Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, March 29, 2023
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38 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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Let the hilarity begin: Dominion wants Fox News hosts and executives to testify at trial
This will be fun.
For the linguiphiles in the group:
Loic Suberville
His YouTube shorts–picking on English, French, and Spanish–are really funny.
More anecdotal evidence that China is driving its customers away by unethical practices: Like virtually all manufacturers, my company has been struggling with component availability since the pandemic started. In the past few months, we’ve been able to a Chinese broker for a few components that are experiencing severe worldwide shortages. As an example, there is a widely used processor board that is currently listed on the manufacturer’s website as “back order” with no delivery date, and all their normal vendors have them as 15 month lead times. Yet we found them at a Chinese broker at twice the price. We bought out their entire stock (app 500 units), and they have assured us they will have more in a month. Yet the actual manufacturer cannot get them. They are not counterfeits or imitations, they are the real thing. This has also happened with a second component that I was directly involved in. In that case, we appealed directly to the manufacturer and they attempted to help us find vendors or alternative sources to no avail. Our Chinese broker came through, and when we informed the manufacturer about that, they started asking questions. How is it that our broker could get these but they, the actual manufacturer, could not?
What do both of these have in common? The actual manufacturing is farmed out… to a Chinese factory. It seems pretty likely that it is telling its customers “We can’t manufacture these right now”, but then actually does and sells them at a premium as “Sunday Production” through Chinese channels (the term used to designate extra production that is sold through alternative channels).
@MarkedMan: Hey, thank you. That’s the kind of nugget that clears a lot of confusion.
Yesterday Trump claimed that if Obama had been given a third term he would have started a nuclear war with North Korea. And so would Hillary Clinton if elected.
@MarkedMan:
Do you see an similarity to that and the Ticketmaster scam (for example Taylor Swift tickets)?
Capitalism at it’s finest
My main take from the Novellas’ Skeptic’s Guide to the Future, is the point Stephen Novella makes in the bonus chat after the book: Space travel is going to suck.
I need to think more about it. Their point is that even realistic depictions of space travel, like The Expanse, rely on one “magic” gimmick or two. Let alone hyperdrive, warp drive, wormholes, Stargates, etc. The Expanse goes with some hyper-efficient, super energy dense fusion that allows travel within the Solar System in mere days or even hours, plus the antidote to high g loads in the form of a drug (that never runs out).
the thing is chemical rockets provide a lot of thrust, but only for a short time. Other means of propulsion, like ion engines, give little thrust, but for a very long time. We’re talking minutes for chemical rockets vs as much as months for ion engines.
This may be good enough. I don’t have the numbers handy, but a thrust of 0.1 g for hour after hour and day after day, would get you Mars in weeks rather than months, and to Pluto in months rather than years.
That would be good enough for exploration, if we can shield against radiation, provide artificial gravity or combat the effects of weightlessness, and solve a few other engineering issues as well. But traveling to Mars for a holiday would require a sabbatical.
In brief, we may get something like Discovery in 2001, but not Avenue 5 or the Rocinante.
@Kathy:
Yeah, but how about business class?
In NYT Thomas Edsall (depaywalled) has done another literature survey. This one on that conservatives are different than liberals. Most of it’s the same sort of psychological stuff that gets a lot of play. I did love a quoted line,
to which I would reply, “Well yeah.”
The first bit, however, was new to me and interesting. A couple of psych researchers classified states into “tight” and “loose”. Edsall doesn’t offer any pithy definition, but it’s multi factor, seeming to revolve around constraints of economics and governance. Mississippi is “tight”, California “loose”. The 10 tightest states all voted for Trump both times, the loosest for Hillary and Biden. They didn’t say it. but it looks like it’s self fulfilling, the more fearful places elect more controlling, less supportive governments. One of the authors notes,
Fascinating if you’re into that sort of thing.
@Michael Reynolds:
Sweet dreams in hibernation and better, but not sufficient, radiation shielding.
@Michael Reynolds:
There won’t be direct aisle access, and the beds will be angled flat (the horror!)
@Kathy: At least in “The Expanse” books, the timelines were realistic given a very significant, but not magical, leap in rocket engines. Many of the chases lasted days or even weeks. It reminded me very much of O’Brien’s “Master and Commander” series set in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Two ships chasing each other, starting almost out of sight, with one gaining a mile or two a day on the other. Long stretches of dread and boredom and then sudden explosion into a sheer hell.
The NY grand jury investigating Trump will be on break for most of April.
Sigh.
@gVOR08: Indeed. It would be very interesting to see a trend analysis on that 50 state scale – specifically as climate change has increased the risk of water rights, wild fires, major storms in different parts of the country.
@Kathy: I did a bit of calculation for the sake of a sci-fi setting I’m developing (It’s a fair bit like The Expanse). It turns out that if you can manage to sustain a 1g acceleration for maybe the space of 5 days, you can get almost anywhere within the solar system in that time. And 0.5 g doesn’t cut that back all that much. So a 0.1g acceleration (which, I admit, is a lot more realizable) would do a lot. Accelerations at that level would not impose much stress on a human body. Radiation, on the other hand…
@Michael Reynolds: Space travel will only be for the meritorious. Ever.
It’ll all be either first or business. You telling me you’re gonna settle for business class?
@CSK: Clock’s running out. Tick tock!
In February, the IRS an estate tax payment of $7 billion dollars. Based on the max estate tax rate this would imply a $17 billion dollar estate and at the average estate tax rate a $35 billion dollar estate.
This would make the deceased one of the richest people on earth, but no one like that is known to have died recently, leading to speculation about who the mystery dead billionaire was:
Can a billionaire die without anyone noticing?
@Jay L Gischer:
Absent some kind of nuclear propulsion, perhaps 0.1g is too high. I really wanted to go with 0.01-0.05 g as realistic for a solar-powered xenon ion engine, or one powered with a radioisotope thermal pile (like those on the Voyagers). But that should also build up to a decent delta-v over days.
@MarkedMan:
I haven’t read the books. On the show, the drive, as I recall, required very little propellant to achieve even high g numbers for extended periods, and could do 0.5 g or so indefinitely. Given the size of some of those ships, that was pretty extreme. Kind of like 100 miles per drop of gas rather than per gallon.
@MarkedMan:
It’s astounding how many different technologies have been used in science fiction in order to end up at “Napoleanic naval wars/adventures in space!”
@CSK: Not necessarily. Bragg may be waiting to see if Georgia or Jack Smith is ready to present a case for indictment.
I don’t fully understand this, but it seems that Disney has kneecapped DeSantis’ hand picked Reedy Creek Board of Governors…until 2054
And I’m here for it…
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-ne-disney-new-reedy-creek-board-powerless-20230329-qalagcs4wjfe3iwkpzjsz2v4qm-story.html
Back in the 1980s, for a brief moment Graham Bonnet was the lead singer for the hard rock band Rainbow, with hits like “Since You’ve Been Gone,” “All Night Long” and “Lost in Hollywood.”
With his short hair combed back, aviator sunglasses and a suit, his look was a marked contrast from his long-haired band mates and the entire burgeoning genre of Hair Bands.
Flash forward 40 years, and he hasn’t changed his style, and instead aged into a Joe Biden impersonator.
https://youtu.be/IbakmECj-go
@daryl and his brother darryl:
On one hand, I hate to be rooting for a giant corporation, but on the other hand, a giant corporation making DeSantis look like a fool does brighten my day.
@CSK:
@SC_Birdflyte:
Bragg seemed like the one most nearly ready to go.
IMO, they may all be waiting for one to dare to go first, and then they’ll all pile on.
@daryl and his brother darryl: “If you take a run at the Mouse, make sure you don’t miss?” I kinda like it, if only for the cognitive dissonance.
@Kathy: In the books the Epstein drive was just a fusion drive with Epstein’s space magic attachment that vastly increased the efficiency of the drive.
@Kathy:
Won’t that lessen the impact the three individual indictments would have if spaced apart a bit?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
There’s Mighty Mouse and then there’s the all-mighty mouse 😉
@Matt:
I reserve judgment until/if I read the books.
I am thrilled to report that Free Staters did not fare well in the town elections yesterday. Only one won, joining a couple of others who are already seated on committees (some weren’t up for election this cycle). I am breathing again. Had things gone differently, we would have had a Free State majority on the budget committee, and enough of a presence on the select board to really muck things up. It was closer than I’m really comfortable with, but I’ll take the win. Whew!
@CSK:
If Trump is elected to a second term …
Unfortunately, it is all too possible.
@CSK:
Impact?
Well, if Benito might be put in a cell with someone serving an unjust and long sentence for possession. Said cellmate might just snap after the Nth the Cheeto whines about how no one gets treated more unfairly than him, and might bash his orange head against a wall.
That would be quite an impact.
@al Ameda:
Whatever restraints were on Trump during his first term would be totally absent during his second.
@Kathy:
This is a point Charles Stross periodically makes in his opinion posts. And sometimes in his fiction.
“Canned primate” is suboptimal for space travel in conditions of long duration flights, high radiation flux, hard vacuum, consumables requirements etc.
@JohnSF:
Only if the intent is for the primate to survive.
@Gustopher: I love “Since you’ve been gone”. I believe that initially the group was known as Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow. Blackmore was a founding member of Deep Purple.
@senyorDave: Yup. That’s the one. Rainbow was Blackmore splitting off, and eventually bringing along one of the bass players, while the rest of Deep Purple sputtered along, ended and then seemed to collect in Whitesnake.
Rainbow also gave us the late, great Ronnie James Dio, who (like most people) had no resemblance to Joe Biden.
Deep Purple holds up better than Rainbow. I’m especially fond of the Mark I era these days. Someone has to be.