Dem
47
GOP
53
Back to normal order.
If you're still working on the headline theme, we'll tell you that the staff mathematician approved heartily of this week's choice.
M.O. in Metamora, MI, asks: I was reading through the DHS shutdown item and was wondering: Why do we think this time will be different than the end of last year? Aren't Republicans just going to refuse to play ball, and then when actual impacts start hitting voters (the flight disruption you highlighted), the Democrats will get scared of angering people and back off with nothing?
It all feels like déjà vu, reading "Democrats are going to have leverage now!" in advance. I expect in a month I'll be reading: "This was never going to end differently, Democrats had no choice but to end the shutdown without getting anything."
We were told then that "Now that SNAP and everything is secured, Democrats can have this fight again with better leverage!" To the surprise of no one, that didn't happen, there was no second fight for healthcare. Is there something I'm missing that will make this time different, where we won't end up with a "We agreed to everything the Republicans wanted on ICE in return for them funding the TSA for the rest of the year!" and patting ourselves on the back?(Z) answers: Which is more essential to people: (1) food, or (2) the ability to fly on an airplane?
The fact that holding out on ACA subsidies meant that 40 million people would not have enough food was a major consideration for the Democrats, both in political terms and in human terms. And since the Republicans have made clear they are NOT giving in on the ACA subsidies, then the purpose of that suffering would be... nothing. And in the holiday season, of all times.
A shutdown of DHS imposes a much less harsh cost on Americans in general, and on Democratic voters in particular. Meanwhile, Democratic voters are furious about ICE right now, and insist on some sort of reform. And the reforms the Democrats want are popular, including with independents (and even some Republicans). Oh, and it's not the holiday season.
Nobody can know what will happen until it does, and the Republicans are obviously counting on the Democrats to chicken out. However, there is simply no question that the calculus is substantially different now than it was back in November.
J.H. in Boston, MA, asks: You wrote that once funding runs out for the TSA, airports will shut down and wreak havoc on the economy. Many people, including myself, consider that TSA's function in air traffic is more security theater than actual vital security and wouldn't mind if it ceased to exist. Could an airport just decide to continue operation without TSA? Presumably there are statutes that require TSA's oversight, but if Congress isn't going to follow their own laws, then why should airports be obligated to?
(Z) answers: The legal problem here is that screening is indeed required by law, specifically 49 U.S. Code 44901. An airline is allowed to hire its own, non-TSA screeners, but... those screeners still have to be approved by TSA before they can do the job. Oh, and "Congress is not following the laws, so why should I have to do so?" is a defense that will fly in approximately 0.0% of courts.
The economic problem here is that there is an audience for the security theater. If people are allowed to board planes without screening, and if some of those people appear to be Muslim (or even vaguely Muslim), there will be some passengers who refuse to fly. That's money lost to the airlines, along with angry customers. A second economic problem is that if someone did sneak a bomb onto a plane during the no-screening period, there would be lawsuits out the yin-yang.
J.P. in Sedro Woolley, WA, asks: I have a question for the historian. Let me preface it by saying I am Jewish, pro-Palestinian (I believe they are humans and have rights), and can't believe the Epstein stuff isn't causing riots in the streets.
I was hoping you could discuss the historic antisemitic trope of the blood libel, and how it relates to the Epstein files. I see endless social media posts about the files, which I 110% support, but it's getting harder and harder to disentangle disturbing facts from hate speech. Epstein and Maxwell are Jewish, and their sadistic behavior as individuals is being taken as proof that Jews are part of some larger satanic conspiracy. I'm not sure what to think, except that I don't tell anyone I'm Jewish anymore.(Z) answers: "Blood libel" gives a wrong impression, I think. The alternate term, "blood accusation" is clearer, I would say.
In any case, for literally millennia, Jews have been accused of being members of a cult that murders people (particularly babies, more particularly Christian babies) for their blood, so that the blood can be used in occult rituals. That's the "blood" part. Meanwhile, the accusation is unsupported by evidence, and is obviously defamatory. That's the "libel" part.
Whenever a Jewish person is accused of any sort of crime, particularly if that crime involves something violent or sexual, then the antisemites break out all the old tropes, and use the Jewish's person's crimes/alleged crimes as "evidence" that the tropes are truthful. I have not seen anyone specifically accusing Epstein/Maxwell of collecting the blood of victims and using it for evil rituals, but I also don't frequent the corners of the Internet where that might come up (ahem, Truth Social), and I would not be surprised at all to hear that it's going on.
J.L. in Chapel Hill, NC , asks: You wrote: "We'd say that if you want to understand where Prejean Boller is coming from, her re-tweet of an Owens tweet pretty much tells the tale: 'Zionists are naturally hostile to Catholics because we refuse to bend the knee to revisionist history and support the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children for occult Baal worshipers.'"
Eh? Sorry. This doesn't help me understand much... at all. What on Earth is she talking about? I'm not steeped in conspiracy theories. I have no idea what this tweet is about.(Z) answers: For "the mass slaughter and rape of innocent children," see the answer about blood libel above. "Occult" refers to rituals and other religious practices that are outside the mainstream, and carries connotations of "evil" and/or "Satanic." And Baal is a false god who appears in the Old Testament, and who some Israelites began to worship, particularly as discussed in Numbers 25.
So, what Prejean Boller (and Candace Owens) are saying is that Judaism is an evil cult where members worship a false god, and also commit unspeakable atrocities against innocent people. It would be pretty tough to squeeze more antisemitism into so few words.
J.L. in Baltimore, MD, asks: In the videos of AG Pam Bondi's testimony, I can see that the Epstein survivors are wearing the same t-shirt but I couldn't find any closeups that show the shirt. Do you know what the shirt says?
(Z) answers: We can tell you what it says, but it's best if you see for yourself, so you can decide what it means. Here's a closeup:
![It says 'The Truth Is
[REDACTION] [REDACTION] [REDACTION]. Epstein survivors are still waiting. Release the [REDACTION] files. World without
exploitation.](http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Images/epstein_shirt.jpg)
A.L. in Sudbury, MA, asks: Is it possible that Southern states with large Black populations could become more favorable to Democratic Senate candidates if the Voting Rights Act falls? In particular, Mississippi has a Senate election this year and if Black voters are upset enough could they oust a not particularly popular Senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)?
(Z) answers: Possible, but don't count on it. Some Black voters are Republicans. Many others already vote. So, it would take quite the shock to the system to get enough new Democratic voters to the polls to unseat someone who won her last election by 10 points. Doable, but a tall hill to climb.
D.E. in Lancaster, PA, asks: You might have answered this before, but do you think our politics can ever move beyond cultural wedge issues? This past week, hearing all these "Big Tough Alpha Males" on the right whine, cry and clutch their pearls over Bad Bunny is not only pathetic but exhausting. I know there is a tendency to blame all this on Donald Trump, but in this matter he's just the latest symptom from an illness that long predates his descent on the golden escalator. Remember Murphy Brown's baby, the immorality of The Simpsons, Terri Schiavo, the 9-11 mosque, the Black Panthers at the polling stations terrorizing voters, and a bunch of other tiresome examples.
Bonus question: For every Republican politician threatening to hold investigations into the Bad Bunny Super Bowl Half Time Show or to pass legislation to prevent something like that happening again, would it be wise for their Democratic opponents to say something along the lines of "Instead of focusing as on lowering health care costs, reducing the costs of utilities and issues of affordability, Congressman X is focused on an entertainment show that has no consequence for your life." Would something like that be an effective line. or would it refocus their attention back on the wedge issue?(Z) answers: Wedge issues are a part of the fabric of American politics. The first real presidential election, in 1800, had wedge issues. Democratic-Republicans accused John Adams of wanting to crown himself king. Federalists accused Thomas Jefferson of wanting to burn all the Bibles.
That tendency probably is worse right now, for at least three reasons. The first is Donald Trump, who prefers wedge issues over more substantive matters. The second is social media. And the third is that partisanship is so intense at the moment, it's often more effective to fire up your own voters with wedge issues than it is to try to peel off voters from the other side with substantive policy discussions.
The wedge-issue tendency ebbs and flows, election by election, decade by decade. It will probably get somewhat better once Trump's career is over, and once people get more skeptical of what they see on social media. Or if they stop using social media as much (Facebook, for example, has pretty poor long-term prospects).
And "Apparently, the other party cares more about [MINOR ISSUE X] than [SERIOUS ISSUE Y]" has been tried so many times, it's kind of like the boy who cried wolf—it's hard to get voters to take it seriously. That said, it CAN work. That was basically the main message of Trump's 2024 campaign, particularly for the last couple of months: "Kamala Harris cares more about trans prisoners than she does about you."
C.J.P. in Fife Heights, WA, asks: I happened to see on Twitter that Fox reported different numbers for the ratings than you did. I know which source I trust, but where are they getting the numbers they are reporting? Did they make them up or are they massaging existing data to meet their needs?
(Z) answers: We're all using the same numbers (from Nielsen); we're just interpreting them differently. And, if I may say so, I think our interpretation is honest, and Jesse Watters' is not. I know, you don't think of Fox entertainers as being the kind of people who would bend the truth, but there it is.
If you read our item, we noted that viewership peaked toward the end of the second quarter (137.8 million people), dropped during the halftime show (128.2 million people), and dropped considerably more after the halftime show.
There is really only one way to interpret this. The only reason that viewership would increase noticeably near the end of the second quarter is because some people tuned in specifically to see the halftime show, and didn't know exactly when it would start. The reason that viewership dropped at the start of halftime is that some people who were tuned in to watch the game flipped over to the Puppy Bowl, or Kid Rock, or some other programming. And the reason that viewership dropped substantially in the third quarter is that a number of people tuned out once Bad Bunny was done, and that number was so large, it was not offset by the number of people returning to the broadcast after having watched Kid Rock/the Puppy Bowl/etc.
In short, the viewing trends suggest Bad Bunny was broadly a popular choice. Jesse Watters' "take" is either ignorant or dishonest—you can decide.
B.J. in Arlington, MA, asks: My family is watching the Olympics on Peacock TV. On the first Sunday evening, we were watching a replay of men's luge. The commentators have plenty to say about every competitor, in fact they basically don't shut up for a moment... but they DID NOT SPEAK A WORD for Anton Dukach of Ukraine's entire run. They didn't say his name, his time, nothing. I believe he had the best time up to that point in the event, which was certainly worth commenting on. The usual background sounds such as the crowds, the sled on the track, the local announcer, etc., were all audible, there was commentary for the preceding competitor from the United States, and commentary resumed immediately with the next competitor from Italy, so there was no problem with the broadcast or the commentator's feed. I understand that some Russian athletes are competing as "Individual Neutral Athletes" and I could imagine some different treatment for them as a result (though I have not checked for that), but Anton Dukach was competing as a Ukrainian.
(For those with the Peacock TV streaming service, you can see what I'm describing in "M SINGLES LUGE: FINAL RUN" from Sunday, February 8 at 06:25. (We have Premium Plus with no ads; I don't know if the ads change the timestamps.)
I did some web searches and cannot find any discussion about this but I do not see how anyone could have missed it. The silence was deafening. Do you know what it is about?(Z) answers: I watched the video on Peacock, and it is definitely missing the commentary.
It's nearly inconceivable that the announcers would make some sort of statement by remaining silent. That's against the rules of the Olympics (no political statements) and would be very unprofessional. Also, they commented on the other Ukrainian luger's run, so why not this one?
No, the only real explanation is some sort of technical issue. And the announcers never said anything about it, so it was a technical issue that they and the producers likely did not know about. It probably happened when the video was being encoded for streaming, and might have happened during some sort of post-production editing.
I.S. in Cap Ferret, France, asks: Why is fighting allowed in North American ice hockey? I recommend watching Olympic footage of the sport, where it is not allowed. Other related sports, like field hockey and lacrosse, also forbid it. It's poor sportsmanship, increases the possibility of severe injuries, and sets a bad example for kids watching. If ice hockey can be played successfully at the Olympics without fighting, why not in North America?
(Z) answers: The official answer is that it allows players to blow off steam, and keeps them from doing something more dangerous when the adrenaline is pumping. The real answer is that it sells more tickets.
M.S. in Alexandria, VA, asks: While watching the Parade of Nations in the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, I was seized by the fear of our Narcissist in Chief trying to officially change the name of our country from "The United States of" to just "America" so that our athletes parade first in the '28 Summer Olympics. What do you think are the odds? Should I place a bet on the prediction market?
(Z) answers: It's not impossible, because Donald Trump is a shockingly ill-informed man.
However, it is also not likely. He can try to rename the country Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamerica, and it wouldn't help much, because the International Olympic Committee is the final arbiter of what name will be used. On top of that, the rule for the Parade of Nations is that the host nation always goes last (and the NEXT host nation goes second-to-last). That is why, if you watched this year's opening ceremony, Italy was last and France was right in front of them.
T.J.R. In Metuchen, NJ, asks: I know you have tons on your plate, but since primary season begins in less than 3 weeks, is there a chance at some point you can run down the key primaries coming up for Senate, Governor and House of Representatives?
(Z) answers: We always preview primaries on the Monday before they happen. That way, there is very little chance of "unknown unknowns" popping up, plus readers get the information just before it becomes relevant, as opposed to trying to hold on to it for weeks or months.
R.W. in Brooklyn, NY, asks: As you often do, you have again noted the stark difference in voting patterns between college-educated Americans and non-college-educated Americans. I'm wondering if you have any sense of what causes the difference. Is it what people learn in college? Just the very fact of having been exposed to the college environment? Or is it not really college at all, but rather college attendance as a proxy for other demographic factors—class, for instance? (I'm guessing it's some combination of all of the above, but would really like to hear your views.)
(Z) answers: I think you have largely covered it. It is pretty hard to graduate college, and yet still be able to accept uncritically the simplistic canards and even more simplistic "solutions" that Donald Trump offers up. That's even more true if, in your coursework, you got some exposure to the notion that things like [SCAPEGOAT GROUP X] are well-worn tricks, and never produce anything positive. Similarly, almost all college students get at least some exposure to Muslims, LGBTQ people, Jewish people, immigrants, etc., and learn firsthand they're not scary boogeymen. Someone who lives their whole life in Ruralville, Red State, doesn't get that experience.
Meanwhile, if you have a college education, you probably have a skill set that is currently marketable, or that you will be able to adapt into marketability. On the other hand, many folks who do not have a college education have skills that are already outdated, or are rapidly becoming so, and are scared witless. They are undoubtedly also capable of adapting, but it's surely a tougher row to hoe for them, and so it's not surprising that they are susceptible to promises that Trump can snap his fingers and bring the good old times back.
L.K. in San Carlos, CA, asks: How do you feel about Scott Galloway's resistandunsubscribe.com? That is to say, how powerful have boycotts been in the past? How many people have to join the boycott for it be successful? I know my protest won't do any good if I'm alone, but is there a tipping point?
(Z) answers: His heart is in the right place, but his ideas are unrealistic.
Boycotts only work if they are sustained, they involve enough people to affect the bottom line of whoever or whatever is being targeted, and where the relationship between the boycott and the impact is crystal-clear, so that the target has a real choice to make. I don't know exactly where the tipping point is (and it surely depends on context), but it certainly requires at least tens of thousands of people acting at roughly the same time, and sticking with it. The "sticking with it" is key; the reason all those "Wednesday gas strikes" were silly is that people ended up buying the gas anyhow, just on a different day. And it doesn't affect Exxon or Shell if they sell that gas on Wednesday, or if they sell it on Thursday, instead.
Galloway's site lists dozens of targets. It's not very practical to get rid of all the Apple products AND all the Amazon products AND all the Microsoft products AND all the Meta products AND all the Uber products, etc., etc. And unless tens of thousands (or, in the case of these companies, hundreds of thousands or millions) of people jump ship at the same time, then nobody will notice, and it will just be chalked up to the usual fluctuations involved in doing business.
S.H. in Austin, TX, asks: You've written that corporate interests are in bed with Trump. As any pretense of ethical constraints between American business and government is apparently a thing of the past, I'm increasingly troubled by my investments in Trump-enabling companies. How do you think about this in regards to your own investment strategies?
(A) answers: It has been quite a while since I dealt with individual investments (I now invest in ETFs). However, if I were to get back in to individual investments, my strategy would be the same now as it was years ago: Do my best, and give myself grace. I would do my best to ensure the companies I invest in are not actively supporting and did not recently support any people or causes that I feel strongly about not supporting. I'd also want to determine whether I have any other red lines—e.g., how do I feel about petroleum companies? Tobacco companies? And so forth.
Finally, if after investing in a company I discovered that they should've been on my naughty list, I wouldn't beat myself up over it. I am but one person; I do not have a whole floor of researchers at my disposal. All I can do is my best, and if something slips past me the best way to handle it is to learn from my mistake(s) and move on.
L.B. in Canby, OR, asks: I loved your item on how gerrymandered the entire U.S. is and how to balance things out so the minority no longer rules, especially in the Senate. And yes, I agree both Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia should be states (whatever happened to no taxation without representation?). However, there is one point you never mentioned. Why not combine North and South Dakota? Together, their population would only be 1.6 million, still a very small state from a population perspective. And don't get me going about Wyoming. Why is Wyoming even a state? It could easily be split up into the surrounding states. And yes, combining North and South Carolina would result in a state of just under 16 million so it would still be a medium-sized state. I live in Oregon, which has under 5 million people, so I consider it a "small" state. And yet, we are huge compared to the Dakotas and Wyoming.
So my question is what would it take to combine some of these smaller states?(Z) answers: First, the reason that Wyoming (and other small states) were granted statehood is... the Northwest Ordinance, which was first adopted in 1787 (by the Articles of Confederation Congress) and then was affirmed in 1789 (by the 1st U.S. Congress). It sets up a process, based on population, by which territories can become states. Those population benchmarks were calibrated to 18th century population sizes, such that it only took 60,000 people to qualify for statehood. And, until the 1940s, any state that went through the process and met the benchmarks was pretty much automatically granted statehood.
As to merging (or dispersing) smaller states, that would require two things: (1) consent from the citizens of whatever states are being merged, and (2) passage of an ordinance by Congress, which would have to be signed into law by the president. This would obviously dilute the political power of citizens in the merged states. So, they would never go for it, which means it's not going to happen.
D.V. in Columbus, OH, asks: After reading your item on the Democrats' long-term chances in the Senate, the option of splitting California made me curious. Would a move like this require federal legislation like admitting Puerto Rico or D.C.? Or would it be a bit simpler since California is already an admitted state? Could California do it all on their own without having to have a Democratic federal trifecta?
(Z) answers: As with merging two states (see above), splitting an existing state would require consent from the citizens of that state, plus enabling legislation passed by Congress and signed by the president.
If California were to split, an interesting question is whether that would create two new states (say, North California and South California), or it would create just one (say, North California, with the remainder understood to be the continuation of the original state of California). In the former case, each would have to submit a brand-new state constitution, in the latter case, only North California would have to do so. For what it is worth, every time a new state has been carved out of an old state (e.g., Maine from Massachusetts, West Virginia from Virginia), the "source" state was understood to have continued on, and was not treated as a new state.
Note that this is all very, very hypothetical. I've lived in California for a long time, and I perceive no meaningful momentum for such a change. People in Southern California are quite attached to Northern California's water, and people in Northern California are quite attached to Southern California's tax dollars.
J.L. in Albany, NY, asks: You wrote: "Changing the size of the House does not need a constitutional amendment, just a new federal law."
Does this mean that Republicans could change the size of the House back to what it was before when they returned to power, or even reduce its size now if it were to their benefit?(Z) answers: The current size of the House is set by the Reapportionment Act of 1929. The Republican-controlled House could pass a new Act, but then it would have to get through the Senate, which would mean killing the filibuster. This is something Republicans clearly do not want to do.
On top of that, reducing the size of the House would make voters furious, because they would feel (rightly) that they are less represented than they once were. And any other shenanigans (like trying to grant extra seats to red states) would run afoul of existing law and Supreme Court precedent.
So, while it's technically possible, it's not going to happen.
M.M. in San Diego, CA, asks: What were the circumstances in 1929 that led the Congress to change the number of House seats to 435?
(Z) answers: Prior to that, re-apportionment had happened once per decade. However, when it came time to do the job in 1920-21, the Republicans (who had the trifecta) realized it would cost them seats, and probably the majority. So, they refused to do it, and the Apportionment Act of 1911 remained on the books until 1929 (roughly 8 years longer than should have been the case). In that year, a deal was worked out that would even out the district sizes (which had become comically imbalanced) but that would stop any new seats from being added. The former portion of that was, by and large, good for the Democrats of that era, and the latter portion was, by and large, good for the Republicans.
R.J. in Chicago, IL, asks: It's difficult to know how future historians will judge our era, since events are still unfolding. What do you think we can say with confidence they will emphasize about this period? And what remains uncertain, given how things are still developing?
(Z) answers: On the first day of my U.S. history survey course, I take students through the eras of U.S. history since 1861: Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, World War I, etc. I also tell them that our current era is just "The Modern Era" because we don't quite know what the main story will be. However, eventually, our era will have a more specific name and periodization.
At that point, I take them through a few viable possibilities:
- The Digital Age (or some other tech-related sobriquet): It may be that, when the dust has settled, the dominant story of our era is the rise of the Internet, e-commerce, social media, AI, etc.
- The New Gilded Age: The parallels between our era and the original Gilded Age (wealth gap, political corruption, increased racism, rapid technological change) are often eerie in how salient they are. If we soon enter into an era of major reform, it will be hard NOT to call our era the New Gilded Age.
- The Age of Trump: This would not be a compliment, but merely a judgment that the forces that made him possible, and the forces that he in turn unleashed, were the most important story of our era. The only era in American history named for a person is named for the president who was most like Trump, namely the Jacksonian Age/Andrew Jackson.
- The Second Cold War: This one is something of a longshot, but if Russia and the U.S. come into greater conflict in the next decade, or if tensions between the U.S. and China heat up, it's possible.
That's about as well as I can answer your question.
D.E. in Fremont, CA, asks: Has any other sitting president in the history of this great nation ever ordered public places to be named for him? Tacky beyond belief.
(Z) answers: It takes a curious combination. The president in question has to have a giant ego, so as to care very powerfully that he be honored and remembered. At the same time, he has to be seriously insecure, so as to be fearful and unsure that history will bother to remember his name.
There is no president who is quite in Trump's league here, but the president who comes closest is Lyndon B. Johnson. He didn't rename pre-existing structures after himself by fiat, but he did pull strings to get things named after himself, on occasion. Though note that the Johnson Space Center was named for him shortly after he died, clearly in tribute to his memory.
F.H. in Pacific Grove, CA, asks: LBJ was a fount of folksy quotes like "Better to have your enemies inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in"; "It was raining as hard as a cat pissing on a flat rock"; "While you're saving your face, you're losing your ass" and the recently disproven "Every President wants to do right."
Where did these all come from? Did he make them up himself? Did he hear them growing up? Is it some sort of Texan gene expression? Or are they just like the millions of jokes that we know must have originated somewhere but no one seems to know where? I'm sure once he got speechwriters, they would follow his lead, but where did that lead come from?(Z) answers: Johnson was not himself a particularly gifted wordsmith. But he did have a good memory and a willingness to be coarse in contexts where others would not find that appropriate. And so, what he largely did was introduce the language and the aphorisms of the rural Texas hill people into national politics. In other words, all of the sayings you mention were undoubtedly things he picked up while growing up poor in Texas.
M.R. in New Brighton, MN, asks: What thoughts do you have about how the term "Artificial Intelligence" is used by the non-technical public? Do you find instances when it is misused? In those instances, what terminology would you use instead?
(V) answers: In 1961, a Ph.D. student at MIT, Jim Slagle (who was blind), wrote a program to do symbolic integrals of the type asked on the MIT freshman calculus exam. Integrals come in categories like polynomials, trig functions, square roots, etc., each with methods for solving them. Slagle's program figured out the type, looked up the rules, and applied them. It passed the exam. Does it take Intelligence to pass the MIT freshman calculus exam? MIT thinks so, but the program follows straightforward rules.
In 1964, Joe Weizenbaum wrote a program called ELIZA that pretended to be a psychiatrist. I was intrigued by this program and wrote a better version that worked with templates. If the user typed: "I am sad," that matched the template "I am [X]" and the program (randomly) responded: "How long have you been sad?" "Do you like being sad?," "Do you have friends who are sad?," "Would you like me to help you stop being sad?," etc. If you typed "I am president of the moon," it might reply "Does your mother know you are president of the moon?" The program had no idea what it was saying. It just matched templates and gave canned responses that turned the input into a question. I wrote dozens and dozens of templates and hundreds of responses. The pattern matching engine was simple but the program could carry on a long conversation. People who tried it thought it was intelligent. Was this AI?
In the late 1960s, a word game called Jotto was popular. Each of two players picks a secret five-letter English word. Then player 1 asks player 2: How many letters in your secret word match [SOME FIVE-LETTER TEST WORD]. If the test word was, for example, "horse," and the number of matches (jots) was zero, player 1 now knew the secret word does not contain any of "h," "o," "r," "s," or "e." The players took turns until one of them guessed the other's secret word. I wrote a program to play Jotto. It beat almost everyone almost all the time. Does beating people at a word game require intelligence? People thought so. But the program had a simple algorithm. Later, I even published a paper in a journal about the program and how it worked. It seems that something that seems "intelligent" loses its "intelligence" as soon as you explain how it works.
So whether some program is "intelligent" apparently is not dependent on what the program has achieved but on whether the person using it understands how it works. Modern large language models like ChatGPT use neural networks with billions of parameters. In short, they try to guess the best next word in a sequence. To the designers, they are clearly not intelligent, but to users, they appear to be, just like the three examples from the 1960s above. AI is probably as good a description as any for programs that seem "intelligent," but at least thus far, all of them are just following some (complex) process.
J.B. In Bozeman, MT, asks: With the Academy Awards right around the corner, I was curious what the staff film buffs thought was the most worthy Best Picture win (at least in the past 40ish years)? In other words, the opposite of Crash.
(L) answers: Well, if I'm limited to one, I'd say Gandhi. A biopic is so difficult to pull off, especially with that subject, but Ben Kingsley's performance was transcendent. If I could pick two more, I'd say Ordinary People and Shakespeare in Love.
(A) answers: If we're evaluating with the benefit of hindsight, I think it's reasonable to go with the film that has seemed to have the greatest "staying power." With that in mind, I'm going with Titanic. It's a historical drama, an action film, and a love story, and it does all of those things very well. I saw it for its 25th anniversary re-release in 2023, in an almost-sold-out 932-seat IMAX theater. So, the film holds up very well.
When I pulled up the list of past Best Picture winners to pick my answer, I noticed something interesting. Here are the number of best picture winners I've seen from each decade:
Decade Number 2015-24 3 2005-14 4 1995-2004 9 1985-94 7
To be fair, I did see a lot of these films long after their theatrical releases. For example, I saw The Silence of the Lambs for the first time sometime in the early 2000s. Therefore, one could argue that the unevenness is due to simply having had more time in which to see the older films. However, I've never specifically endeavored to watch Best Picture winners. I suspect the emphasis on older films is partly due to having had more time to see them and partly due to the winners drifting over the last couple of decades toward films I'm not interested in. Next, I'll be explaining why kids need to get off my damn lawn.
(Z) answers: I also looked at the list, and I also tend to think that the most worthy Best Picture winner is one that has stood/might withstand the test of time, either because it speaks to universal themes, or because of artistry, or both. The number of Best Pictures I dislike is actually considerably greater than the number I like, and I think quite a few of the ones I was not a fan of have already shown they were "of the moment," and have largely faded from memory—The Artist, Slumdog Millionaire, Birdman, etc.
Trying to consider what films might still be finding viewers 50 years from now, I think it's hard to disagree with (A)'s conclusion that the pick has to be Titanic. That said, I also gave strong consideration to Gandhi, Unforgiven, Schindler's List, The King's Speech and Oppenheimer.
R.M.S. in Lebanon, CT, asks: I have noticed that many men, especially those from Generation X and older, refuse to take Taylor Swift seriously as a musician. I think she has undoubtedly proven her talent. She has had number one albums since the Bush administration and is currently more popular than ever.
I don't own any of her music but I like some of it. I don't think she has an amazing voice, but there is no question in my mind she is a prolific and talented songwriter. By age 20, she had written or co-written 70 songs, which is a high amount for a young musician. Her biggest talent, in my opinion, is her genius ability at managing her image. She debuted in the 2000s during the Bush administration during a very culturally conservative political climate, and crafted a wholesome persona compared to other female performers in her generation like Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Christina Aguilera and Rihanna. I think this was very smart and she greatly benefited from it.
Why do you think so many people refuse to take her seriously?(Z) answers: First, because she is blonde, young, and female.
Second, because she fits a template that everyone's seen many times before (young, attractive, female, solo pop star), and most of those folks tend to be passing fads. In a similar vein, if you put together a group of five or so good-looking young men who sing lots of harmonies and don't play instruments, people aren't going to take them seriously as musicians, either. At least, not until they break away and start a solo career (e.g., Bobby Brown, Justin Timberlake).
Swift clearly has unusual talent, and I suspect one day she will be accorded a status similar to that enjoyed by Dolly Parton.