Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, July 25, 2022
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70 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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Pass the salt-
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/style/cannibalism-tv-shows-movies-books.html
Talk about your sore losers:
There appears to be some confusion as to the safety of the machine:
Myself, I think the kid is lucky to be alive:
It’s a brave new world out there.
Greetings from Estes Park. We’ve been on the road for a week and will be out for a few more, but for now Estes is home. We’ll be here a few days and then off, heading to the east. Need to check in on friends that have serious health issues, with all of us being at the stage of life where one can go quickly.
Maybe the 1/6 hearings are actually making an impact?
Alas, probably not.
@Sleeping Dog:
I envy you, as Estes Park is one of my favorite places in the country to visit =)
@OzarkHillbilly: Industrial accidents robots can be big, quickly moving machines. All such machines are inherently dangerous, but robots usually have many more axis of motion and so can move in unanticipated ways. This is why they are guarded by cages with interlocks on the access panels to disable the robots and other equipment when the doors are open. Sometimes technicians and engineers need to be close by with these interlocks over ridden, and I imagine that’s when the accidents are most likely to happen. A 100 pound metal arm traveling faster than a baseball bat can do some real damage.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@MarkedMan:
Asimov must be laughing in his grave. He did tell us so.
I found this interesting:
Putin’s Unexpected Challenge: Snubs From His Central Asian Allies
If you don’t have access to the WSJ. Here is the entire article on another site: https://www.newsncr.com/world/putins-unexpected-challenge-snubs-from-his-central-asian-allies/
@Sleeping Dog:
Be careful. We’ve had multiple flash floods in Larimer County this year and the forecast for the next several days is increased monsoon storms.
Sometimes when considering counterfactuals, I come across one question: Why didn’t they…? Meaning why some person or group failed to do something they could easily have done. That is, the means, methods, materials, know-how, etc. were there, they just didn’t employ them.
For example: why didn’t any of the major warring powers in WWII use of battlefield chemical weapons in Europe?
I’ve heard two answers to this question. One, to keep the enemy from using them as well. Seeing how the Battle of Britain devolved quickly into tit-for-tat city bombing in retaliation for other city bombings, one can see the merit of this argument. The other is that chemical weapons were not that useful in the quickly moving fronts of WWII, as compared to the static fronts courtesy of trench warfare in WWI.
I’ve also heard and read many times Churchill planned ti use such weapons should the nazis invade Britain. IT’s just as well they never did.
But here’s another: why didn’t the deplorables carry firearms for the January 6th putsch? A few did, but most didn’t. They resorted to improvised weapons from what they picked up, or used things like flag staffs and other kinds of clubs.
There are many possibilities, and I won’t explore them, but I did read in some news accounts at the time that it was on purpose. Some of the communication within and between the groups involved, advised not to bring guns because DC has strict laws about carrying them concealed or not.
If this is true, it would be the ultimate argument for strict gun laws.
@MarkedMan: I was a drywall hanging biorobot. One did well to not get in my way.
@Scott:
Wonder what sorts of terms there are in the Russian lease for the Baikonur Cosmodrome? I believe it’s still the Russians’ only launch site for crewed spacecraft.
@Michael Cain:
Saw the flash flood warnings. For the moment we’re part way up a mountainside and I’ve not seen evidence of erosion near us. Wednesday, we’ll head up to the Larime, Medicine Bow. Considered heading further north and crossing the the Big Horns, but from there heading east will take us through the Bike Week crowds. Planning to scoot south through the Sand Hills, which for some odd reason is one of my favorite parts of the country. Can’t explain it.
@Michael Cain: I don’t know but the next Soyuz flight to the ISS is scheduled for September.
Thank goodness we have SpaceX and soon Boeing able to transport astronauts back and forth.
I do adore the British tendency for understatement:
From: ‘Cannabis’ plants removed from Dorset village’s display
So, I watched the 1984 version of Dune over the weekend.
It was weird. On the one hand, it wasn’t as terrible as I remembered, but in the other hand it was even worse.
On the better column, things were not as repetitive as I recalled. For instance, Paul does not ask himself every other minute in a loud whisper “am I the one?”
On the worse column, the dialogue and visual effects make the movie look more like it was produced in the 60s than in the 80s, especially given the existence, by then, of effects-heavy movies like the first Star Wars trilogy, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones, etc. It doesn’t even look as good as 2001, which was made in the 60s.
Stuff like that.
Also, the Villeneuve version is far more intelligible, despite eschewing gimmicks like the loud mental whisper and intermittent narrator. In fact, I’d say in this go round of the 80s Dune, I comprehended the first half of the movie better because I referred to Villeneuve’s version, and they are more or less the same story.
Overall, my initial impression remains. This is a rather terrible movie with many annoying features. The loud whisper monologues, for one, and the narrator who sometimes seems to say “well, let’s just skip ahead.”
@Kathy: In late 1943 the Luftwaffe bombed the Italian port of Bari. They sank several cargo ships supporting the allied campaign in Italy. A freighter carrying 2000 mustard gas bombs blew up causing extensive casualties and many deaths in the town and among ship crews. Medical care was complicated by uncertainty as to the cause. The allies suppressed any knowledge of mustard gas being present. The allies had planned against the possibility of the Germans using gas and wanted retaliatory weapons on hand.
Gas might have been useful against German troops and logistics concentrated at invasion beaches in Britain. If wind and weather were favorable. And Italy later devolved into almost trench war conditions. But neither side used gas. Perhaps an inspiration for the later MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction theory of the cold war.
And yes, the relative absence of firearms at the 1/6 riot does seem to be a testament to DC gun laws. Which I imagine are on the way out thanks to the Federalist Society. If so, it will raise the violent crime rate in DC, raising the perceived need for “defense” guns. All good from the NRA’s point of view. And as a bonus they’d get to rail against crime in a Dem led city.
@Sleeping Dog: Albatrossity has a spread on the Sand Hills up at Balloon Juice this AM. His first pic shows just why it is one of your favorite parts of the country.
@Kathy:
You should review the 2000 Sci-fi Channel miniseries version too for completeness:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Herbert%27s_Dune
As for the 1984 version, I love it from a Camp angle for the production design and the somewhat over the top acting choices. It’s got a very “80’s rock album cover” aesthetic to it that I like a lot in certain kind of movie.
@gVOR08:
I get the impression reading about WWI tactics, that chemical weapons simply impeded the target and user about the same amount, at least by the time militaries figured out how to use them. And that pretty much they kept on being used out of inertia.
I’ve read, too, that Saddam had great success in using them against Iranian troops, because their protective gear didn’t fit well for various reasons.
As terror weapons against civilians, though, they do work.
@Stormy Dragon:
I might if it shows up on some streaming service I’ve access to.
Otherwise I’m pretty much done with Dune. For one thing it’s fantasy, not really science fiction (no more than Star Wars). For another, the appeal seems to be the world building. I can appreciate that, as that’s what appeals to me in some of Niven’s works (like The Integral Trees). But Dune’s playground is not one I find compelling.
@Stormy Dragon:
No edit function today.
The general aesthetic of the 80s Dune is just fine. I found the mix of old-fashioned military uniforms and futuristic ones odd, but a simple way to tell combatants apart. Ditto the ridiculously large microphones, but that’s fine and rather consistent overall.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup. Beautiful part of the country.
@OzarkHillbilly: The lede of that piece is salacious and more than a little bit sensationalistic.
Chess, particularly speed chess, is played “touch-move”. When you touch a piece, you must move it. Even if it isn’t your turn, if you touch a piece, you must move it. This enables certain types of physical maneuvering on the chess board.
When I played speed chess (almost always against much more experienced opponents) sometimes my opponent would see what piece I had grabbed, then make their next move, and beat me to the clock.
This is what the young person in the piece was trying to do, I think, and the robot as well, but the robot was not quite good enough at maneuvering around another hand over the board. Sometimes hands can smack into each other, or pieces upset. There are rules and conventions for whose clock should tick while these things are corrected.
Interestingly enough, the GM quoted, Sergey Karjakin, was banned from the FIDE Candidates tournament recently for public remarks about the invasion of the Ukraine. (He is Russian). The winner of that tournament Ian Nepomniatchi, is also Russian, but kept his mouth shut.
WaPo has a depressing, annoying, infuriating story: Claim that sex ed ‘grooms’ kids jolted Nebraska politics a year before it swept the nation
The story is exactly what you would expect, complete with statements that there is no evidence to support these claims, and if they get to calling it Q-tinged bigoted lies, I’ve given up by that point. Our media is failing.
It makes me wonder what insane claim is altering a school board race in rural Mississippi, which will become the next big issue.
@Kathy:
I found no discernible character motivations in the Villeneuve movie, just people walking through the relatively sparse plot. Maybe that’s just a me problem, but it left the movie empty.
Specifically, I didn’t believe Paul. His actions weren’t normal.
(Part of that is the original book, where so much of it is internal monologue. I’m not saying it would have been a better movie if Paul were to exit the Bene Gesserit test scene by screaming at his mother “I hate you, and your work friends!” and then stomp off to his room, put on headphones and sulk… but it wouldn’t have been worse)
I don’t think the acting in Lynch’s Dune was great, but Paul had a lot more anger and the frequent voiceover changed the nature of the movie so I wasn’t looking for emotional depth.
I find the effects of the original charming, and very much of the time. Granted, I watch Doctor Who.
It might have gone better with a soundtrack by Queen, like the Flash Gordon movie. Particularly when Paul rides the sand worm for the first time. (“Paul! Woah-oh!”)
I think you’re forgetting how mid-budget special effects looked at the time, and are judging it against the best visual effects.
That said, if they’re bad enough to pull you out of the movie, then you’re not going to enjoy it. But I think that’s more a matter of it aging poorly as expectations change.
See, here you’re comparing it against a complete masterpiece.
Anyway, I’m hoping these Dune movies continue to do well and we get Emperor Sandworm in a movie that is trying to take these things very seriously. Because that will be hysterical.
@Gustopher:
It’s not just you. The acting (and directing) was completely flat. There was no motivation, no depth, and no believability to any of them. A Bene Gesserit witch mewling like a shy farm wife? Gurney being boring? No explanation of why Yueh betraying them is such a huge deal?
Completely flat.
@Gustopher:
IMO, that’s the effect of a talented cinematographer directing a movie.
I can take internal monologues in a book, even when they are superflous. In a movie or TV show, though, I find them endlessly irritating. Especially when done as whispers that are louder than a normal speaking voice. It’s like nails on a chalkboard.
@Gustopher: @Kathy: @Mu Yixiao:
I hate to defend Hollywood on the subject of adaptations, but DUNE is a m’fucker of a heavy lift. I liked the movie a lot. Villeneuve should get a special ‘I can’t believe you pulled this off’ Oscar. Score it like Olympic diving: the harder the dive, the higher the potential score. Adapting DUNE is a triple back somersault with a mid-air cooking demonstration.
@Kathy:
The Iranians had little to no protective gear. Saddam’s men had great difficulty in using CW nevertheless. The conditions have to be right, and the Iranians started waiting for the wind to be at their backs before attacking. Nevertheless it was an important component in checking some of the human wave assaults. One of the legacies is the Iranians were told the US gave it to Iraq. Envoys at the Swiss embassy conducting those under-the-table negotiations on nuclear proliferation reported that when pressed on the issue of their abject hatred for Americans, were known to roll up a sleeve or a pant-let, point to a nasty chemical burn scar, and say “America”. Damn shame because we didn’t. Things like mustard gas and chlorine re pretty easy to make.
Hitler never considered using it, not even with the Russians bearing down. He was a corporal in the trenches in WW1.
I had a relatively busy weekend of streaming, as noted by the notes on Dune Classic*. I also saw the latest Spiderman movie, on which I’ll have some snarky comments later.
What I found more interesting was the latest ep of The Orville, “Midnight Blue.” I have two things to say about it:
**SPOILER ALERT***
1) Any series that shows a child being tortured is not by any stretch of the imagination a comedy, even if they tried out some Dolly Parton gags.
2) Evidently this show has a much smaller cultural impact than the one it emulates, as I’ve heard no bitching about the fact the Republicans were kicked out of the Union ins this ep.
All in all, a very good episode.
@gVOR08:
@Kathy:
There was also the British anthrax weapons program including Operation VEGETARIAN intended primarily to wipe out German livestock production (good old British sense of humour, eh?).
Some 5 million delivery units were prepped.
(Which isn’t chicken-feed)
A test usage rendered the Scottish island of Gruinard uninhabitable until 1990.
It’s very difficult to obtain details of UK chemical weapons stocks and planning for WW2: most information remain classified secret until the late 1980’s. And a lot of the details seem to have been “lost” over the years before and since.
One estimate in non-paywalled content is that UK had some 55,000 tons of chemical agent to hand.
The basic issue was that for field use, conventional artillery was, and is, much more effective.
This is pretty good:
http://www.thebulwark.com/whats-the-downside-for-humoring-him-until-he-dies/
@Michael Reynolds: The ultimate test is whether the end product is enjoyable.
I don’t think Villeneuve hit that mark, but I am generally in the minority on that.
I think it needed scenes added to establish a lot of what the book did via interior monologues.
Lynch aged up Paul to about 30. It made a lot of the story more believable (and made scenes where he was treated like a kid a little weird). I’m not convinced he meant to age Paul like that, but he had a favorite actor.
Villeneuve needed to establish Paul enough that his actions made sense, fidelity to the source material be damned. Weird Victorian stick boy who doesn’t express emotion may fit the book, but it’s not human and it risks being bad movie.
Lynch made Paul more human. Villeneuve made Paul less human (I believe it was a deliberate choice) but also had everyone just act like it was normal behavior. (And add restrained portrayals across the board, and the whole thing is flat).
Also, I have no idea why the dude at the end wanted to fight him — I know from the book and other adaptations, but here the dude had no real motivation other than the movie was dragging and needed a climax.
Simultaneously not enough establishing Paul (not particularly human could work, if established as odd from the get go), and too many of the non-Paul threads being trimmed so no one seemed to have motivations.
@Kathy:
Orville isn’t comedy. It hasn’t been for a very long time (the understanding is that the first half of s01 was stuffed with low-brow humor because that’s what Fox execs expected from McFarlane, and he was willing to do it to get his show on the air.
And… I didn’t see the Dolly Parton bit as a “gag”*. It was a heart-felt interaction between two powerful and influential women. I know a few people who’ve worked with Dolly quite a bit, and from everything I’ve heard, that was exactly how a hologram of her would act.
===========
The line “I may not be all here, but I am all Dolly” may actually be meta: That scene was shot in two different cities, with the set being transported between them, and the actors doing their lines in their own cities. So Dolly was not, in fact, actually “all there” in much of that scene. 🙂
A heck of a way to start your Sunday on the water
https://www.facebook.com/721116508/videos/pcb.10162906351611509/429860542432704
Senate staffers are protesting climate change in Schumer’s office with a giant banner that says “Keep Negotiating, Chuck!”
This is not sarcasm. Somehow, this is not sarcasm.
https://twitter.com/saaaauuull/status/1551584941410230272?s=21&t=gJa0f-UZ7MP_TFbyS0V_lA
I guess these types of group activities keep them off the streets and away from drugs or something.
@Sleeping Dog:
I saw that on the news. I think I’d have headed right back to the dock.
@Kathy:
And could also account for Right Wing objections to the same.
I was contemplating dropping my subscription to Disney and took a look at what they had to see if anything was worth watching. Mostly a whole lotta nuthin but I came across “Moon Night” which I realized I hadn’t heard much about. I watched the first episode and liked it, but suspect it will devolve into another punchy-punchy Marvel paint-by numbers exercise, because they all do. (Ok, in all fairness, “Loki” was good and intriguing and different, beginning to end.) Did anyone here watch it?
@CSK:
Dozens of whales within view of the shore is not a regular occurance and all the boats hoping to get a closeup look, something like that shouldn’t have been surprising.
Only once have I seen a whale from the beach. It was a Minky, that pod on the northside of Great Boars Head in the fall to begin the migration south. The waterfront homeowners on the Head get a great view from above.
@Kathy: Could be worse. I’ve been having intermittent no wifi events. Last one was 3 hours long.
@MarkedMan:
First of all, it’s Moon Knight 🙂 I started watching it but didn’t finish. It’s not a formulaic punchy-punchy (though there is certainly some punching). It’s about a guy with multiple personalities who talks to them–and an ancient Egyptian god. It got a bit too weird for me at the time. But I might go back and rewatch it when I’m in a more appropriate head-space.
@MarkedMan: Disney Network is beyond my budget for streaming services and I only budget 2 pay fors to begin with. Eventually, I’ll drop Hulu and go to something else but I have stuff I’m watching there at the moment.
@MarkedMan: There’s a lot of punching.
It’s also the first time I have seen Oscar Isaacs being his charming self in an action thing that wasn’t marred by the action thing being completely awful. So, I thought it was good for that alone.
But very Marvel.
@Sleeping Dog:
I’ve never seen a whale, which is strange given that I’ve spent my entire life in close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, on either side of it.
@Mu Yixiao:
Cast back to season 2 when we first see the refugee colony, and Heveena picks “9 to 5” as her fight song. Later in that ep, when the GQP troops invade the colony, the fight plays out with “9 to 5” as soundtrack music.
In this ep when Topa meets Heveena, the same song is playing.
That’s the gag.
In recent weeks, 42 people have been reported injured in Yamaguchi city – including children and the elderly. Police are unsure if it’s a gang of perpetrators, or a lone
gunmanmonkey.BBC News.
@dazedandconfused:
@JohnSF:
I have had similar thoughts regarding a more mobile front, see above. But also that poison gas, especially nerve agents, might have been effective in city warfare when it’s block by bloody block.
Again, just as well they weren’t used in WWII. It was nasty, brutish, and bloody enough as it was. Even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
@Gustopher:
This is how they workshop their political concepts. What gets traction is astroturfed at the nation level. And they have LOTS of venues to workshops the concepts they plan to fight with.
Meanwhile Democrats are workshopping political narratives via Twitter, the platform that looks like and sounds like America
@Gustopher: ” I’m not convinced he meant to age Paul like that, but he had a favorite actor.”
Actually, Dune was Kyle McLachlan’s first professional (film) acting job. He was still in college and working in the theater when he was recommended to Lynch. Yes, he would go on to be Lynch’s (apparent) favorite actor, but it would have been pretty impressive of the director to cast this unknown because he knew he would become his favorite…
Also, he was 25 when the film was released, so probably closer to 23 when he was shooting…
@JohnSF:
That last article was written by someone who has never had to spend an hour in the sun in full MOPP. The Poseur is strong in that one.
What renders CW practically obsolete is hyperbarics, like the Russian TOS. One goes off directly or semi-directly above a trench and it’s a pre-dug mass grave. Does he even mention that? I got to the part where he says it’s but a simple matter to give protection gear and quit reading.
@CSK:
Maybe the next NE OTB meetup should be a whale watch out to Jeffreys Ledge, followed by dinner at Petey’s.
Jen?
@Sleeping Dog: I’m game, but my better half gets horribly seasick so he’ll secure the table for us I guess!
I’ve never seen a whale IRL either, and would love that.
@dazedandconfused:
Don’t think he mentions thermobarics/FAE.
But re. chemicals, even if protective gear is very unpleasant, they and chemical-proofed vehicles are still capable of negating the primary effect of chemical weapons: killing people.
You get get a secondary effect of impacting operational effectiveness.
But the question remains, does that gain outweigh the costs and problems of operating chemical weapons vs. simply using more conventional shells, bombs etc.?
Some analysis of British Army operations in France 1939-40 reckons it might have been effective.
(I suspect others disagree)
You’d really need a proper operational and supply study of present circumstances to see if it made military sense overall these days.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: we have been experiencing Wi-Fi outages a lot recently. It stayed out pretty much all night when Amazon did that big promotion. Coincidence? Been hinky ever since. Had it serviced, still hinky.
My sudoku time got seriously curtailed.
@CSK:
@Jen:
I’ve seen a whale in real life only once, at Seaworld San Diego in 1980.
I don’t mean an Orca. Those are dolphins of sorts (and I’ve seen many). I don’t recall what it was, probably a small humpback. No idea why it was there.
I’ve never seen one in the wild, but I’ve never been far offshore on a boat either.
David Warner Dead at 80.
@Kathy: Yeah. The Orville is a comedy in the sense of not being tragedy (IIRC, the old idea was binary–no separate category for “drama” as a form). The comedy, as such becomes very subtle, but you’re right, it is there.
@Jen:
We’re gone till ~8/14, we can pick up the conversation then.
@MarkedMan: I watched Loki and loved it.
I will say that complaining about how there’s fighting in a comic book/superhero movie is a bit like complaining that there is singing in a musical. Having said that, there’s no reason you have to like it. That’s up to you.
There’s character stuff conveyed in those fights. Stuff that’s important. At least in the good ones.
@Kathy: The Vancouver (BC, Canada) aquarium used to have some beluga whales, which are very small. They will no longer keep whales or dolphins, though.
I just went whale watching on July 3 in the San Juan Islands and we watched a humpback for about an hour. It’s not that far offshore.
I’m not sure about this, but I would suspect that there’s some way to get out in Magdelena Bay (on Baja) in the winter when the California gray whales are there.
None of these options require you to be on open ocean. There may be more. Recommended.
@wr: Wow! I have my Kyle Maclachlan timeline completely messed up! He was that young? He was ever that young?
I suppose there are worse things in life. I definitely got an older vibe off him in that movie. Whatever his age, I can’t see him as less than 28-30 in that or anything else from that time. Which makes Blue Velvet a little weird, but Blue Velvet was always a little weird.
(I also cannot see Keven Spacey as under 38 in any circumstances, and thus don’t believe the claims that he was trying to molest a 15 year old Anthony Rapp when he was 25. He was never 25. He was 38. He was born at 38, and when the doctor delivered him he said “congratulations it’s a healthy middle aged man” and I guess he stayed at 38 for 38 years, and probably tried to molest a 15 year old sometime while he was 38)
@Jay L Gischer: @Jay L Gischer: Oh, I’m not complaining. There is more than enough television, film and videos being made today to suit all tastes so I don’t begrudge people anything they like. It’s not a zero sum game. And, truth be told, I like an awful lot of stuff that others think is crap.
In this case, it’s just that I’ve seen enough superhero fights to last a lifetime, with their patented “LEVEL UP” technology. Meaning that, regardless of the various superpowers the hero and villains have throughout the move/episode, in the ultimate battle they are somehow almost exactly evenly matched.
I thought the fight scenes in “Logan” were exactly what you described though – well crafted scenes that also showed something about the characters. And in the two episodes of Moon Knight I’ve watched so far, the relatively short fight scenes have done the same.
Hence, the sarcasm.
@Gustopher: In reply to the Ballon Juice post on this subject:
Instead they are focused on an existential crisis for the human race. Which, trust me on this, was very much affecting the people of St Louis with triple digit daytime highs and *hot and humid* nights the past few weeks, weeks where every paved horizontal and bricked vertical surface radiated all the heat it had absorbed that day all night long… And held back some from the day before.
I am very sorry for all those people disappointed by the young folks who do not direct their energies into what their older and obviously more intelligent betters think they should.
How dare they???
** trust me folks, pick an un-airconditoned brick 4 family flat and try to sleep in it on a July night in the VanderLou or Marine Villa neighborhoods.
@dazedandconfused:
I can’t speak to the accuracy of the reporting or of my recollection, but I recall reporting at the time that we provided technical advice to Saddam’s government and facilitated contacts with vendors. The vendors may have offered feedstocks or equipment, if not the actual gas. Dick Cheney was the point person. I do recall an episode of Cheney vehemently, and specifically, denying we gave chemical weapons to Saddam. No one had claimed the U. S. government had given them anything, just that we facilitated their purchases.
@Gustopher:
A little?!
This is…wow.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1551660196736380929