Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, April 2, 2023
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22 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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More light music for the weekend.
I’m tempted to say The Pastoral Symphony is Beethoven’s best work, but such things as “best” are subjective and dependent on individual tastes. So I’ll just say it’s my favorite of Beethoven’s works.
He is one evil SOB.
Mexico ditched daylight savings starting this year. it’s all standard time (with some exceptions), all year round.
So why did one of my phones and the PC skip ahead one hour on the first Sunday in April? I didn’t really notice until these clocks claimed it was around 7 am, and things were still pretty dark. My other phone claimed it was around 6 am.
I had to change the times manually, like a prehistoric savage 🙂
Dont complain. If you hurt your phone’s feelings it will stop working and then you will have to use a landline, just like the cavemen did.
Steve
I’ve long had a gut feeling that life in the city is no more dangerous than life in the suburbs or rural areas, and this study I stumbled across lends some credence to that. While it does show a higher rate of violent crime in the cities, it is not by as much as is often assumed. In 2013 it was 9.8 per 1000 in cities for men, and 7.8 for both suburban and rural areas. But I suspect this difference disappears or even reverses when you consider that “urban” lumps in truly horrendously violent places in the city.
@MarkedMan: I was driving across Kentucky four years ago doing the Bourbon Trail from distillery to distillery. I stopped for fuel on a remote section of highway. I went to pay inside, buy some pop, and use the bathroom. A young man with a backpack hustled into the bathroom ahead of me and locked the door. The clerk behind the counter told me that I would have to wait a while. In response to a quizzical look from me, the clerk pantomimed a injection into the arm. I was told that there was a buy site in what appeared to be an abandoned barn nearby, but the warm and heated gas station was a favored injection site. Judging by the overdose death rate, that southern Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia area is full of crime.
In about 13 hours, I start my trek to Seoul. I’ll be silent on her for the next 8-10 days (not that I expect anyone to either notice or care), but I expect to have some fun stories when I return.
The highlight of the week? The friend that invited me has booked us on a tour of the DMZ*. I have no clue what to expect, but I’m equal parts excited and nervous.
I’ve been to Seoul twice before, but I was in a quiet little neighborhood (apparently near a college, based on the people I saw), and had no clue about what to seek out (I was only there for a day or two each time). This time around, I’ve got a list of food to try as well as suggestions from friends and acquaintances.
I used to travel to a different country every 60 days (visa reset trips**), In the last 5 years I haven’t traveled more than an hour’s drive from my house–and I’ve only done that twice.
It’s going to be good to actually travel again.
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* This is one part of the trip that I have studiously refused to tell my 91-year-old mother about. I think she’s stressed out enough knowing I’m going to Asia (my six years in China were not easy on her, and she has a hard time separating China from the rest of Asia). I’m certainly not going to mention that I’ll be near mine fields. 😛
** I have an M (business) visa for China. It’s good for 10 years, but only 60 days at a time. So I would have to leave the country to reset the countdown. I could have, quite literally, walked through the customs exit into Hong Kong (a covered walkway across the narrow straight), turned around and walked back through the customs entry into China–5 minutes later–and been legal. But… it was a great excuse to visit another country for a day or two.
@Mu Yixiao: I took the DMZ tour. It’s great. Nothing to be nervous about at all. The only place you’ll see NKs is at the gift shop. They’ll be the ones selling stuff, not the ones buying.
(And if you get to go on a tour that includes lunch or dinner, let me know how it was. I was signed up for that one, but it was cancelled when the SK woman was accidentally killed/murdered/shot for spying [depending on which story you like best].)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That does NOT make me feel more comfortable!
News/stuff/zeitgeist report from Harper’s Index:
Factor by which the net worth of married couples 25-34 is greater than that of single households of the same age: 9
Factor by which this disparity has increased since 2010: 2
Percentage of Gen Z-ers who say they want the housing market to crash so they’ll be able to buy a home: 84 (Hmmm… I thought people were saying that Gen Zs just weren’t into owning property 🙁 )
Percentage increase since 2019 in the number of children who are UNvaccinated against polio: 19
Percentage of the top 25 box office hits of 1981 that were sequels, spin-offs, or remakes: 16
Of 2019: 80.
@MarkedMan:
It’s been said that the populations of urban blacks and rural whites (those living at the same level of poverty as urban blacks) are all but statistically indistinguishable. Very close to the same rates of drug addiction and crime, violent and otherwise.
@Mu Yixiao: But that event didn’t happen at the DMZ. It was at the Geumgang-san (mountain) reunions over a decade ago. (And we didn’t go to any of the places where the land mines are, so you don’t need to worry about that.)
@dazedandconfused: That statistic actually makes sense if one believes that economic desperation contributes to crime and drug/alcohol abuse and that poor people are more likely to see violence as a tool that can control/mitigate the behavior of others.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
There isn’t a crime-ridden rich neighborhood with which to contradict that theory.
Meanwhile, in Russia:
Prigozhin aligned Russian military propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky (a.k.a. Maxim Fomin) comes to messy end.
Tatarsky was presented with a statue which had a bomb hidden inside it at a celebratory meal
The place where the Street Food Bar, owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin until he “transferred” management in 2020.
And only 150 yards from Schmidt Embankment 7, location of Prigozhin’s main offices in St. Petersburg
Someone is sending a very blunt message.
The problem for outsiders is deciding who the sender is: Putin’s “inner council”; the FSB; Army Command; or the Ukrainians.
Prigozhin will know.
Maybe someone should ask him?
This map of average life expectancy in the US is eye-popping.
No European country i can think of has such regional variance. Indicate just how divergent US states, and regions, are.
But also the match-up to other regional variance indicators of various sort.
@dazedandconfused:
There are a few such neighborhoods in Chevy Chase, Potomac, etc.
I drove home from Pinedale on two different roads the other day, and the loss of life amongst the wildlife was devastating. The ravens, eagles, vultures and magpies are circling in swarms of hundreds all around the tops of the hills and the draws where the animals are dead and dying. I saw at least 4 antelope right by the side of the highway, barely alive. A Game and Fish truck doing autopsies on the tailgate. It’s sad as hell. This snow will not melt off fast enough to expose fresh feed that might save them.
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/03/30/gordon-calls-emergency-meeting-to-discuss-wildlife-starvation-1000s-of-pinedale-area-deer-expected-to-die/
@dazedandconfused: I suppose there probably is, which is why I list poverty/desperation as contributing factors to the conditions described rather than as the primary causes of such issues.
On the other hand, it’s certainly possible that poor and black people are simply inferior. That idea has held sway at various times and places in history and is certainly due for a comeback. The return of the guilded age provides an excellent opportunity.
@JohnSF: it’s always exciting when you can see the Mason-Dixon Line in these maps.
Childhood poverty, teenage pregnancy, literacy rates, syphillis… you can almost always detect the Confederacy.
This, however, is my favorite.
https://twitter.com/TerribleMaps/status/1642198623193628674?s=20
@dazedandconfused: Given the many, many differences between how whites and Blacks are treated in the criminal justice system, as well as countless other differences involving the structure of communities and families (how many Black men are in jail?), I would be genuinely surprised if the crime and addiction rates were really the same.
There are just a lot of uncontrolled variables — lead levels, number of interactions with police, access to livestock, corner stores vs. Walmarts, etc. That they would either have no effect or cancel each other out is a little absurd.
@Kathy:
Depending on my mood, “my favorite symphony” could be any of:
Mozart #40
Beethoven #5
Beethoven #6
Beethoven #7
Beethoven #9
Mendelssohn #4 (“Italian”)
Brahms #3
Dvorak #9 (“From the New World”)
Saint-Saens #3 (“Organ”)
Rimsky-Korsakov, Sheherazade*
…but yes, Beethoven’s 6th was the first to really catch my interest. I thought its use in the movie Soylent Green was extremely effective.
*He didn’t label it a “symphony” but the structure is there — four movements, the first and last relatively up-tempo, the third in triple meter, the second slow, sonata form…