Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, June 27, 2024
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51 comments
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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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You may not know the name, but you know the face: Bill Cobbs, RiP.
The headline of the day- Feds charge 5 with attempting to bribe Minnesota juror with $120K
The Florida headline of the day- Jury recommends death penalty for man who killed five women in Florida bank
@Bill Jempty: Those charges will be dropped as the supercilious 6 just legalized bribery.
@OzarkHillbilly: “You may not know the name, but you know the face: Bill Cobbs, RiP.”
I was just going to post about him. Bill Cobbs was a guest star in my very first produced script, an episode of Spenser: For Hire, along with William H. Macy and Kate Burton.
https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/716165/s02-e20-if-you-knew-sammy
Always loved seeming him in anything after that.
@wr: He was something special. I can’t explain why or how, but he was.
@wr: I’m randomly curious about an actor thing and realized you are probably the perfect person for this. I caught Martin Short interviewing Selena Gomez last night and in passing he commented on how she always came to the set knowing her lines and ready to get to work. Is this uncommon among A-listers? If not, why would any producer work with a problem actor?
One of the local bars in town is advertising the debate like it’s the Superbowl. Food trucks, the debate on all tv’s, raffles, specials on drinks, the whole nine yards!
Please oh please oh please, let Donald Trump make a fool of himself! ;-P ;-P
You can’t make this stuff up…
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/meet-senator-says-trump-represents-return-normalcy-rcna159013
@DeD:
For Republicans, “Normalcy”= The culture and mores of the 19th century.
Huh. Whod’a thunk it? Neanderthals were DEMs.
@Chip Daniels: To be more direct, “normalcy” means not having to see gay people. Not having to look at a Pride flag across the Basin. Not having to hear about trans people. All that stuff amounts to religious persecution you know!
@Jax:
I thought that was his natural state.
We finished watching Station Eleven last night. It’s streaming on Max. The title is misleading in a way. It doesn’t take place in a station. We really enjoyed it. If anyone watches it, I suggest not looking at plot summaries, just let the story unfold. Probably not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it remarkably engrossing.
Bodkin, on Netflix, is another limited series that’s worth the time. Barack and Michelle Obama are the executive producers. It takes place in Ireland and the always worth watching Irish actor David Wilmot has a major role, as he does in Station Eleven.
Speaking of Irish actors, Downhall Gleeson was excellent in Alice and Jack, on PBS. And Jamie Dorman in The Tourist on Netflix.
Maybe I’m just a sucker for the brogue.
Oops. Dude is toast.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/world/americas/bolivia-unrest-military.html?unlocked_article_code=1.200.NVYO.iWHHzJnITzBi&smid=url-share
I’ve found The Acolyte insipid.
It’s progressing a bit like a superhero narrative. The antagonists are too powerful. The protagonists can at best escape them alive, or delay them a bit. Of course, later on and without any major changes, they’ll find a way to stop or defeat them.
I’m more interesting in learning why Mae wants to kill five specific Jedi, and why at least one of them thought she was justified.
On the other hand, the story in My Adventures with Superman is getting interesting.
@DeD: Sucks to be him.
After legalizing bribery (more on that later), the supremes went on to block the Sacklers’ impenetrable bankruptcy shield.
When the bankruptcy deal was announced, I felt that victims were not receiving anywhere near enough compensation, and that the Sacklers were getting off with a light slap on the wrist.
As I see things, the Saclers/Purdue Pharma, either:
1) Knew their opioids were addictive but marketed as non-addictive anyway, which morally constitutes fraud (legally as well, IMO, but I’ll leave legal opinions to those qualified to offer them).
2) Didn’t know whether they¿re addictive or not, but marketed them as non-addictive anyway, which is pretty much the same as 1) but with less malice and more depraved disregard.
3) Honestly believed their opioids were non-addictive, but they got it wrong. This is morally acceptable, so long as they attempted to make things right upon discovering their error. As far as I know, these drugs were never taken off the market, nor were they marketed less aggressively, nor did the Sacklers or Purdue offer any help to those affected (if I’m wrong about this, I welcome any corrections).
I wonder what the vote at the court means. Uncle Thomas went for it, which I find surprising as it would hurt rich people. But so did Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, but not Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
Moving on to bribery. As it’s now legal to bribe public officials so long as a) it’s after the fact, and b) it’s called a “gratuity,” can businesses who bribe government officials now deduct the bribes as a business expense?
@Kathy: How about 4) hoped that they were non-addictive and market them as such in a monumental wishful thinking exercise? (Or is this subsumed under 1, 2, or 3 in a way I’m not recognizing?)
The corrupt, adulterous, generally bad person, AG Ken Paxton is still facing scrutiny. He’s like the Donald Trump of Texas, always somehow skating out of trouble.
Court ruling suggests recent activity in federal investigation of Ken Paxton
@just nutha:
I guess it’s subsumed under 2), they didn’t know.
Real Life Consequences Part #137,431
My wife works at a non-profit that works with victims of child sexual abuse, primarily in education and outreach. They have a children’s educational program that starts in kindergarten or earlier. At those early ages it primarily consists of trying to get kids aware of boundaries. Don’t touch people without asking, and that it’s alright to object to touching from others that make you feel uncomfortable. (I’m sure it’s better and more effective than what I just said.) They finally got their program approved by a particular school district in the greater Washington DC area, after spending over a year and attending 5 school board meetings. All because of the crazy trumpers who look with suspicion on anything to do with sex, and the board walking around on tip toes trying not to startle the loons.
@Bill Jempty:
Wait, didn’t The Court recently rule that Bribes are now ‘Gratuities’ and that this is not criminal activity?
@al Ameda:
No, no, no. They did not legalize bribery. They legalized bribery of politicians (which by extension would include judges). Nobody said anything about sharing the gratuities with jurors or any other commoners.
@Kathy: Indeed the show continues to be dumb. The writing is terrible. The acting ranges from decent to awful. The choreography is somewhat passable to terrible. None of the “twists” have been surprising. Watching the Acolyte I can’t help but keep thinking about how this show had a bigger budget than Dune. Yet I can’t figure out where the money actually went.
I intentionally avoiding going into actual details because each episode would require paragraphs to point out all the stupid/dumb/awful parts. After watching Andor I had high hopes for Ahsoka. After Ahsoka I had basically no hope for the acolyte. Now having passed the half way point in the Acolyte I have no hope for the Acolyte or anything STar wars related under Disney.
@Kathy:
So, I’m full on Star Wars fan girl, so, yeah, I love it. That being said, the first couple of episodes were very heavy on the Star Wars vibey bullshit. Even I felt like something was off, I dunno. Lol, maybe ramp up the bullshit or something. I thought the last couple of Episodes were pretty good though. And Manny Jacinto can get it. OMG, he is amazing and sooo hot. Evil Jason Mendoza sex machine.
Anyway, I gasped twice during the latest episode (unrelated to the drooling), make of that what you will.
Do you think that tonight Trump will accuse Biden and the FBI of trying to assassinate him during the Mar-a-Lago raid? When he was safe and sound 1500 miles away in Trump Tower?
@becca: “Speaking of Irish actors, Downhall Gleeson was excellent in Alice and Jack, on PBS.”
If it’s the brogue that pleases you, you should check out Domnhall’s father Brendan in two wonderful movies written and directed by John Michael McDonagh (less antagonistic brother of Martin, author of Three Billboards Outside Wherever, The Banshees of Inisherin and In Bruges) — The Guard, which has Gleason as a lazy, fat, racist cop in a tiny Irish town somehow teamed up with Don Cheadle as an FBI agent searching for drug smugglers, and Calvary, in which he is a good priest who is informed in confessional that he will be murdered in a week to atone for the sins of the church.
@Kathy:
It appears we are an oligarchy overseen by the best Supreme Court money can buy. The Slackers must be poor tippers.
@Scott:
There’s no “somehow” about it — the GOP has suborned the courts there, too.
@Beth:
I want to see Acolyte, but mostly because I’m a big Philosophy Tube fan, and it’s exciting to see Abigail Thorn’s acting career taking off.
@Stormy Dragon:
That’s right, she’s in it. Fair warning, objectively @Kathy: and @Matt: are, ugh, right. But it’s awesome. Just a heads up, I’m an unreliable narrator when it comes to Star Wars. Except for Manny Jacinto, he is flat out objectively awesome and so, so, so, hot.
@Matt:
I guess I’m a little more tolerant of popcorn entertainment.
@Beth:
I thought “the Master” would be one of the twins’ mothers. I still think that was a better idea.
@Kathy:
I thought so too, but I like what they ended up doing way better.
@Pete S: An important distinction, indeed. Good catch!
@Beth:
Jacinto is really good. He’s proven to be someone like Tatiana Maslany or Amanda Seyfried, whose being disappears into the character they’re playing.
That said, I was 100% positive it was one of the mothers, when “the Master” moved Osha out of harms way when the Jedi charged.
@wr: I am really interested in your take on Alice and Jack. It’s hard to articulate how a character can put you off, yet still make you care. I’m talking about Alice.
Did you watch it?
I am familiar and have enjoyed the talents of the Gleeson clan in all their endeavors.
@Kathy:
I can only hear Jason Mendoza when he speaks. The “I wore a mask” line had me laughing because it was such a Jason thing to say. If we can somehow get to “Luke, Donkey Don is my father” I will be delighted.
Also, I loved the padawan Jeckie. There’s a lot wrong with the show, but she had a great moment in almost every episode.
That said, I would have been perfectly happy if all the Jedi we were following were killed in the big fight last episode and the season was over then and there, several episodes before anyone expected. No mystery solved, just “oh, there are Sithy folk out there somewhere, and lots of stuff the Jedi don’t know about, that’s probably a problem.”
Maybe pick it up in a second season, maybe not. But give the villain time to just be a threat in people’s imaginations. Calendar time as much as screen time.
Kathy –
“I wonder what the vote at the court means. Uncle Thomas went for it, which I find surprising as it would hurt rich people. But so did Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson,…”
Setting aside the racist “Uncle,” and juvenile “rich people,” perhaps you should consider that such a surprising result indicates that the issue is a bit more nuanced than you are apparently capable of processing, with your limited sophistication.
@Kathy: Well I would be more tolerant of popcorn entertainment if the writing was actually decent. I’ve read a few star wars books and played the KOTOR series. I also had a friend that was pretty hardcore into the various Star Wars books. So I’m not exactly a hardcore fan that can recite all canon on the fly but I know a decent amount about the universe. So in order for me to shut off my brain and ignore all the terrible writing I’d need something else to grab on to for entertainment. There’s nothing there though and I couldn’t even get excited over the latest fights because the choreography was just bad. Like I really wanted to get happy at seeing what I assume is cortosis based armor but I couldn’t because the fight itself was badly done. Then afterwards the questions started popping up in my mind about how much having cortosis suddenly appearing breaks the disney SW time line. Favorite part I think is that while the big bad can ragdoll 8 jedi at once with a single force push he’s absolutely unable to do anything to a couple flying animals. It’s dumb and I’m tired of the writers relying on such stupidity to allow the good guys or whatever to regroup. There’s no consistency in the writing. Just whatever the “plot” demands happens magically. Although props to the writers for finally killing someone with a light saber. The neck snap was pretty good too.
@Kathy: You are the first person I’ve run into who didn’t guess it was the alchemy/drug guy. I was HOPING beyond hope it was actually one of the mothers but nope that would require some actual decent writers to make work.
@Beth: Oh man Manny is way hot once the fighting starts. Basically the only good thing about the episode was watching him fight. Even if the choreography was sub par.
I think I’ve enjoyed The Acolyte more than I enjoyed the current season of Doctor Who. I’m not saying that it’s better, but my expectations are lower, and the flaws are just less irritating.
There are no mystery boxes that are just dragged out to show you there’s a mystery box and then tucked away again with no development until the final episode when half the mystery boxes are opened and another talks directly to the camera.
There’s the “what happened on Planet Lesbian?” mystery, but what each character saw there drives their actions in different ways. And reveals are built towards and foreshadowed in ways where you could conceivably guess the answer (maybe too easily, but it’s not “oh, the mysterious hooded figure who pointed ominously was a 15 year old girl who was dressed weird and she was pointing to a street sign for reasons that only make sense if she knew someone was watching her which she didn’t”). And I’m pretty sure that any negative consequences won’t be resolved with a deus ex machina or barely explained sequence of random events.
I feel like the show is mediocre, but playing fair with the audience.
(I’m not a huge fan of Russel T. Davies as a showrunner for Doctor Who. The recently concluded season had him writing the majority of the episodes, and it was all his excesses front and center. He’s always written with the assumption that if the scenes have the right emotional beats no one will notice if don’t really fit together.).
@Matt:
We should be in the Rule Of Two phase, if the bad guy really is Sith, so I think there’s a good chance we have only seen the apprentice (who wants his very own apprentice).
(Also, I think the choreography of the fights has been really good for a tv show, but maybe I’m just fine with anything that has flashing lightsabers.)
@Matt:
1) He wasn’t the apothecary. He’d supplanted the apothecary while Mae went on a killing.
2) I figured it could be him anyway, because he was right there on the planet already. But:
Yeah, me too. I figured it would be Koril, as she’d been opposed to the Jedi taking one of her daughters. So, taking on Jedi powers and styles, but on the Dark Side(TM), and training her daughter in them as well, would be just one more way to stick it to the people she hates. And she’d have the same reasons Mae does* to kill five particular Jedi.
But, it was not to be.
Wow! Jack lecturing someone on things being too nuanced for that person’s limited sophistication is too ironic for words! Yeowza!
Kinky Friedman, 79, has died. RIP.
@Kathy: Until it is contradicted in the source material, he is Darth Pharmacist.
Oklahoma just passed a law requiring that schools teach the Bible. Just heard the head of education for Oklahoma say that every teacher in every class must have a Bible in class and teach from it. Wonder how math class will work? 1 disciple plus 1 disciple= 2 disciples?
Steve
Orbital debris is a growing problem.
Few satellite operators take responsibility for their hardware once it stops operating for whatever reason.
Many solutions have been proposed, but all cost money and require action, a deadly combination.
So, I was thinking about conditions in low Earth orbit. Despite being in orbit, weightless, etc. there is some atmosphere that high up (I think you can find traces of atmosphere as far as 10,000 kilometers above the surface*). Not much. It’s thinner than thin up there. But this rarefied medium does produce drag. Not a whole lot, but enough that satellites need fuel and thrusters to keep station. Larger satellites, like the ISS, even need to boost their orbit from time to time (I think this is done using resupply and crew capsules).
In time, left all alone, almost all satellites in orbit will succumb to drag and burn up entering the thicker part of the atmosphere. This can take anywhere from years to centuries, depending on the orbit, size, and other factors.
What if we help it along? It wouldn’t cost much to add relatively large, lightweight sails to all or most satellites, which would be kept rolled up for years, and then deployed at the end of its useful life. This would increase drag and get them to burn up that much faster. As a bonus, the sails would also make dead satellites easier to track.
This wouldn’t work with satellites higher up, especially comsats in Clarke orbit, around 36,000 kilometers above sea level.
I know. Who’ll pay for it, who’ll enforce it, how will violators be dealt with, etc.
@Gustopher:Prior to Disney this would be the rule of two era. Post Disney that no longer matters.
The fights were better than some of what we saw in Ahsoka but that’s a very low bar. There were Jedi running off screen never to appear again during the fights. Like the Jedi extras decided to give up and go home mid fight.
I would be surprised if any of the light saber wielding actors bothered to train in relevant swordplay. When Hayden Christensen showed up in Ahsoka the difference was clear as day. Hayden looked like an actual fighter. Rosario looked like the star wars kid. Her movements were slow, awkward and clumsy in comparison to Hayden. That’s because Hayden put in serious work to train for the prequels. The current batch don’t seem to care.
In Rosario’s defense dual wielding a shoto with longsword is difficult. Ahsoka’s fighting forms are very acrobatic and difficult to pull off. So she was going to have to put a whole lot of effort into training to make that look really good/proper. I also wonder how much trouble the head piece/lekku was giving her. She did well enough in hindsight. I guess my expectations were just too high.
I’m involved with HEMA and Belegarth. So I’ve always wanted to see more realistic sword play in STar wards. Something more along the lines of this.
https://youtu.be/AAzY28C8Syc?si=u1l32Ys1M6q-snFH
It’s not 100% realistic but it’s close enough and still entertains.
@Kathy:
1. You’re being pedantic. You knew who I was talking about.
“1 disciple plus 1 disciple= 2 disciples?”
Correct. Maybe Oklahoma will also include Terrence Howard math wherein 1 disciple times 1 disciple = 2 disciples. It can’t be 1 disciple because how could you possibly have less disciples than you started with, as I understand his theory.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=saQrA8QsopI
@becca: Sorry to say I haven’t seen Alice and Jack yet…