Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 19, 2024
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47 comments
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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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Tuesday? Tuesday? Already? 0215 and …
Meds? Taken.
Drink & smoke? Yeppers.
News & email checked? Nothing new to rant or comment on yet. Darn it.
Nagged everyone about colon screening? Yep.
Sleepy? Nope.
Maybe an episode of Captain Scarlet will do the trick.
Zzzzzzz
The Florida headline of the day- Florida hunter shoots man he mistook for turkey
A dead child experiences no freedom.
Texas had 36 unintentional shootings by children in 2023
@Flat Earth Luddite:
How about Judge Loose Cannon’s attempt to write a jury instruction that says find Trump innocent, he can do whatever he wants?
Like the Spanish Civil War, the Ukraine-Russia war is becoming a testbed for future conflicts. We see that in the use of drones and satellites. Here’s another:
Ukrainian officials see ground robots as ‘game changer’ in war
@Scott: I’ll just leave this here.
If we had fewer guns, we’d have fewer mass shootings.
On another thread, Scott said:
I’d like to add that this has always been true. None of those labels mean anything and they have never meant anything. Same is true for liberal, conservative, progressive. All my life people have been pointing out the “hypocrisy” of this or that pol because “conservatives are supposed to believe this” or “liberals are supposed to support that”, but the reality is that these labels are no more than team colors. They don’t and never have indicated any meaningful philosophy, just a collection of specific issues that change from day to day.
Interesting, to me at least. In recent days I’ve passed through the two big Washington, DC airports, IAD and DCA, and in neither did I spot a single MAGA hat. Same in two DC hotels.
Shouldn’t a triumphant cult of personality flaunt their identifiers? Their forbearers would long since have been sporting swastikas.
@Michael Reynolds:
Day before yesterday, I drove from Atlanta to Valdosta, avoiding 75 and doing it all on back roads. I stopped in small downs like Thomaston, Americus, Albany, and Thomasville.
Yesterday, I drove Valdosta to Jacksonville, avoiding 75 and 10, and doing back roads again, I stopped in Fargo, St George, and Macclenny.
Two days in Trump country. Not one Trump flag. Not one Trump banner. Not one Trump sign. i did see a few Trump 2020 bumperstickers. Not Trump/Pence 2020. Just Trump 2020.
Today’s drive, after a morning round of golf, will be St. Augustine to Jupiter along AIA as much as possible.
The headline of the day- ‘Godzilla’ hits Tokyo streets to promote traffic safety
@Michael Reynolds: @EddieINCA:
Living deep in Trump country, I rarely see Trump signs off of two-lane highways or Main Streets (I assume the ‘backroads’ you speak of are still thoroughfares and not residential side streets with 4-way stops every other intersection). Even at their peak I rarely, perhaps never, saw MAGA hats in use (though I did see them on top of people’s bookshelves or coffee tables).
Start driving down any residential neighborhood, however, and Trump flags are everywhere.
Scary thought: it was pointed that starting with this election, there will be growing numbers of Republican voters whose only memories of the Republican party are from after Trump’s election…
@Neil Hudelson:
Hmmm. So they’ll identify as Trumpies where they don’t fear challenge or consequences.
They also don’t seem willing or able to donate. Small donors are tapped out, the big money backers are leery. Time for Elon to ride to the rescue and buy Trump outright. Pity Elon can’t be Veep or POTUS since he’s an immigrant.
@gVOR10:
Thanks for the guest pass, I can’t usually access the WP.
I’d forgotten how scary newbie judges and lawyers can be. The freshly minted 2nd Lt’s of the justice system.
She certainly is something, isn’t she?
@Neil Hudelson:
My travels have taken me through residential neighborhoods in Tifton, GA, Lake City, FL, and Macclenny, FL. I’ve done this drive before, most recently 2019. The difference is noticeable. Less signs, period.
@Michael Reynolds:
Xlon owes a tiny $44 billion to several creditors who paid for his impulse data mining app purchase, that’s not mining as much data as was hoped. He also has his Mars toys to look after. All in between running a legit car company and space launch company. I think his picture adorns two dictionary entries these days, “overextended” and “tapped out.”
I hit a snag with the pineapple coconut ice cream.
Mixing it was easy. One container of coconut milk, plus pineapple juice to fill up the one liter measuring cup. Pour that into the ice cream maker, and let it work for 20-30 minutes.
Alas, it takes me a few tries before I’m confortable letting machines run unsupervised. So when I noticed some build up on one side of the blade, I pushed it with a rubber spatula.
This caused the mass to jam lower down, and brought the bowl to a stop*. I couldn’t get it going again. So I scooped out the ice cream, about 900 ml worth, and strained the remaining liquid, lest it turn the whole concoction to solid ice in the freezer. I mixed the fluid remaining with a little sparkling mineral water and drank it. It was pretty good.
*The bowl turns, but the blades stand still. The thermodynamics of the machine are very clear.
@Michael Reynolds:
You can’t buy someone who won’t stay bought. Even Musk is smart enough to know that.
The only way to buy Trump and have it stick is with flattery from a position of superior power. Vlad and Kim and Orban don’t have to worry.
Stravinsky- Rite of Spring “Opening”
Well, boo hoo.
‘I’m pissed’: Ex-Trump aide Peter Navarro blasts justice system before heading to federal prison
Such a victim.
@Scott:
If there’s a reason he was in this parking lot that makes it make sense, I never want to know.
Today is General Primary Election Day in Illinois. I went over to the Makanda Township Fire Station where the polls are located for Makanda Township precincts 2 and 4 and requested a Democratic ballot.
Other than multiple candidates for President USA and the three names for the Biden delegates (vote for no more than three) the only race that had more than one or no candidates was for:
Representative in Congress Twelfth Congressional District
I did some research on these two candidates. Enough to find out that one of them favors term limits so I voted for the other one.
Not that it matters. Whoever wins this primary contest will be crushed by incumbent Republican Mike Bost in November. Bost has won this seat by impressive margins since his first run in 2014. Most recently garnering 75% of the vote in November 2022.
When I visited the polls this morning at about 10 o’clock there were all of two other citizens casting their ballots. Turned out I knew them. A guy named Lee and his wife who I had not seen in about thirty years. Lee was the long time owner of the local hippie haven and tourist attraction The Makanda Boardwalk. Site of the annual Vulture Fest.
He told me he owned the Boardwalk for 32 years and sold it recently.
@Scott: @Gustopher:
Republicans really DON’T have any sense of setting the stage, do they? Yikes! (But I’d be interested in knowing, even if it made sense–possibly, particularly if it did.)
As to Navarro’s “They come for me, they can come for you.” I’ll quote Gill Grissom in reply: “I should hope so.”
On other things, I started watching The Marvels yesterday.
Spoilers may follow:
Maybe it’s me, but I don’t recall Carol messing up the Kree. And as for Monica obtaining superpowers, I had to go hunt that down in Wikipedia (hint, it happened sometime in 2021 in a late ep of Wandavision), and it took me until today to vaguely recall something.
The feeling is that we’re missing a lot of backstory on these characters, and a few flashbacks aren’t enough. So the plot feels thin and shallow.
@Kathy:
I liked the Marvels more than I thought I would, but yeah, thin. Honestly, I think I mostly liked it because it hit a pretty broad target of “90’s Girl Power” that I’m a huge sucker for.
Speaking of which, one of the new ways I’ve been harrassing my partner is every time she rolls her eyes at me or the nonsense I’m doing (via text) I respond with “I can’t help that you married this: [insert .gif of Jennifer Love Hewitt from “Can’t Hardly Wait”]. I can feel her eye twitch through the phonelines every time I do it.
@Beth:
I got sleepy with a few minutes of movie left, and double those minutes in credits and in-credits/post-credits scenes. But that far, I didn’t hate it. I liked how they handled switching places, eventually.
I expect I’ll see the ending today.
There’s a reason why many bold, radical, attention-grabbing aircraft designs are often referred to as paper airplanes: they exist only on paper, and odds are they’ll never get to the prototype stage.
Here’s the latest: a huge plane for transporting oversize wind turbine blades.
I’ll buy the ability to land on a rough gravel strip. Lots of planes do that (though they tend to be smaller). I’m skeptical of the requiring for a very short runway. Big plane, lots of mass, lots of kinetic energy.
But, assuming it can land at any wind farm, can it land at every individual wind turbine?
In the opening paragraph, there’s this line: “Larger wind turbines produce more power than standard ones, but the components are too big to be transported by road.”
Can’t the components not be sent in pieces by truck and assembled on site?
@DrDaveT:
Elon might also be an over-leveraged fake billionaire himself. He reeks of snake oil. Very possible Elon is in no position to save Don the Con.
I am not much of fan of any modern musicians so most fo the discussions about Taylor Swift meant that for my part I had no idea why people liked her so much. Last night we had our adopted grandkids over, three girls between 4 and 8. After running around outside with them I sent them in while I grilled some stuff. When I came back in their mom had turned on a Taylor Swift concert for them. They were totally enraptured. I thought she was OK based upon what I saw, but she certainly seems to have some magic that fascinates young girls.
Steve
Hey @Gustopher: , I wanted to come back to your comment from last night, but decided to scrap what I had and let the thoughts bake some more.
I guess it couldn’t last forever.
MickeyD’s Senior Premium Roast as it is labeled on the receipt that has been 88¢ + 11¢ tax = 99¢ for at least 2 years finally broke $1. Now 99¢ + 12¢ tax = $1.11
The increase in cost will mean that my change jar will be short by 12¢ every day.
Refills are free so I guess it is still a bargain.
This almost hurts as much as when Zig Zags went up from 5¢ to 10¢ a pack in the ’60s. That damn near broke me.
@steve:
The movie from her current concert tour is available on Disney+. I expect I may see her act if/when she plays halftime at the Super Bowl.
On more important things, I didn’t drain enough liquid from the pineapple coconut ice cream, so it’s more like just ice. It still tastes good and it’s cold. So there’s that.
The yogurt mocha needs like a couple of hours outside the office freezer just so it can be scooped. I think we have it set too low. But it remains creamy and delicious then.
It seems a thicker mixture works best. I used Greek yogurt with one cup of chocolate milk. The pre-frozen mix is rather thick.
I used Mexican chocolate, because it was the only sugar free milk-soluble chocolate I could find. It’s an odd concoction. It comes in solid tablets, variously circular or octagonal, it’s rather hard, and it doesn’t melt. It does dissolve in milk or water.
Heating milk has its own issues. So I put a heat-resistant measuring cup on bain marie to heat the milk gently, and dissolved the chocolate in it. I then let it cool for a loooong time.
The flavor is great, though. Much richer and better than powdered chocolate for milk. I might try it next as milk mocha.
I’m thinking about other flavors I could try, while I wait for cherries to show up at the stores. I was thinking I’ve never seen apple ice cream. I’ve no doubt someone somewhere has done it, I’ve heard of stranger flavors, but it’s something I might try. I was thinking apple cinnamon pecan ice cream. With milk and cream and pureed, cooked apples. A very sweet variety, like Golden Delicious perhaps.
We’ll see.
CNBC: Biden actively recruiting Haley supporters
Biden’s team has already brought on at least six major donors that helped fundraise for Nikki Haley, and they are pushing for more.
@Kathy: I come from Red/Gold Delicious country (Washington State). My experience is that Gold Delicious apples have fairly fragile flavor and make a particularly light flavored apple sauce. On the plus side, they may be sweet enough without any sweetener unlike apples that make heavier and more tart sauce. As always, let us know how it turns out.
Maybe fortify the apple flavor with juice?
@Beth: Fret not. My own thoughts are half-baked nonsense.
Relatedly, I was just thinking that it’s in everyone’s interest to have one completely awful belief or habit just to weed out the purity progressives riding on purity ponies from their friend group.
Nothing particularly harmful, but something where everyone has to say “They’re good folk, but… their views on a gender neutral term for the Portuguese Man O’ War are not great.” The people who can do that are generally better people than the people who have 2% better political and cultural views. They aren’t less judgmental, but they can put their judgements in perspective.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’m firmly of the belief that any apple that has to tell you it is delicious is not, in fact, delicious.
Don’t believe big apple!
(Granny Smith is where it’s at)
@steve: This is how I feel about The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, The Beatles and The Bruce Springsteen.
All artists who are superstars, and all artists that I like well enough, but just don’t see whatever their very large fanbases see.
(Springsteen’s The Seeger Sessions is on of my favorite albums, but if I try to explore the rest of his catalog, I get bored quickly)
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I tired that when I attempted to make apple puff pastries. It worked rather well.
The problem is finding actual apple juice. these days, most commercial juice sellers have “nectars,” meaning sugar water mixed with juice. It’s cheaper, for them. But now and then, you do find some.
I think I’ll grate the apples before cooking them, too.
@Gustopher:
You can use the cultivars’ names without believing the implied hype.
The Red Delicious apple is a good case in point. Growers select for color, uniformly red. They look beautiful on store bins. But the flavor is blah.
Assuming there’s an inverse correlation between consistent color and good flavor, then maybe the apple sweet spot is the Gala variety, which is striped.
@Kathy:
It’s not a big surprise that blades that long can’t be broken down, the stresses are enormous. Only achievable with continuous carbon fibers and autoclaving, I reckon.
The description of a mile-plus long runway as “short” will amuse bush pilots for some time to come I predict. I suspect the reasoning is that every windmill will have a runway is based on the assumption these are big, expensive machines and each must have a road for maintenance access anyway. Making the section close to the windmill straight and a mile long should be feasible for most. A bit of slope is certainly acceptable, almost desirable.
As these are special purpose planes cruise speed can be sacrificed for slow-flight ability, so a mile should be plenty.
@dazedandconfused:
The average wide body needs at least 2,400 meters. The runways at Heathrow are 3,600 and 3,900 meters. JFK has one over 4,400 meters long.
My other objection is that wind farms take up large areas. If the blades can’t be transported by truck, how do you get on from the runway to a turbine kilometers away? Drive the plane there?
There’s also the notion of flying low amid very tall structures.
I get the problem, extracting more usable energy from existing wind. And I get this solution, longer blades, is hard to implement. I don’t think a large plane is the answer.
@Kathy:
They are transported by rail from the factory, and some roads are clear enough of trees to allow for trucking by special rigs…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTpZ5V4HrK4
A telephone pole on that corner would’ve made this turn impossible…even for this baby-sized one, and they are planning for football field-long ones soon.
But the windmills are seldom adjacent to super highways. I suspect that’s the problem.
@Kathy: Your comment on Red Delicious apples reminds me of a story from grad school. I took an upper level econ course one summer and one of the professors did consultation for various government agencies as part of his public service efforts related to tenure. This particular summer, he’d been contracted by the Washington State Apple Commission to figure out why the price on Red Delicious apples was tanking. (At the time, they were selling for a low as ten cents a pound, which, IIRC, was below production cost). Surveys of the market and other things that economists do revealed that the market was absolutely saturated with Red Delicious Apples. More than people wanted to buy, more than wholesalers (one of which I’d just resigned from the employ of a year or two before) could inventory, more than processors could turn into juice, just too damn many. The recommendation was to cut back on cultivation of Red Delicious and gradually expand the cultivation of other varieties. Growers were not particularly happy at the recommendation because, again IIRC, Red Delicious (and a variant sometimes called a “Standard Delicious”–or simply “Delicious”) are easier to grow and growers and other workers in the industry have more experience with them. But the study had revealed what it revealed and the recommendation was what it was. Life moved on.
The following year, the Apple Commission granted permission to expand production of Red Delicious Apples by 10%. Why anyone thought that was a good idea was beyond me. My econ professor wondered why they’d even bothered with the study.
@dazedandconfused:
The dimensions of some manufactured goods are a big logistical headache.
At that, both Boeing and Airbus own dedicated outsize cargo aircraft, the Dream Lifter and the Beluga. But they only fly them between airports.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I thought the story would end with a subsidy, and tons of rotten apples.
On the ice cream front, I wonder if perhaps I should mix varieties. Say Golden Delicious and Gala.
@Gustopher:
Like hell.
Apples better than Granny Smith for just eating:
Honeycrisp
Mutsu/Crispin
Rome Beauty
Fuji
Gala
Macintosh
For cooking:
[long list omitted]
I like Granny Smith, but it ain’t remotely the best. We agree that Red Delicious is an abomination*. When I was at Cornell mumble-mumble years ago, Cornell Orchards sold about 50 varieties of apples. About a quarter of them were better eating apples than Granny Smith, and about half were better for baking. The enshittification of apples parallels the rest of US commerce.
*My parents had a semi-dwarf Golden Delicious tree in their back yard. The apples it produced were nothing like the “Golden Delicious” flavorless mush available in grocery stores. It is hard to overestimate how much the requirement for “ships well without bruising” has completely eradicated flavor and nutrition from commercial apples.
Re apples, here’s a definitive ranking. Click on the individual varieties for detailed reviews.
@Mimai: The rankers don’t seem to be aware that the criteria for eating-from-the-hand apples are quite different from those for making-a-pie apples.
@Kathy: So basically a bigger C-5 galaxy?
There’s currently no economical way to break the turbine blades down for transport.