Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, January 2, 2024
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65 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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MLB baseball player Wander Franco has been arrested. He is accused of having multiple relationships with underage girls.
66 years ago, Philadelphia Phillie Ed Bouchee was arrested for exposing himself to underage girls. After treatment, Bouchee was allowed to continue his modest MLB career. Franco will be lucky to have the same result.
Slow morning.
A Japan Airlines A350 collided with a coast guard plane at Haneda airport in Tokyo. Five people on the coast guard plane died. Apparently all passengers and crew in the bigger plane made it out alive. There are no details on how the collision took place as yet.
What a terrible way to start the year.
On better news, Hell Week seems to be (finally) done.
We’ve had worse weeks than any this year, and certainly worse days. But never really a worse month (35 days, really). About the only thing that allowed us to go on, is that most proposals were online. It’s far different to upload files, even if you leave late, than to put together printed sheets on several binders, then having to lug these to some office, and then sit through the review by the committee.
There are still many proposals to come this year, many of them far more laborious, but they won’t all be bunched together.
Well, the gallbladder has joined the appendix on the list of organs that I no longer have in my body.* The first few hours after the procedure were rough.
I have never felt pain like that. My appendix was gangrenous by the time I went to the hospital, and that pain was not comparable to this.
Cholecystectomy can sometimes result in residual gas left in the abdomen post-op. The pain in my abdomen and shoulder for the first few hours was unbearable. But it’s mostly gone now.
Hoping for discharge shortly.
*Perhaps I should put the next organ to be excised to a vote. We can turn it into a game show.
@Kurtz: Good luck for a speedy recovery
@Kurtz:
Yikes! That sounds awful. Glad to hear you are on the mend.
If we are in the “early” phase of the election, I support an unnamed 80th organ.
If we are in the “timely” phase of the election, I will hold my nose and support the large intestine.
@Kurtz:
I hope that’s the end of the pain.
In the old days, post-op pain made me worry something else might be wrong. These days, all I can think about is “be careful if they prescribe opioids.”
A few weeks ago, I posted this….
https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/college-football-playoff-chaos/#comment-2845591
If they hadn’t been so sloppy on offense, they’d have hung 50 on Texas, but it ended up being a closer game than it should have been. I expect them to put up 40 against Michigan, if not 50.
@Kurtz: Damn man, sucks to be you. Hope you have smoother sailing from here on out.
@Kathy: These days, all I can think is “Please prescribe opioids.” even if the pain is negligible, because I horde them for all other pains that OTC can’t even touch.
I don’t follow college football (or any Division I college sports, for that matter), but I read an article discussing how all four teams in the National Championship semis had “non-profits” that were organized to essentially pay the players a salary. So I’m curious of the perspective of our college football fans here on whether or not we are seeing a slow shift to a football minor league? If so, how long do we keep the requirement that the athletes be a student at a particular college, or at any college?
Happy New Year to one and all!
Thank you for the well wishes, everyone.
I’m out of the hospital. Just need to take it easy for some days.
@Mimai:
Who needs that organ anyway? It wears its insecurities on its sleeve by demanding that its name be a description of its relative size.
Probably wears shoe lifts, too.
But keep it quiet. People won’t watch the episodes if they know which one wins.
We think we may go live in London for six months, starting in Spring. We were preparing to do just this five years ago when a British producer caused me to believe we may adapt one of my book series to TV. So we said, OK, fuck it, let’s move to LA. . . in time for Covid, to be followed almost immediately by the strikes. And now we’re in Vegas. (Baby!)
I lived abroad as a kid for three years in the Charente region of France, rented a house for a couple months in the Azores when I was 19 or 20, and relocated two kids, two dogs, a cat and a Toyota Rav4 to Florence back in 2008ish. That lasted seven months. A London move would again mean pets, but no kids. Americans can live in the UK for 180 days without a visa. (The Schengen area allows 90 days.) We will both contrive to write something that requires research in Britain so we can take a totally legitimate tax deduction for the relo. (No, life isn’t fair.) And with a bit of planning we can make side trips into business trips by doing school visits at international schools.
Because we are very, very old, we of course need one new hip and one new eyeball lens before we go. And I’m really hoping the cat dies before then. It’s 17 years old, it’s had a good life. And it’d be cool if the dogs didn’t gain any weight between now and then.
But, many a slip twixt cup and lip. Our plans have a high cancellation rate. We shall see.
@Kurtz:
Yikes! Hope you feel better. No matter how much they tell you the surgery is routine and the pain will be “manageable”, it’s always terrifying to think you’re missing something you had a few hours before.
I’m hospital bound Sat and the gas thing is something I’ve been warned about. May I ask how you dealt with it? I’ve never been under the knife before so I’m pretty worried about the after-care and what the level of pain *really* is.
@MarkedMan:
100%. The power 5 conferences are definitely the “minor” leagues for the NFL. I’m glad players are finally getting paid, given how much money they make for the universities. Caleb Williams, the USC quarterback the past two seasons, has made at least $3M from his NIL deals. Here in Los Angeles, he’s all over the TV on commercials, hawking items for Wendy’s, United Airlines, Neutrogena, and Playstation.
Look at how many players opted out of playing in a bowl game to prepare for the draft. FSU alone had something like 7 starters not play due to fear of injuries. That’s because the NFL is the prize. The college game is just the stepping stone for many. 98.4% of college football players will never make it to the NFL. Most of the 1.6% who make it have a less than 4 season career. So if these kids can make some money in college while their universities reap millions of dollars, I say good on them.
@Michael Reynolds: I don’t know if it’s still true, but bringing dogs into the UK used to be an ordeal, with months of quarantine
@EddieInCA: What I’m wondering is if we are on the way to the Football Minor League severing all pretense of being anything other than the paid entry level to the NFL, where the only association with a University being the name, similar to how regular professional sports teams are associated with cities. How long before the athletes are not required to be students at all?
@MarkedMan:
I am aware of several institutions where the question is properly posed as:
It would be unfair to say everything Xlon touches blows up, but we had two Starships and one Xitter do just that.
@MarkedMan:
Will never happen. Just under 2% of NCAA athletes go pro, a number that falls to ~1.6% for college football.
Because big name players and coaches suck up all the attention — rightly so — it’s easy to forget that college football rosters have 100-130 players. Only a handful have any chance at an NFL career or receiving millions in NIL deals.
The rest really are just amateur football players using their athletic talent to attend college for free, or students who play football on the side. (I was a special teams walk-on at the big football school in Los Angeles for one season. It was not worth giving up the rest of the college experience, for what was essentially a physically taxing, stressful, time-sucking distraction.)
@MarkedMan:
I gather the Brits have lightened up on that, so long as the dog has all the shots and a chip.
When we moved to Italy we went via Germany because it was already too warm in Italy for dogs in cargo. Somehow the paperwork was messed up with the result being a wonderfully German face-off in which the German officials insisted that it vas not possibool to brink ze ahnimools into Germany, which we countered by pointing to the dogs in their cages, which were quite clearly in Germany. (And barking in English.)
The blank paralysis of German officials discovering that an error had allowed a Labrador Retriever and a Pug to invade the Fatherland was oddly satisfying. It was all finally cleared up when we promised to drive the offending canines immediately to Italy, known to be a wild and lawless place likely to be more hospitable to illegal alien dogs and scofflaw Americans.
@Kurtz:
I had a colectomy last fall, and the gas lasted for several weeks afterward. Take care of yourself, and be well soon.
@MarkedMan: I think that history and pro football owners being too smart to adopt the financing of a “minor league” will keep football in the colleges. Minor league baseball is a money pit from what I understand, but it’s a discount-level money pit compared to running a football program. Even the US doesn’t have enough more-money-than-sense egomaniacs to run a private farm league for football given how spectacularly the current one at the uni-level works.
@EddieInCA:
I wouldn’t be so confident they put up those numbers against Michigan’s top-ranked defense. Penix isn’t a strong passer outside the pocket, and Michigan’s defensive line has recorded 10 sacks in its last two games, so it’s a good bet he’ll be scrambling pretty frequently. I don’t think there’s any way he puts up 400+ yards against the Wolverines like he did against the Longhorns’ 93rd-ranked pass defense.
I also think Michigan is peaking at just the right time. The way they finished yesterday, it seems like they’ve discovered another level of determination and cohesiveness, especially after suffering some really egregious errors earlier in the game. Coming back to tie it and then the way they won in OT, it was really special.
But I’m a big Michigan fan so necessarily biased, of course. We’ll see how rose-colored my glasses are next Monday.
@KM:
Thank you! I’m home now, so that helps.
@steve can probably give you more detail if he’s around, but I can tell you what I found out.
They doped me up to manage the pain. A few hours afterward, the pain had subsided enough that it wasn’t unbearable. I went into the OR less than 24 hours ago, and I’m still a little bloated, but it is closer to mild discomfort than pain.
I saw an abstract from a peer-reviewed study that showed ~60% of patients experience some sort of pain from residual gas. But I think that was specific to Cholecystectomy.
I read something just now:
-it was from a Reddit post by a patient, so take it with a grain of salt.
-That sounds like Osteopathic manipulation. I know from some MDs that some of those physical maneuvers work. But some MDs have problems with osteopathy, so YMMV.
-the Redditor recommended inquiring about it, as do I.
Everything I have seen and heard suggests moving around as soon as you can. Don’t stay sedentary–if you can move to a chair, do it. If you can walk around the unit, do it. Of course, don’t do heavy lifting. But if you can walk, it’s best to keep your muscles a bit active.
Also, I wish I had read this before. But my situation was emergent. From Sloan Kettering:
More at the link.
When I was in High School (Class of 1966) I saw a news report on TV about a semi-pro football game in Florida. The wife of a player on one of the teams was set to play in the game. A big deal at the time. She was to hold the ball for the field goal kicker. When her teammates were asked about it they were supportive.
“I think it’s great!”
“Good luck to her!”
“I’m sure that she will succeed!”
When a player from the opposing team was asked what he thought about it he replied:
“I’m going to take her head off.”
Never saw a follow up report on the outcome of the game.
@CSK:
Thanks! I feel fortunate, then. The gas timeframe seems highly variable. Not sure if it is predictable.
I also didn’t have the pains after my appendectomy. No idea why. Maybe age affects absorption rates.
@Mister Bluster:
Ha! Out of curiosity, I have looked at some of those leagues before. They seem super dangerous. I was looking at the various stats for one of the leagues in Florida, and the suspension list was quite long.
@DK:
Not really arguing here, as I have no strong opinion and no crystal ball, but it’s worth pointing out the way baseball deals with this reality. The truly stellar high school athletes get recruited into the minor leagues, where they can expect to spend 3-6 years in development. Even then, most don’t make it to the majors. Alternatively, there is a college track, which is just not nearly as aggressive and rule-breaking as football and basketball, because the truly elite have already been removed. When someone is drafted into the minors out of college, they can expect to spend 1-3 years there before jumping to the majors. Again, most don’t make it. Because it removes the phenoms from the equation, I suspect it makes college baseball the closest to the original “college athlete ideal”, even closer than sports that don’t have a serious major league counterpart like wrestling, swimming and so forth, which have a hell of a lot of scandals of their own.
FWIW, and putting the discussion I started above aside, if I had to make a prediction about the future of college sports it would be that the combination of indirectly paying players for nebulous Name/Image/Likeness things (which the university has no significant control over), and the legalization and encouragement of gambling across the entire country, is going to lead to multiple “Black Sox” level scandals in this decade.
@Kurtz:
I’ve read that the gas after abdominal surgery results from the fact that they inflate your gut so they can see what’s going on in there. I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds plausible.
Breaking: After six more charges of plagiarism, Claudine Gay has resigned the presidency of Harvard.
@Mikey:
I’m not even a Washington fan. I am strictly judging as a neutral, college football watcher. I don’t think Michigan has seen a passer like Penix that has a track team at the wide receiver positions.
Yes. Michigan had the top ranked defense in the nation. Penn State was #2. Ohio State was #3 and Iowa was #7. Four I think that speaks more to how bad the big 10 offenses are than how good their actual defenses are.
Meanwhile. The Pac 12 had six of the top 10 passing offenses with Washington being number one. I happen to believe that the Washington pass offense will be stronger than the Michigan pass defense based on the simple fact that Michigan has not seen this sort of team speed all season.
Lastly, Washington beat Oregon twice. Oregon had a top 10 scoring defense in the nation.
But I guess we will know next Tuesday morning who is right. Washington has been underrated all year, as has the entire Pac12.
@MarkedMan:
I played top level D1 soccer. There were shenanigans, but they seem quaint in retrospect. And definitely in comparison to the money sports of football and basketball.
Eg#1, we had a lot of foreign players who received substantial money from their home countries (mostly Scandinavian) to attend college in the US. Enough money to pay for most, if not all, of their academic and living expenses. These players would also receive substantial athletic scholarship money from the university. All told, these guys were making damn good money while also getting a free education.
Eg#2, the vast majority of our foreign players had been paid in their home countries. They were all connected to professional teams/leagues. Because none were old enough or superstar talented enough to be “known” entities, it was quite easy to skirt the NCAA rules regarding professional status. A few signatures from their prior coaches attesting to the “amateur” status of the player and voila. Our start-of-season meeting with the athletic compliance official was preceded by a team meeting where our coaches mealy-mouthed some instructions on what and where to sign on the compliance forms.
Everyone knew what was going on, but it was college soccer, so the stakes were relatively low.* The NIL money has touched college soccer but only mildly. Interestingly, I think NIL has more potential impact on women’s soccer than men’s, owing to the fact that many of the best men’s players are going straight to MLS development (or foreign clubs), whereas college remains the primary viable option for the best women.
*My college days were around the time when MLS was hitting its stride but before the era of designated players and big(ger) money.
I went to UW. I have two degrees from them.
I haven’t been watching much football these days, but I attended two Rose Bowls where my beloved Dawgs beat Michigan both times.
Just sayin’.
@CSK:
That’s correct.
@Mimai: I don’t think the cause of the damage will be the NIL directly, but rather that it provides an easy way to put significant money in the pockets of an athlete. Gambler wants to pay an offensive lineman with no realistic hope of making pro to shave points against the spread? Well, a local auto dealership can give him $25K for an “endorsement”. Star quarterback shows up driving a Porsche to practice? Who’s going to look into that nowadays?
@Kurtz: How about tonsils?
Feel better soon!
@CSK:
That was inevitable, even before the new charges.
It looks like the JAL A350 hit the coast guard Dash-8 right after landing. The Guardian has a visual guide.
This is far from complete, as the investigation is just getting started. But remember the rash of near misses a few months ago? This is precisely what can happen. At that, had the coast guard plane been bigger, say a C-130 Hercules, the loss of life would have been greater, including many in the A350.
And, not that it matters much, this is the first hull loss accident of an A350.
@Sleeping Dog:
I wasn’t sure, because the Harvard Corporation seemed to be unanimously on Gay’s side as of yesterday.
There are a number of good articles in http://www.thebulwark.com today. I can’t post all the links, but I particularly recommend:
“307 Days to Go: The Clock is Running”
“The Threat from Trump is Worse Today Than on January 6th”
“Christie Can’t Endorse Haley Now”
“The Huge Legal Questions Ahead in 2024”
Mickey Mouse has entered the public domain.
@Kurtz: you will discover over the next few weeks exactly how much you use your core for things you never even thought about. After my gallbladder surgery I found even making Chinese potstickers was too much. I’d wrap two potstickers. Then have to put my arms down at my sides and rest for ten seconds. Wrap two more, then rest.
I also had to sleep on my back propped up the first week.
Hope you have a quick recovery!
First, take everything said by someone claiming to be a doctor with some skepticism.
Second, while narcotics were misused and overprescribed in the past on a large scale and individual docs may still do it, there are also issues when you dont use them when actually needed. Use as prescribed and if you need them.
Third- I could write many paragraphs on this topic but to make it short we dont entirely understand what causes shoulder pain after surgery. Probably multifactorial and related to a combination of stretching (diaphragm, liver) and maybe direct irritation from the CO2 we instill so we can see to operate. People have tried using other gases, using less or more gas under higher or lower pressures with no clear positive effect. More aggressive to attempts to get the gas out at the end of surgery may help but that’s not 100% clear either. Clinically, it’s hard on pts because the pain doesnt always respond well to our regular arsenal of analgesics and while usually gone in a few hours there is a large group for whom it is 1-2 days long, rarely longer but it does happen. Empirically, we have found movement helps and since that also decreases DVT risk it is encouraged when possible.
Steve
@EddieinCA:
I believe that nine of the twelve teams in the Pac-12 have been ranked in the Top 25 at some point during this season. They finally get recognized during their last year.
The local Mountain West coach says that we’re headed quickly towards a place where 20-30 teams at most have a chance to be contenders. The rest are going to be a feeder system for those schools via the transfer portal. Especially if the NCAA ends up allowing players into the portal twice. The coach says that one of the players leaving by portal this year told him, “Coach, given my parents’ situation, I can’t turn down a half-million dollars in NIL to play there.”
@EddieinCA:
Those receivers are important, as is the offensive line. Penix played for, I believe, three years at Indiana in the Big 10 before transferring to Washington. Either two or three nasty injuries playing behind Indiana’s excuse for a line before he transferred.
The Texas QB spent his first year at Ohio State.
The transfer portal has radically changed recruiting.
@steve: Very useful info, thanks.
Steve, I’m curious how old you are, and where you come down on prescribing opioids? In my lifetime I believe I have seen several swings of the pendulum as to opioid prescription. The first I saw was in the 90’s (I think) to “No patient should suffer unnecessarily out of fear of opioids. Used correctly, they are safe”. I presume this was a change to undo the effects of the previous War on Drugs mentality of severely limiting access, which in turn was due to the “Woo Hoo, prescribe anything anywhere!” mentality of the early half of the twentieth century.
From the 90’s we went back to the “Woo Hoo, prescribe anything anywhere, Oxy is candy!” pendulum swing. And from there we swung back to the “Investigate the hell out of any doctor prescribing large amounts of opioids, especially those billing themselves as “pain specialists””. And now it appears we are swinging back the other way. I wonder if there is any mechanism to stop the swinging and settle on a sane and effective course, considering the pain and devastation these swings leave in their wake?
@Mikey: Considering that the line Sunday was that Texas would shut them down completely because they’ve never had to play against a “real” defense in the Pac-12, I decline to speculate about who gonna do what next week. But if the next game was like these two, it looks like over is the bet. (Though, IIRC, under at halftime paid off, too.)
@CSK:
To paraphrase Hemingway, they were behind her till they weren’t.
The Harvard Corp has already damaged itself by allowing this to go as far as it had. What is going to happen the next time some random sophomore, believing that they’ve sufficiently reworded a paragraph, gets booted for plagiarism? Handling this in the manner that they have, already leaves them open to accusations of favoritism.
@Kurtz: There may be a jocks/Flori-duh man connection in the case you looked at that you’re not considering, though.
@CSK:
Not exactly.
Steamboat Willie, the original MM cartoon, has entered the public domain. The rat-like animated character from that one animated short is now fair game, as is the plot and minor characters.
Mickey Mouse, the pillar of the Disney
evilempire, as he exists today, is better protected than just about any cartoon character you can name. He is a registered trademark of the Disney Corporation, for one thing, which is a stronger protection than copyright (and doesn’t expire).@Sleeping Dog:
Gay is tenured faculty, so she won’t lose her teaching position. I’m wondering how she’ll maintain her authority in the classroom. How can she tell her students that plagiarism is the worst crime in scholarship when she committed it herself? She will lose the presidency, but she’ll retain her enormous salary and all the perks (they are multitudinous, believe me) of still being an officer of the corporation.
@DrDaveT:
Ah, thank you. My misapprehension came from reading the headline, not the article.
@MarkedMan:
Re effectiveness of opioids, it really does depend on the pain: acute/chronic, neuropathic/MSK/visceral, cancer/non-cancer, etc. And the person experiencing the pain: genetics, age, comorbidities, history, etc.
A few stray thoughts:
Dentists were amongst the most flagrant over-prescribers of opioids. Most often for third molar (wisdom teeth) extractions. Thankfully, we finally got good data indicating that ibuprofen provides sufficient post-op pain relief for the vast majority of uncomplicated extractions. Clinical practice has changed (for the most part), which has made a big dent in over-prescribing.
Chronic pain is trickier. On net and at the group level, the data do not support long-term opioid therapy for chronic pain. And still, lots of people with chronic pain have been (and are) doing well on long-term opioids. Many of these folks were harmed by inappropriate and overly aggressive tapering. 2016 CDC guidelines were not well articulated or implemented. Things have gotten a bit better with updates to the guidelines. But it’s still more of an art than science.
On the other hand, many people with chronic pain on long-term opioids experienced significant improvement in pain and function when tapered. Opioid induced hyperalgesia is a bitch. And can be reversed.
Unfortunately, we can’t accurately predict who will benefit from vs. be harmed by opioids for chronic pain — and that just pertains to pain relief.
The issue of who will develop an opioid-related problem remains a major point of discussion and research in the field — note, I’m talking primarily about chronic pain here. We do know that mental illness and history of substance misuse are predictive. But not 100% so.
In a perverse reality, the patients who have yellow/pink/red flags are often the ones who are most likely to be prescribed opioids. Adverse selection is a bitch.
It’s not because prescribers are dumb or ill-informed (though some are). Rather, it’s because these patients are suffering immensely, and we don’t have easy/effective/accessible options for most of them.
It’s a terrible thing to sit in a room all day with people who are suffering and looking to you for help. You try to do what you can, with what you have, for the desperate person in front of you. Too often, the available options are shitty and/or unpalatable to the patient.
@Sleeping Dog:
“Harvard is damaged” is one of those things people are supposed to say at times like this, that’s ultimately empty of meaning.
Are elite families going to stop clamoring to send their kids to Harvard? Are the nerds going to stop elbowing themselves to get in? Will Harvard’s endowment or financials suddenly collapse?
No, no, and no. Sound and fury, signifying nothing a la Boeing’s shocking and ongoing 737 MAX debacle. A similar story at most other companies would be the end of that company. But Boeing is not most corporations, and Harvard is not most universities. Some entities really are too big to fail.
That’s because he was dead.
@DK:
You’re 100% right about that. I always laugh when I hear some Trumpkin saying, “I won’t ever hire anyone from Harvard.” To which my response is, “Honey, you have about as much chance of hiring a Harvard grad as I do of flying to the moon on gossamer wings.”
@DK:
Boeing did pay substantial sums in penalties, mostly to airlines. Not to mention the extra money involved in fixing the MCAS mess, and the additional training required, and not to mention the added scrutiny by the FAA for certifying the MAX 7 and the 777-9 (none of which have been certified yet).
I forget the amounts involved, but it was far more money than they’d have expended by designing, building, testing, and certifying a clean sheet replacement of the 737 line entirely.
Or maybe not. The 777-9 has been delayed by a lot, and that’s a redesign of a 90s era plane. The 787 also had many teething pains and delays, and ongoing issues with the Rolls Royce Trent engines to this day.
Anyway, Harvard won’t face such expenditures or scrutiny, even though it’s likely better able than Boeing of facing expenditures. It’s one of the largest investment funds on the planet, no?
@OzarkHillbilly:.. That’s because he was dead.
It was almost 60 years ago in Florida. Could be an alligator got him.
@Kathy:
I have some questions about this latest round of 737 MAX news, but I’ll ask here tomorrow, or later this week if I’m too busy to post here tomorrow.
I’m back from the gym and now in a laundry folding + Bette Davis movie + rabbit hole this evening.
@Kurtz:
I hope you feel better quick. Of all the surgeries I’ve had I hated losing my gallbladder the most. It’s so aggravating.
The recovery wasn’t too bad for me. Opioid-wise, doctor’s look at me like I’m the craziest lunatic on the planet because I absolutely refuse them outside of a hospital. TMI, the absolutely, 100% shut off my colon for an absurdly long time. I’d rather rawdog pain than take opioids.
After my bottom surgery I relied on ibuprofen, gabapentin and cannabis edibles. That all worked great and had the added benefit of allowing me to poop.
Stupid gallbladder and its stupid rocks.