Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, April 23, 2022
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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).
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Comments on another thread got me thinking about the concept of class (as opposed to income level). I don’t really have a good personal definition for how I view this, but I know it when I see it. I can say my view is nothing like my older Irish relatives, to whom class was something primarily born into, although to a lesser extent it was also dependent on income and current profession. To me, class is earned, and it can be held by people in any geographic area or income level or personal circumstances. And the contrawise holds true too: low class people can also come from anywhere.
@MarkedMan:
Before you begin putting people into a class, you need to define just what class is and that is mostly cultural. In the US, we’ve borrowed liberally from the British definition. While we’re in agreement that class, is something earned, that isn’t the popular view.
@MarkedMan:
Well, not to annoy Lounsbury (oh, hell, why not), but Donald Trump is a perfect example of someone born with all the material advantages who chose to grow up to be a vulgar lout?
And, for the obverse, didn’t Thomas Jefferson speak of the “natural aristocrat,” some born into humble circumstances who has the innate characteristics of a gentleman?
Some good news to start the wkend with: Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error.
Cause:
Effect:
via Arwa Mahdawi, comes this little gem:
See? He’s not that rich. In fact, he’s sleeping on somebody’s couch!
So I broke down and got hearing aids, more for my wife than for me. These are the super ultra deluxe models, with many different profiles that switch automatically depending on where you are. I’ve had them for two weeks and at first kinda sorta thought they were helping, but have gradually concluded that yes they are, definitely, but in a assistive rather than assertive way. They don’t make voices louder, just clearer. And then last night I met my wife, daughter and her girlfriend at a super loud restaurant in Manhattan. The music was loud-ish, but the voices were overwhelming, with the place packed full of highly animated young people absolutely delighted to be alive and out and about. In this type of environment I have long ago resigned myself to being the silent observer at the table because of the struggle to separate the sounds. I can hear things, but they all overlap. And this isn’t recent, it’s happened since I was 18 years old hitting the college bars.
As I waited for my party to arrive, I realized I could isolate voices across the frigging room! And the whole sonic scene changed. Rather than a wall of sound, a featureless cacophony, the room was full of dozens of individual conversations. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t easy to understand, but at one point I focused for a minute on a woman five tables away, facing me, and I could make out maybe 30-40% of what she was saying. Normally I don’t do much better than that for people at my table! And when my party showed up I had a normal conversation the whole time. Astounding. Revelatory.
“We can rebuild him. We can make him better than before.”
Religious devotees participate in the procession of the desolata. Processions and events of holy week have returned to Italy after the easing of Covid restrictions
There’s one in every crowd.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Dern individuals.
The state of the NH Senate race.
The article doesn’t mention the exploding scandal around the Sununu Youth Services Center, named for the Gov’s father, John. It seems for decades the reform school has been a hive of child abuse, both physical and sexual. In the past when the abuse was to be uncovered, it got papered over and the issues made to go away. That ended when a freshman state Rep, who had been a resident at the school, dropped a bombshell in a committee hearing. Since then a number of former residents have come forward and lawsuits filed.
It is hard to say how this will effect the Senate race, but to note, Hassan is a former governor and held the office prior to Sununu.
@MarkedMan:
When I got mine a couple of years ago, the audiologist made a point of telling me early on, “We’re not giving you back your 25-year-old hearing. We’re swapping one set of impairments for a different, hopefully more useful, set of impairments.” Still, they are doing some rather remarkable things with signal processing these days.
@Michael Cain: When I first looked into them about five years ago I got the impression there were big trade offs, but I think things have progressed very rapidly. My suspicion is that it’s all about what is generically called artificial intelligence. My presumption is that I’m the beneficiary of hundreds of subjects “teaching” a machine learning system what is preferred in various environments.
I was told by a friend that the best way to use hearing aids is to start using them BEFORE your hearing goes to complete crap, so you learn how to use the signal information coming in and get used to what words sound like. A lot of the seeming loss in mental facilities in older people isn’t a true loss; it’s that their mental RAM is tied up with interpreting the sounds they hear and there is very little bandwidth left to deal with the meaning of what has been said. (We’ve noticed this with the mother of a friend of mine–her “mental acuity” got much better after we kept insisting she wear her hearing aid all the time.)
Man dies after setting himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court, police say
@JohnSF (from yesterday): My apologies, I completely zoned on the fact of an Audi R-5 (really an RS-5, so completely different 😉 ). Probably because the first year of production for Audi’s with 5’s was 2013. Mine was a Renault–either ’78 or ’79, can’t remember which. Fun car, but quirky. Never figured out why the distributor point insulator was an add-on ring of laminated fiber rather than a built-in rubber grommet, tho. 🙁
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I thought the timescale indicated Renault, but… 🙂
Funny thing is, I’ve always been interested in cars in a rather abstract sort of way, due to family.
My father being a productiona manager with Rootes who then became Chrysler UK, then moved to BL/AustinRover/Rover Group.
But I didn’t pass my test and get a car till the tail end of the 1980’s.
Partly due to having been in London for some time, where a car is more a nuisance than an asset, partly due to being stony broke LOL.
Funnily enough, when buying the first one, I was very tempted by an old Jaguar X.
Until Dad advised me thusly:
“Son, don’t be bloody stupid.”
So I got a Fiat Strada TC instead.
Which was almost as stupid, LOL.
But fun.
@OzarkHillbilly: Yay! Good news indeed! Maybe only significant amounts, rather than all, is lost. Maybe some of it can be recovered, too.
@OzarkHillbilly: “ETA: forgot to add this: But Hagel apparently has not asked why he was so willing to be swayed by big oil when there was no shortage of scientists, including prominent Nasa researchers, telling him and other political leaders the truth.”
THIS! “I was mislead” as often as not really means “I chose to believe something I suspected was wrong but fit my worldview better.” We usually mislead ourselves.
@MarkedMan: WA! What brand did you buy? The effect you describe has been called “cocktail party effect” and is difficult to overcome. None of the hearing aids I’ve ever used (about 15 years so far) have ever performed as you described. They might not work the same for me (I’m completely deaf in one ear), but I’d be willing to give them a shot.
@grumpy realist: Indeed. One of the things that I have to remind students of sometimes is that because I’m hard of hearing and use a hearing aid (only one ear can benefit as I mentioned above), they sometimes (actually pretty often) speak faster than I can process (hear).
@JohnSF: In the US, some say that FIAT (which, IIRC, actually is an acronym) stands for Fix It Again, Tony.
@MarkedMan:
Early in the pandemic when people said “there are zero downsides to masks”, I countered with “hidden deafness”. Hearing tests are conducted in very controlled situations where the patient is wearing headphones and there are zero other sounds. It doesn’t test anything like real-life situations.
“Hidden deafness” is real. I have it–as, it seems, do you. If there’s any background noise, I have to look at a person’s mouth to fill in the blanks and figure out what they’re saying. I’m in my mid 50’s and I can still hear “video whine” (that super-high-frequency tone that comes from CRTs and other tube-driven devices). That’s the first thing to go as we age, and I should have lost that range a while ago. I can also hear very very quiet sounds–if there’s no other noise. So my sensitivity is still very good. However….
I have never been able to distinguish a voice from background noise. I can’t count the number of times that I got hit while driving in a car because my (at the time) girlfriend got pissed off that I “wasn’t listening”, when the truth was I didn’t know she was speaking.
A couple years ago, I noticed that I couldn’t distinguish voices on TV shows or in movies. I thought my hearing was finally failing. But the fact that I could still hear things that others my age couldn’t threw me for a loop. So I did some googling, and found out that the audio editing of TV shows and movies has significantly changed in the past few decades, and those changes de-emphasize the 1KHz range–which is where the human voice is centered–in order to emphasize the bass (big explosions) and high-end (“pew pew” from space blasters).
When I go to the cinema, the volume is painful, the bass is overwhelming, and I can’t understand what anyone is saying. It’s one of the reasons it’s likely that I’ll never see a movie in a cinema again.
I… can only imagine. Like you; any situation with significant background noise, I resign myself to “being deaf because of the noise”.
Please share the make & model of your hearing aids, and your ongoing experience with them. I’m not quite ready to take that step (because I don’t interact with groups), but I’m sure that there are plenty of people here (including me, eventually) who would love to hear* your reactions and recommendations.
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* No pun intended. Didn’t catch that until I’d finished typing it.
Chicago Cubs shutout Pittsburgh Pirates today by 3 touchdowns and 3 extra points, 21-0.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, FIAT is an acronym, something or other automobiles Turin, IIRC.
Always reckoned the Pope should drive a Fiat Lux 😉
Actually, the Strada was very reliable, apart from needing a bit of fiddling with the carbs, until it began to succumb to rust.
And a hoot to drive; could challenge a lot of sports cars on a twisty road; though over about 65 it’s skateboardish suspension made it a rather sub-optimal cruiser.
For comfort, the next car, a Renault 25, was far better. But nowhere near as quick in the squiggly bits.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yeah, FIAT is an acronym, something or other automobiles Turin, IIRC.
Joke time:
Q: Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene so angry?
A: Madison Cawthorn won’t return her underwear.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I suspect there are a bunch of use anxiously awaiting an answer .
I plan to see my first audiologist as soon as I can get an appointment !
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Either “Fix it again, Tony” or “Feeble Italian Attempt at Transportation.”
When I got into the rave scene last year or so, one of the things I did was listen to the children (20 year olds) and get myself a pair of ear plugs. So got myself a pair of Eargasam plugs.
I’m so glad I did. They don’t really block any of the music, but they block all the crowd noise unless it’s a roar. It’s also nice to be in front of a speaker with the bass so powerful it rearranges my atoms and then wake up the next day without any ringing in my ears. In the long run I’m screwed anyways because of my 20’s, but at least this will preserve a bit of my hearing for a bit.
@CSK:
Feeble? Pfui!
Tell that to the BMW driver I burned off in the Cotswolds in Spring 1995. (I think)
🙂
@CSK:
Lovely FIAT!
I will defend you against all deprecation!
@JohnSF: @JohnSF:
Okay, okay. Relax, dude. 🙂
@JohnSF: Fabbrica Italiana Automobili di Torino (or as Wikipedia notes, literally Italian Automobile Factory in Turin).
@CSK: I’ve never heard your version until now. Probably because it’s too highbrow for the types of people I hung with back in the hood. 😉
@JohnSF: A picture of a car with the top coat flaking off? Really?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Are you suggesting I’m one of those snooty New Englanders?
@Mu Yixiao:
Hearing loss and tinnitus are no joke and contribute to unidentified but significant issues in many people’s lives.
I spent several years working for a workers’ compensation (W/C) attorney on the claimant (injured worker) side. A common case was hearing loss. Many of the clients were males over 50, with a history of working in industrial settings. On examination, there was a marked “notch” in their hearing. I don’t remember the exact Hz range, but it coincided with most women’s and children’s voices. A frequent comment was that their spouses made them get a hearing test because they were unresponsive to voices at home. My grandfather had the same issue, but in the 60’s this was unknown.
My personal hearing loss is age/chemo related, plus way too much head banging music when the drummer sat in front of the amps, and weapons in enclosed spaces.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
is there any aging Italian car that doesn’t have flaking topcoat paint? Not counting the trailer/garage queens?
IIRC, your Lancia had a vinyl roof to protect it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think that’s just reflections.
Then again, maybe not. LOL.
Anyhoo, better than them American cars that go fast in straight line, then get all confused when they come to a bend. 🙂
@Sleeping Dog: How dare they! I love that pic.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Ooh, Lancia!
What model?
I have major lust for the Delta Integrale.
(The basic chassis/suspension was actually pretty close originally to the Strada; but the Lancia guys took it to 11 with 4wd and the 2litre turbo version of the engine)
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I’ve had the “voice-range” issue all my life. The former girlfriend who would hit me in the car? That was in high school and early college. I was 18-19 years old.
Conversely, when I went to the Milwaukee Museum of Art in college, there were rooms I couldn’t enter because the video whine from the cameras (!) was so intense that it was painful to stand in the room.
Tinnitus? Yep. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt*. I just ignore it. (It’s in my right ear as I type this).
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* Wait… is there a fun T-shirt for tinnitus? I’d buy one of those (and I don’t wear t-shirts).
@Just nutha ignint cracker: We hear what we want to hear. Nobody is immune to that very human trait.
@Mister Bluster: somebody should tell them it’s baseball. 🙂
@JohnSF:
It was a Beta Coupe. If memory serves, it was the poster car for Lancia being Italian for “unreliable but sexy Fiat.” But damn, us swinging bachelors looked cool when Cracker was driving us around.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’ll look them up when I get back to my hotel. I know they are Uniteon but I can’t remember the model