Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Thursday, July 31, 2025
·
26 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 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
Our very own Kristallnacht.
“We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out”
I just got back from the morning trek. It’s mostly woods alongside the road that roughly circles the lake, but there’s a nice level clearing at one bend in the road and today two young deer were grazing there.
Normally, they see you and either freeze or bolt. These two did neither. They started to approach us, wagging their tails like dogs. Sadie has somehow remained oblivious to the situation, sniffing away at something or other she found more interesting, but if the deer got much closer I knew she’d have an opinion. So I just stood there, waiting to see how this played out, until a delivery van came along and broke the spell.
@Scott: I was just reading that and I had a similar thought.
Around 2007 or 2008 I bought a very cheap, very small, umbrella that could fit in my bag easily, and even in some pockets. last month a rib snapped, so one side just hangs there. It still keeps the rain off, but it was time to replace it.
I haven’t found another like it, so I settled for a cheap but bigger one. Still fits in the bag, but not in a pocket.
What I wonder is this:
All new compact umbrellas with the telescopic shaft come off the factory with the canopy folded neatly in a small volume, and come inside a sleeve which they fit easily. After you open it once, it can never be refolded the same way, and it never goes back into the sleeve. At least that’s been my experience.
Is there a trick I’m missing, is it standard, have I been doing it wrong for decades?
On other matters, I’m thinking roasted chicken breasts, and fries with gravy on the side.
I’m a bit behind on my Ancient Geeks, just now listening to the classic SF authors episode. I of course related to much of it. At one point I remembered the Science Fiction Book Club, and sure enough, one of the hosts mentioned it a few minutes later.
What a different time, when a kid could get excited about mailing in a list of books to receive as part of joining, and then 4-6 weeks later getting a big box of book joy in the mail. How patient we were back then.
I still have some of those books. Some will have held up better than others, I realize. Amber? Yes. Xanth? Probably not….
@becca: Ah, what a lovely moment! (Glad Sadie was distracted!)
When something like that happens, I can only assume someone’s been feeding them. My husband was on a hike in England not long ago, and one of the moors they crossed has (allegedly) wild horses. They saw the walking crew and headed right to them…people=snacks.
@reid: I was a member also. We had a lot less TV available back then so reading was the primary source of pleasure and leisure.
@reid:
Until around the late 90s, I had to wait for relatives to travel to the US if I wanted new books*. There was one (1) bookstore nearby that carried titles in English. Their SciFi selection wasn’t great…
Then along came Amazon, when it was just a bookstore, and then I had the chance to wait 4 to 6 weeks for books. Later Powell’s, too, because they had 1) second hand books that were no longer in print, and 2) for a while offered free shipping to Mexico. These days is 99.9% audiobooks and ebooks, which are “delivered” in minutes.
I knew about the Science Fiction Book Club. They advertised a lot in Omni and Discover, which I read most months. Alas, they did not ship to Mexico. Also, back then international payments were a PITA.
*I had a decent starter collection of SciFi books in Spanish translation very early in the 80s. But that was when my English teacher suggested I practice the language by reading it. So I moved to reading in English (it worked!!)
Also, I found some mistranslations in several books I reread in English. Nothing major, but some were a bit annoying after having seen them. Not to mention footnotes indicating “In the original English, these two words sound similar.” or “In the original English, this word also means something else that’s relevant to the story.”
@Jen: There’s a fellow that puts out deer chow. Plus, several nearby parks and trails provide a hunter-free existence. Nice place to be a deer. I saw my first antlered stag a few weeks ago. What a beautiful animal.
@becca: I also enjoy seeing deer in the wild. However, there is always consequences. In the woods behind my house, the deer would graze constantly on the vegetation. As a result, bird populations that rely on underbrush for protection, etc. have drastically declined. Of course, the increased deer also increased the coyote population.
@Kathy: Last week you mentioned going back to watch the Star Trek series. For grins I decided to re-watch the original ST movies in order. I can’t believe how dull and drawn out they are. With the exception of The Undiscovered Country I fast-forwarded through all of them, the scenes with Ricardo Montalban in Wrath of Khan are grand of course and Christopher Plummer is a fine, menacing Klingon but all the rest now seems so mediocre.
@Mr. Prosser:
The first movie is infamously long and drawn out. In fact, I enjoyed the ancient geeks ep on it more than the movie. It’s a wonder it made any money and didn’t kill Star Trek for good.
Speaking of which, I’m puzzled by the first three eps of TOS.
SPOILER ALERT
In the first, The Man Trap, they kill the monster, which was the last of its kind. granted it had killed several Enterprise crew, but part of their mission is to “seek out new life,” and they could have contained the creature by supplying it with salt* (yes, salt).
The second ep, Charlie X, and the third, Where No Man Has Gone Before, are essentially the same story: a super powerful being endangers the ship and maybe all humanity, and there’s no easy way to contain them. So they wind up getting rid of them somehow (the somehow differs between eps).
It feels so un-Trekkie.
Part of the issue is the order CBS chose to air the eps. But the other part is the show runner(s) choosing to write, develop, and film such similar eps so close to each other.
*A virtue of technobabble is that the missing, rare, expensive, etc., element, part, substance and so on can be anything, and the audience doesn’t necessarily know how common such things are. Salt? Come on!
@Kathy: “Part of the issue is the order CBS chose to air the eps. ”
Just for your daily dose of pedantry, it was NBC. CBS famously passed on Star Trek, because they had their own science fiction show, Lost in Space.
@wr:
Yeah, and I knew this. I’ve no excuse, other than it’s Paramount/CBS that owns the franchise now.
@Mr. Prosser:
While I haven’t fast forwarded any eps yet, I sometimes take to browsing the web while they play, knowing nothing of consequence is taking place in the next 3-4 minutes.
Taco trade alert.
Don’t know how many folks read the Balloon Juice blog, but one of my favorite posters anywhere is Betty Cracker, partially for her wordsmithing. This is a classic:
As satisfying as it’s been to hear about bungling henchmen like Bondi, Patel and Bongino biting and scratching each other like coked-up trash pandas in a burlap sack, I figured it was more likely they were inept fools who got caught up in lies they told to conspiracy loons for political gain rather than incompetent accessories attempting to cover up their boss’s terrible crimes.
@Kathy: one of the things I really like about Stranger New Worlds is how it captures that deeply weird, clunky side of the original series.
Sometimes you get a retelling of “Those Who Walk Away From Omelas”, sometimes you get some form of Space Magic, other times a screwball comedy, or sci-fi horror. (I would like a screwball comedy retelling of Omelas).
I wish they would stop wedging legacy characters in. Let the show have a little space, despite being a prequel. It doesn’t need to end three minutes before the original series starts, with Kirk taking command and ordering the bridge be redecorated in retro futurism.
(Also, did young Scotty say he doesn’t drink, or did I imagine that?)
@Scott:
ICE is claiming that assaults on their officers are up 700-800%. Ignoring the fact that they lie about assaults all the time, I think their thuggish interactions with the public are up way more than that, so the increase in assaults is actually amazing restraint.
“Assaults” normalized by ICE douchebaggery is way down.
This —–
Rightwing-o-sphere responds with typical “exception picking” to counter ugly reality to its base —–
The reality is that the one child in question is both health compromised and starving — but hey, Fox News has to find its fig leaf wherever it can, and hooboy! they got librul NYT dead to rights! Kind of.
BUT the fact remains, and underscores to those who are not distracted by deflection, the tactics of the Israeli leadership continue to inflict harm through starvation upon the Gazans. That there are Palestinians with pre-existing health issues including young children , makes Israel’s tactics even more obscene and does not lessen their culpability.
More asymmetrical warfare by the Right, with words leveraging minutae over facts to influence narrative. Meanwhile, people are starving in Gaza.
@Kathy:
The story, to me, of Man Trap is how love can utterly blind. The creature had the ability to deploy it as weapon and was able to get someone to allow it to commit murder.
The story of Charlie X is one of absolute power corrupting absolutely and there is, tragically, no cure.
O. Henry, Rod Serling…transferred into outer space.
@Gustopher:
One thing I like about trek is they don’t mind recasting the iconic characters, or to show them aged, rather than digitally de-ageing the old actors, or superimposing them on someone else if the original actor is dead.
Anyway, I haven’t seen the third season yet, and probably won’t for a while.
But we’re in the age of fan service. Of course they’ll keep wedging in the legacy characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the end the show turns out to be a holodeck program in Discovery, TNG, or Lower Decks.
@reid:
Piers Anthony would probably be prosecuted for child pornography these days if he tried to publish those. In hindsight, some of his books were extremely squicky. And, y’know, just badly written. Although I do give him enormous credit for conceiving of The Game, in the Adept books.
Guess which chief nazi parasite regularly stiffs his contractors.
Can’t say I’m surprised.
He’s a little effing taco.
@dazedandconfused:
The story was fine. It’s the ending and killing a sentient creature that I object to. Especially since the creature would have been fine and not killed anyone had they left a ton of salt on the planet.
Charlie was orphaned and alone for 14 years, or so the crew believed. Essentially they were getting an uncivilized teenager, even before they knew of his powers. I saw no attempt to educate him (past the bit of Kirk telling Bones to teach him about sex, which I thought was played as comic relief), nor to explain to him why his behavior was inappropriate.
Maybe that’s a 60s thing.
@DrDaveT: Yes, I have very little memory of the Xanth books, other than the power each person had was neat and that they were kind of goofy. Perfect for a 12 year old me. I’ve since read reviews of them and can just say that I turned out okay, luckily. (I also liked the Adept series… I think.)
@Kathy:
It was a sentient creature capable of complex communication, but instead of simply asking for what it needed it chose to use the Enterprise as hunting ground, Killed at the last second as it was trying to kill Kirk, right in front of other humans. But if they had simply encountered a critter that needed some salt there wouldn’t have been much of a plot, I guess.
Charley? They tried to educate him. He rebelled and messed a lot of people up, bad. Horribly bad. There was no good ending for him unless he could be stripped of his powers, at least for the writers of the early shows. Not many good endings for a lot of the characters in O. Henry’s and Serling’s stories either.
I actually like those early episodes for that reason. Not long after the first year the show and subsequent series became more idealistic and preachy in general, too much so for my taste.