Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, January 26, 2022
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69 comments
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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Seattle’s cement workers strike over low wages and unfair labor practices
No concrete? No work. It’s as simple as that.
As a union carpenter my sympathies are where one would expect them to be, but unanimous? It’s got to be pretty blatant for everybody to decide that no pay is better than whatever they were getting before. All the other Seattle area contractors are probably leaning pretty hard on these 6 companies to reach a deal. If they aren’t, they will be soon.
Can’t say as I blame them.
He still has his sense of humor.
I’m sure JKB will be along shortly to post a Youtube video by some random RW nutjob that will absolutely destroy the above data graphs.
COVID-19: endemic doesn’t mean harmless
Not satisfied with just trashing up our planet and near Earth space, now we’re littering on the moon: Out-of-control SpaceX rocket on collision course with moon
If the laws of gravity give you space impact lemons, might as well make lemonade.
I left work yesterday shortly before 12 am today, then woke up at 5am to make it to the office by 6, so I could see some samples loaded and taken away. It’s not the few hours of sleep that get me, but leaving when it’s dark, waking up when it’s still dark, and then driving when it’s still dark.
When I have to do something like this, I remind myself of the time we finished work at 2 am, and I had to be somewhere at 6 to, you guessed it, present samples. I didn’t even go home, but dozed at my desk. I was sure if I went to bed, I wouldn’t get up in time no matter how many alarms I set.
On other things, my fusion chicken cordon rouge was rather good. It would help to slice the turkey sausage in half lengthwise, and wrapping just half a sausage and the cheese in each chicken milanesa. Next time. maybe even brown the underside on a pan, too. the mole on top was pretty good.
On the reading front, I finished a lecture series on Athenian democracy, which I found rather illuminating. Like the Romans afterwards, the Athenians taxed some of the wealthy by making them responsible for certain public expenses. Can you imagine something like that today? “Hey, Zuck. You gotta build a freeway and ten units of public housing. here are the specs. We will check your work for quality”
Now I’m reading a book on physics called “Einstein’s Dice & Schrodinger’s Cat.”* It intersperses details of both scientists’ life stories with their work and the progression of the fields of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
*Poetic license. As we all know, those were God’s dice.
When I was 19 or so I spent a winter working in a small factory. I hated it. Go to work in the dark, come home in the dark. Wouldn’t see the sun for days on end. Once a week I got to take out and dump the acid bath in the hazardous waste vat. I lived for that 5 minutes and would milk it for all it was worth.
US to hold surprise plant inspections targeting pollution in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley
Long overdue.
Sounds like England in Midwinter. 🙂
Only here it’s day after day.
Getup at 6:30 AM = dark
Drive in to work = dark
Sunrise at 8:00
Sunset at 4:00
Finish work at 5:00 = dark
Drive home = dark
He sure has porked up. Not that he was ever what you’d call trim.
http://www.nypost.com/2022/01/26/trump-declares-himself-the-47th-president-while-playing-golf/
@OzarkHillbilly: “I’m sure JKB will be along shortly to post a Youtube video by some random RW nutjob that will absolutely destroy the above data graphs.”
Nah. YouTube was invented after 1922, and he seems to be allergic to citing anything that wasn’t created before then…
@JohnSF:
These days it’s dark when we leave at the regular time, 6:30-7:00, and dark when I get up. but the sun’s usually out on my drive to work.
@JohnSF: That was what drove me nuts about England–the total lack of sunshine (heck, daylight) in the winter months.
I’m probably the first person in history who went for a trip to Belgium to see the sun.
@JohnSF:
On the other hand, in the summer, it stays light till almost midnight. Or at least it did in Edinburgh.
New variant of Omicron has hit the shores.
Not much is known about it, but it doesn’t look to be any worse than Omicron_1.
Re: the recent post on alcohol not being good for you…
https://www.tastingtable.com/745713/new-study-reveals-the-relationship-between-drinking-wine-and-covid
Yes, I know it’s correlation not causation but I’m going with it. 😀
@Jen:
But red wine 10 to 17%.
Such variation!
Rigorous testing is called for to determine the possible differentials between a vintage Burgundy, a Pomerol, Gigondas, Barossa Shiraz, Barolo, Valpolicella Amarone, Rioja Gran Reserva…
I volunteer as tribute!
A counter argument: ‘This ain’t Vegas’: should a cruel end to the Bills’ season prompt an overtime change?
@Jen: That’s slander against white wines! Obvious reverse racism!
@wr: Oops. I’m wrong! JKB did link to a ludicrous youTube post on another forum. And it wasn’t even a clip from Birth of a Nation…
@OzarkHillbilly: FWIW, I pay so little attention to football nowadays that I didn’t even know you can’t win with just a field goal anymore. Still, playoffs decided in overtime going 10-1 to the coin toss winners makes it fair to say that the game is decided by a coin toss
@wr: Hence the JKB/Youtube reference. 🙂
Ohio senatorial candidate JD Vance was roundly mocked on Twitter after he celebrated an endorsement from extremist right-wing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
“Honored to have Marjorie’s endorsement. We’re going to win this thing and take the country back from the scumbags,” Mr Vance wrote on Twitter.
How do you transform yourself from a moderate Republican to someone who welcomes support from MJT, who has openly trafficked in anti semitic conspiracy theories?
@OzarkHillbilly:
I hate to say this, but maybe they should take a page from soccer and play a whole overtime quarter (or an abbreviated 10 minute quarter). If they’re still tied after that, then go the sudden death, any score wins route.
To simplify things, I’d eliminate overtime in the regular season. A game tied at the end of four quarters is a tie. Deal with it. During the season, teams play for position. Playoffs are elimination tournaments. The latter requires a tie breaker, the former does not.
Posting a short reply to a question yesterdays Ukraine comments by
dazedandconfused
Hah! Congratulations, you’ve actually encountered a Brit who knows what the Monroe Doctrine is/was. 🙂
Short version:
– started off out of reasonable anti-imperialist apprehension
– was mostly eyerolled at for half a century
– seemed justified again viz Mad Max in Mexico
– caused Lord Salisbury to smile in public and fume in private
– morphed into a mix-up of platitudes, conventional power politics, and blatant quasi-hegemonic arrogance
– looked really tawdry in American bleatings over the League of Nations
– is now well past its sell-by date
And is of limited relevance to Russian behaviour.
I may post a longer version on this later if I have time (he threatened).
Don’t know why, people are coming down all over the place on this. It’s all in an attempt to insure the losers in future games don’t feel so bad. Which is pretty silly. Both teams left it all on the field. Both teams deserved to win. But one of them had to lose.
No matter what the rules said, one team was going to walk out of that stadium feeling like they were walking on the clouds and the other was going to feel absolutely gutted. I feel for the Bills, I really do, but as a Miserian I’m happy with the result.
@senyordave:
Beats me. Another thing that Vance is accomplishing is totally losing the audience for any future books he might care to write.
I never liked the guy to begin with, even when he was posing as a reasonable human being, but don’t know what he thinks he’s doing here, unless it’s finally letting his inner asshole shine through what used to be a civilized facade.
@MarkedMan:
RE: your post on fit testing the 3M Aura 1870+ N95 mask:
Certainly reminds me of fitting with self-contained breathing apparatus (Scott AirPaks and the like).
Almost regardless of the filter material itself, the weakest link is the quality of the fit. Unfortunately that aspect is controlled by the user.
That mask costs approximately 5$ per unit, when purchased in quality of 20 or more.
BTW, the 3M website states that:
Words fail. What a charmer, what command of the English language! A modern-day Shakespeare.
@Jen:
Well, he’s just demonstrating his authentic white trash credentials.
@Jen:
None of people I know personally who drink Four Roses Single Barrel, Talisker 10 or Lagavulin 16 have gotten ill.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m putting my faith in vodka martinis.
I don’t deserve my luck. I hope to be able to elaborate later.
Breyer is retiring! Now let’s see what kind of norm-breaking shenanigans Mitch and Company try to get up to.
@Jax: Using Barrett as the standard for nomination to confirmation, and if Supreme Court term is up in June, then confirmation should be around mid-August.
@Michael Reynolds: Same holds true for the ones I know who quaff Highland Park 18, Aberlour 12, or Balvenie 21 Port Cask.
I think this report might be missing a whisky focus. 😉
@OzarkHillbilly: Hey, I just said I was wrong!
@Michael Reynolds: Raising a hand for the Macallan 18. Or Laphroaig, period.
(Trader Joe’s has a very nice Islay malt as well.)
@Michael Reynolds:
Balvennie Doublewood 12 seems effective; if appropriately balanced out with Tariquet XO Armagnac and Taylors 10yr Tawny Port
Fortified wine = science 🙂
@OzarkHillbilly: @Kathy: First 8 or 10 years I worked produce warehousing, I worked from 7 to 4 am most of the time. Summer made a break in the dark/dark sequence because I lived far enough North so that it was still light when I went to work and dawn was just breaking as I was going home. The good part of those hours was that I worked almost no overtime. When I switched to swing, I started at 3 pm and worked until 2am most days and until 4 or 5 most of the others.
@CSK: I put mine in my formidable misanthropic and antisocial tendencies.
@Scott: Completely different situations–that was then; this is now.
@Kathy:
Given up to four rounds of playoff games, at the end of a now 17-game season, and it’s a sport where people are routinely injured, often seriously, adding full quarters seems a big ask (worst case, that’s a whole additional game). If I were representing the players, I’d be coupling such a request with a “no overtime in the regular season, deal with ties.”
My word what a surprise in the Financial Times(probably paywalled):
I swear, I want to have carved on my funerary monument:
“I TOLD you so, you f@cking fools.”
I’m sensing a theme today.
New Hampshire’s Executive Council has voted to use $12 million of federal relief funds to purchase 1 million at-home covid rapid test kits, which will be sold at state liquor stores.
This feels like an incredibly New Hampshire solution.
@just nutha:
On the rocks or up? Olive or twist?
@Jen:
Well, at least they know where the shoppers flock. Probably sell half of them to Massachusetts residents, judging by the license plates I see in the Salem store.
@Jen:
@CSK:
Yup, NH R’s Communities and school districts need assistance, the states long term care facilities are drowning and they’re taking $12M to sell these to out of staters.
On other NH news, the Secessionist amendment was unanimously quashed in the House committee. It awaits action in the Senate.
@CSK:
@just nutha:
With bitters and twisted, I’d imagine? 🙂
Personally, I go for Chateau Misanthrope, 1957.
@grumpy realist:
Meanwhile, one of the things on my bucket list is to spend a winter in a place far enough north that there’s polar twilight, because I’m curious what not seeing the sun for several weeks is like.
@JohnSF:
I like olives. Fruit is an important part of one’s diet.
@Michael Reynolds:
Oddly enough, none of the people I know that drank Four Loko in the last year got sick either.
I mean, it tastes like jet fuel and medicine, soooooo.
Yeah, life’s gotten a little weird around here.
Night Shift
When I drove the Sleepytown Yellow Cab at night it was 6pm to 6am. For those years I was a day sleeper. There were several weeks around the Winter Solstice that I never saw the sun. Even my one “day” off was Thursday night.
I did develop good night vision. There were four law enforcement agencies that patrolled my turf at the time. State Police, County Sheriff, City cops and Campus Police. After running the streets post midnight for a time I could identify all of them from at least a block away. The marked cars were easy as they all had rollers on top. The unmarked weren’t really fooling anyone. There were a few local police cars that had taken a beating during the anti-draft, anti-war riots on campus and in town that lasted for weeks in May of 1970 when the University finally shut down before the end of the Spring Quarter. I started hacking just a few months later. Apparently the city couldn’t afford to replace them right away so when I saw a missing hubcap or a wrinkled fender or primer on a trunk lid it was a good bet to be the screws.
@Mister Bluster:
Between May and October, the rain season in Mexico City, it’s not uncommon to not see the Sun for days due to the overcast skies.
I remember one time we were walking nearby for lunch, when a faint yellowish shaft of light showed briefly. I wondered for a moment what that could be, before I realized there was a small break in the clouds allowing a little sunshine through.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That tracks with Kathy’s first law* of football: when a team loses the game as the result of one play, they really lost due to many results of many plays.
I think statistically the team that wins the coin toss wins 52% of the time or so under current rules, as opposed to a far higher percentage under the old rules. It’s close to even to be almost fair.
@Michael Cain:
Yes and no. Yes if it were for every overtime game, not only in the playoffs. And no if the league did away with regular season overtime (which I don’t see happening).
*I don’t have “only one rule,” but I do have many Laws. And they are all first laws of something. It sounds more important. For instance, Kathy’s first law of football: a consistent place kicker is worth twice their weight in gold.
@Kathy:
Saw a sportscaster point out that in regular season games the coin flips have been a slight bit over 50% favoring the winner, but in the playoffs the coin flips have been 11-0 for the winner.
May have something to do with generally the superior QBs being in the playoffs.
@CSK: Neat.
@JohnSF: Bwa ha ha ha ha:-D
@dazedandconfused:
Don’t all coin flips favor the winner? That’s what makes them the winner…
Sitting in a private room in the cardiac ward with wires taped to my chest, waiting for them to shove tubes into my arteries tomorrow. Weeee!
On the bright side:. The nurses are cute. 😀
Spotify to Pull Neil Young’s Music After Artist’s Objections to Joe Rogan
Damn near 50 years ago my best friend John and I would sit on his front porch. We would drink Grain Belt beer as he strummed his guitar and we would sing Old Man take a look at my life I’m a lot you were…twenty four and so much more………..
A few months later John put the wrong end of a .22 rifle in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.
It took a long time for me to stop being angry with John for doing that but I still cry when I hear that song.
@Mister Bluster:
I have a lot of memories that relate to Neil Young songs, for reasons good and bad.
Good on the old curmudgeon for telling Spotify to shove it.
@Mister Bluster:
@JohnSF:
Mr. B, being angry w/your friend is understandable.
Something that I’ve noticed about Neil Young, is that he’s been playing the same two guitars for about 50 years. A Gibson Les Paul, that originally was gold and he painted it black and a Martin D-45. Both look like they’ve had good use for a long time.
Oops. Used the wrong email last time.
So… Sitting in the hospital with wires taped to my chest*, waiting for them to shove tubes and gizmos up my arm tomorrow. Weeee!
I’ve been poked, prodded, and interrogated for the last nine hours. Some seriously cute nurses though
≠=========
* I’d rather not talk about how much hair has been ripped out today.
@Mu Yixiao: What’s going on!? (And good luck whatever it is!)
@dazedandconfused:
That, and a greater incentive to score a TD and not go home in disgrace. Whereas in the regular season a tie is half a game, so the pressure to score six points isn’t as great.
Them too, generally superior defenses make the playoffs. So…
@MarkedMan:
At work today, tightness in the chest, pulse @ 110 (while sitting down), shortness of breath, and dizziness. Went to the company RN to get my BP and she called 911. Not a heart attack (or maybe only a baby one) but enough that they’re concerned.
@Mu Yixiao:
That sounds like me, all the time….
All kidding aside, I hope it’s nothing serious, and hope you feel better very, very soon. Cute nurses always help.
@EddieInCA: @Mu Yixiao:
Last week my Fitbit congratulated me for being in my “cardio zone” for 150 minutes straight….
Great!!!! Except, for the previous three hours, I’d been sitting at my desk going over budgets, cost reports, casting notes, and approving payroll.
I got cardio in while sitting at my desk doing nothing. I’m sure that’s not the way it’s supposed to work, but hey, I got my cardio in.