Welcome to November Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, November 1, 2021
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48 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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Well, this is depressing:
http://www.thebulwark.com/donald-trump-is-now-the-odd-on-favorite-to-be-president-in-2025/
Trust me, you’ll get the bonus points.
@CSK: I’ll worry about it when it happens.
Today’s GOP, in a nut-tweet.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I suppose that’s all we can do.
@CSK: It’ll be a bloodbath. Apparently, Pompeo said he’s running even if Trump is, and the whole thing devolved into a “hahahaha j/k” circus.
I think the money guys are not interested in Trump 2.0, even if the electorate is.
So, the antivaxxers who claim they don’t need a vaccine because they’ve recovered from COVID, will they get reinfected annually as a booster for their natural immunity?
Jill Lepore has a new limited podcast about Elon Musk called The Evening Rocket. It ran originally as 25 eps on the BBC (don’t ask me).
It may be interesting to get her take on the second draft of current history.
@CSK: There it is.
@Jen:
Yes, I saw that about Pompeo. Maggie Haberman reports that an aide to Pompeo claims this was merely Pompeo joking with Trump. She adds that Pompeo is making “early moves” toward 2024.
Random note: has anyone been experiencing difficulty updating Android apps in the google play store?
Since last week, there are some apps my personal phone won’t update. It tries, but the downloads go so slow it reminds me of the days of 1200 baud modems. Then eventually it stops and adds the little triangle with the exclamation point next to the app it failed to update.
Now, this phone has no SIM chip, so it relies only on WiFi. It’s not my home Wifi, IMO, because it works just fine streaming video and doing all other things on the desktop, and downloading audio books and other large files on the phone. I also tried it with the WiFi at the supermarket and it failed there too.
At first I thought it was the Google apps, but then it started to fail with some games and other things as well. It is rather random, as some apps update in a couple of minutes as it used to be usual for all.
@Kathy:
Not quite the same issue, but there used to be a menu in the google play store to manually update each app. That seemingly has disappeared with the latest update to my phone. Now I can go to “manage apps” where I can indeed see which apps need an update (side question, why do some apps autoupdate immediately, and others seem to take their dear sweet time or not at all?), but I can only choose to remove said app or leave it alone. If I want to update any app, I have to go to that apps’ page in google play, click update, go back to “manage apps,” see which app needs an update, navigate to that app page, click update, repeat, repeat.
Well, I signed up for my Moderna booster tomorrow. I was gonna wait until they came out with one that addresses variants, but the recent talk about waning immunity from the first two and natural immunity from contracting a breakthrough case being iffy, at best, I figured I better get it done.
Still no luck on finding a flu shot not made from eggs inside the state of Wyoming. 😐
@Kathy:
if they understood any of this they’d have to. So no.
@Neil J Hudelson:
I noticed that weeks ago. There was a little blue rectangle once to explain where apps would be updated now.
@Jax:
Lots of luck finding it. perhaps a doctor or pharmacy can order it from out of state? Meantime, wear a mask when you expect to interact with people. They’re even better against flu.
On a related note, I got a flu shot yesterday. My mom found a doctor who sells the vaccine and applies it at home. We got a bunch of relatives and friends to take it, too. Costs about US $30 per shot.
More random stuff. I’m watching the Green Lantern Animated Series (one lousy season). I don’t get invested in the whole comic book body of mythology, but I’m aware of it. So I knew there were different color “power-rings” drawing energy from various color lanterns, making use of different emotions. And naturally these can serve as plot devices as needed.
The first part of the season deals with the Red Lantern Corps. The second is even more preposterous, but has an interesting bit, which I’m sure it’s old, old, old, news to comic book readers:
Our heroes look for the legendary Orange Lantern, said to be very, ver powerful. Well, they find it, but it turns out it’s powered by greed.
Coincidence or premonition?
@CSK: And yet, I can’t help but notice that the solution seems to be that the problem would be solved if only Democrats in Congress would adopt the GQPs solutions for the nation’s problems.
But that makes sense. The author is a Republican, so the only issue is FG. The agenda is fine. Mitt said the same thing in his come to Jesus speech about FG when he came back to the Senate.
@Kathy: Eureka! I found one! The pharmacy in the next town over carries the Flucelvax! And I have to go there anyways on Friday, so that’ll work! 🙂
@gVOR08:
The logic dictates if you don’t want to get ill from COVID again, you need to get ill from COVID every year in order to maintain your natural immunity. Otherwise you could get ill from COVID.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, I spent part of last evening listening to 80s music: The Commodores, Lionel Ritchie, Tina Turner, Billy Ocean…that stuff was great. Still is.
@Kathy:
I’m reminded of some fools eons ago who drank bottle of carbon tetrachloride to refute the notion that it is carcinogenic.
@Jax: Hooray.
@CSK: “Apropos of absolutely nothing, I spent part of last evening listening to 80s music: The Commodores, Lionel Ritchie, Tina Turner, Billy Ocean…”
When you think of 80s music and I think of 80s music, we are thinking of very different things…
@wr:
What do you think of?
@CSK:
The history of fools drinking or eating something to prove it’s harmless is a long one.
In the XIX Century, and up to the first third of the XX, there was much controversy about the germ theory of disease. proponents claimed microscopic pathogens, namely bacteria and bacilli, were responsible for most or all infectious diseases (note, not all diseases). They had plenty of evidence to point to, especially vaccines which kept people, and animals, from getting sick (and other evidence as well).
Some among the doubters, and there were reasonable basis for doubt given the level of knowledge of physiology and biology back then, would ingest bacterial cultures or broths to prove their innocuousness.
Well, some bacteria are not as infectious, or not infectious at all, if they are ingested (like Legionella). Others often cause asymptomatic disease, which is usually harmless.
But either way, none cause disease instantly. So drinking some bacteria or a carcinogen won’t prove anything at that moment. It’s just plain stupid to do it.
@Kathy: When DC rolled out all the other colored lanterns, beyond the basic green, and Sinestro’s yellow, I lost interest. The whole idea seemed more contrived than normal for comic books (and that’s saying something).
@CSK: For me, “80s music” means Tom Petty, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, The Cars, The Ramones, Elvis Costello, Warren Zevon, The Police, The Blasters, Dire Straits…Yes, a lot of overlap with the 70s, but performers didn’t stop being good because they crossed a decade boundary.
I also have a lot of fondness for groups that were just fun, even if they didn’t do anything beyond the 80s. Men At Work is a quintessential example. I wish we had more fun groups nowadays.
@Kingdaddy:
Well, sure. I just have a particular fondness for those I listed. There’s a reason people like Aretha Franklin lasted over a half a century and just kept churning out quality stuff over the decades. They did some–by no means all–of their most memorable work in the eighties.
@Kingdaddy:
Overall I find the Green Lantern’s powers preposterous, not unlike how I feel about musicals where dialogue is replaced by song. But both seem to work in animation.
So, it may be time for Hal Jordan and the Amazing Technicolor Power Ring.
@Kathy: There already is a White Lantern, a former Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, who combines all the colors…Sorry, almost threw up there.
@Kingdaddy:
Well, that’s the natural outcome of adding any colors. Everyone knows all colors mixed together add up to white.
@CSK:
@Kingdaddy:
o/~ So bring back Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana there was U2 and Blondie, and music still on MTV o/~
@Kathy: Not according to the one drop rule. :-0
@Kathy: Depends on what you mean by “colors.” If we’re talking pigments as color, adding them all together makes a blackish color.
@Kathy: I can’t wait to meet you and hear what your voice actually sounds like, because the level of snark and sarcasm I read into that was freakin hilarious. 😛
This pandemic really screwed up our plans for an OTB meetup. 😐
CNN headline: “Manchin warns he may vote against Biden social safety net plan as he criticizes key aspects”
The Hill headline: “Manchin demands infrastructure vote; holds off support on spending bill”
NPR headline: “Sen. Manchin says he’s not ready to back Biden’s $1.75 trillion budget package”
ABC headline: “Manchin deals heavy new blow to Biden’s hopes for social spending, climate policy bill”
The rest of the party spent last week swallowing Sinema-and-Manchin-demanded cuts, including ones that will again leave the US without paid family leave like the rest of the developed world. But now Manchin is again trying to kill BBB while demanding an immediate vote on BIF.
So nice of Manchin to hold a whole press conference just to add to Democratic voter apathy and anxiety a day before Virginia votes.
I’m sure establishment bros will be quick to tell us how Manchin is a picture of consistency, a humble team player who never reneges. It’s the progressives’ fault for their selfish intransigence, arrogance, and obvious refusal to compromise or something.
@Kingdaddy:
@wr:
@CSK:
For me, the early 80’s were all about Depeche Mode, The Cure, INXS, Yaz, Fine Young Cannibals, The Police, Howard Jones, and the like. In the late 80’s is was NWA, Ice-T, Public Enemy, Run DMC, and too many one hit wonders to list here. 80’s, like every decade, had some amazing music, and alot of crap.
@Kingdaddy: And it led, of course, to the White Power Ring. And the Black Power Ring.
I suspect that if someone at DC had typed the words White Power Ring into a script early on, the entire Rainbow Lantern Brigade never would have happened.
I do like Dex-Starr, the cat, with the Red Power Ring on his tail, fueled with rage. My only objection is that they gave him a back story that consists of animal abuse rather than “a woman tried to put a halloween costume on her cat” or even “He’s a cat, of course he’s filled with rage.”
@Dude Kembro: I hold to my position that BIF should only pass as an amendment in BBB. Splitting the two was a mistake from the beginning.
Alternately, maybe states can build their own damned roads and bridges.
@CSK: Bryan Ferry, U2, Psychedelic Furs, Spandau Ballet. Waterboys, Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, Robert Palmer, Visage, Tears for Fears… and so forth.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@just nutha:
@Jax:
Sorry all of you:
Not those colors
Not pigments
And not snark.
In high school physics we learn “white” light is made up of a mix of colors, which can be separated with a prism, or seen when there’s a rainbow. There’s an experiment in which a disk is painted in all these colors, then set spinning rapidly. The blur that results looks kind of off-white.
Having grown up partly in the ’80s, I do have some nostalgia for music in the period. But from what I’ve seen, it’s one of the most mocked decades in popular music. The rise of MTV and the concurrent domination of Reaganism, combined with memories of stuff like hair metal, has contributed to an image of the entire decade as one of absurdly overproduced corporate blandness and an obsession with image over substance, despite the fact that those things existed in music long before and would continue to do so long afterward. It’s how you get those scenes in American Psycho where Patrick Bateman does those monologues about the greatness of the most mainstream and unthreatening of ’80s pop singers.
@Kathy: If you get it spinning fast enough and the original color cells are neutral (more problematic) you get white white. My H.S. physics instructor demonstrated it. Very cool!
Picking this up from last night.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The highest compliment I ever received from a JC English prof/teacher was, “You tell a good story.”
The highest compliment I ever received from a prof was at our department’s “coarse awards” (an evening to roast everyone). The most hard-core prof (who was an amazing man that I was happy to call my friend) gave out “golden bookmarks” to graduating students. Mine was for “witty repartee”. i.e., “you bullshit a very high level”. 🙂
I’ll never forget that man.
…. Nor the phrase “fornicating ducks” (hard-core prof, great man).
@Dude Kembro: Not to mention he waited until Biden was out of the country. He’s burning bridges. I’ll give strong odds that he goes independent next election.
@Kathy:
My degree is in (theatrical) scenic and lighting design.
Lighting color theory is additive (the more colors you add, the closer to white the result becomes).
Pigment color theory is subtractive (the more colors you add, the closer to black it becomes).*
The really fun part is mixing the two. How does the light interact with the pigments?
The biggest thing (which many people miss) is that skin colors aren’t “black and white”. Put shades of blue or green on a “white” person, and it looks like they have a green light shining on them. Do the same to a “black” or Mediterranean person (think “olive complexion”), and they look severely sick. Melanin has a green component that really stands out under green light–making the color look internal, rather than external.
Under one light, a costume will stand out starkly against the wall behind it. Change the light, and suddenly they blend together.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve painted an amazing set…. only to walk up into the light booth and realize just how badly I’d screwed myself over. And then the costumer brings out their work… and I just want to kill myself.
Don’t even mention the make-up artist.
========
* In reality, it’s disgusting shit-brown.
@wr:
For me, one of those is an all-time great, one of them is somewhat amusing, and the rest could be forgotten without any real loss.
De gustibus non est disputandum.