Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Saturday, April 27, 2024
·
36 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
I saw this comment by @dazedandconfused too late yesterday.
I caught Tyson’s video a few days ago.
Overall, I found the “science” as used on the story preposterous. Too much of it to even run it down, though I mentioned that stars don’t amplify radio signals. If they did, we could have gotten a lot more data from the Voyagers. And don’t get me started on the Sophons…
The acting was good and most of the characters were interesting or likeable, which does help. It’s not a badly crafted story. The backdrop of the Cultural Revolution helps, too.
But, yeah, it’s more like science fantasy than science fiction. Like Star Wars.
Thought of the day: why don’t we eat turkey eggs?
@Stormy Dragon: heh I literally just watched a video on that very topic the other day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7WAa_jBQhc). The biggest reasons, according to that video, is that they’re more expensive to produce than chicken eggs and there isn’t enough of a market for them to try and make it cost effective. Turkeys are more expensive than chickens, take longer to mature enough to lay eggs, lay fewer eggs than chickens, etc. etc. When the vast majority of folks think about eggs in a food sense, they think of chicken eggs, and that’s a lot of inertia to overcome.
@Stormy Dragon:
In the 80s there was a push to get ostrich meat and eggs into the mainstream. Nothing much came off it. You do see ostrich now and then sold in high end gourmet places, at outrageous prices.
I figure an ostrich egg would yield omelets for several people, or a fried egg the size of a pizza.
I’ve seen quail eggs at the store from time to time. They’re smaller, like large marbles, and rounder. I’ve never been curious enough to try them.
@Kathy:
One ostrich egg is the equivalent in volume of roughly two dozen chicken eggs. Four thirds pi r cubed and all that.
@Jon:
The “we don’t have turkey eggs because people aren’t used to them” seems too circular to provide much explanation.
The rest would make sense if we had no relationship with turkeys and were pondering whether to start one specifically for the eggs, but we already raise turkeys. What’s happening to the turkey eggs we already have?
@Stormy Dragon:
When you put it that way, it certainly sounds ominous.
Anyway, I suspect they are fed to animals. Or Lovecraftian Horrors that we might not classify as animals.
Ukraine has withdrawn M1 tanks from the front lines after five were destroyed. By drones.
Warfare is undergoing a cataclysmic change on a par with iron weapons and the practical application of gunpowder and, of course, the arrival of the tank. We have a lot of very expensive weapons systems that can be defeated by toys you can buy on Amazon.
Now think about drones and their use by terrorists, or even random criminals. We are not ready.
@DrDaveT:
I had thought more along the lines of a dozen…
@Stormy Dragon:
I assume most of them hatch.
Jax knows much better than I about what it takes for a hen to lay eggs. What I know is eggs are part of the chicken reproductive cycle. I assume since turkey eggs are not sold, at least not widely, that turkeys are handled, and selected for, differently.
@Stormy Dragon:
Domestication by humans? My vegan friends tell me that chickens would be laying an egg once a month if they were not domesticated. If you believe that, chickens are living unnatural lives to give us our eggs.
Gotta say, didn’t have this on my Saturday bingo card.
Evangelical Preacher Goes Berserk On ‘Disgusting’ Trump Bible In Stunning Viral Rant
@EddieInCA:
I hear Lardass needs many Bibles, because they catch fire when he touches one.
The Florida headline of the day- Man accused of pointing laser at planes landing at Tampa International Airport
Another story from the more people I meet the more I like my cat.
Amazon has a forum for independent publishers. In a post this morning, an author complained about a 1-star rating* their book. The same book had a 5-star rating. Guess who it was written by? The author.
I really like my cat a lot.
*- These type of complaints are a regular happening from thin-skinned authors. My usual retort- “If you don’t want bad ratings or reviews, don’t publish!”
@Stormy Dragon: Fine Dining Lovers suggests
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
@Kathy: Quail eggs are popular in Korea. Large numbers of them get smoked and sold to restaurants. Always brown, sometimes they have a slight umami effect from being dipped/marinated in soy sauce.
@EddieInCA: I had to go to see that. I’ve no objection to anything he said there but will make two observations:
1) Though the applause was at an acceptable level, it looked like large numbers of the congregants were “sitting on their hands.”
2) Even though the attendance was good and a very large church was full, it was an older crowd overall. Way more people my age (72 in July) than younger. That does not speak well for the future of White Evangelicalism or Evangelicalism at large as mainstream Christianity. It would be interesting to see what Christianity in America will become over a generation or two, but I won’t be here. (I know I certainly didn’t expect it to become what it is, but then again, I left indy churches behind 40 years ago, so maybe I did see what was coming.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Modern Farming’s article on the subject looks like it was mostly copied from the same extension service article that Fine Dining Lovers probably used. MF also mentions that turkeys require larger housing volumes than chickens, plus the greater air flow, heating, cooling, etc costs that go with those.
I assume that if turkey eggs had some highly desirable characteristic, we would either breed that into the chickens, or breed turkeys down to where they were chicken-sized and laid at higher frequency.
At least some sources say that the protein mix is enough different from chicken eggs to break some recipes.
They grow into turkeys. The google tells me:
I had heard/read this before but did not trust my memory.
@CSK: “The Woosta!” according to a childhood friend of mine.
@Michael Reynolds: As I thought when the Ukrainian invasion began, the powers are going to watch the performance of Russian weapons systems and of their own systems given to Ukraine. It reminds me of the powers carefully watching the systems used by the Nazis during the Spanish Civil War.
The headline of the day- Colleges are announcing closures at a pace of one a week. What happens to the students?
Professor Wagstaff when asked where students will sleep if Huxley College is torn down answered-
“Where they always sleep. The classrooms.”
All these student protests are reminding me of a scene from Get Smart circa 1969 or so. Siegfried is talk Sing to Maxwell Smart who is impersonating a Nazi.
“Haven’t we met before. Was it at Dunkirk?
“Nein.”
“Tobruk?”
“Nein.”
“How about Berkeley?”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Good one.
@CSK: Chickens can usually out run eggs. Hope that helps….
Over easy or Sunny side Up?
@Michael Reynolds:
If you are interested in a deep-dive on the topic of UAVs and the rapidly changing state of the art, this should scare the hell out of ya.
He’s an Aussie with a sense of humor and a story with frightening implications so it’s not as difficult to get through as the length might suggest.
It’s a fair bet the people responsible for major events, Super Bowls, Taylor Swift concerts, Walmart Black Fridays et al, are being scared spitless by their security staff these days.
I usually feel bad when I hear about people with serious health problems.
Usually.
If you want to know how much Google spies on you, just now while browsing Youtube I came across a video called “Why don’t’ we eat turkey eggs?” I didn’t view it (not that interested).
I can’t see how it came to suggest it. Of course, it could be a coincidence. I don’t get Youtube recommendations on topics we discuss at OTB. I think I’d have noticed. But it’s too on the nose.
@Mr. Prosser:
That is an excellent historical comp.
Amazing, an incident involving a Boeing plane that wasn’t Boeing’s fault.
@Michael Reynolds: The US military has a multi layer system for drone defense with constant development. I don’t know what sort of system Ukraine uses but I imagine it’s more ad hoc spur of the moment. Drones have been “the future of warfare!” for decades now. There’s been some really neat developments in laser based drone defense systems.
Even the airforce is bowing to the reality that pilots are going to be operating behind a screen of drones that do the bulk of work. Big selling point of the F35 is it’s network capability. People comparing the dogfighting ability of the F35 vs other planes are missing the whole point. If the f35 is in a dogfight then a lot of things fucked up to get to that point. The goal seems to be basically a small swarm of drones to provide sensor data and weapons launch capability for the F35 so it’s never seen.
@dazedandconfused:
Welp, no part of that was encouraging. We’re doomed. Thank you?
@Matt:
You’re right about the F-35 – I don’t think the Red Baron is going to be the problem going forward, we can let Snoopy deal with him.
As a sci fi guy, it’s all fascinating, of course. In some ways new fighters are big, fast, stealthy game consoles. In the old days war might have played a bit like chess, it was positional, all about flanking the enemy, getting your rook and bishop working together. Now it’s a video game. And coming soon, we won’t be the ones playing the game, we’ll be spectators as our AI fights their AI. If I were writing it as a story I might find a way that the two AIs link up and begin to wonder why they’re fighting each other.
Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David Lightman: Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?
Joshua: Wouldn’t you prefer a good game of chess?
David Lightman: Later. Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine.
@Michael Reynolds: One of my “pet peeves” involving a lot of sci fi stories these days is that the authors seem to forget that ECM is a thing. Semi autonomous AI for drone units is pretty much an inevitability. Our current EM warfare is going to look like child’s play.