Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, July 19, 2024
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35 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former 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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Bob Newhart
RIP.
Apparently Trump’s acceptance speech last night was…kind of terrible.
Journalist, author, and former White House speechwriter James Fallows:
The photo is the Hindenburg in flames.
One more (hahahaha):
Another, by way of LGM:
Also they had a firefighter’s uniform on stage in honor of Corey Comperatore, but the name on the uniform is spelled “Compertore.” Seriously? Like they couldn’t do five seconds of Googling to get the name right?
Finally, Ezra Klein:
From this Week in Wildlife photo array come a couple of real jewels:
Yah. Remind me to never F with a mother warthog and her babies.
Bedazzled am I.
@Mikey:
To hear the MAGAs tell it, this was the greatest speech since Pericles’s Funeral Oration.
I should have watched the GOP convention-I haven’t watched any convention in decades- but Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Trump must’ve been a great show. Petronius couldn’t have put together a better cast.
Like many I have been worried about the decline of America, but it will have many funny moments.
Worrying about the decline of America is like worrying about horses escaping from an already empty corral.
Not “have been” as in recently. “Was” as in not any more
@CSK: They said the same thing about trump’s farts.
I used to be such a political junkie that I would watch all the conventions. Today, I find myself distancing away from most politics. Quit Twitter, only watch local news (or sometimes international news), very few podcasts (mostly science), pretty much everywhere except here. I realize, as learned hopelessness, that I can’t change what is going to happen. I already made my decision (I would vote for the yellow dog before I vote for Trump) so why torture myself with the day to day political stuff. Just go to my happy place and stay there.
Or maybe this is just the summer doldrums.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I believe they did. And rhapsodized over his belches.
My office in minor chaos this morning as some random number of our Microsoft computers are down (including mine). Others are fine. I have had to decamp to my home office where that Microsoft computer is working just fine.
@Joe:
Notifications on my phone early this morning announcing that Houston’s airport were having problems, medical facilities had to close, driver’s license offices were closed. Turned out to be this:
Global tech outage hits airlines, banks, healthcare and public transit
Looks like things are getting fixed but it highlights larger issues:
(Deleted — Scott beat me to it.)
Welcome to the Group W bench.
@Joe:
@Scott:
My home and work PCS are fine.
Much of the work I do in the mornings is to look up government websites for new acquisition procedures. They’re all up and running so far.
Well, my home and work PCs are still fine, but several others in the office are not. And the IT dept. sent an email entitled “Windows Blue Screen.”
So nostalgic.
Meantime, I needed to get a document from a server, and the server is down… It’s not an important or urgent document (well, not urgent).
@OzarkHillbilly: +100 for an Arlo Guthrie reference.
@Scott: My only argument for myself against that tempting course of action (avoiding all politics because i already know who I’m not voting for) is that I want to have a reasonable idea of what’s going on. And that’s to be able to promote my opinion with any persuadable friends and acquaintances I have.
/Heck, I should really be volunteering for campaign work considering how important this election is.
About that deporting all immigrants, does deportation invalidate Melania’s prenup?
@Slugger:
But she has an Epstein Visa. Oh, excuse: an Einstein Visa.
Getting as fully away from politics as I can today, lately for some reason I’ve been thinking about Asimov’s robots stories.
Their claim to fame, such as it is, lay largely in the three laws of robotics. partly because, as intended, the laws turn robots from malevolent or oppressed beings into industrial machines. Partly because many of Asimov’s robot stories hinge on conflicts between the laws (with alterations to one law happening one time).
When I first read them in the 80s, I was baffled by several things. For instance, if a robot ceased functioning, all its memories would become unavailable (much as would those of a person who dies). I couldn’t understand why there was no backup or hard drive or solid state drive or something.
This is particularly noticeable in the first three robot novels, where an examination of the visual records of the robots involved would solve the mystery in an instant.
So, I assumed the explanation was some kind of plot device, or lack of backup device, to keep the mystery from being solved easily.
But the real explanation is far more pedestrian.
1) Asimov began writing robot stories before the first electronic computers were made (1940 to be precise). Naturally all that was common practice by the 1980s, over 40 years later, was nonexistent then.
2) Asimov never warmed up to using computers much. He had one he called his “word processor,” and used it only for that. As I recall, his practice was to type longer pieces, like novels and nonfiction books, in a typewriter, and then revise, fix errors, in the word processor as he copied the piece into it (he pretty much typed all his works twice, according to his memoirs).
So even later works like The Robots of Dawn in 1983, and Robots and Empire in 1985, lack much sophistication as it pertains to information technology.
I spent most of the last week being in the pool for jury selection. I was never seated in the box and asked questions, and after about 20 hours of mostly boredom, the rest of us were excused.
One amusing incident (having nothing to do with the case, which I can’t talk about) came when one of the prospective jurors was talking about the discussions he has with his neighbor, the retired judge. He said they talk about high level stuff. For instance, he had just read a book by Robert Bork on activist judges.
If I believed in burning books, I’d probably burn that one first. The current crop has pulled a Bob Beamon in their activism. I think their activist record will stand for decades to come. The whole notion that conservatives were against activist judges seems out the window now that the activism works in their favor.
If you don’t hold to a principle when it inconveniences you, it was never a principle. Bork passed away about 10 years ago, so we don’t get to hear his reaction. I would love to hear some of the people who decried it recant, but I think that will never happen. Nobody ever says “I was wrong”.
@Mikey: Several outlets are reporting that it was his actual firefighter’s jacket, on which the name had been intentionally misspelled.
For example, “CBS News learned from the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company that this had been done intentionally, as there was only enough space on the coat for a certain number of letters.”
@Eusebio: That’s good to hear, at least they honored him properly.
Until Trump went over and started molesting it, anyway.
@CSK: She got an Einstein Visa in a nation full of completely photogenic but still chronically underemployed models? Really???
Why is ANYONE still making the argument that this system is not corrupt beyond repair? (Other than BECAUSE BROWN PEOPLE of course.)
@Jay L Gischer: Conservatives have never been against activist jurists. Conservatives are only against rulings that upset their interests. They use complaints of an “activist judiciary” as a tool for securing “the rule of law” as a vehicle for maintaining their interests.
@Jay L Gischer:
+200 if it’s from “The Story of Reuben Clamzo and His Strange Daughter in the Key of A.” A nice topical quote, like
@just nutha: Well, it’s only fair that they would be unhappy with things that disturb their interests. It’s just the “principles” they hide behind that bother me. Principles that, when push comes to shove, are abandoned. Things like textualism, and originalism, and “just calling balls and strikes”. Or being “non-partisan”, or “fair-minded”.
On things like “how we spend money” and “how we prioritize things”, when someone has won an election, its ok for them to follow their priorities on this stuff. But directing the courts so that they are in the tank for you – not so good.
@Kathy:
Arguably, Asimov’s most famous computer is the one that grows over time to be all-knowing and all-powerful in the short story “The Last Question.” And the name of that computer was “AC” — short for “analog computer” (a la ENIAC, UNIVAC, etc.) Oops.
@Jay L Gischer:
This. Liberals have a fairly long list of principles, and argue over their relative importance and the best ways to achieve them. Conservatives have a very short list of principles, and they are almost never the ones they assert if you ask them what their principles are.
@DrDaveT:
The computer in question starts out as Multivac. Later it goes by other names like Microvac, Galactic AC, and at last Cosmic AC.
I don’t recall what Asimov claimed, if he ever did, what the AC means, or what Multivac means (he did take the name from UNIVAC), but the AC in UNIVAC stands for Automatic Computer (in full, universal automatic computer). ENIAC stood for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, so the A in that AC stands for “and” 😀
I found the text of the story here. If you search for the term “computer,” which BTW only appears six times, the second result is in a line that said AC stands for automatic computer.
All that said, I don’t think Asimov ever had a digital computer in any of his stories.
@DrDaveT: I have heard many conservatives disavow Trump: “Trump is not a conservative”. (I have not had an opportunity to discuss recent SC decisions with them.)
I tend to agree. I do wonder, though, why they vote for him.
@Jay L Gischer: I’ve become too cynical to do this type of discussion in a serious manner anymore. I will simply say that there are no principles–textualism, originalism, calling balls and strikes, whatever are simply tools that are used to explain whatever decision conservatives are supporting at the moment. If there is a principle in conservatism, it’s “we’re better, therefore we have the right to decide.” (And I will note that they never abandon that notion, no matter what it costs them, so it may meet your definition above.)
@Jay L Gischer: Because he’s not Joe Biden and he, at least nominally, agrees with their agenda or an agenda they will accept. “We have the right to decide” again.
@Jay L Gischer:
One thing that makes political reform difficult is just that: lack of real principles. And it’s been compounded with the kind of hostile partisanship that has been growing since the 90s.
I remember back in the 80s and 90s, Republicans complained a lot about gerrymandering. Once they took over drawing electoral maps, it’s not a big deal. Or simply consider the budget deficit. It’s the end of the world if it happens under a Democratic president, and they don’t mater under the other party’s.
I want to live just long enough to see a Democrat lose the popular vote by a small margin, say under 10,000 votes (I know, incredibly unlikely), and win the electoral vote by the smallest margin possible (see previous parenthesis), just to know what the magnitude will be of the GQP tantrum at such incredibly rigged and unfair system.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
The famous Frank Wilhoit definition:
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.