Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, November 12, 2024
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51 comments
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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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Data without comment.
Fewer Military Ballots Mailed from Overseas Ahead of 2024 Election Compared to 2020
A Cold War story.
The Air Force once almost nuked the Moon
Kristi Noem for Homeland Security Secretary, according to CNN.
@Jen: Got to keep the US safe from dogs.
@Scott: And young kids. I mean Noem has three kids now, but how many others misbehaved and were taken to the gravel pit?
@Scott: In the Tom Clancy novel debt of honor, then National Security Advisor Jack Ryan jokingly asked his friend Admiral Jackson who worked in Operations if he was working on plans to invade the Azores or some place like that. Jackson’s reply- That was last week.
I read Stephen Ambrose’s bio of Eisenhower. While Ike was in office there were persons pushing at one or another to use nuclear bombs or nuclear energy. Nuclear powered military. airplanes? Yep that was on somebody’s drawing board,
Somebody saying they did this or that 60 years ago (I’m not checking into this with what is mentioned above) is easy to do. Did it really happen? I’m always skeptical. Just like I’m skeptical about people who still popping up concerning the JFK assassination.
@Scott:
Part of the idea was the detonation would be visible over large parts of the world.
This doesn’t make it any less stupid.
A summary of polling data that assesses how many Americans would embrace or tolerate authoritarianism:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/how-authoritarian-are-americans-trump-surveys-autocracy
@Bill Jempty:
There was the whole atoms for peace policy. Also, when a new tool comes along, people have to figure out by experience how else it can be used.
Some ideas that sound horrific are not entirely irrational in principle, they are just stupidly processed. For instance, using nuke to carve a canal. This would totally work, and generate enough fallout to kill anywhere between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people (not to mention harm the ecosystem), depending on population densities and wind patterns. The error is to think of a nuke as a large explosive device and nothing more.
Nuclear propulsion will be a thing eventually, but likely in space. It is a thing right now in aircraft carriers, large cruisers, and submarines. For aircraft it might be nice, if it weren’t for airflow carrying away bits of uranium and fission byproducts. Or for the requirement to shield the crew and passenger/cargo area, and the need to keep airflow from the core. This renders any plane too heavy to fly.
You may want to google Project Orion. It would totally work, but I wouldn’t use it any closer than Lunar orbit.
BTW, early attempts at fracking involved testing a nuke as the explosive agent. it didn’t work. Imagine climate change with radioactive natural gas. Lovely.
I am still not newsing. Still just OTB (I avoid the tabs) and sudokus. I need to find some cryptic crosswords. I’m a puzzler, not a gamer, unless you count backgammon and Candyland.
My ear worms are End of the World by Skeeter Davis and I Want to be Sedated by the Ramones.
Re air fryers vs convection ovens. I need to do some reading on the matter, but here’s the basic thermodynamic issue:
An oven is a hot space where you place cold food to cook. The food absorbs heat from the hot air inside, and to a lesser extent through contact with the hot oven racks. As it absorbs heat, the air around the food cools (it passes its heat to the food; heat always flows from the hotter to the colder object). And the colder air nearer the food will in any case absorb heat from the hotter air farther away. So the end result is the food gets cooked.
But if you add a fan to stir the air inside the oven, the colder air moves away from the food and gets replaced by warmer air. So the food cooks faster.
In theory a large gas oven with a fan should perform as well as the smaller air fryer. this is not what I’ve observed; though I didn’t take notes on temps, which naturally would be a big issue.
This si where I need to learn more. My suspicion is that the air fryer works its magic through the smaller volume and improved airflow. Notice the crisping plate at the bottom allows air to flow through it. So unless you put the food in a dish, or cover the plate with foil or parchment*, it cooks as well with hot air on the bottom as on the top.
I still love my combo air fryer multi function cooker. It’s the best kitchen appliance purchase I’ve ever made.
*There are some parchment papers sold for air fryers that have perforations to let air flow better.
@becca:
Slate.com has a daily crossword. Give Sadie a scratch behind the ears for me.
@Kathy:
Kathy, thanks for reminding me. I forgot Atoms for Peace.
Then Senator Claude Pepper sometime before he was defeated for re-election in 1950, had an idea to stop a hurricane. Drop a nuclear bomb on it.
@Bill Jempty:
Wouldn’t that have been a great story for Mythbusters? I’m sure they could have built a nuke on their own…
I think the energy calculus simply doesn’t work. A category 3 storm releases thousands of megatons of energy, albeit not in explosive form, over the interval between formation and dissipation (several days). The largest detonation ever was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, at 50 megatons (the design yield was 100). the second largest, I think, was Castle Bravo at 15 megatons.
Thus far, the only non-destructive use I see for nukes is in space. Either for propulsion, to nudge asteroids from collision orbits, and maybe low yield bombs to push asteroids or even small natural satellites to other orbits (say to herd them into a LaGrange point, or to keep Phobos from crashing into a Martian space elevator).
MAGA lawyer Mike Davis says there will be civil war if Judge Merchan sentences Trump to prison on Nov. 26.
@Kingdaddy:
Well…that’s truly depressing.
A gift NYT article about a boy ultra runner, who happens to be autistic.
Breaking: Mike Huckabee is ambassador to Israel.
@CSK: Hasn’t MAGA lawyer Mike Davis predicted civil war on various other triggers lately? This sounds familiar.
Besides, does he think someone is going to lead Trump away in chains if he is sentenced? Even assuming Merchan upholds the convictions (and I don’t assume that), there are years of appeals before any verdict, let alone sentence, will be finalized.
https://bsky.app/profile/juliadavisnews.bsky.social/post/3l7k7bspmtr2i
@Joe:
Oh, I don’t think Davis thinks Trump will be led off in chains. But if he can get the MAGAs to believe it, so much the better as far as he’s concerned.
@CSK:
I’d call his bluff and sentence the felon to the max time in jail, consecutive for each charge.
@Kathy:
I grant you an inaugural held at Riker’s Island would be…piquant.
The edit function won’t work for me. I get the teeny box, but no way to move the cursor.
@CSK: I went back to bed after my earlier comment. Unusual for me, but nothing is usual anymore.
I like crosswords. I used to buy compilations of the NYTs Saturday crossword at my local bookstore and get out my crossword puzzle dictionaries and lose myself for a while. I am a puzzle snob, I admit.
What I am looking for now are cryptic puzzles that rely on puns and slangs and riddles for an American audience. The British puzzles are the best, but I don’t know a lot of slang terms or local lore from across the pond. Unfortunately, the few domestic puzzles I have seen are not challenging.
As for Sadie, I found her sunning on the big pontoon boat. I joined her.
And Mike Huckabee is Ambassador to Israel. Well, that should be – I mean, I’m sure it’s a good – well, maybe not as bad as it could be – what the hell, has Trump even met Huckabee?
@becca:
I’m sure you’ve done this, but if you haven’t, try Googling “American cryptic crossword puzzles.”
And give Ms. Sadie an under-the-muzzle scratch for me.
@CSK: I have and I did!
I’m currently reading Trekonomics* by Manu Saadia. Around half a chapter and two introductions in, it seems more Trek panegyric, nostalgia, and a demonstration of handwavium** in action. Still, it oozes optimism about three parsecs past hubris.
It has gotten me thinking about trek’s magic tech. I may have more to say about it later. Right now, absent some new physics so revolutionary as to render quantum mechanics a pre-school subject, a lot of it is magic. A few things, notably the replicator, are possible with present or foreseeable technology, but in a far more limited way.
*Three guesses.
**I was going to link to a definition, as the term strikes me as too hardcore SF Fannish. Most online definitions say it’s unobtanium, and that’s wrong. It means explaining things by waving your hand to dismiss their impossibility, often by assuming facts not in evidence, and not entirely reasonable. In extreme usage, it resorts to circular definitions and tautology.
@Kathy:
Which model? I’m thinking of getting one for my best friend.
Old man look at my life
I’m a lot like you were
Today is Neil Young’s birthday. He is 79.
In the summer of 1972 my best friend John and I would sit on his front porch at night and drink Grain Belt beer. He would strum the chords on his guitar and sing this song. We were the about same age as Neil Young. We could have been rock and roll stars too!
Six months later John put the wrong end of his .22 rifle in his mouth and blew his head off.
I remember when he told me that he was going to kill himself.
I laughed. “You will not.” I said.
We buried him on Easter Sunday.
I will never forget the sobs and wailing of his girlfriend as she cried out his name as she literally had to be pried off his casket at the cemetery.
There have only been a few times since then that someone has told me that they would commit suicide. Believe me I did take them seriously and listened to them.
John Carpenter
1950-1973
RIP
Heart of Gold
@DK:
If the link works, this one exactly.
But that’s like the Mark I. Since then Ninja alone has come up with at least two more, which don’t require switching lids. I think Instant Pot also makes a combo, I think they call it Duo Crisp.
About mine, the minor issue is the air fryer lid (on top of the pot in the photo) is attached to the pot with a hinge. So it gets a bit in the way when you use the separate pressure lid.
A bigger issue is using the pressure lid for slow cooking. Even with the valve set on release, it tends to pressurize in the latter stages (one reason I favor pressure cooking now). It does work with a glass lid, but the ones I have don’t quite fit it.
Because things aren’t bad enough. Critical condition patient with avian flu in Canada.
The patient is described as a teenager, in good health before contracting H5N1.
On the other hand, no infections were found among their contacts, and infections among US cattle workers haven’t broken out more widely. Conceivably it could be hard to transmit between people (the H1N1 swine flu in 2009 was transmissible, but not highly so).
Just the same, get a flu shot if you haven’t already, and try to stock up on masks just in case. If an H5N1 specific vaccine becomes available, take it if possible.
Speaking of viruses, late last September began an outbreak of Marburg in Rwanda.
The Marburg virus causes a hemorrhagic fever disease like Ebola. It’s painful, nasty, and has a high death rate. Rwanda has managed to largely contain it, and is trying out vaccines and experimental cures.
The vaccines have undergone phase 2 trials, so they’re known to be safe. They have not undergone phase 3 trials, therefore it’s unknown if they are effective.
The thing is that tiny, poor Rwanda, which spent the 1990s staging a bloody genocide of a minority group, is doing rather well containing a lethal, contagious disease. How? By using techniques that work, like contact tracing and isolating known infected patients. Plus a high level of supportive care seems to be keeping the death rate lower than in prior outbreaks.
@CSK:
Wait, wait, isn’t he one of those “All the Jews have to die so that my God can be reborn” types? I’d say that’s pretty good evidence we’re about to see the Palestinians cease to exist.
@Beth:
Hey, girl, he’s a devout Christian.
John Ratcliffe will be Trump’s CIA director.
@Beth:
I think it’s only the Jews in Israel, not all the Jews. And it’s about bringing the end times anyway. I wonder, though, why they want a rapture if they really believe in Hell for all eternity.
And Pete Hegseth will be Secretary of Defense.
@CSK: Just when you thought shit couldn’t get any worse…
@CSK:
It’s as if Trump is staffing up for a war with Iran.
@CSK: Buh-byeyeeeeee! (Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.)
@CSK: Yeah, if you’re on your phone, moving the cursor is problematical. Cancelling the edit and opening it again and/or moving the cursor to different spots in the block sometimes helps but is a nuisance.
@becca: Harper’s Magazine has more difficult puzzles. There are usually no blanks in the grid; only bold lines that show separations between words where some horizontals and verticals end.
@Not the IT Dept.: I’m pretty sure that Huck joined one of the various events where televangelists laid on hands and prayed for Trump en masse. But that wouldn’t mean Trump remembered who he was, come to think of it. So many rubes, so little time.
@Beth: Nah. He’s an “Israel’s enemies have to die so that the Great Tribulation and millennium can happen” dispensationalist. But it is hard to keep track.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Huh? Where am I going????
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Thanks. I’ll try that.
@CSK: Does two picks from Faux News mean that the Trumpies are going to have to forgive the network for being disloyal?
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Good question. Maybe the two have to solemnly swear to disavow Fox.
@Mikey: @dazedandconfused:
I’m waiting for Trump to appoint Kyle Rittenhouse as director of the ATF.
@CSK: Re:@Just nutha ignint
cracker: Not you,
Huck. ETA: He’s the one who’s leaving, or are you leaving, too?