Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So many bastards, so little time.

In my day, never was longer.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

No Justins, No Peace

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

After roe, women are no longer free.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Not all heroes wear capes.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

The revolution will be supervised.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Enjoy Our Wins

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Enjoy Our Wins

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Saturday Morning Open Thread 21

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

191Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Still need to win the abortion vote in November.  But good job Ohio.  We don’t get to say that too often.

  5. 5.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “[This is] going to provide rocket fuel [for Biden’s campaign].”

    If life gives you lemons…

  6. 6.

    Kay

    My youngest son is working this summer to save money to go to Spain for study abroad. He was at a carwash then Wal Mart but he wanted a better hourly so he asked my middle son, the electrician, to get him on a construction site. My middle son got him on as a laborer on a demolition – lowest possible rung- he carries things and gets yelled at by heavy equipment operators.

    So one of the operators told him, by way of telling him to toughen up, that it’s a “doggy dog world” so my son said “I think it’s ‘dog eat dog'” and the operator told him “you are a fucking idiot, professor”.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    The trend will be the Rethugs trying to whittle down voting rights until only the local Rethug Party Chairmen (emphasis on men) can vote.

    It’s won’t work, but they will try…

  9. 9.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Here is what I posted on Twitter in response to the Tweet by Kat Abu:

    It’s too late for me. I have a BA, an MA (an ABD, I was that close to a PhD), an AS in computer programming. This education is why I see thru everything the right claims, all the bullshit, all the conspiracy theories they have devolved into. (Kelly Conway: Alternate Reality.)

    A classic book on this from 1964 is Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter. Winner of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction. It still stands today as a seminal work in exposing the anti-intellectualism threads in American society. I read it then and learned.

  10. 10.

    Tony Jay

    I look at it like a boxing match.

    The MAGOP are doing everything they can in there; biting, gouging, tripping, faking injury, playing on the biased referee to pull them apart when they run into trouble. But the Democrats are faster, fitter, hungrier and are winning most every round on points.

    Sure, you’re going to come out of the bout with cuts and bruises and a face like a pug, but I’d much rather be you than the other guy.

  11. 11.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    DeWine says a ballot measure guaranteeing reproduction rights is “extreme”.  What a joke.

    He says he wants a compromise, but when asked he couldn’t name one.

  15. 15.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    He comes home wide eyed with hurt behind his coke bottle glasses. I told him to stay at Wal Mart. Air conditioned, and fun girls to work with. He was popular there!

  16. 16.

    artem1s

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:

    DeWine says a ballot measure guaranteeing reproduction rights is “extreme

    says the guy who signed the fucking heartbeat bill. he had a chance to compromise but was to afraid to veto it because the extremist assholes in his party have him by the balls and always will.

  17. 17.

    Doug R

    I did spend about 6 years getting 2 1/2 years of credits but TBF some of my friends that did get degrees were IDIOTS during COVID.

    I hit a brick wall with Calculus, still haven’t finished the second half-I found it very derivative.

    I still take the occasional free course online through Coursera-got certificates for dinosaur, relativity, epigenetics and exoplanets.

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    A demolition laborer has a hard job. And a loud one! If your son can stick it out, it will make all his future jobs seem relatively easy and quiet.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Interesting: Scientists may be on brink of discovering fifth force of nature

    Now researchers have said there could be another, fifth, fundamental force of nature.

    Dr Mitesh Patel, from Imperial College London, said: “We’re talking about a fifth force because we can’t necessarily explain the behaviour [in these experiments] with the four we know about.”

    The data comes from experiments at the Fermilab US particle accelerator facility, which explored how subatomic particles called muons – similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier – move in a magnetic field. Patel says the muons behave a bit like a child’s spinning top, in rotating around the axis of the magnetic field. However, as the muons move, they wobble. The frequency of that wobble can be predicted by the standard model.

    But the experimental results from FermiLab do not appear to match those predictions.
    ………………..
    But Patel, who worked on the LHC experiments, said those results were now less coherent. “They are different experiments, measuring different things, and there may or may not be a connection,” he said.

    Butterworth added that the unexpected frequency of the muons’ wobbles was one of the longest-standing and most significant discrepancies between a measurement and the standard model.

    “The measurement is a great achievement, and very unlikely to be in error now,” he said. “So if the theory predictions get sorted out, this could indeed be the first confirmed evidence for a fifth force – or something else strange and beyond the standard model.”

  20. 20.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: In 10-20 years this will be seen by him as the most formative experience of his life. Regardless which direction he takes.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Some Maui updates from Friday (Source).

    The County of Maui Department of Water Supply is issuing an unsafe water alert for areas of Upper Kula and Lahaina affected by wildfires. As a precaution, customers in those areas are advised not to drink and not to boil their water. Instead of tap water, customers are advised to use only bottled water for drinking, brushing teeth, making ice and preparing food.

    The advisory is in effect until further notice.

    Failure to follow this advisory could result in illness, according to the department and state Department of Health. Due to the wildfires, structures were destroyed and some areas of the water system lost pressure. Those conditions may have caused harmful contaminants, including benzene and other volatile organic chemicals, to enter the water system.

    Customers are advised to:

    Limit the use of hot water
    Limit shower and bathing time and use lukewarm water and a ventilated area
    Use a dishwasher to wash dishes and use the air dry setting
    Wash clothing in cold water
    Avoid using clothes dryers
    Not use hot tubs or swimming pools
    Not use ice from automatic ice makers
    Use proper ventilation when using water indoors
    .

    Well, that didn’t take long. Limited access road opening lasted all of half a day.

    Effective Immediately, the road to Lahaina, via Honoapiʻilani Highway is closed in both directions.

    Police had reports that many people were parking on the Lahaina Bypass and walking into the areas makai of the bypass, which is locked down due to hazardous conditions and biohazards. This zone has been declared as a site for authorized personnel area only. Police say those caught within this zone will be escorted out and may be arrested.

    “This area is an active police scene, and we need to preserve the dignity of lives lost and respect their surviving family. Unauthorized entry to these areas increases danger to themselves and delays our operations, as MPD and National Guard personnel must stop their searching efforts and escort individuals out,” police said.

    Maui police spokesperson Alana Pico said people continued to disobey the orders, and entry to Lahaina was effectively closed. The area is currently open to emergency personnel only.

  26. 26.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Doug R:”I hit a brick wall with Calculus, still haven’t finished the second half-I found it very derivative.”

     Sounds as if it hasn’t been integral to your ability to lead a happy life, so it’s all good!

  27. 27.

    Kristine

    @Doug R:

    I still take the occasional free course online through Coursera-got certificates for dinosaur, relativity, epigenetics and exoplanets.

    Oh–I need to look into this.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    My middle son really adores him – he was much the youngest so my middle son sort of took care of him and still does. Middle son is working in NC so I told him youngest hates the job he got him and wants to quit and he said “good grief – tell him to tell them to fuck off”

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Immanentize: I’d have gone with “illiterate fuck” myself. And when he replied with the standard, “Huh?” I’d say, “I rest my case.”

    @Kay: Yep, that sums it up.

  34. 34.

    Marmot

    @Doug R:

    I hit a brick wall with Calculus, still haven’t finished the second half-I found it very derivative.

    But the second half is integral to later math!

    Forgive me.

  38. 38.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: At her primary debate last year, Lauren Boebert made an issue of a vote her opponent had taken as a state senator, and tried to accuse him of having ulterior motives. But it came out of her mouth as “alternate motors.”

    The crowd guffawed, and Boebert’s staff was reminded not to use big words in her briefing materials.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @OzarkHillbilly: The lattice field theory calculations DO agree with the muon results, which suggests to me that what’s really going on here is not new fundamental physics, but insufficient understanding of how the strong force (quantum chromodynamics, already part of the Standard Model) contributes to muon g-2. These calculations are very, very hard to do.

  45. 45.

    Jeffro

    OT but here’s some fun for the music fans out there: what are R.E.M.’s five best songs?

    (it helps if you don’t allow yourself to pick more than 1 from any given album of theirs…I am listening to ‘Automatic For The People’ right now and I’m like “ok those are my 5 right there”… =)

    “…if you belieeeve, they put a man on the moon…man on the moooon…”

    Good stuff for a Saturday morning!  (or any morning, really!)

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Sometimes it takes experiencing a little adversity for a person to figure out what they want to do and why.  And figuring out how to interact with others who are abrasive or mean on first contact is important.

    Good luck to your youngster!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: He should’ve countered “Okay, so what exactly would ‘doggy dog’ mean?”  Although it would have probably only made things worse, lol.

  49. 49.

    Mike in NC

    In Georgia next week they’re expecting multiple racketeering indictments for Fat Bastard and his henchmen. Go Georgia!

  51. 51.

    twbrandt

    @Kay: I had a laborer job at a steel plant between high school and college. I HATED it, but learned perseverance. I also interacted daily with people I never had before given my comfortable middle class upbringing. It was a valuable experience, though very tough.

  55. 55.

    oldgold

    Why has Ohio trended so hard right over the past decade? Like Iowa, Obama carried Ohio in ‘08 and ‘12. Then, the bottom dropped out for the Democrats to the the point a half-ass like J.D. Vance trounces Tim Ryan.

  57. 57.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Matt McIrvin: Anytime I read of some “groundbreaking development” my first thought is always, it’s probably just gonna tweak what we already know. Still, it’s interesting.

  58. 58.

    citizen dave

    @Jeffro: I listened to Fables of the Reconstruction the other day after telling my wife the story (again) of the guy it is about with his two sides of the house and his book, called Life and How to Live It.  Here is the story: http://itstartswithabirthstone.blogspot.com/2014/10/stories-in-song-6-rem.html

    and the house today: https://www.atlantamagazine.com/homeandgarden/inside-the-athens-cottage-that-inspired-r-e-m-s-life-and-how-to-live-it/

    Off the top of my head: Finest Worksong, So Central Rain, Rockville, Fall On Me, Can’t Get There From Here

    Re: The top clip; I’ve long thought that education itself is an anti-Republican value.  That makes it difficult when they are in charge of the government apparatus to provide such.  Hope no one hears what is going on in my city of Fishers Indiana, now that the Nutters are doing stuff on the school board and library board.  Oh crap, too late: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/john-green-hamilton-public-library-the-fault-in-our-stars-removal-rcna99044

    $350,000 to read every teen book and decide if it should be on the shelf…

  59. 59.

    Another Scott

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yeah.

    “After decades of work and billions of dollars, particle physicist gain incrementally better understanding of important high-energy particle to tweak existing theories.”

    vs

    “OMG!  BREAKING NEWS!  ‘GOD PARTICLE’ DISCOVERED!  WHAT DOES IT MEAN??!”

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  60. 60.

    sab

    @artem1s: The Supreme Court gave us the compromise 50 years ago and DeWine just couldn’t accept it.

    The big battle in November will just bring us back to Roe v Wade.

    I am not ranting at you. I am ranting at DeWine and LaRose.

  66. 66.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @citizen dave: I’m still trying to process the changes Cole talks about at UWV. I was an English prof. If you still require first-year writing, it’s hard to slash an English dept by 30%. They may be R1 now, but that won’t last.

  67. 67.

    p.a.

    In no particular order

    Boxcars (Carnival of Sorts)

    Fall on Me

    Maps and Legends

    Nightswimming (o.k., this is my #1)

    Wendell Gee

     

    Since so much of the early stuff is meaning-opaque, I tend to rank by the music “atmospherics”  I prefer.
    Also, Tourfilm is a excellent concert movie.

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    @oldgold: There’s been a demonization of liberal Democrats in Ohio for a very, very long time.  Howard Metzenbaum was a villain up there with Ted Kennedy in the GQPers’ eyes.  And the Taft wing of the GQPers – based in Ohio – have always been on the reactionary side.

    But I think a bigger reason for changes in the last couple of decades is the elected GQPers being more brazen about picking their voters and trying to restrict votes from others.  If there were instant registration, 30 days of early voting, free mail-in ballots, etc., I very much doubt that the GQPers would have such overwhelming power in government there.

    We really, really need national voting standards and a strengthened Voting Rights Act.

    Fingers crossed that the tide is turning in Ohio…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    What is the red and white whatever on the woman’s back??

    According to the MAGOPhant’s speech balloon, it’s a Trump Steak. LOL.

    I love that she picked up a snake on her way across.

  70. 70.

    New Deal democrat

    @oldgold: Not just Ohio at all. Since 2000, you can see a sea of red in legislative and executive maps marching up the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys till it reached all the way to Michigan and Wisconsin by 2016.

    Remember that there used to be Democratic governors and Senators in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and Wisconsin. Even Kansas had a number of Democratic governors for awhile.

    Martin Longman (Booman) called this “the Southification of the North.” Basically, divide and conquer using cultural issues (more correctly “moral” issues, as to which people are unwilling to compromise) to turn white working class voters, especially rural ones, against racial minorities.

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @New Deal democrat: ​  Wisconsin currently has a Democratic Governor and one Democratic Senator.​
     
    ETA: Since 1957, at least one of WI’s Senators has been a Democrat.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    @oldgold:

    Tim Ryan didn’t reach out to natural Democratic Party constituents.

    He ignored them, while disrespecting the President and chasing WWC voters.

    I think he was a sucky candidate.

  80. 80.

    Immanentize

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: when I was a Provost for Vice (was that my title?) our board was taken over by passionate grads who were mostly law or business grads. They started seeing our Undergraduate School of Arts and Sciences simply as a support program for the Business School and “hard” disciplines. This was not helped by the longtime Dean of the CAS being a passive aggressive nimrod allergic to change. He said he was “protecting faculty” but he was protecting his old and easy ways.

    We did a ton of metrics on programming and it resulted in a couple program closures — our “engineering” and Computer Science degrees in CAS (we really did not have the faculty or the students to support them in light of all the superior local options) and two business masters programs.

    The path of successful students in a liberal arts college (including the business classes and STEM) depend completely on two learning outcomes: mastery of the basics (reading, writing, ‘rhythmic, and relationship skills) and the structured opportunity to dive deep into an area that is self chosen. Or many.

    My guess is, like Ruffo in Florida, that none of the people quashing programs in WV is an educator.

  81. 81.

    New Deal democrat

    @lowtechcyclist: Thanks for that. When I looked it up a few months ago, I was surprised at how many Dem governors it had in the past 50 years.

    Making Kansas a swing State is a hobby horse issue of mine. Of the 50 States plus DC, it is right in the middle, #26, in urban vs. rural split, right between NC and MN if I recall correctly. And it would be a really cheap $$ way to pick up Senate seats and Presidential Electors, because the only areas you need to target are suburban Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita.

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    “Doggy dog” sounds like a sort of a cute, fun world – “oh, is it doggy dog? Fabulous!”

    He says they’re all “60” (years old)

    they’re probably 40 :)

    22 an hour in west MI though

  84. 84.

    sab

    @rikyrah: Very much agree with you. He was my congressman for twenty years and I had to try to sell him to my dad’s nurse’s aide who lived in Marcia Fudge’s district. She thought he was just another white Catholic Irish Italian boy who had no interest in her issues.

  86. 86.

    UncleEbeneezer

    It’s rather hilarious how fast we went from:

    • Appointing a Special Counsel is a good thing (that Garland should have done long ago)

    to

    • Appointing a Special Counsel is a bad thing (and Garland is a fool for doing so)

    It’s almost like the people holding these diametrically conflicting stances just enjoy bashing Garland…

  89. 89.

    debit

    @rikyrah:  THIS.  Rep Dean Phillips is doing the same thing right now in his district, screeching that we’re dooooooomed if Biden runs again.  I wish I had known he was such a piece of shit before I donated to his first campaign.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    I don’t know. The Detroit job was federal funds but he’s in NC for some kind of industrial ceramics thing?

    He likes the southerners. They took him to a “dance hall” – country and western music – I didn’t know there were still dance halls.

  94. 94.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I have personally been seized by the Weeble Force, and i hope there are no pictures.

    Weeble Force does oppose the weak force of gravity, though. Until it doesn’t.

  98. 98.

    matt

    @Kay: Lifers at semi-skilled jobs absolutely hate people who are going to university to better themselves. From personal experience.

  99. 99.

    sab

    @sab: I am hoping JD Vance is a one term mistake. Ohio likes right wingers who talk like moderates. Rob Portman was good at it.  JD Vance can’t do that.  He fiercely believes whatever his sponsors tell him to believe.

  100. 100.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​ He says they’re all “60” (years old)
    they’re probably 40 :)

    Construction will age one: “It’s not the years, it’s the mileage.”

  102. 102.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Immanentize: When I first joined the faculty at ISU, Iowa didn’t allow program duplication in its three public universities. So, in the ISU English dept, the only PhD program was the one I taught in: Rhetoric and Professional Communication. At that point, all our PhDs got tenure track jobs because other schools were establishing programs. Obviously, that’s a Ponzi scheme, since those programs would eventually turn out their own PhDs and the market would be flooded.

    Eventually, our linguistics people got a PhD program, which made sense since they did computational linguistics and there were few programs nationally and none in Iowa. But then they got an MFA program in creative program, which made no sense since the University of Iowa was right down the highway with an internationally recognized program. After I left, a PhD in lit followed. I was horrified. Lit PhDs are massively overproduced and wind up providing cheap adjunct labor. It’s exploitive. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea, other than faculty who wanted to teach grad students.

  109. 109.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @matt: ​
      FWIW sometimes the kids bring it on themselves by talking down to the “lifers” and otherwise being snotty little shits. From personal experience. I worked at a window making factory during the summers throughout college. I watched a bunch of fellow summer workers act like asses and be disliked. I kept my mouth shut and did my job. I had very few problems.

  110. 110.

    sab

    @OzarkHillbilly: “It’s the mileage.” Yes. I am 5’5″ and my husband was 6’2″ when I married him. I suddenly realized today that he is my height because his spine has collapsed from a lifetime of heavy lifting. Of course I was aware of his spine issues and the constant pain he deals with, but I hadn’t noticed the height. I was talking to him face to face and we were at the same eye level. It was weird.

  111. 111.

    Eunicecycle

    @Suzanne: He really is spineless. Roe WAS the compromise, you dumbass! (I mean DeWine of course!) He failed to protect our doctor in charge of the Covid response, who was 100% right about everything. She was being harassed at her home by people with guns, let alone the other crap from Repub lawmakers, and he did NOTHING. I didn’t like him a lot before that but now I despise him.

  112. 112.

    trollhattan

    @OzarkHillbilly: Are they pranking me with a headline saying “six key things” then listing five? Brit humour.

    9. Why am I still stuck in traffic with all these Teslas?

  113. 113.

    Ken

    @Doug R: I still take the occasional free course online through Coursera-got certificates for dinosaur, relativity, epigenetics and exoplanets.

    Getting your Masters in Supervillainy, I take it?

  114. 114.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @trollhattan: ​
      You’ve never been in a Southern sorority house?

    Also, just for the record, I counted 2 sorority sisters of color in there.

  116. 116.

    sab

    @schrodingers_cat: She claims that she wrote that book as a warning, but moms are using it as a guidebook. Urk. From what I can see she has used her professorship to groom young women lawyers to clerk for right wing judges. And I mean groom. Dress sexy etc. Didn’t Yale have to restrict her husband from teaching required courses because he couldn’t be trusted around young women.

  118. 118.

    JWR

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
    He says he wants a compromise, but when asked he couldn’t name one.

    @sab:
    The Supreme Court gave us the compromise 50 years ago and DeWine just couldn’t accept it.

    Word! Like those morans in Ohio(?) from whom the 10 year old girl had to flee in order to get proper medical care, and the sponsors of the abortion ban were all whimpering about how they already had compromises in the original bill and she could’ve been treated in Ohio which was and is total nonsense and a flat out lie. All of their imaginary “compromises” operated on the fantasy that Roe was still in effect. It’s almost as if they don’t know what they’ve accomplished with their “Save the Unborn Children!” BS.

  120. 120.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I hope he meets a nice girl at the dance hall! I think “western swing” is a different kind of music than “country” but don’t quote me. I know nothing about music.

  122. 122.

    sab

    @Kay: Third job this summer. That is a booming economy. Back in the day when we walked to school uphill both ways through the snow we spent half the summer trying to land the first summer job.

    I remember it vividly. When I moved to Michigan in the 1980s unemployment was about 20%.

  124. 124.

    jimmiraybob

    @HeartlandLiberal: ​
     
    A 1964 Hofstedter article, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” published in Harper’s Magazine, is a window into where we have been and where we are today in American crazytown politics. It’s available online and easily Googleable.

  125. 125.

    sab

    @JWR: There is no question about whether there was rape with a ten year old. Of course she was. Five or six years younger than the age of consent. The only question was whether she would survive a full term pregnancy and delivery. And Ohio couldn’t even meet that low bar.

  130. 130.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @sab: Ouch. While I have a bad back and neck it’s nothing like that. Not yet anyway. I feel for him as pain is my constant companion.

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @JWR: It’s almost as if they don’t know what they’ve accomplished with their “Save the Unborn Children!” BS.

    I think they know exactly what they’ve accomplished: They put the bitches back in their place. Trouble is they just won’t stay there!

  136. 136.

    Anoniminous

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Almost certainly not a new finding.  Most of these wild-eyed announcements are either bullshit – like AlphaFold’s claim to have “solved protein chemistry” – or some kind of laboratory error – see the recent dust-up re: Room Temperature Superconducting that wasn’t.

  139. 139.

    anitamargarita

    @eclare: “ah-haa”, my dad also was a big fan, some of my earliest memories are Bob Wills on the record player and “swing dancing”with my dad and sisters. All us kids must have been been under 8 years old, so not much dancing, just twirling each other around til we were dizzy.

  144. 144.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The hatred for education is a feature of Conservative Evangelicalism.  The whole movement holds science leads to disbelief and they just seems revel ignorance and a lot of them think magnetism is a mystery beyond human understanding.

  145. 145.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev: Heh.

    NOVA:

    NOVA: If string theory doesn’t have testable predictions, is it science or is it philosophy?

    Steven Weinberg: Sometimes people say that string theory, because it’s unrelated to any experiment, is no longer science, it’s just a kind of a mysticism. I don’t think that’s right at all. I think that the string theorists are trying to accomplish something that will be recognized if it succeeds in unifying all the forces, but it will be experimentally verified as well. It won’t be experimentally verified by finding the strings themselves—by seeing the one-dimensional little rips in space that we call strings—but it will be experimentally verified if it explains the things that are still mysterious about the physics we know about. It is just a part of ordinary science. Unfortunately, it’s further removed from observation than most parts of science but not hopelessly removed from it.

    NOVA: Do you think that string theory could turn out to be just plain wrong?

    Weinberg: I don’t think it’s ever happened that a theory that has the kind of mathematical appeal that string theory has has turned out to be entirely wrong. There have been theories that turned out to be right in a different context than the context for which they were invented. But I would find it hard to believe that that much elegance and mathematical beauty would simply be wasted. And in any case I don’t see any alternative to string theory. I don’t see any other way of bringing gravity into the same general theoretical framework as all the other forces of nature. Yes, it could be entirely wrong. I don’t think it’s likely at all. I think it’s best to assume it’s not and take it very seriously and work on it.

    Weinberg was, naturally, a theorist.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  146. 146.

    sab

    @columbusqueen: He was a good congressman, but he certainly presented himself badly in that election. My husband used to throw shoes at the tv whenever we saw his ads. And we liked him,  once he got married and came around on abortion.

  147. 147.

    Ken

    @schrodingers_cat: My niece’s calculus difficulty was with limits, or actually with why they were learning them.

    I gave her my (biased engineer’s) version, which is that historically calculus came first and clearly worked, but had some stuff that made mathematicians twitchy. So they developed limits to show that everything was mathematically valid. Then, since every math textbook is written by mathematicians, they include all that justification.

  152. 152.

    CaseyL

    “Save the Unborn Children!” put together with gun rights, aka “Sacrifice the Born Children!” makes it clear the GOP does support birth control and abortion… just (very) retroactively.

  153. 153.

    eclare

    @schrodingers_cat:

    My eighth grade algebra teacher wrote the quadratic equation on the board on the last day of class because “she had to teach it.”  A lot of it comes down to poor teachers in the early classes.  Somehow I survived and made it through AP calculus, which I loved.  For that I had a wonderful teacher, Kiki, fresh out of college with a math major.

  156. 156.

    trollhattan

    @Ken: ​
    Was fine through trig and algebra, then while taking calculus I missed two weeks when it so happened derivatives were introduced, sinking my math ship. Oddly, loved physics and did well in that the same year.

    By contrast, my kid graduated HS with two years AP calculus under her belt, hated physics and “didn’t get it.” Go figure.

    Think we’re all just wired differently.

  157. 157.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I thought switching again was a bad idea. I don’t think contractors give anything away. They’ll expect to get every bit of that 22 an hour out of him and i honestly don’t know how hard he works. Maybe they give him shit because he doesn’t work hard. I think it started with disappointment day one because it’s “demolition” and they gave him one of those 5 gallon buckets with the tool hanger on it and tools and his name in Sharpy so he thought he would be doing something – demolishing something- and all he does is carry heavy shit hither and yon, stacking debris.

    Anyway. He’ll be off to Madrid soon so I told him to stop complaining. He really is privileged which to his credit he knows.

  158. 158.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: For introductory physics, I found that the three fundamental things were:

    1. Check the units.
    2. Understand which quantities are scalars and which are vectors.
    3. There is a way to write this so it all adds up to zero. Make sure it does.

    It didn’t matter what the underlying topic was — mechanics, optics, thermodynamics, electricity — those three always showed up.

  161. 161.

    sab

    @trollhattan: Algebra almost killed me, but geometry seemed to be self-evident.

    My mother the chemistry major almost failed organic chemistry but it was my father’s favorite class in college.

  162. 162.

    Jager

    @Kay:

    I worked on construction jobs from high school through college, just wait until they start giving him sexual advice.

  163. 163.

    Jeffro

    @citizen dave: what a cool story!  “Life And How to Live It” is in my top 5 btw!

    @Immanentize: very cool!  “Wolves, Lower” did not pop to mind right away but yes, what a great cut!

    @p.a.: that’s a great list!  I will have to check out “Tourfilm” – never seen it, believe it or not.

  165. 165.

    Another Scott

    @trollhattan: You should have used Apostol’s Calculus.  He does integration before differentiation.

    ;-)

    Doing integration first makes a lot of sense (adding up areas is more intuitive than figuring out infinitesimal changes of slopes).

    I had an AP math course in high school where we did some (conventional) calculus, and then I foolishly signed up for an honors calculus class in my freshman year of college that used Apostol.  Very, very rigorous and a tough text.  I had to drop it and move into a normal calculus course after a couple of quarters ’cause I was getting killed by the brainiacs that had calculus in 6th grade or something.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  167. 167.

    Kent

    I’ve been having an online discussion about abortion politics with a MAGA cousin in Ohio.

    My  point to him is that Americans very much DO NOT LIKE being told what to do.  A fact that should be obvious to him given the complete public melt down we saw in the past couple years over vaccine mandates and mask requirements.

    And that someone who argued that vaccines and masks are issues of freedom, privacy, and medical autonomy should not be the slightest bit surprised when other fellow Americans make the same arguments of freedom, privacy, and medical autonomy in favor of reproductive healthcare and abortion rights.

    Policy objectives can be carried out through any combination of carrots and sticks but Americans very much hate sticks.  Whether it is vaccine mandates, helmet laws, or gas stoves.  And to date, anti-abortion politics has been 100% stick and no carrot.  For Fuck’s sake, Ohio doesn’t even mandate paid sick leave for pregnant women to give birth.  Much less do anything at all to ensure that choosing to be a young single parent isn’t a sentence to a lifetime of poverty.

  168. 168.

    Another Scott

    @Ken: A good list.

    I would add that it’s really, really important to clearly understand the definitions of things and try to develop an intuitive understanding of what is being asked in the questions on exams.  Too many instructors like to try to make things “easy” by being unclear about what they’re asking.

    “Consider a binary star system with the 2 stars orbiting around each other…”

    “WTF??!”

    :-/

    A book I really liked when I read it a few years ago (long after it would have been helpful in class – but it didn’t exist then), and one that should be (IMHO) required reading by physics instructors is A Guide to Introductory Physics Teaching by A.B. Arons. (It’s available on the Internet Archive).

    He stresses how vitally important it is to be clear about defining stuff and being rigorous in explanations – that trying to make things inappropriately “simple” just causes confusion and misunderstanding.

    Being a good teacher is hard work!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  169. 169.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Another Scott:

    “Consider a binary star system with the 2 stars orbiting around each other…”

    “WTF??!”

    It’s not until you add a third body to the system that mathematicians give up and go home.  It was interesting to me to learn just how incredibly, insanely, ‘even computer’s can’t do the math’ complicated multiple body gravity equations quickly become.

  170. 170.

    Kent

    @trollhattan:

    @Ken: ​
    Was fine through trig and algebra, then while taking calculus I missed two weeks when it so happened derivatives were introduced, sinking my math ship. Oddly, loved physics and did well in that the same year.

    By contrast, my kid graduated HS with two years AP calculus under her belt, hated physics and “didn’t get it.” Go figure.

    Think we’re all just wired differently.

    Physics teacher here.  Physics is basically just story problems.  The math is usually very simple algebra.  Rarely do you ever even venture into trig and never calculus unless it is the most advanced AP Physics C.

    The difficulty is always in untangling the story and manipulating formulas to set up the solution.  The math is then very easy.   It is kind of the exact opposite of most math classes where the math is difficult but the story is easy.

    What makes things like AP physics questions difficult is not the math but all the other things they throw at you like complicated unit conversions and multi-step problems where you have to use one formula to derive a variable that you then have to plug into another formula to find the answer.

  171. 171.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck: Heh.

    I remember looking through some old Bell System Technical Journals when I was in grad school.  They had long-hand derivations of the various equations of motion needed to figure out the positions and paths and velocities necessary to get the Apollo boxes in the right positions to land on the Moon.  It was quite impressive.

    I also recall one recitation session for a mechanics class in college where one of the TAs thought it would be fun to go over one of the standard PhD qualifier exam questions about a top spinning on a spinning globe.  It made me realize that I had no interest in continuing along that path…  :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  174. 174.

    Citizen Alan

    @Immanentize: I loved Ann Richards too. But I’m not blind to the fact that the only reason she got a single term as Governor of Texas was that she was up against an absolute moron who thought rape jokes were funny.

  177. 177.

    Citizen Alan

    @Suzanne: This! Compromise and bipartisanship to a Republican means that the Republicans get everything they want and the Democrats get nothing in return. And furthermore, that the Democrats take the blame for everything that goes wrong as a result of the uniformly disastrous Republican policies!

  178. 178.

    Citizen Alan

    @Omnes Omnibus: Which is sad to me, because a Texas POC sorority girl is probably just a future Candace Owens, someone whose path to future success is premised on being “one of the good ones” who is perfectly fine with white supremacy as long as she is treated well.

    Speaking of race relations, I meant to share this weeks ago but forgot. A few days before leaving Mississippi, I had a conversation with my favorite aunt and the topic of my RWNJ sister came up (RWNJ sister had one of her little crying jag freakouts a few days before). My aunt rolled her eyes, swore me to secrecy, and said that the real reason RWNJ sister had been acting insane for the last six months was that she’d learned that her daughter/my niece (23yo) had secretly been dating a black man for a year or so without her knowledge, and apparently she would show up at aunt’s house crying over it on a weekly basis.

  179. 179.

    WereBear

    @schrodingers_cat: I failed algebra the first time, but it was an unairconditioned afternoon class in Florida and the teacher was not good at explaining.

    Took it as a summer course and aced it. A/C and a good teacher.

  180. 180.

    WereBear

    @Ken: Heck, if someone had explained it that way, I might have made it to calculus.

    Found out later I have dyscalculia, but it is intermittent :) Sometimes I can understand it, but I can’t reliably DO it.

  182. 182.

    catclub

    @Citizen Alan: ​
     

    And furthermore, that the Democrats take the blame for everything that goes wrong as a result of the uniformly disastrous Republican policies!

    BiPartisan Social Security “reform”.

  187. 187.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @citizen dave: Everyone always calls it Fables of the Reconstruction but…if you look at the album cover it’s actually ambiguous and could just as well be Reconstruction of the Fables. 

     

    @Jeffro: I perused the lists…was wondering if someone would list Great Beyond and sure enough someone did. I think that one is great but it’s not on an album proper so I thought it might get ignored.

    I think Document is my favorite album of theirs. My 5 off the top of my head and subject to change as I haven’t put much thought in:

    Supernatural Super Serious. This is my fave from their late career comeck album.

    What’s the Frequency Kenneth? This one is a bit personal as my dad’s name is Kenneth and it pops into my head whenever he does something I don’t understand which is frequently.

    Welcome to the Occupation is I think my fave from Document. Just like the groove a lot. Plus it presages the harder edged direction they’d go in during the coming decade.

    Don’t Go Back to Rockville. It’s the one that sticks with me most from their early period and you have to have one from the first couple albums.

    Fall On Me. This was the first REM album I bought and this is my favorite song on it.

  188. 188.

    citizen dave

    @What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: My best friend–now and from college days–was a big R.E.M. fan as well and would point out the two titles; saying it could be either on the record, but for the CD version a choice had to be made.  I almost wrote it as “Reconstruction of the Fables” just to see if anyone would notice.

  189. 189.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Jeffro: Oh, man, everyone’s going to say different things.

    Let’s see:

    1. “What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?”
    2. “Driver 8”
    3. “Cuyahoga”
    4. “Star 69”
    5. “Radio Free Europe”

    I doubt that’s going to be a popular list.

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