Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, June 17, 2024
·
30 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
Chicago teen earns doctoral degree at age 17
Definitely an underachiever.
If ever one thinks life is too hard…
Abandoned, abused and belittled: how Oksana Masters survived a torturous childhood – and became a world-beating athlete
Her book: The Hard Parts: A Memoir of Courage and Triumph
According to CNN, Taylor Swift’s fans danced so hard at her Edinburgh concerts that it registered as seismic activity.
@CSK: Yep! Happened at her Seattle show too, the dancing registered 2.3 on the Richter scale. She’s a force of nature. 🙂
@OzarkHillbilly:
So you start off our day with one young woman who is far smarter than anyone here, and another young woman who is far stronger than anyone here. A little dose of ego correction.
@Michael Reynolds:
I admire them both.
@Michael Reynolds: I had that thought too, and agree on your conclusion (not that I ever thought I was all that smart, just above avg. Reading about Oksana, I’m pretty dawg damned sure I could never have survived what she’s gone thru).
I spent most of the weekend watching Mythbusters eps on Youtube.
It’s amazing to realize how much I liked that show and how much I miss it. It’s too bad the second iteration lasted only a couple of seasons.
What I hadn’t noticed is how much filler there was in that show. Often they ran two or three investigations, cutting from one to the other. When they returned to one, they recapped the myth, showed clips illustrating it, recapped what’s been done, and showed replays of the earlier stages. It was almost like watching the show and its rerun at the same time.
I realized this now, when I’ve a tool to fast forward through all the repetition. When I watched it on TV over a decade ago, it didn’t seem that repetitive.
Completely deranged:
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “HAPPY FATHER’S DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE RADICAL LEFT DEGENERATES THAT ARE RAPIDLY BRINGING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INTO THIRD WORLD NATION STATUS WITH THEIR MANY ATTEMPTS AT TRYING TO INFLUENCE OUR SACRED COURT SYSTEM INTO BREAKING TO THEIR VERY SICK AND DANGEROUS WILL.”
“WE NEED STRENGTH AND LOYALTY TO OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS WONDERFUL CONSTITUTION. EVERYTHING WILL BE ON FULL DISPLAY COME NOVEMBER 5TH, 2024 – THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” he added.
In a sane world he would be in assisted living, off in a corner room where the staff could whisper to each other “it’s your turn to take care of the crazy guy with orange hair. And check to see if he needs to have his depends changed.”
@Kathy: I really enjoyed the show. I remember an episode where they examined the myth that a paper could only be folded seven times. So naturally they had a football filed sized paper to test it. The show had a great combination of science and absurdity. Add in a penchant for blowing things up and you had compelling viewing.
@SenyorDave:
I watched that one yesterday.
I like their method of first replicating the circumstances, then, if that failed, replicating the result (if physically possible at all). This showed how bad human intuition is about the physical world. Also, perhaps, how we are conditioned by cartoons and action movies to expect certain results that just can’t happen.
Trump is hoping his daughter Tiffany’s father-in-law, Massad Boulos, will help him win over Arab-American voters. Good luck with that one, Donnie.
About @Steve’s post yesterday, I find the situation appalling.
I had concerns over the Chinese vaccines (there were several), because efficacy data on their trials was spotty and not well reported in most media outlets. Also because just about everywhere vaccination was implemented early, be it with the mRNA or virus vector shots, transmission went down quickly. Except in countries like Chile, which went with one or more Chinese made shots.
About the one thing most reports agreed on, including some in science magazines and some studies I half-understood, is the Chinese vaccines were effective at preventing severe disease and death.
One or two of these were liste don the Mexican government’s vaccine portal, which meant I might have gotten them (I got Pfizer). I’d made up my mind to take any vaccine offered (we couldn’t choose), and then, if necessary, travel to the US for Pfizer or Moderna.
The bottom line is that spreading vaccine misinformation is bad in any circumstance. In the midst of the trump pandemic, it’s outright murder.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You and I are mere flesh and blood. Oksana is apparently fashioned out of tempered steel.
According to Alyssa Farah-Griffin, Trump wanted to execute the person who leaked the information that he hid in the White House bunker during the George Floyd riots.
She added: “But there were others, where he talked about executing people.”
I wonder who else was on his hit list.
@Michael Reynolds: Indeed.
@CSK: If I could manage the feat, I would gladly join it.
I found an article on WaPo about pet spending and statistics about who owns what pet.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/30/american-pet-spending/
Reptiles are fascinating — Republicans are twice as likely to own them than Democrats (4% to 2%), Hispanics are more likely to own them than anyone else, and people living in trailers rather than any other living arrangement. Education: high school dropouts and folks with associates degrees.
I assume it is just small sample sizes, and doesn’t mean that every Latino Republican man in a trailer park with an associates degree has a reptile.
My assumption has mostly been that it was post-goth white liberal women who got into snakes and bearded dragons. I was wrong.
For some reason, my regular supermarket has had turkey breasts and thighs on sale for over a month. Usually you don’t see any turkey for sale outside December, and then it’s all whole frozen turkeys.
I wonder if last holiday season was terrible, and they’re taking whole birds out of deep freeze and portioning them out.
Or maybe it’s their current poultry supplier. I noticed the chicken went from one brand to a different one.
I’m not planning to get any in the foreseeable future. I had great success cooking it, and then using the bones for stock, but it’s too expensive to gt once or twice a month. Instead I’m thinking I should cook chicken breasts the way I did the turkey breasts, and keep the bones for stock.
@Gustopher:
That one may be closer than you realize. I would guess that it’s a pretty small sample size.
If you’ve ever been to the non tourist parts of Mexico and central America, you know that lizards and such are just part of the roof thatching* and “wall papering”.
I wonder how much of their acceptance of reptiles as pets is “cultural heritage”? (for lack of better terms?)
* a lot of scorpions in roof thatching too, but I don’t see Latinos keeping them as pets.
@Kathy: I bought roasted dark meat chicken, legs and thighs with the pelvic back bone attached, on special last week at my local grocery store and the bones from 4 legs and 4 thighs made a huge pot of stock for vegetable soup over the weekend. Most went in the freezer, so I don’t need to make stock again for a while. I still am figuring out how the air frying basket on my new, smaller, convection oven will roast chicken, but with what raw chicken costs at my store downtown, when deli chicken is on special, it’s really just as cheap to buy already roasted pieces.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
For the turkey, I cooked it in the oven at 185 until a couple of degrees C short of the cooked temp. I then let it rest a few minutes, and stuck each breast in the air fryer on broil at, I think 230 C for seven minutes. I got juicy, tender meat and crispy skin.
I’ve cooked chicken thighs directly in the air fryer, marinated and with breading. I forget the times, but the neat part is the thing pauses when I open the lid, then restarts when I close it. I can then check the temp and skin.
We got a new multi functional copier for evaluation.
First thing I did, was to feed it one of the labels I use for samples. TL;DR they’re a peculiar size we have a format for printing. These tend to be a PITA on all printers, requiring multiple visits by IT and the copier supplier to get right.
I was pleasantly surprised they printed right away and perfectly centered, by the simple expedient of choosing the feed from a specific tray.
I’d credit the brand of the new machine, except I can’t, We’ve had that brand before, and it was a PITA to get the labels printed in them. Hopefully this one will do better (if we get to keep it).
After 11 years, my sister is being prepped for her heart transplant. So long as the next 24 hours go well, this is a joyous moment.
For those inclined to pray, send good vibes, offer viriginal sacrifices, whatever you believe may help in times like these, it would be appreciated today.
@Neil Hudelson:
Good luck. Hoping for the best.
double post.
@Neil Hudelson: Receive ye therefore the sacred upvote.
@Neil Hudelson:
My best to your sister–and you.
@Neil Hudelson: Will do.
@Neil Hudelson:
Bit belated, but best hopes.