Pearl Harbor Day Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, December 7, 2025
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14 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus 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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The chaos is fun, no doubt. But the structure of college football is so dumb.
If Bama, Miami, and ND are on the menu for 2 spots, two of those teams played. Miami won. End of story. But somehow, that doesn’t matter.
If you ask me, ND should not be allowed into the playoffs at all unless they give up their independent status. Join your peers in a conference or kick rocks.
@Kurtz: I believe I’ll live long enough to see the three big conferences all settle at 16 teams each, and tell the NCAA to shove it. Maybe only football to start with, but more likely for all sports. Absent the revenue the NCAA gets from the bowls and the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, it’s not clear that the NCAA can survive as an organization.
From Ann Telnaes: Whiskey pete goes caroling.
If we could buy Trump for what he’s worth, but sell him for what he thinks he’s worth, we could pay off the national debt
and still have enough leftover to take everybody to DisneyWorld.
@Michael Cain:
That sounds about right.
136 teams? Way too many at the highest level. What I would do is split the FBS:
48 at the top for division S.
44 for division A
44 for division B
System of relegation and promotion.
Division S can be split any number of ways that suit schedules, playoff births, and swapping teams between the divisions.
For the lower divisions: – 4 conferences of 11. 10 intraconference games. Top 2-4 from each into a bracket.
@becca:
Everyone must dress as a goth for the trip to Disneyland.
Some People Are Saying… that potus wants Noem out, to be replaced by someone with a penis. Glenn Youngkin is the lucky toady.
Marge is out and Mace is threatening to take herself out. The gop is making it crystal clear their donors don’t want wimmenfolk in the work force.
I’m surprised Trump doesn’t play Get Your Biscuits in the Oven (And Your Buns Into Bed) by Kinky Freidman and the Texas Jewboys at all his events.
Long post on my late dog, Emm.
Every weekday, Emm would follow me to the table when I ate. She’d beg, of course, but I’d bring her dish and try to get her to eat her food (which was very much like what we ate). She’d sniff her food but wouldn’t eat it. So, I’d give her a morsel or two from my plate, which she gobbled up. Then I’d cut a few more pieces of meat, and placed them in her dish.
She’d then proceed to eat that, along with the rest of the food in her dish. Next she’d resume begging. I’d offer her empty fingers, which she sniffed and licked. After a while she understood that was that, and would wait under the table until I was done. Then she’d follow me upstairs for play and a nap.
On Saturdays, though, we had people over for the midday meal. Lots of people in the fancy dining room with the fancy plates and cutlery, and the fancy paper tablecloth. Emm could beg from me first. I did as on every other day, and got her to eat her food with some of my meat entree. But then she’d go beg of everyone else, naturally.
I tended to leave the table early, as I get uncomfortable around too many people for prolonged periods (ie over 20 minutes). Emm would follow me to the kitchen and watch as I put the dishes in the dish washer. But she wouldn’t follow me upstairs to my room.
Instead she’d come to the threshold to the foyer, and stand there wagging her tail. She resisted all entreaties to come with me, but she wouldn’t leave to go back to the dining room to beg for more food until I left. I wonder if that was her way of telling me to stay.
Eventually the meal would be over. By then I’d be napping in my room. Emm would then come up and scratch at the door until someone let her in. She’d jump on the bed, I’m told, and settle in her spot and join me in a nap.
December 7th, 2002, I adopted two adult cats — Kimchi and Oshinko — and enjoyed commenting on it as a day that would live on in infamy every time they misbehaved. Over the years they were phased out, and so I had to phase out that phrase.
December 7th, 2019, I adopted another cat — Porkchop — and was pleased that I was able to bring back the joke that only I thought were funny (I repeat it for my amusement, not anyone else’s, so this is fine).
Porkchop is currently batting at the ice cubes in my glass of water, performing a housecat appropriate reenactment of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with ice cubes playing the role of American ships.
A day that will live in infamy indeed.
@Gustopher:..(I repeat it for my amusement, not anyone else’s, so this is fine).
I’m a cat guy. I am amused!
I know this is not breaking news or anything, but those guys named Josh Allen and Joe Burrow are pretty decent football players. Kinda good at it, really.
@Gustopher:
We had two Maine Coons. Scratch and Sniff.
Sniff, the (comparatively) small one, was grey and white and beautiful. But very much into just hanging around. Didn’t mind attention, but rarely sought it out. Though, he did meet one of my friends. Saw her twice; enamored at first sight. He finished his path three or four years before his brother.
Scratch was big. Once frightened a guest, who backed up in a near panic at first glimpse, mistaking him for an adult Raccoon. Relentlessly bullied his brother.
When he met my ~18 pound poodle-bichon* rescue, he quickly cornered the 1.5 year old pup, who immediately flipped on his back in submission. Scratch gave him mild corporal punishment in the form of four smacks to the head, then went about his business.
Scratch was King; Pharaoh; Sekhmet’s descendant.
Perma-no-fucks-ever-given face. But he became bungied to his people after he became the only cat.
*asshole. Highly likely to have been severely mistreated before I adopted. He is fortunate I was the one who took him on.
In yesterday’s substack. Paul Krugman talks about the state of AI with Paul Kedrosky, described as an investor, tech expert, and research fellow at MIT.
There seems to be funny business about the power grid. Plus Nvidia’s magic chips wear out from overuse, necessitating replacement. And most salient, advances in the LLM bots are slowing way down.