate.
@Gromitt Gunn:
“I admire these “little” folks for standing up for their principles, but they are probably screwed with no recourse.”
I am sure the people who decry “cancel culture” are all over this, amiright?
@Moosebreath:
Much the same on the flip side: people who practiced cancel culture are now finding that when you live by the sword, you sometimes die by the sword. It’s rather like people complaining about right-wing book banning while somehow forgetting that the initial attacks in kidlit came from the Left and they weren’t just demanding books be removed from libraries, they were demanding books be destroyed.
Principle should take precedence over tribe or identity. I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of the press. I also believe freedom must be paired with civic virtue and individual responsibility. But then I’m old.
@Kathy: Hal Clement’s classic SF novel Iceworld is told from the point of view of aliens with a sulfur-based chemistry who inhabit a much hotter world. They visit Earth, and hijinx ensue. (Their first encounter with liquid water proves nearly fatal…)
@Moosebreath: Actually, some are.
@Moosebreath:
The ‘people who decry cancel culture’ are the same right wingers who canceled the Dixie Chicks, Colin Kaepernick, and others way back before it was called cancel culture.
Racists were banning “To Kill A Mockingbird” way back in the 60s. And of course, then they performed the ultimate act of cancel culture by assassinating Dr.
King.
Homophobes have been getting gays fired and excommunicated from polite society for a very long time. And that’s after the US stopped torturing and executing homosexuals, a horror from our colonial and early history that we’ve buried.
Neither the canceling nor the hypocrisy is new. “Cancel culture” is just the term for it now that historically underprivileged groups also get to have a say.
@DrDaveT:
I recall reading many stories with aliens who ave a peculiar biochemistry. From subtle stuff like they need a little bit of cyanide in their air, to living crystals made of silicon.
They can be fun to read. And the fact they’re impossible doesn’t really matter.
@Michael Reynolds:
Around fifteen years ago the website I first published stories at had a major crisis that almost destroyed the website. I took no part in it due to health reasons.
What was the crisis about? A XXX incest category for stories. The debate was heated, some authors pulled their stories. Somebody told the company that hosted the website. For 3 or 4 days the website was down. When it went back up, the category was gone.
I have never portrayed incest in my stories and never will. The same goes for sex with underage characters also. One of my stories had an important character that was a victim of incest. Another story of mine had a scene where a main character was raped and murdered.
The kind of stuff is rare with me. I prefer to kill characters off by heart attacks, car crashes, plane crashes, mauling* by rottweilers and presa canarios, car bombs*, or decapitation*. See I write gentler stuff.
*- I have only done this once.
What’s the difference between Wikipedia and Xitter?
Wikipedia is a non-profit by intent.
@MarkedMan:
They seem to be a rare bunch, though it would be better if there were more like them.
@Flat Earth Luddite: Should I assume that we’ll be headed to the ballfield to watch the kids play for our postprandial cigar on Wednesday?
@Kathy:
Well yes, that’s true in our universe. How do you know it’s the only one?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
A universe with laws set in such a way that neon is highly reactive, would have chemistry so different from what we know as to make it a completely new thing, about which we’d know nothing.
@Kathy:
The intense and utterly critical symbiosis which exists between fungi, plants, animals and microorganisms on earth raises a question in my mind if existence of earth life on another planet or visa-versa is even feasible. It seems that no matter how fertile an alien soil might be no earth seed could find the right conditions within it, the right fungi, the right microbes which have taken millions of years to match up properly with. I wonder if the whole meme of alien invasions is wrong headed. Certainly if we are being observed by aliens they have shown no interest in colonization or even short term habitation.
@DK: There is a small percentage that are primarily concerned with protecting free speech. The Jewish ACLU lawyer who helmed the Nazi Skokie march case comes to mind. But much more common are people who defend free speech, but only for people who are like themselves. There’s nothing wrong with this, it is natural that people want to fight for themselves more than they want to fight for others. But while the language might be identical between the two groups in a case where the people agree with the speaker, a case that offends will show the difference. The true free speecher will hold the course, while the more average person will continue fighting for themselves, i.e. shutting up the person that is offending them.
@dazedandconfused:
There have been experiments that take microbes to orbit and see how they do. More relevant, I think NASA has managed to grow plants on actual Lunar soil. And there’s a bacterium, D. radiodurans, that can thrive among gamma rays (no idea whether it can make the Hulk sick).
So, who knows. We may find out more if we ever set up shop in other worlds. We’ll never get space travel costs so low that we can export Earth soil to sustain millions on Mars.
I’ve trouble just shutting down and going to sleep. That is, I literally get bored, and start thinking of something as I drift off. Some popular topics are:
What technologies could a civilization develop in a span of one million years?
Why did Emm chase the ball and then rush back to me, but refused to let go of it so I could throw it again? She merrily chased after another ball if I had a second one.
If a technological species had developed on Earth millions of years before H. Sapiens, would we find any traces of them?
Would a million year old technological civilization ever stop developing new technologies?
What did the Olympian gods, and for that matter the Egyptian gods, do with their immortal lives? For sure they did nothing to advance science, technology, or even art.
Why does the choral portion of Beethoven’s 9th begin with “O friends, not these tones”? Hasn’t the singer been listening to the same music we have?
What will replace smart phones? Other than tinier computers with phone call apps we no longer call “phones.”
Curiously, I almost never think about cooking late at night.
@MarkedMan:
Of course, there are some in the world who look at the trend that we want to fight more for ourselves than for others as what is wrong with the picture. In some cases, some of these people used to call themselves “liberals.”
@Kathy:
It’s been a long time since I sang Beethoven’s 9th (since about 1993, IIRC), and I only sang it in German, so I don’t really know what I was singing, but looking up Shiller’s poem in translation right now, I see nothing that presents as that phrase, so I’ll guess that it’s because it doesn’t happen and the translation you have is faulty.
@Kathy:
In the context of Schiller’s poem, this is a request to change the mood of the conversation. The symphony to this point has been depicting a struggle between major and minor moods, representing positive and negative forces/fates. This line follows a passage in which the minor was dominant.
As for the Olympian gods, I believe that Apollo was explicitly presented as the father and patron of the arts, encouraging mortals to develop artistically.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I don’t speak German, but some terms are close enough to other languages in the Germanic family that they can be deduced. the only such I language I know well is English. So:
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Seems a lot like “Oh friends not these tones.”
It may be this and the two following lines were added, not part of Schiller’s poem.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Oh yeah… definitely time to corrupt innocent young minds with our appearance, eh?
@Flat Earth Luddite:
BTW, this afternoon from 3 until about…now, spent adjusting the fiddly bits. Ugh.
Pondering ethanol disguised as fruit juice for dinner.