Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.
@Teve: Yeah, and I’d probably be a little more forgiving if I ever met him, but there is precious little chance of that so why bother? Like you, I read him too.
Germany, Italy, and the UK are all seeing contraction in key parts of their economy. A Europe wide recession seems likely and the U.S. will probably follow.
Martin Kamen had worked for three days and three nights without sleep. The US chemist was finishing off a project in which he and a colleague, Sam Ruben, had bombarded a piece of graphite with subatomic particles. The aim of their work was to create new forms of carbon, ones that might have practical uses.
Exhausted, Kamen staggered out of his laboratory at Berkeley in California, having finished off the project in the early hours of 27 February 1940. He desperately needed a break. Rumpled, red eyed and with a three-day growth of beard, he looked a mess.
And that was unfortunate. Berkeley police were then searching for an escaped convict who had just committed several murders. So when they saw the unkempt Kamen they promptly picked him up, bundled him into the back of their patrol car and interrogated him as a suspected killer.
Thus one of most revolutionary pieces of research undertaken in the past century was nearly terminated at birth when one of its lead scientists was accused of murder. It was only when witnesses made it clear that Kamen was not the man the police were after that he was released and allowed to go back to the University of California Radiation Laboratory to look at the lump of graphite that he and Ruben had been irradiating.
It did not take the pair long to realise they had produced a substance with remarkable properties, one that has since transformed a host of different scientific fields and continues to help scientists make major discoveries. By irradiating graphite, they had created carbon-14.
“That gloomy night and morning of 27 February 1940 began a revolution in physiology, biochemistry, archaeology, geology, biomedicine, oceanography, palaeoclimatology and anthropology as well as nuclear chemistry,” says environment researcher John Marra, author of the newly published Hot Carbon: Carbon-14 and a Revolution in Science. “Carbon-14, perhaps the most important isotope to life on Earth, was ‘born’.”
@Teve: Some of the come-to-Jesus Republicans are even more virulent Trump-haters than Democrats. Look at Rick Wilson and Tom Nichols. I enjoyed Frum’s piece.
In his first public response to the death of financier and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump retweeted baseless conspiracy theories around his death and a news alert citing former President Bill Clinton’s previous involvement with Epstein.
I was actually thinking he might wait a few days, but he came through in less than 24 hours.
Fencers don’t make the news often but when we do, it’s because we’re being awesome. Parry on, my wayward son, there’ll be a gold medal when you are done!
Via Eschaton, at New Republic Alex Pareen has a pretty good take on what’s wrong with NYT.
The Times is a paper for the East Coast rich. If that doesn’t describe you, the paper is not making editorial decisions with you in mind.
“Times readers in the New York metropolitan area are upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal and identify with New York’s culture, its museums and its art,” a former Times circulation editor said in a 2013 interview. The company’s media kit—the PR materials designed to convince brands to purchase ads in the paper or on their website—tells a similar story: “The NYT Weekday ranks #1 with Opinion Leaders, reaching 57% of this elite group.”
…
The paper’s target audience explains everything from its bizarre fixation on elite private universities and the behavior of the students attending them to its unshakably windshield-obsessed perspective on transit issues, despite covering the only American city where a majority of households don’t own a car. It explains the entire real estate section, and “Vows,” and why a significant portion of the Gray Lady’s op-ed page is given over to people who only exist to troll a sort of imagined effete elitist caricature of Manhattan liberalism. It even explains the crossword puzzle.
This may also go a long way toward explaining the multiple failures of our ruling elites.
Jax made a comment passed on from daughter about Har Mar Superstar and if more young women had his confidence the world would be better. It really touched me.
So today will be about confident young women.
HAIM. Both old and new. This is from 2012 (really? Seems like yesterday.) They’re three sisters from suburban LA. Very pop, but they’re cool as shit.
Forever – It’s an odd song structure and very bassy. It’s unique and cool and slinky. The video is to die for just because of the dorky dancing. Truly adorkablest. I love the bit in the salon. YMMV, but I think this is a really great song in the top five of the century so far.
Grr! I cannot paste the url – search “youtube haim forever”.
This is brand new from Haim. It’s called Want You Back. The song itself is not nearly as good as Forever, but a solid really quite fairly infectious good pop song, but the video is outstanding! One take and they’re walking down a street in LA from Ventura to Van Nuys. It starts subtle and they get more involved later in the run time. They have choreographers now, but they’re still adorkable dancers. My favorite background signage is for “Indian Restaurant #2” – there is a story there. Just watch. It’s 4 minutes and it’s awesome. Second favorite – the sign for “casa de Cadillac” is amazing. I want that font.
This could be controvesial. Ronnie Spector, specifically with The Ronettes. Be My Baby.
Indisputably one of the greatest songs ever. But produced by Phil Spector who is one the world’s biggest shitbags ever, but who was also really good at his day job before he murdered that woman (He was a total shitbag way before he murdered her. Who the the hell builds a mansion in Alhambra?)
In later revelations Ronnie was not confident when she was young. In this case, kindly ignore evil Phil and concentrate on Ronnie because she has a heavenly, otherworldly voice and it is an amazing song.
She may not have *felt* confident at the time but she sounds like she is. An all time great song and performance.
You can decide what you think about her, but she is very bold and very defiant, and cared not one whit what you think. I love her.
Violet is not the best Hole song, but it fits this list best.
Apparently, I “met” her once way back when. She was a dancer at a strip club on Hennepin and was at a party I was at. She apparently was there. I don’t remember her at all, I remember that party, but not her. People swear it’s true though.
So many great songs. Daniel is great, but for this list I would go for Laura.
It’s slow and schmaltzy. But so great. For quite a while I was amazed that they got a guy who looks a whole lot like Terrence Stamp to play Laura; I googled it like a year later and suddenly figured out that it actually is Terrence Stamp. I plotzed. I’m such an idiot at times.
If you do not know Bat For Lashes / Natasha Khan, do so. Now.
In her back catalog is a video with big North Atlantic waves smashing onto cliffs. TMI – I really like wave pr0n.
I don’t care how tough you think you are, you’re not as tough as this woman
Mom Runs 3:11 Marathon With a Triple Stroller While Pushing 185 Pounds
Cynthia Arnold can probably run faster than you, and she can do it while pushing a three-person stroller.
This wasn’t the first time we’ve seen the 35-year-old mother of three wield a trio of tykes across a race finish line. Last year, she broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest-half marathon while pushing a three-person stroller at the Missoula Half Marathon in Missoula, Montana.
This year, she returned to the event to go for an even larger goal: to set the Guinness World Record for the fastest full marathon while pushing three kids at the Missoula Marathon.
In order to break the previous three-person stroller marathon record, Arnold had to finish 26.2 miles in 4:06. She ended up blowing that time out of the water, maintaining just under 7:20 pace per mile and crossing the line in 3:11—despite the fact that her three children are now a year older and significantly heavier than the last time she went for a record. Her three kids combine to weigh about 130 pounds, which brings the total to roughly 185 when taking the weight of the stroller into account.
A story about a minor trend of municipalities passing laws that allow the eviction of all renters of a residence if one person staying there commits a crime, and that being challenged by the Legal Institution for Justice. A snip:
Under Granite City’s so-called “crime-free housing” ordinance, private landlords are required (on pain of fines or revocation of their rental license) to evict an entire household of tenants if police believe any member—even a house guest—committed a crime. There is no requirement that the tenants participated in or even knew about the crime: If one member of the household is a criminal, the whole household can automatically be punished for their crime. That is true even if the tenants’ landlord wants them to stay, which is the case here.
Seems like it doesn’t have a chance in hell in the supreme court to me, what do you think, Doug?
@Teve: I don’t understand people who run marathons — the first person who did it promptly died, and I would have thought that would warn people away from trying to reproduce it.
@Gustopher: yeah I exercise nearly every day but I will never run a marathon. I don’t see how that could be healthy. Lotta oxidative stress for instance.
Bullfight supporters chanted: “Freedom” while the arena’s loudspeaker system drowned out the protesters, first with the song Viva España, and then a rendition of the banned fascist anthem Cara al Sol (Facing the Sun).
I’m sympathetic to animal rights, although I don’t consider it a slam dunk. And I’m respectful enough of culture to give it a hearing. But for the crowd, if this article is to be believed, this was about freedom and fascism. Why is it that the Western world is losing its collective mind just now?
@Gustopher: “If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.” — Emil Zatopek
“Only after a marathon can I say I have given everything. Because of the enormity of the attempt, the cleansing of the pain, I can sit, even stiff and blistered, and know a kind of peace.” — Kenny Moore
I run marathons and I love running marathons. The marathon is an incredible test of physical endurance and mental strength. There are no shortcuts–anyone who’s running, you know they’ve worked hard to get there. There’s a lot of shared pain and joy and camaraderie, even between those who are running their first and those who are running their 10th or 20th or even more. And the joy the winner feels isn’t any greater than the joy the 10,000th finisher feels.
But I won’t deny, those of us who run these things, again and again, we’re a bit touched…
Got my fill of running during the anti war riots here at Sleepytown U in 1970.
The City Council passed an emergency ordinance that declared that more than two people standing next to each other on the public way constituted a mob.
That meant that if two students were on the sidewalk in front of the Army Recruiting Office discussing the Euthyphro Dilemma and a third citizen walked past them on their way to class they were fair game for the State Troopers to arrest them.
Can’t tell you how many times I had to beat it down the street to avoid being tear gassed and billy clubbed for no reason at all.
Running from the cops should be an Olympic event!
@Mikey: I’ve done a hundred and nineteen 5Ks in 2019. But I don’t know if my joints can handle marathons. And I’ve heard horror stories about, to put it delicately, people whose food did not remain in their intestines for the entirety of the race. Bleh.
@dazedandconfused: You expect her to make the six year old run the marathon with her? You must know some pretty hearty six year olds to even be suggesting that…
For my money, I probably wouldn’t call Trump a racist and I definitely wouldn’t call him a white supremacist. I’d call him a race-baiter. I know I’m out of sync with leftist orthodoxy on this, but words and phrases have actual meanings and I think language works better when we respect their differences:
*A white supremacist is someone who believes as an ideology that the white race is inherently superior to and should dominate all other races. Adolf Hitler was a white supremacist. Jefferson Davis was a white supremacist. For that matter, pretty much everyone in Europe (or descended from European stock) before about 1900 was a white supremacist.
*A racist is someone who believes different races have different inherent abilities but doesn’t have any consistent ideology to back it up. They just don’t like folks from other tribes (and they do like being top dog).
*A race-baiter is someone who may or may not be personally racist but is perfectly happy to make money or win political office by appealing to racists.
Trump is a race-baiter. But is he personally racist? Beats me, and I almost don’t care anyway since I think a race-baiter is generally worse than a racist. Racism comes in various degrees, but sometimes it’s just the result of upbringing and expresses itself as little more than a casual, personal, low-level hostility. Race-baiting, by contrast, is invariably cold-blooded and mass-focused almost by definition. It’s cynical and selfish and demonstrates a willingness to stoke hatred for little more than short-term personal gain.
Genuine white supremacists are thin on the ground these days and don’t wield any serious political power. Racists come in all stripes, but their power has been dwindling for decades and their attitudes have largely been driven out of the public square. They’re still dangerous but getting less so—and that trend will continue as long as political elites make racism publicly intolerable. The only thing that can change this is a resurgence of race-baiting, and that makes race-baiters the most dangerous of them all. Fox News is far worse than their viewers and Donald Trump is far worse than his base.
Those are the people to fight, not the yahoos who yell “Send them back!” at Trump rallies. Without Trump, they’d just be sitting at home and occasionally telling off-color jokes to their buddies. It’s only with people like Trump around that they become toxic.
@Teve: I don’t really like the way any of that is phrased, but I do feel that he’s digging in the right spot.
And it put me in mind of this quotation from David Runciman:
Power doesn’t tell us the true nature of the man; the man tells us the true nature of the power.
The ignorance, fears and prejudices of the common man can now be exploited as never before. In my opinion, when you take the interests of the rich, as expressed through the media, for the consumption by the ignorant, someone like Trump becomes inevitable.
Another good analysis of what’s going on with the mentality behind Brexit. Interesting how the author notices the same tendency that I have; that is to say British incompetence as having a role to play.
(You are really really storing up disaster if you look down on experts and enshrine amateurs along with a “we’ll succeed by muddling through” attitude. At some point the rockets blow up.)
The ignorance, fears and prejudices of the common man can now be exploited as never before. In my opinion, when you take the interests of the rich, as expressed through the media, for the consumption by the ignorant, someone like Trump becomes inevitable.
I’ve had similar thoughts lately w/r/t global warming. Watching one of those period shows about the Medicis I realized that duh there has never been a time when money didn’t rule politics. And 90% of people have virtually no knowledge of basic chemistry, or how science works, and given that there are trillions of dollars to be made selling carbon, it was inevitable that at least one US party would be paid enough to pretend Global Warming isn’t real, the miracle is that both parties haven’t been completely bought off.
“The most recent FBI crime stats show that more people were killed in 2017 with hammers and clubs than were killed with rifles of any kind. Those figures showed that 467 people were killed with “blunt objects (hammers, clubs, etc.),” while 403 were killed with rifles.
And it must be noted that the category of “rifles” used by the FBI includes bolt action, pump action, single shot, and semi-automatic, as well as those the left describes as “assault weapons.” This means only a percentage of the 403 deaths attributed to “rifles” would have been carried out with an “assault weapon.”
There was no word on a leftist movement to ban knives and clubs. However, statisticians did note that 100% of rifle, knife and club deaths were perpetrated by human beings.
In related news, 74% of Democrats, but notably not Bill and Hillary Clinton, were in favor of banning assault prison bedsheets.
there has never been a time when money didn’t rule politics
I think the only interesting exception is with political systems that look upon the country (and its people) as something they own and must therefore cultivate/exploit over generations. Terrible stuff, unless compared with rulers who don’t care about what happens after they leave the scene. And that is pretty much us today. The rich and poor agree that the end is coming, but they all seem to feel that they have the next move planned out, be it the Rapture, bunkers, or island paradises.
@Teve: My knees have never felt better than they do since I started running long distances.
I like running 5Ks too, but they’re an entirely different kind of race. There’s a lot less to keep track of. You just get out and run your ass off for 20-odd minutes (or less if you’re younger and faster than I am) and you’re done. It’s fun.
Most of the time the digestive issues with marathoners involved barfing rather than diarrhea, but one time I had to hit the porta-potty halfway through because I had recently dealt with a bout of salmonella and that stuff can stick around a while. Needless to say I did not do well that race, although I did eventually finish.
Why are Trump supporters unable to recognize that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, namely a megalomaniac, a liar, a grifter, a failure, devoid of lucidity, unintelligible, corrupt and totally uninterested in the well-being of Americans?
My knees have never felt better than they do since I started running long distances.
See this is interesting to me because being a science person I’ve actually gone to the literature and tried to determine if there was an answer to the question “Is running bad for your joints” and I get mixed information. It’s very frustrating. Some people say it helps their joints, some people blame it for their crippling arthritis, and the research is very mixed and unclear. I’ve seen research that said ultramarathoners have signs of artificially aged mitochondria, but I’m never going to run 100 miles in 48 hours or whatever so i’m less interested in that.
There seems to be some evidence that heel-striking causes joint problens, so I’ve been trying to adopt a mid-foot technique but it’s slow going and I can’t keep it up for long. So my 5k times are in the 50-min range.
@de stijl: I will look them up when I get home. I am currently on day 3 of school shopping (hell) in “civilization”. This is the song in my head right now. 😉
@Kit: I have a big broad curiosity of how currencies work, prompted by reading the Baroque Cycle years ago, but one of my minor reasons for wanting to understand currencies better, is so I can better make fun of a few of my young white male techie friends who swoon over bitcoin and who I make fun of on the regular, because bitcoin is such a horrible currency (mainly because of the built-in depreciation) that lately they’re pretending it was never really supposed to be a currency, it was just supposed to be a store of value.
@Teve: I don’t wish to pass myself off as an expert, but the two criticisms I would lay at bitcoin’s feet (?) would be: 1) that it has been a dreadful store of value (wild swings), and that its proof of work, while simply brilliant conceptually, has the unintended side effect of sucking a hell of a lot of electricity.
The built-in depreciation is almost certainly a good thing, but probably not enough of a good thing. Money supply should grow with the economy, otherwise capital sitting in a vault grows increasingly valuable. Unless you are sitting on capital, you don’t want that. And if you have debt, then you certainly don’t.
@Kit: I’m trying to do too many things at once and I screwed up. Built-in Deflation is what I meant. Once all the ‘coins’ are mined there aren’t any more. So the bitcoin supply can’t increase with the economy. So you get deflation, which blows donkeys. But there are lots of hysterical “NO UR RONG BITCOIN IS NOT DEFLATIONARY” rantings from the culties and at some point my amateur currency knowledge gets wobbly.
@Teve: No doubt the wide variation re: joints comes down to how different people just run…differently. But like you I haven’t been able to find much actual research. In my experience it’s about 99% anecdotal.
As far as form goes, these two things have helped me a great deal.
@Teve: You might enjoy J. K. Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, where It Went. This is a reissue, the original was written at the height of inflation, hence the title. Very readable, and very funny. I haven’t read it in decades, but my recollection is such that it will have aged well in the intervening 40 plus years.
@gVOR08: @Teve: What I would really like to read would be a history of money and finance that would at each stage describe the state of the world and how it was being held back, what innovation occurred, and how that innovation both helped and hindered. So, for example, coins would standardize weights, but would also lead to shaving and adulteration, which would themselves shape the world, and need to be dealt with in turn. Eventually, we would get to futures, and derivatives and swaps. Write me that book, Teve, and I promise to buy at least one copy.
@Teve: Once you write it, you can buy as many as you want. Promise!
There’s another topic that I’d absolutely love to see take the same approach: astronomy. Start with the basics that the sun and moon move and change. What did people think? And happened next? What were the theories? What could be explained and what could not? What was the next advance? A new observation? A new tool? An advance in mathematics? What did the next advance help with, and what did it hinder? For most of human history, we have gazed up at the stars, marveled, and created stories. How we have managed to squeeze out our current understanding of the universe from these cold unpromising points of light is nothing short of amazing! I’d really love to (better) understand the journey.
That guy in Las Vegas did use a hammer when he shot and killed 59 people. He used the hammer to break the windows so he could kill his victims with the arsenal of guns that he had stockpiled.
I just can’t figure out why he didn’t throw hammers at the crowd below to carry out his slaughter.
After all a hammer is the same as a gun.
@Guarneri: Come back when you can show us the statistics of mass killings by people wielding hammers and clubs. Is moving the goalposts hard or do you use a crane or something?
@Kit: Someone’s gotta have written a book on the history of Roman currency somewhere….I’ve been tempted to do an analysis of Roman and medieval application of the laws against counterfeiting and exactly how it was treated in the legal system. Because of the face of the emperor on the coins, counterfeiting was considered one of the versions of treason. Counterfeiting finally ended up being considered “petty treason” with all the other versions of treason ending up as “grand treason.”
(Anyway, back to Japanese. I passed the French test, wow, applause, so at least THAT’s completed.)
@Teve: Is it that they don’t recognize it or that they DGAF? Granted, some of them are credulous imbeciles, but I don’t see most of our trolls here as credulous types. (Of course, I could be wrong.)
@Teve: On the running thing. It’s always possible that you get different data because people have different circumstances. Case in point: a friend of mine from high school days discovered the joys of cross country running at about 15 or 16 and stayed with it through college–running cross country for the college he went to. Sometime in his junior or senior year, he went to the doctor complaining of leg pain. As I recall, the doctor told him that the bursa in his knees had started to erode and that he essentially had the joints of someone 30 or so years older than he was and needed to curtail/stop long distance running.
His is the only case like that I’ve ever heard of, though. Still, some people may have more fragile joints for whatever reason there would be. In my case, I’ve always had food allergies, but I’ve always thrown up when I ate foods I was seriously allergic to (peanuts and walnuts especially). Other people get shockey. The only time I had shock was when I took the same allergy injection twice by mistake. Maybe there are fewer “one answer” questions in science than we realize. (But I suspect you already knew that 🙂 .)
Is it that they don’t recognize it or that they DGAF? Granted, some of them are credulous imbeciles, but I don’t see most of our trolls here as credulous types. (Of course, I could be wrong.)
IDK, I haven’t pondered it much lately. Trump has failed to deliver basically everything he promised, economic growth way above 3%, booming coal and manufacturing, a health plan that covers everyone and is cheaper than Obamacare, etc, but he has delivered on one thing, being a dumb obnoxious racist asshole. So when someone is still supporting him in 2019 I just assume that’s who they are too.
As I recall, the doctor told him that the bursa in his knees had started to erode and that he essentially had the joints of someone 30 or so years older than he was and needed to curtail/stop long distance running.
The best exercise situation I ever had, I had a pass to UNC’s indoor climate-controlled Olympic-length pool. Though I currently live in Florida, the swimming situation here is terrible. 🙁
I passed the French test, wow, applause, so at least THAT’s completed.
That’s awesome! I’m 5 months into using Duolingo to get an introduction to Italian. It’s not bad, I’ve made way more progress than I did with 2 years of college Spanish. The discussion boards are kinda fun. Saw a cute exchange the other day:
Person1: I don’t get it! The tips said Perdere means take, and Portare means take. But then I got the answer wrong. What’s the difference????
Person2: Perdere is when you take it off the table. Portare is when you take it to Atlanta.
That guy in Las Vegas did use a hammer when he shot and killed 59 people. He used the hammer to break the windows so he could kill his victims with the arsenal of guns that he had stockpiled.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Currency is often said to have 3 main functions: as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Bitcoin is terrible at the first two and nobody uses it for the third.
There’s another topic that I’d absolutely love to see take the same approach: astronomy. Start with the basics that the sun and moon move and change. What did people think? And happened next? What were the theories? What could be explained and what could not? What was the next advance? A new observation? A new tool? An advance in mathematics? What did the next advance help with, and what did it hinder?
I think naked-eye astronomy may predate H. sapiens, which would make the earliest developments not only lost, but never documented.
Several ancient civilizations developed astronomy, mostly for religious purposes. Still, the writings of some Greek philosophers contain speculation and observation on astronomy, some of which is rather close to fact. And there’s Ptolemy’s infamous epicycles, used to explain the (apparent) retrograde motion of the planets.
But not everything is documented. As with the development of agriculture or writing, it happened in several places independent of each other, and at multiple times.
It’s only in more recent times that you find good documentation of developments, both in traditional astronomy and alter using telescopes. You can read about Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Newton, etc. and their contributions to astronomy.
One interesting figure in the XIX Century is Urbain Le Verrier, the first person to infer the existence of a planet before anyone observed it directly.
I’ve been wanting to talk about the unbuilt Boeing 7J7.
The design was unusual in two ways:
1) It had a new type of jet engine called an unducted fan, which basically looks like a regular jet engine with two sets of counter-rotating propellers in the back. It was supposed to be both more efficient than turbofan engines, and quieter as well.
2) Boeing called it a twin-aisle narrow body. Seating would have been configured 2-2-2, with a 2-3-2 “high density” option.
Many regard the second point as a lost opportunity to improve short haul jet travel, as the plane never got built.
Except, in a way, it did.
Boeing did build the B767, but sold it as a conventional wide body for long haul flights. But the 767 had a fuselage width of 4.72 meters, vs the proposed 4.78 meters for the 7J7, with 2-3-2 seating. Essentially that’s the same interior.
True, the 767 was a long haul plane, while the 7J7 would have been used in shorter routes. That far, it was a missed opportunity. Twin-aisle planes are 1) more spacious, 2) faster for boarding and deplaning, 3) have more aisle seats. Twin aisle planes tend to be long haul wide bodies, like the 747, 777, 787, A330, A340, A350, etc. narrow body planes used in shorter flights are all single aisle, in a 3-3 configuration.
Now back to the first point. the explanations I’ve read conclude the unducted fan engine died a victim of lower oil prices in the mid-80s. IMO, that’s bunk. Not only have oil prices peaked rather high (remember $100+ per barrel not long ago?), but fuel has always been a concern for airlines. Even when oil is cheap, the biggest operational expense is fuel.
So either the regular turbofan engines have improved well past the gains in efficiency offered by the unducted fan, or the latter didn’t really deliver the speeds airlines and passengers expect from a jet aircraft.
The best bet for in flight improvement in short haul flight is the airbus A220, formerly known as the Bombardier C-Series. the interior is a 2-3 configuration, like that of the original 727 and DC-9, but with some added features. 1) slightly wider seats, 2) the middle seats are the widest, 3) large overhead bins, 4) a somewhat wider aisle, 5) reduced engine noise. It gets described often as a narrow body with wide body features.
John Harwood
@JohnJHarwood
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3h
if you like to keep score, here’s the change in Dow Jones Industrial Average from Inauguration Day to Aug 12 of their 3rd year in the White House:
Someone’s gotta have written a book on the history of Roman currency somewhere….I’ve been tempted to do an analysis of Roman and medieval application of the laws against counterfeiting and exactly how it was treated in the legal system.
I’m not promising to buy that one, but give a shout once it hits the shelves 🙂
Shadow Divers is a page turner.
@Teve: Glad you’re enjoying it.
The Shame and Disgrace will Linger by David frum
@Teve: Says the shameless man who feels no disgrace.
@OzarkHillbilly: I have mixed feelings about David Frum and all the right-wingers who allege to have come to Jesus, but it’s still a good piece.
@Teve:
The shame and disgrace will linger only because the Republican Party and all the elected officials in it have been shown for what they are.
Mitch McConnell doesn’t like Trump being president? He’s in a position to do something about it, and won’t.
@Teve: Yeah, and I’d probably be a little more forgiving if I ever met him, but there is precious little chance of that so why bother? Like you, I read him too.
Germany, Italy, and the UK are all seeing contraction in key parts of their economy. A Europe wide recession seems likely and the U.S. will probably follow.
Three huge explosions in Russia. Radiation medicine being given out.
@Teve: Some of the come-to-Jesus Republicans are even more virulent Trump-haters than Democrats. Look at Rick Wilson and Tom Nichols. I enjoyed Frum’s piece.
He never disappoints:
In his first public response to the death of financier and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump retweeted baseless conspiracy theories around his death and a news alert citing former President Bill Clinton’s previous involvement with Epstein.
I was actually thinking he might wait a few days, but he came through in less than 24 hours.
Fencers don’t make the news often but when we do, it’s because we’re being awesome. Parry on, my wayward son, there’ll be a gold medal when you are done!
American fencer kneels on medal stand during anthem to protest gun violence, Trump and racism
@SenyorDave: See, that’s the thing about
Trump. Every time you think he can’t go any lower, he does.
if Trump ever goes missing we’re going to need James Cameron to find him.
Via Eschaton, at New Republic Alex Pareen has a pretty good take on what’s wrong with NYT.
This may also go a long way toward explaining the multiple failures of our ruling elites.
For Jax (and her daughter).
Jax made a comment passed on from daughter about Har Mar Superstar and if more young women had his confidence the world would be better. It really touched me.
So today will be about confident young women.
HAIM. Both old and new. This is from 2012 (really? Seems like yesterday.) They’re three sisters from suburban LA. Very pop, but they’re cool as shit.
Forever – It’s an odd song structure and very bassy. It’s unique and cool and slinky. The video is to die for just because of the dorky dancing. Truly adorkablest. I love the bit in the salon. YMMV, but I think this is a really great song in the top five of the century so far.
Grr! I cannot paste the url – search “youtube haim forever”.
This is brand new from Haim. It’s called Want You Back. The song itself is not nearly as good as Forever, but a solid really quite fairly infectious good pop song, but the video is outstanding! One take and they’re walking down a street in LA from Ventura to Van Nuys. It starts subtle and they get more involved later in the run time. They have choreographers now, but they’re still adorkable dancers. My favorite background signage is for “Indian Restaurant #2” – there is a story there. Just watch. It’s 4 minutes and it’s awesome. Second favorite – the sign for “casa de Cadillac” is amazing. I want that font.
Again, I’m stymied and cannot paste the url:
HAIM Want You Back
Could some some kind soul please post the actual links. You would earn so many mensch / menschette points! TIA.
This could be controvesial. Ronnie Spector, specifically with The Ronettes. Be My Baby.
Indisputably one of the greatest songs ever. But produced by Phil Spector who is one the world’s biggest shitbags ever, but who was also really good at his day job before he murdered that woman (He was a total shitbag way before he murdered her. Who the the hell builds a mansion in Alhambra?)
In later revelations Ronnie was not confident when she was young. In this case, kindly ignore evil Phil and concentrate on Ronnie because she has a heavenly, otherworldly voice and it is an amazing song.
She may not have *felt* confident at the time but she sounds like she is. An all time great song and performance.
Shirley Manson from Garbage.
My favorite is Special, but there are tons of great Garbage songs. She has an outstanding voice and attitude.
Another controversial choice: Courtney Love.
You can decide what you think about her, but she is very bold and very defiant, and cared not one whit what you think. I love her.
Violet is not the best Hole song, but it fits this list best.
Apparently, I “met” her once way back when. She was a dancer at a strip club on Hennepin and was at a party I was at. She apparently was there. I don’t remember her at all, I remember that party, but not her. People swear it’s true though.
Malibu is the best Hole song.
Non-controversial choice.
Natasha Khan aka Bat For Lashes.
She is phenomenal. Such a voice.
So many great songs. Daniel is great, but for this list I would go for Laura.
It’s slow and schmaltzy. But so great. For quite a while I was amazed that they got a guy who looks a whole lot like Terrence Stamp to play Laura; I googled it like a year later and suddenly figured out that it actually is Terrence Stamp. I plotzed. I’m such an idiot at times.
If you do not know Bat For Lashes / Natasha Khan, do so. Now.
In her back catalog is a video with big North Atlantic waves smashing onto cliffs. TMI – I really like wave pr0n.
I don’t care how tough you think you are, you’re not as tough as this woman
link
@de stijl: “This is brand new from Haim. It’s called Want You Back.”
That would come as a surprise to those of us who saw Haim perform that song at Coachella in 2018… after its release in 2017.
@CSK:
He will win any moral or ethical limbo competition.
Oh look, the GOP healthcare plan…I’m sure people like Paul Ryan would approve…
https://ij.org/press-release/illinois-family-sues-to-end-law-threatening-them-with-compulsory-eviction-for-a-crime-they-did-not-commit/
A story about a minor trend of municipalities passing laws that allow the eviction of all renters of a residence if one person staying there commits a crime, and that being challenged by the Legal Institution for Justice. A snip:
Seems like it doesn’t have a chance in hell in the supreme court to me, what do you think, Doug?
@Teve: I don’t understand people who run marathons — the first person who did it promptly died, and I would have thought that would warn people away from trying to reproduce it.
@Gustopher: yeah I exercise nearly every day but I will never run a marathon. I don’t see how that could be healthy. Lotta oxidative stress for instance.
@Teve:
A six year old in a stroller is just plain wrong…
Just saw this article in The Guardian:
I’m sympathetic to animal rights, although I don’t consider it a slam dunk. And I’m respectful enough of culture to give it a hearing. But for the crowd, if this article is to be believed, this was about freedom and fascism. Why is it that the Western world is losing its collective mind just now?
@Gustopher: “If you want to run, run a mile. If you want to experience a different life, run a marathon.” — Emil Zatopek
“Only after a marathon can I say I have given everything. Because of the enormity of the attempt, the cleansing of the pain, I can sit, even stiff and blistered, and know a kind of peace.” — Kenny Moore
I run marathons and I love running marathons. The marathon is an incredible test of physical endurance and mental strength. There are no shortcuts–anyone who’s running, you know they’ve worked hard to get there. There’s a lot of shared pain and joy and camaraderie, even between those who are running their first and those who are running their 10th or 20th or even more. And the joy the winner feels isn’t any greater than the joy the 10,000th finisher feels.
But I won’t deny, those of us who run these things, again and again, we’re a bit touched…
@wr:
Brand new to me.
Got my fill of running during the anti war riots here at Sleepytown U in 1970.
The City Council passed an emergency ordinance that declared that more than two people standing next to each other on the public way constituted a mob.
That meant that if two students were on the sidewalk in front of the Army Recruiting Office discussing the Euthyphro Dilemma and a third citizen walked past them on their way to class they were fair game for the State Troopers to arrest them.
Can’t tell you how many times I had to beat it down the street to avoid being tear gassed and billy clubbed for no reason at all.
Running from the cops should be an Olympic event!
@Mikey: I’ve done a hundred and nineteen 5Ks in 2019. But I don’t know if my joints can handle marathons. And I’ve heard horror stories about, to put it delicately, people whose food did not remain in their intestines for the entirety of the race. Bleh.
@dazedandconfused: You expect her to make the six year old run the marathon with her? You must know some pretty hearty six year olds to even be suggesting that…
@Gustopher: True. But it does sound like a pretty boring three hours for the kids. “Mommy, are we there yet?”
Someone’s benefiting from the Dennison trade war, and it’s not the US.
Is Joe Biden getting senile?
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-ne-biden-parkland-shooting-mistake-20190811-odak75oqojfq5cdiz6dno72cfa-story.html
If he is, he’ll be the perfect opponent for Trump…maybe the president can offer Biden some of his Adderall to help him get through the debates…
@Bill:
Nope. Biden’s always been that way.
Interesting post from Kevin drum:
@Teve: I don’t really like the way any of that is phrased, but I do feel that he’s digging in the right spot.
And it put me in mind of this quotation from David Runciman:
The ignorance, fears and prejudices of the common man can now be exploited as never before. In my opinion, when you take the interests of the rich, as expressed through the media, for the consumption by the ignorant, someone like Trump becomes inevitable.
Another good analysis of what’s going on with the mentality behind Brexit. Interesting how the author notices the same tendency that I have; that is to say British incompetence as having a role to play.
(You are really really storing up disaster if you look down on experts and enshrine amateurs along with a “we’ll succeed by muddling through” attitude. At some point the rockets blow up.)
@Kit:
I’ve had similar thoughts lately w/r/t global warming. Watching one of those period shows about the Medicis I realized that duh there has never been a time when money didn’t rule politics. And 90% of people have virtually no knowledge of basic chemistry, or how science works, and given that there are trillions of dollars to be made selling carbon, it was inevitable that at least one US party would be paid enough to pretend Global Warming isn’t real, the miracle is that both parties haven’t been completely bought off.
NEWS ITEM
“The most recent FBI crime stats show that more people were killed in 2017 with hammers and clubs than were killed with rifles of any kind. Those figures showed that 467 people were killed with “blunt objects (hammers, clubs, etc.),” while 403 were killed with rifles.
And it must be noted that the category of “rifles” used by the FBI includes bolt action, pump action, single shot, and semi-automatic, as well as those the left describes as “assault weapons.” This means only a percentage of the 403 deaths attributed to “rifles” would have been carried out with an “assault weapon.”
There was no word on a leftist movement to ban knives and clubs. However, statisticians did note that 100% of rifle, knife and club deaths were perpetrated by human beings.
In related news, 74% of Democrats, but notably not Bill and Hillary Clinton, were in favor of banning assault prison bedsheets.
@Teve:
I think the only interesting exception is with political systems that look upon the country (and its people) as something they own and must therefore cultivate/exploit over generations. Terrible stuff, unless compared with rulers who don’t care about what happens after they leave the scene. And that is pretty much us today. The rich and poor agree that the end is coming, but they all seem to feel that they have the next move planned out, be it the Rapture, bunkers, or island paradises.
@Teve: My knees have never felt better than they do since I started running long distances.
I like running 5Ks too, but they’re an entirely different kind of race. There’s a lot less to keep track of. You just get out and run your ass off for 20-odd minutes (or less if you’re younger and faster than I am) and you’re done. It’s fun.
Most of the time the digestive issues with marathoners involved barfing rather than diarrhea, but one time I had to hit the porta-potty halfway through because I had recently dealt with a bout of salmonella and that stuff can stick around a while. Needless to say I did not do well that race, although I did eventually finish.
See this is interesting to me because being a science person I’ve actually gone to the literature and tried to determine if there was an answer to the question “Is running bad for your joints” and I get mixed information. It’s very frustrating. Some people say it helps their joints, some people blame it for their crippling arthritis, and the research is very mixed and unclear. I’ve seen research that said ultramarathoners have signs of artificially aged mitochondria, but I’m never going to run 100 miles in 48 hours or whatever so i’m less interested in that.
There seems to be some evidence that heel-striking causes joint problens, so I’ve been trying to adopt a mid-foot technique but it’s slow going and I can’t keep it up for long. So my 5k times are in the 50-min range.
Why are we all paying a tax to credit card companies
I really want a book/blog/podcast that explains the basics of currencies, but I haven’t found one yet.
@de stijl: I will look them up when I get home. I am currently on day 3 of school shopping (hell) in “civilization”. This is the song in my head right now. 😉
https://youtu.be/Vqbk9cDX0l0
@Teve:
Think of currency like time:
You can spend it, save it, invest it, waste it, and measure it, but no one really knows what it is.
@Teve: Re: currencies
I remember having read this some time ago. Perhaps it can help.
@Kit: I have a big broad curiosity of how currencies work, prompted by reading the Baroque Cycle years ago, but one of my minor reasons for wanting to understand currencies better, is so I can better make fun of a few of my young white male techie friends who swoon over bitcoin and who I make fun of on the regular, because bitcoin is such a horrible currency (mainly because of the built-in depreciation) that lately they’re pretending it was never really supposed to be a currency, it was just supposed to be a store of value.
@Teve: I don’t wish to pass myself off as an expert, but the two criticisms I would lay at bitcoin’s feet (?) would be: 1) that it has been a dreadful store of value (wild swings), and that its proof of work, while simply brilliant conceptually, has the unintended side effect of sucking a hell of a lot of electricity.
The built-in depreciation is almost certainly a good thing, but probably not enough of a good thing. Money supply should grow with the economy, otherwise capital sitting in a vault grows increasingly valuable. Unless you are sitting on capital, you don’t want that. And if you have debt, then you certainly don’t.
@Kit: I’m trying to do too many things at once and I screwed up. Built-in Deflation is what I meant. Once all the ‘coins’ are mined there aren’t any more. So the bitcoin supply can’t increase with the economy. So you get deflation, which blows donkeys. But there are lots of hysterical “NO UR RONG BITCOIN IS NOT DEFLATIONARY” rantings from the culties and at some point my amateur currency knowledge gets wobbly.
@Teve: No doubt the wide variation re: joints comes down to how different people just run…differently. But like you I haven’t been able to find much actual research. In my experience it’s about 99% anecdotal.
As far as form goes, these two things have helped me a great deal.
Scott Jurek’s tips on form in this video
It’s All in the Hips (Runner’s World)
@Teve: You might enjoy J. K. Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, where It Went. This is a reissue, the original was written at the height of inflation, hence the title. Very readable, and very funny. I haven’t read it in decades, but my recollection is such that it will have aged well in the intervening 40 plus years.
@gVOR08: ooo thanks that’s just the sort of thing i’m looking for.
@gVOR08: @Teve: What I would really like to read would be a history of money and finance that would at each stage describe the state of the world and how it was being held back, what innovation occurred, and how that innovation both helped and hindered. So, for example, coins would standardize weights, but would also lead to shaving and adulteration, which would themselves shape the world, and need to be dealt with in turn. Eventually, we would get to futures, and derivatives and swaps. Write me that book, Teve, and I promise to buy at least one copy.
@Kit: I’d like to buy that too.
@Teve: Once you write it, you can buy as many as you want. Promise!
There’s another topic that I’d absolutely love to see take the same approach: astronomy. Start with the basics that the sun and moon move and change. What did people think? And happened next? What were the theories? What could be explained and what could not? What was the next advance? A new observation? A new tool? An advance in mathematics? What did the next advance help with, and what did it hinder? For most of human history, we have gazed up at the stars, marveled, and created stories. How we have managed to squeeze out our current understanding of the universe from these cold unpromising points of light is nothing short of amazing! I’d really love to (better) understand the journey.
That guy in Las Vegas did use a hammer when he shot and killed 59 people. He used the hammer to break the windows so he could kill his victims with the arsenal of guns that he had stockpiled.
I just can’t figure out why he didn’t throw hammers at the crowd below to carry out his slaughter.
After all a hammer is the same as a gun.
@Guarneri: Come back when you can show us the statistics of mass killings by people wielding hammers and clubs. Is moving the goalposts hard or do you use a crane or something?
@Kit: Someone’s gotta have written a book on the history of Roman currency somewhere….I’ve been tempted to do an analysis of Roman and medieval application of the laws against counterfeiting and exactly how it was treated in the legal system. Because of the face of the emperor on the coins, counterfeiting was considered one of the versions of treason. Counterfeiting finally ended up being considered “petty treason” with all the other versions of treason ending up as “grand treason.”
(Anyway, back to Japanese. I passed the French test, wow, applause, so at least THAT’s completed.)
@Teve: Is it that they don’t recognize it or that they DGAF? Granted, some of them are credulous imbeciles, but I don’t see most of our trolls here as credulous types. (Of course, I could be wrong.)
@Teve: On the running thing. It’s always possible that you get different data because people have different circumstances. Case in point: a friend of mine from high school days discovered the joys of cross country running at about 15 or 16 and stayed with it through college–running cross country for the college he went to. Sometime in his junior or senior year, he went to the doctor complaining of leg pain. As I recall, the doctor told him that the bursa in his knees had started to erode and that he essentially had the joints of someone 30 or so years older than he was and needed to curtail/stop long distance running.
His is the only case like that I’ve ever heard of, though. Still, some people may have more fragile joints for whatever reason there would be. In my case, I’ve always had food allergies, but I’ve always thrown up when I ate foods I was seriously allergic to (peanuts and walnuts especially). Other people get shockey. The only time I had shock was when I took the same allergy injection twice by mistake. Maybe there are fewer “one answer” questions in science than we realize. (But I suspect you already knew that 🙂 .)
@grumpy realist:
As the French say: super!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
IDK, I haven’t pondered it much lately. Trump has failed to deliver basically everything he promised, economic growth way above 3%, booming coal and manufacturing, a health plan that covers everyone and is cheaper than Obamacare, etc, but he has delivered on one thing, being a dumb obnoxious racist asshole. So when someone is still supporting him in 2019 I just assume that’s who they are too.
The best exercise situation I ever had, I had a pass to UNC’s indoor climate-controlled Olympic-length pool. Though I currently live in Florida, the swimming situation here is terrible. 🙁
@Teve:
Which is–sort of–the definition of “currency.”
That’s awesome! I’m 5 months into using Duolingo to get an introduction to Italian. It’s not bad, I’ve made way more progress than I did with 2 years of college Spanish. The discussion boards are kinda fun. Saw a cute exchange the other day:
Person1: I don’t get it! The tips said Perdere means take, and Portare means take. But then I got the answer wrong. What’s the difference????
Person2: Perdere is when you take it off the table. Portare is when you take it to Atlanta.
😛
@Mister Bluster:
I stand corrected. 😛 Good to know.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Currency is often said to have 3 main functions: as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Bitcoin is terrible at the first two and nobody uses it for the third.
@Kit:
I think naked-eye astronomy may predate H. sapiens, which would make the earliest developments not only lost, but never documented.
Several ancient civilizations developed astronomy, mostly for religious purposes. Still, the writings of some Greek philosophers contain speculation and observation on astronomy, some of which is rather close to fact. And there’s Ptolemy’s infamous epicycles, used to explain the (apparent) retrograde motion of the planets.
But not everything is documented. As with the development of agriculture or writing, it happened in several places independent of each other, and at multiple times.
It’s only in more recent times that you find good documentation of developments, both in traditional astronomy and alter using telescopes. You can read about Tycho Brahe, Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Newton, etc. and their contributions to astronomy.
One interesting figure in the XIX Century is Urbain Le Verrier, the first person to infer the existence of a planet before anyone observed it directly.
I’ve been wanting to talk about the unbuilt Boeing 7J7.
The design was unusual in two ways:
1) It had a new type of jet engine called an unducted fan, which basically looks like a regular jet engine with two sets of counter-rotating propellers in the back. It was supposed to be both more efficient than turbofan engines, and quieter as well.
2) Boeing called it a twin-aisle narrow body. Seating would have been configured 2-2-2, with a 2-3-2 “high density” option.
Many regard the second point as a lost opportunity to improve short haul jet travel, as the plane never got built.
Except, in a way, it did.
Boeing did build the B767, but sold it as a conventional wide body for long haul flights. But the 767 had a fuselage width of 4.72 meters, vs the proposed 4.78 meters for the 7J7, with 2-3-2 seating. Essentially that’s the same interior.
True, the 767 was a long haul plane, while the 7J7 would have been used in shorter routes. That far, it was a missed opportunity. Twin-aisle planes are 1) more spacious, 2) faster for boarding and deplaning, 3) have more aisle seats. Twin aisle planes tend to be long haul wide bodies, like the 747, 777, 787, A330, A340, A350, etc. narrow body planes used in shorter flights are all single aisle, in a 3-3 configuration.
Now back to the first point. the explanations I’ve read conclude the unducted fan engine died a victim of lower oil prices in the mid-80s. IMO, that’s bunk. Not only have oil prices peaked rather high (remember $100+ per barrel not long ago?), but fuel has always been a concern for airlines. Even when oil is cheap, the biggest operational expense is fuel.
So either the regular turbofan engines have improved well past the gains in efficiency offered by the unducted fan, or the latter didn’t really deliver the speeds airlines and passengers expect from a jet aircraft.
The best bet for in flight improvement in short haul flight is the airbus A220, formerly known as the Bombardier C-Series. the interior is a 2-3 configuration, like that of the original 727 and DC-9, but with some added features. 1) slightly wider seats, 2) the middle seats are the widest, 3) large overhead bins, 4) a somewhat wider aisle, 5) reduced engine noise. It gets described often as a narrow body with wide body features.
Here’s another reason why health care probably shouldn’t be a for-profit industry…
@grumpy realist:
I’m not promising to buy that one, but give a shout once it hits the shelves 🙂