Guest Blogger Michele: Maggie's First Year in California Anniversary

Sunday, November 2 will mark the 1st Anniversary of Maggie the elephant's trip from Alaska to her new home in California. Making decisions is not always easy. But the decision to send Maggie out of Alaska so she could have more open space, better weather, and most important, the company of other elephants, seemed pretty easy. But for various reasons, never clearly articulated, the zoo took forever to finally agree.

[Picture of Maggie from PAWS]

A former Alaskan friend was visiting recently and started telling me about how Maggie was doing and so I asked her if she'd do a guest post. She agreed. So first I'm going to give some background on the decision the zoo made to send Maggie south. Then we can look at the results of the decision in Michele's guest post.


A May 2007 ADN article reported:

Thwaites and other board members have said Maggie is a dominating elephant that may not adjust well to living with other elephants or to a change in her lifestyle. "Maggie's not your typical elephant. She hasn't been used to this. You just don't know (what could happen to her)."
Thwaites said the board is asking experts, including some of the same ones consulted in 2004, for their advice...

The 2004 report was written by a five-member committee formed to advise the board on what to do with Maggie. In it, elephant experts from around the U.S. and Canada said Maggie would be better off elsewhere. The lone dissenter, Dr. Jim Oosterhuis of the San Diego Wild Animal Park, said the animal could stay in Alaska if she was provided proper exercise, softer flooring in her enclosure and more interaction with her handlers. The zoo has spent $900,000 to improve Maggie's living conditions, Thwaites said. It has not, however, met all of the goals, including the soft flooring, which is estimated to cost another $100,000, he said.

The Alaska Zoo's elephant committee, composed of zoo staff, a board member and others closely connected to the zoo, three years ago split on the question of moving Maggie

The committee was made up of the then-president of the board, Mike Barker; then-senior zoo staff members Tex Edwards and Pat Lampi; Maggie's local vet, Dr. Riley Wilson; and a founder of the zoo, John Seawell.

Edwards and Seawell thought Maggie should stay in Anchorage. Barker and Lampi voted to send her to the North Carolina Zoological Park, which scored highest among several Outside zoos that had indicated an interest. Wilson, the fifth committee member, was undecided.

*****************
How Maggie the elephant is doing in her retirement at the Performing Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in Galt, California.

Maggie arrived at the PAWS ARK 2000 sanctuary on November 2, 2007 via a celebrated airlift commanded by the late Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Tinsley, commander of the 3rd Wing at Elmendorf Air Force Base. After arriving at Travis Air Base, Maggie, in her crate, was trucked to the 75-acre sanctuary. She walked unaided out of her crate into the African elephant barn and into her private sleeping stall, was given a bath, examined by vets, and plied with treats.

After exploring the African barn, she was led to the introductory yard where she met the four female African elephant residents, 71 (the leader), Mara, Lulu and Ruby. Maggie is very vocal and trumpets to them. She makes a honking sound when she is begging for treats (our Maggie loves to eat!).

Maggie remained separated from the others physically by a fence until the PAWS staff was sure that she was strong enough not to be knocked over by them. They could nuzzle and touch trunks from Day 1 and slept in the same barn in separate stalls. She never appeared frightened of the other elephants and roared to show her spunk. Maggie was kept close but separate from the others until February 13, 2008 [video of Maggie joining other elephants] when the staff was confident she was strong enough to hike up and down the hills, and then she was introduced into the full elephant pasture with the others. She seems to have particularly bonded with Ruby.

On August 17, 2008, PAWS celebrated Maggie’s 27th birthday with carrot cake and all her new California friends. She was not willing to share her cake with the other elephants and they had to be distracted with goody bags of their own!

There was so much interest in Maggie when she arrived that the PAWS webcam crashed from sheer volume of hits. It is currently down and in the process of being upgraded but check back periodically for new videos.

I, for one, am very grateful to the Board of the Alaska Zoo for allowing Maggie to be re-located to PAWS and to the sanctuary and Bob Barker for financial support. I think your readers will be happy to see how well she is doing.

PAWS posts regular updates on Maggie on their website under “News and Alerts”

Here are some nice videos of Maggie so you can see how she’s doing.


Best regards,
Michele

Don't Vote

This is from PittsburghWil

Voting Early

I decided to vote today. It took 30 minutes, the longest I've ever waited. Of course, everyone who wants to vote now until Tuesday goes to one place. The Alaska ballots are pretty easy. All the information is on the page and you just fill in the circle next to the candidate you want. My mother's California ballot was much more difficult. All the names and ballot measures are listed in a booklet. It has numbers for each candidate.
Then you have to go to this computer card and blacken the right number.
This shouldn't be so difficult for the designers to figure out. The California ballot introduces a lot more opportunity for the voter to make a mistake than does the Alaska ballot. And hand counting - should that be necessary - is easier, particularly if the voter didn't do it quite right. Making it computer friendly should NEVER sacrifice voter friendly.

Boreal [Northern Hawk] Owl Visits the Hard Way

4:07pm




A loud thump on the window, but I can't see anything.

4:09pm Outside there's a good sized bird lying in the driveway below the window. But it is moving. I went in and called the bird treatment and learning center. They said to wait a bit to see if it gets up on its own. If not, wrap it in a towel, put it in a box, and bring it in.




4:15pm The bird is sitting up and looking around. Our neighbor comes by. Things are improving. Later I look up Alaska owls and decide it's most likely a Boreal owl. [Dianne, whose knowledge of birds I always defer to] says in the comments below, that this is a Northern Hawk owl. The key point that got me to think it was a boreal owl, was its size. This was not a big owl.]

About 10” long, the Boreal Owl has a chocolate brown back with large white spots and white underparts streaked with brown. Its off-white facial disk with a distinct black border, short tail, yellow bill, and white forehead spotting are distinctive field markings.

The whole story is on the video.


[No, I'm not that anal that I was tracking the time. But my Canon Powershot was.]

Good to see so many conservatives supporting a convicted felon

It's normally liberals who try to put a human face on America's prisoners. Republicans have claimed to be strong law and order folks who endorsed stiff sentences for criminals. But today's Anchorage Daily News letters show a softer, more compassionate conservative streak in Alaska.

"I was disappointed by the conviction of Sen. Ted Stevens. I do not believe the prosecution acted with integrity and I believe there is an outside agenda to remove Sen. Stevens. I will not be swayed in my loyalty to the senator."

Fortunately, the Republicans have been in control of the Justice Department for the last eight years (did I really say that?) so LaVon can't blame the Democrats for this. Clearly the outside Republican agenda is to vacate one of their sure seats in the Senate so the Democrats can get a veto proof majority. I think I heard that story about how losing the election will help Republican fund raising.

"He has given his all to the state of Alaska and now Alaska has the opportunity to stand by and show the same support and dedication that he has shown it and its people. Alaskans now have the opportunity to fight for someone that has fought so hard for others."

About this sacrifice for Alaska stuff. Being a US Senator is one of the great power trips available in the US. You meet the most powerful people in the world. You get to subpoena other powerful people and dress them down in front of the world. And once you're elected, you really have to screw up to get voted out of office. Come on now, he's gotten a lot more than he's given. It was so good, at 84 he wasn't ready to walk away. When someone thinks they can't be replaced, they need to be shown the world can live without them.

"He was tried and convicted by what I consider a kangaroo court and not by a jury of his peers as called for in the Constitution. The whole trial was tainted with prosecution lies and misconconduct."

What would be a jury of peers? US Senators? Rich, white folks? Why not Americans? Oh, yeah, these jurors probably weren't 'real' Americans. But even that 'real' American Sarah Palin has said Ted should step down. Or is that so she can step in? Being stuck in Juneau when there's a chance to get back into the center of national political power is going to be tough. It's true the prosecution slipped up. But that's why we have an adversarial system. Stevens had the best lawyers money can buy. They challenged what happened and got one of the witnesses off the list. But if these prosecutors lied throughout the whole trial, you'd think Brendan Sullivan would have let the whole world know about it.

"What a travesty - an unjust verdict resulting from a patently unfair trial, following an indictment based on erroneous information. No doubt the case will be overturned by less partrisan minds on appeal, but in the meantime, Outside interests are doing their best to throw a monkey wrench in the Alaska Senate race."

What else can say? Brendan Sullivan was there for Stevens to point out any erroneous information. It is true that the prosecutors messed up and that could be the basis for overturning the verdict. But I'd like to know if you also wrote in to complain about Outside interests (like oil companies supporting Republican candidates, like the Mormon church fighting for the One-man-one-woman marriage Constitutional Amendment) or is it only when they oppose your position does outside influence become bad influence?

Denial is a natural reaction as one faces the contradictions between one's world view and the way the world really is. Come on now. Senator Stevens is 84. He's testy when someone challenges him on anything. He's been convicted. I'm glad you see him as more than a felon. That you recognize that rather than calling him a criminal, we should call him a human being who has, among a lot of other positive things in his life, committed a criminal act.

I hope you folks who wrote these letters will recognize that most of the people you read about in the newspapers who get convicted of something, are the same. The act that got them into the newspaper is just one small part of their lives. (Ok, I know, for some it is a definite pattern. But even then, it's worth finding out how they got on that path. I bet you'll find for most career criminals, it started early and there was probably a pretty messy family life. So maybe in the future you'll consider something early childhood education funding, parent training, and other, 'evil' social programs.)

Some of you probably aren't in denial, but you owe Uncle Ted something and a nice letter to the editor will do the trick. But you should have the decency to tell the rest of us this is just a gesture.


Kangaroo Court picture from here.

Anchorage's Korean Tofu House after Nick and Norah

After watching Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist yesterday, we ate at one of our favorite places - a Korean restaurant. While Thai food might be easy to like the first time you eat it, say, like ice cream, Korean food, for me it at least, was more like asparagus. It took a while to appreciate it. Or maybe I just never had any good Korean food. But that changed when friends took us to the Noodle Shop. When they went out of business ( Yak and Yeti is in their old shop) we went looking for another place like that. Someone suggested the The Tofu House which turned out to be even better.

Despite the name, they also have meat dishes too. But we love the boiling tofu soup (it's cooked in metal bowls and it is literally boiling still when you get it) that is on the menus under the glass on the table tops. And meals come with this large array of side dishes.

It's on Fireweed (515 W). Coming west from C Street - past the Greek Corner on the left, and then past the car wash on the right. It's in the next little mall on the right. Prices are very reasonable. This spread cost us $21 I think.

Nick and Norah? It was playful and fun. I guess I better watch The Thin Man to understand the reference (Nick and Nora are the characters in The Thin Man). If it was deep, I missed that part. And what ever happened to the recording they made in the studio? Is that the premise for the sequel?

Note: While Google throws up quite a few Nick and Nora's - not just on blogs- but it appears that Nora is actually Norah. In The Thin Man, it's without the h.

Schadenfreude and Ted Stevens' Conviction

I know that a lot of you out there are jumping with joy at the news of Ted Stevens' conviction today. There are reasons to feel good if you've believed he's guilty or arrogant or if you're working for Mark Begich.

Taking pleasure in another person's suffering is a universal emotion. The German's have a word for it - Schadenfreude.

But watching a man go down, a man who like all of us has flaws, yet also worked most of his life to help his state using the talents he had, shouldn't bring anyone joy. We're all imperfect. We all will have times of grief. And I imagine most of us would like a little slack from others at that time.

Is it possible to mix the feelings of triumph and sadness? To feel good about the carrying out of justice and bad about the personal fall of Ted Stevens? Ted Stevens' recent statements don't make it easy to feel sympathetic. He seems completely defiant. ABC reports him saying today:

"I will fight this unjust verdict with every ounce of energy I have," Stevens said. "I am innocent. This verdict is the result of the unconscionable manner in which the Justice Department lawyers conducted this trial. I ask that Alaskans and my Senate colleagues stand with me as I pursue my rights. I remain a candidate for the United States Senate."

Yet his reaction - his total cluelessness of why he was on trial - is part of the sadness.

Philosopher John Portmann seems to make distinctions similar to mine above, at least as described by Perez Zagorin reviewing Portmann's book, When Bad Things Happen To Other People.

[Zagorin's voice] Persons with a well-developed moral sense who experience schadenfreude are apt to feel a certain amount of shame and unworthiness at being possessed by this emotion even momentarily. Is it not mean-spirited and detestable to be glad when bad luck or adversity strikes someone else, even an enemy or rival, and much more so in the case of a friend? . . . Portmann, however, would relieve us of some of our guilt on this score by means of various distinctions. He believes that schadenfreude is rational and therapeutic in certain circumstances, and makes the important point that it can include a sense of justice when we regard the bad things that happen to people as deserved punishment for their actions. He strives consistently to distinguish between pleasure in the justice of someone's suffering and pleasure in the suffering itself. [emphasis added.]

That's what I was doing above - trying to make distinctions between different aspects of the event. Happiness over the fact that the high and mighty are brought to justice just as the powerless are, seems perfectly normal and justified. Pleasure over the suffering of a fellow human being, in this sort of situation, while also perfectly normal, is probably less justified. Perhaps age softens the edges of righteous indignation, makes me more sensitive to the pain of an octogenarian ending his previously distinguished career this way; allows me to feel comforted that justice has been done, but saddened that a man of such intelligence, drive, belief in his own causes, should have strayed onto this path.

Zagorin is not so charitable to people who take pleasure in others' pain.

This distinction, though, is psychologically so difficult to sustain that I would guess that the two sorts of pleasure continually merge. In an example mentioned by Portmann, the blessed in heaven, according to the great theologian Thomas Aquinas, both see and rejoice in the torments of the damned. This conception, which astounded Nietzsche by its cruelty, is schadenfreude at its highest, and it confirms my opinion that a God who inflicts eternal punishment on his creatures is one of the most wicked and immoral ideas the Christian religion ever introduced into the world. It is also among the reasons that make me question whether, despite Portmann's lucid arguments, schadenfreude can ever be a healthy and justifiable emotion and is not simply a base and nasty feeling which we should do our best to resist and overcome.

It seems to me reviewer Zagorin is incapable of accepting the ambiguities that Portmann suggests. "Base and nasty" seem pretty judgmental terms on his part as well. Should we be condemning those who take pleasure in Stevens' plight as strongly as we would condemn someone who has abused his position of power? My belief is that only when one is completely accepting of one's own self, can one feel truly charitable toward others who are in distress, particularly those who have gotten there through their own actions. Charity towards those less fortunate can easily stem from an unconscious relief that it is them and not me, and helping them can be a self satisfying demonstration of one's superior circumstances. (Before you attack on that one, look carefully at the word 'can' in that sentence. It doesn't have to be that.) Charity toward someone who has brought it onto himself is much harder, but probably a purer form of charity.

If Obama supporters really want change, we are going to have to talk to McCain supporters, find common ground with them, understand their fears and hopes, and fashion policies that allay rather than inflame those fears. It's not about winners and losers. If we don't change that dynamic, then it is business as usual. Dancing gleefully over Stevens' conviction makes more unlikely Obama's chance of bringing Americans together. It only salts the wounds of Stevens' supporters who will wait until they can get their revenge. And Democrats in power will fall victim to the same sorts of ego imbalances that have afflicted Republicans and give those now out-of-power folks their opportunities to enact that revenge.

Taking great joy over Stevens' fall also excuses us from our complicity in

• electing him over and over again
• greedily taking all the goodies Stevens has sent our way from DC
• not taking action to change the system which ensures that lobbyists gain enormous power over legislators because of the need for campaign money

So, my concern about Schadenfreude is not simply a moral one, but much more a practical concern.

• First, let's not heap scorn on Stevens as a way to excuse ourselves, voters in a democracy, from our own share of the blame in accepting this corrupt system we have. ("What can I do, I'm only one person?" is not an excuse. What did you try to do? How quickly did you give up?) We have to be involved because legislators who fight the system - look at Ralph Nader - do not get elected.
  
• Second, if the people of the United States cannot talk to each other with respect and understanding, Obama's possible presidency won't accomplish anything of lasting importance.

Free Wifi at PDX (Portland)

I'm at PDX waiting for my flight from Portland to Anchorage. I keep posting about airports with free wifi (Anchorage, Reno, Portland, ChiangmaiJuneau, Taipei) because I think it's important for people to have access to wifi in transit and I want to alert travelers to where there is free wifi for all at an airport.







My Portland weekend is over. I had good times with friends, but also want to respect their privacy so haven't blogged about them. Also, kept busy and not blogging for 24 hours or more is a luxury. It was hard to get a good picture from the car, but there was a lot of yellow and orange and red outside of Portland.





There are a lot of pumpkin stands around outside of Portland. And in Portland tonight I saw a lot of people in costume. I'm still opposed to moving holidays to the closest convenient day. Doing that means that the god of efficiency is overtaking the god of tradition. Washington and Lincoln's birthdays - once separate holidays - have been lumped into President's day and put on a Monday so people of have three day weekends. Memorial Day used to be May 31, but it too got moved to a Monday. Fourth of July on the second of July would be weird, but if we just call it Independence Day, they might be able to get away with that sacrilege.


I didn't know that 'free cracking' existed, but today I got it.

Air Art and Snacks

I flew from LA to Portland today, via Reno, on a smaller plane that didn't fly as high. The air was clear so I got to see the art of nature and man from above. Sculpting the landscape. First, suburbs north of LA in their continuous push into the hills. Little (from the air) matchbook housing developments.
The houses moving closer and closer to the hills. Some even jumping up onto the tops of the hills.

Further out still, little isolated houses spreading like weeds.

And here's what I refer to as air ag art. The beautiful shapes made by farmers' fields from above, contrasting with the harsh natural landscape.

The dam.

And then I got my bag of Mama Mellace's Chedder stix mix. Look at the little stix. Then look at all the ingredients. But, according to the cover, no cholesterol or transfats. How can such a tiny piece of 'food' have that many ingredients? (Like usually, you can double click the pictures for a better view.)


This was somewhere in the area of Yosemite. The pilot didn't point things out so I'm not sure exactly where we were. As we flew into Reno I saw how Lake Tahoe sits above Reno, held in check by a small range of mountains.

Visiting Marty in Portland, will be back in Anchorage soon.

Free Wifi at Reno Airport

Priscilla Shanks Tried to Teach Palin to Say Nuclear

In the upcoming Sunday Times Magazine, Robert Draper tells the McCain campaign story as series of attempted narratives. I'm partial to the term narrative, because I believe that an important part of how humans think is through stories. They simplify getting all the facts. You get enough to figure out which narrative to pin on a politician or anyone or any situation.. Campaign managers work hard to get the best possible narrative pinned onto their candidates and the worst ones on their opponents. .

The narratives Draper says the McCain campaign struggled through are:
NARRATIVE 1: The Heroic Fighter vs. the Quitters
NARRATIVE 2: Country-First Deal Maker vs. Nonpartisan Pretender
NARRATIVE 3: Leader vs. Celebrity
NARRATIVE 4: Team of Mavericks vs. Old-Style Washington
NARRATIVE 5: John McCain vs. John McCain
NARRATIVE 6: The Fighter (Again) vs. the Tax-and-Spend Liberal

Narrative 4 - Team of Mavericks is where we get the background on how Sarah Palin got picked. Ultimately, it seems anti-climatic. Given this is a nine page article, there's not a lot of particularly interesting meat. All of it is just filling in details, documenting a story that isn't particularly remarkable. However, the one part confirmed something Alaskans have been wondering about is this part on Palin's voice coach:

While all of this was going on, an elegant middle-aged woman sat alone at the far end of the bar. She wore beige slacks and a red sweater, and she picked at a salad while talking incessantly on her cellphone. But for the McCain/Palin button affixed to her collar and the brief moment that Tucker Eskew, Palin’s new counselor, spoke into her ear, she seemed acutely disconnected from the jubilation swelling around her.

In fact, the woman was here for a reason. Her name was Priscilla Shanks, a New York-based stage and screen actress of middling success who had found a lucrative second career as a voice coach. Shanks’s work with Sarah Palin was as evident as it was unseen. Gone, by the evening of her convention speech, was the squeaky register of Palin’s exclamations. Gone (at least for the moment) was the Bushian pronunciation of “nuclear” as “nook-you-ler.” Present for the first time was a leisurely, even playful cadence that signaled Sarah Palin’s inevitability on this grand stage.

So who is Priscilla Shanks? There are a lot of hits for her on Google, but most of them are empty. Her Linkedin profile says this:

Priscilla Shanks’s Summary

12 years independent public speaking and media consultant in on-air broadcast training to broadcast journalists and those making the transition from print to broadcast journalistm

10 years experience as adjunct professor at New School for Social Research teacihng [sic] Public Speaking for Professionals

Currently in private practice preparing professionals and authors for media appearnaces, training executives, doctors, CEO's and business leaders in profit and non-profit organizations for their range of public speaking engagements.

On retainer to ABC Network News and CBS Network News and in private practice to broadcast journalists.

New Embedded Comment

Blogger Buzz says that we can now embed the comment box right under the post. I know some people have complained that they couldn't figure out how to comment. I've gone in and changed the setting.



Let's test it for a week and see if this is better.

[A few minutes later update: You still have to click on the comment link below the post, then you'll get the window. Try it out.]

I also noticed today when I was putting in the pictures in the last post, that the posted in reverse order - the bottom picture was on the top. That's reverse from what it's been. I'd really like to be able to load multiple pictures AND set size and location of each picture differently.

Still Hot in LA

Near the beach it's generally cooler, but it was in the 90's today. Much, much drier than Thailand, but hot nevertheless. Below are some pictures as I visit with my mom.


The Santa Ana winds have been here the whole time I've been here. Those are desert winds that blow warm and blow the smog out into the ocean. As you can see, from these three pictures looking north on Venice Beach, last Thursday when I did my first run down to the beach, it was pretty clear. Monday it cooled down a bit and the wind was off the ocean and I couldn't even see the Santa Monica mountains. Today was the clearest. I could even see Catalina Island - below. It's the lump on the horizon.

You can listen to part of the 1957 Four Preps hit song "Twenty Six Miles Across the Sea" about Catalina, the island owned for a long time by the Wrigley Gum family. I went to boy scout camp out there once or twice. Here's an interesting piece about the island.

This yoga at the beach picture was taken Monday when it was much hazier.

This picture is from last January. The white bands around the tree had a sign saying the tree was going down. These trees have been here forever. I was taller than the trees when we first moved in. In any case, the roots are making natural speed bumps in the street and wreaking havoc with the sidewalk. The link shows what I posted in January.



Sometime between January and now, the city took out my mom's tree and one other down the street. Yesterday the treemen were back with new trees, but they had trouble because the roots hadn't been taken out and they couldn't dig the hole.

Today they were back and here's the new Italian Stone Pine.

A collection of gulls at the beach this morning. There were two terns in with them - I think elegant terns - but they flew off before I could get my camera out. They were cool, with a little black tuft on their heads.

Heading back out to the Valley yesterday to visit Frank and "I" once more.

And I've been passing this Indian bike rickshaw on Rose when I do my morning run to the beach.
And I stopped to ask Kayumba what the word means. Hunter, he told me. Both together are "Soft Spoken Hunter." I forgot to ask what language. That is his name. He's originally from the Congo. His buddy laughed and said, "Only one of the words is accurate." He's a contractor working on a house I passed on my run. I told him about Radical Catholic Mom's adopted Congolese family.


And here's another root. At least this one doesn't seem to be messing up the street or sidewalk.

Alaskan Bloggers Are Everywhere

I was reading an LA Times Magazine article this morning over breakfast about the Santa Monica based blog Hullabalu. The article says,

But the Left's second most influential blogger prefers anonymity.

They say the Huffington Post is number one. (The author, Jesse Kronbluth is a HP contributor) I have to confess that that while Digby sounds vaguely familiar, I didn't recognize it when I checked it out. I checked it out because of this:

What could Sarah Palin do to win your endorsement?
I went to high school in Alaska and met my husband there, so I do feel a bit of kinship with Palin. But she'd have to disavow every political stand she's ever taken, denounce McCain, quit the Republican party and become a pro-choice advocate for me to endorse her. I do enthusiastically endorse Alaskan king salmon.

So I checked out the blog and she had a very good post on the Republican attack strategy that so crippled the Clinton administration with a video on how the Republicans are already preparing to fight the election with their Acorn voter fraud nonsense.

I have to say that for years, as a public administration professor, I got the annual report of Acorn. They've worked pretty quietly on projects to help develop community in low income neighborhoods and to improve the chances of poor people to take part in the American dream. Registering such people doesn't endear them to Republicans. Here's the video she has on today's post. It offers a version of this story much more consistent with my limited experience with Acorn.

It's all in the Tapes

The ADN reports today that both the prosecutors and the defense have finished their closing arguments in the Ted Stevens trial and tomorrow the jurors take control.

In the three political corruption charges in Anchorage last year, jurors reported that the audio and video tapes were very important in their decisions. These are crimes that tend to be invisible and the credibility of witnesses is critical. When the jury hears incriminating things in the defendant's own words, that has to have a big impact on their assessment of whom to believe.

In the ADN's article today Erika Bolstad and Richard Mauer write:

[Prosecutor] Bottini replayed a now-infamous secret recording of the senator, who told Allen on the telephone in 2006 that the worst that could ever happen to him as a result of a federal investigation would be a little jail time or perhaps excessive legal bills.

I haven't heard the tape, but that description doesn't bode well for Senator Stevens.

Race Matters II

From Elstun over at Celtic Diva

Barack Obama is winning over swing voters because of what is called his "temperament". It turns out that his coolness, calmness and steadiness is just what voters are looking for and those qualities stand in great contrast to the "erratic" and fuming McCain-Palin campaign.

Because of the racism in the United States, Barrack Obama, like every African-American male who wanted to succeed, has learned how to control his anger, to swallow his outrage, and to respond with coolness. Angry black men had to transform their anger into some other socially acceptable manifestation - humor, the blues and gospel, slam dunks, knock out punches, or verbal virtuosity. While open anger no longer results in lynching, it can still cause serious damage to the person who expresses it in the wrong situation.

Obama, because of the color of his skin, had to learn to turn his anger into calm, articulate phrases.

Neighborhood Renewal Journal

I know that some of the people who drop by here now and then are interested in preserving livable neighborhoods, so I'm posting this email I got. Academic journals are a little pricy, but it should also be available through the UAA library and Loussac's journal data bases. It would be interesting to look at this subject in terms of renewing Alaska Native villages that have been so impacted by cultural disruption.

Neighbourhood – The International Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal

www.ijnr.co.uk

ISSN (Print) 1756-8676 ISN (Online) 1756-8684



I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the development of the International Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal which will promote good practice in this field of public policy. The Journal is the only one of its kind to truly support global research in the field of neighbourhood renewal. The first edition of this peer-reviewed Journal is out now and the Contents of Edition One are shown attached. Edition Two is out in December 2008 and the planned contents are also shown attached. If you would like to subscribe now to the Journal, then please note that the costs are as follows:



(a) £149 per annum for a quarterly hard copy and electronic access.

(b) £99 per annum for electronic access.



Subscriptions can be via the Journal website at http://www.ijnr.co.uk/subscription_fees.php?id=1 or by emailing the Journal Office at newyork@ijnr.co.uk Subscriptions can also be taken via subscription agents such as SWETS and EBSCO. If you wish to subscribe please let me know and I will send you the copy of Edition One in advance of receiving your order.



I’d also be delighted to publish any of your work in this field and this can be done via the Journal website at http://www.ijnr.co.uk/submit_papers.html or by emailing the Journal Office at newyork@ijnr.co.uk



I look forward to welcoming you as a subscriber to ‘Neighbourhood’.



With kindest regards,



Ray





Ray Holden

Director of Development

Holden Publishing

UK Office Office
Horton House
Exchange Flags
Floor Five
Liverpool
L2 3PF
UNITED KINGDOM

Phone:+44 (0)845 6025280

Fax: +44 (0)151 2445401


USA Office
405 Lexington Avenue
The Chrysler Building
Floor 25
New York
10174 NY
UNITED STATES



Please consider the environment - do you need to print this email?

Man on Wire raises interesting questions

I saw Man on Wire listed as a movie in town and it triggered something in my brain, but I couldn't remember what it was about. Then I noticed someone googled to here with "Each day is like a work of art to him." When I checked to see what that post was about, I got this post on an NPR piece about Man on Wire.

So, my mom and I drove to the Beverly Center to see it last night. It's a quirky little film about a Frenchman who's goal is to walk a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It's all about his preparations for this feat and carrying it off.



Two big issues (of many possibilities) arose for me:

1. The inability of [in this case] police to just do nothing. They are programmed to take action even if the action is likely to cause more harm. In the clip, they threaten to use a helicopter to get the wire walker down. Our need for action gets us into a lot of trouble. There are lots of situations where doing nothing - at least for a while - is the wisest action. Look at the clip, and then think about the 'do nothing' option as you watch people in daily life and on the screen.

2. The general questions that get raised when people do high risk activities and society's response to them. The movie tracks Philippe Petit's preparation to walk between the twin towers. Earlier feats included walking between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. While Philippe's main motivation is simply the challenge of walking across that space and the sheer beauty of that act of human defiance of the impossible, it is also made clear in the movie that the illegality of the act is also a draw. As one person interviewed said, it wasn't wicked or mean, just illegal.

US Americans clearly love daredevils. We have a history of stunts like riding barrels over Niagara Falls and making heroes out of people like Evel Knievil. Yet there is also an element that wants to save people from killing themselves. So, we congratulate the heroes who successfully get to the top of Denali and Everest, but shake our heads at the foolishness of those who die trying. As the film shows, Philippe's act is breathtakingly beautiful - it's a spiritual triumph to do something so seemingly dangerous and outrageous. Yet what if he had fallen to his death? What would we say then? What if he had killed several spectators as he landed?

We continue, as I think we should, to allow people to jump out of airplanes, climb difficult peaks, sail across oceans. But what is society's obligation to rescue such people if they run into trouble? Should public resources be diverted to saving daredevils? Should they be required to buy insurance? Could we NOT rescue them if they didn't? Summitpost.org writes about climbing Denali (McKinley):

If you have to be rescued off the mountain, you will likely be billed for the costs which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Rescue insurance or health insurance (if your rescue is a medical emergency) should cover the costs of the rescue. The park service monitors Channel 19 on CB radios. Cell phones also work well above 14,200 feet.

How do we distinguish between the 'experts' and the 'crazies' and should we? Clearly there is something highly inspirational when someone accomplishes a feat that seems impossible.
We've collectively decided it is worth the risk. The government even support this in programs like the space shuttle.

And I couldn't help wonder, given that this act was done at the World Trade Center, how 9/11 has affected adventures such as this. A group of men smuggling the equipment they needed into a building like the WTC today would immediately raise suspicions of terrorism. Would they got shot first and questioned later?

My mother didn't like this movie. But I thought it was fascinating watching the complexity of the preparations. How do you connect the wire between the two buildings? (They used a bow and arrow to shoot mono filament across. This was tied to a bigger rope which was dragged across, and this connected to the wire.) How do they attach it to the building? Besides the technical problems of getting the wire up, they had to solve the socio-political problems of getting past the guards and doing this illegal act. (In the movie, it appears no one considered asking permission, I assume they thought it would be turned down, and that the element of surprise would be lost.)

I can't say that I remember any news stories about this event. But I have an excuse. The walk was done on August 7, 1974. My son was born on August 6 that year and Richard Nixon resigned on August 8.

Frank and Larry's Hungarian Word Game

When Frank and Larry started telling me at dinner last night about the new word game they had created for themselves, I thought about Ropi and I knew I had to get this on video. So after dinner we went into the other room and we got it on tape.

Frank and Larry are brothers who grew up in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now the Slovak Republic) in a Hungarian speaking Jewish family. Larry got to the US before WW II to go to college. Frank spent WWII in Europe. At that time Kosice was controlled by Hungary. In Fall 1940 he was conscripted into a forced labor camp attached to the Hungarian army. He was, in his words, lucky enough that the army unit to which his labor camp was attached was stationed and worked always in Hungary proper. Other units were sent out to the Russian Front. Their parents were first sent to a local ghetto and eventually to a railroad station where 80 people were squeezed into a cattle car and deported to Auschwitz in April 1944. (The cars were originally designed for 40 people or 6 horses.) His labor camp was about 150 men and sent to do work for the military such as building roads or whatever military projects were needed. (I was just clarifying background information to put the video into context. Yes, I realize I should video tape this too. But Frank has participated in the Steven Spielberg project to video tape Holocaust survivors, so he does have an hour or more of tape already recorded.)

[This is the corrected version.]

After the US got involved in WW II, and Larry was finishing school, he was given the option to be drafted into the US army or be among the first to be returned to Europe after the war. He joined the army and became an American citizen about 90 days later. He was sent to basic training in Camp Roberts, California as an infantryman, and during one of the exercises an American officer appeared who was looking for him. "They were interested in my educational background and high intelligence scores and took me out of infantry and sent me to officer training in Fort Benning, Georgia." After four months he became an officer - 2nd Lieutenant. He was scheduled to go to the Japanese theater of operations. Life expectancy there was very short so he contacted the intelligence officer and explained that the army would get better service from him in Europe because he spoke German, Hungarian, French, and understood Slovak, and had studied Latin. All this in addition to English.

They trained him for the European theater and send him for training in Maryland where he became a POW (prisoner of war) interrogator, mostly Germans. They also sent him to counterintelligence school and he successfully finished that and became a CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) officer. He was sent to Germany. The war ended, and there were a lot of German prisoners of war he had to interrogate. He was helping to chase Nazi bigshots, and the most important Nazi he arrested was Ernst Ittameier.

Larry returned to LA in 1946 and Frank was able to join him in 1952. They have lived in Los Angeles ever since. Frank is now 92 and Larry is 88. They talk on this video about how they keep their minds sharp by tracking down the meanings of old Hungarian words and translating them into English.


For those who want to know why I was having dinner with them, well, it's a little complicated. My parents were divorced when I was five. My father didn't remarry until after I got married. After he died, his widow, my second mom, married Frank. I guess it wasn't that complicated.

Doonesbury Competing with Millions of Narcissists

OK, this is the last post on today's LA Times. But I can't pass up Doonesbury's take on bloggers. If you don't have a Sunday paper with Doonesbury, you can double click the picture to enlarge it enough to read it.

John Adams, Composer Autobiography - This is especially for Phil

While I'm looking (I'm still looking, this is a quick break) through the LA Times today, this story jumped out at me too. I know a composer. I never thought about composer autobiographies before. So, Phil, this one's for you.

BOOKS
John Adams explains how he found his voice in his memoir 'Hallelujah Junction'
The composer's autobiography shows how indirect his path has been.
By Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 19, 2008
BERKELEY -- WHEN John Adams, the celebrated composer who is to his adopted California as Sibelius is to Finland, decided to write a memoir of his life and music, he realized there was virtually no model for his project.

"Most composers," he said over lunch at an upscale Italian cafe near his home here, "are composers because that's the way they want to communicate with the world. Even those who can write well, they don't want to express themselves in words."

The few existing examples didn't inspire him. "Most of them were really awful. I was painfully aware of the fact that the few composers who set out to write something wrote a boring then-I-did-this, then-I-did-that thing. The only one I thought was tasty and interesting was [Hector] Berlioz, but unfortunately the Berlioz is only good for the first 50 pages." [The rest is at the link above.]

Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President

From Voice of America
By Paula Wolfson
Washington
19 October 2008

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he is backing Democrat Barack Obama for president.

VOA's Paula Wolfson reports Powell made the announcement during a nationally broadcast television interview.

Colin Powell (2008 file photo)

Powell says Barack Obama has the ability to transform America and American politics.

"He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage. And for that reason, I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama," he said. [All the above including the photo from Voice of America]

.
I think this one is important because there was actually any doubt that Powell would do this.

As the most prominent African American in US politics before Obama, as a Republican who was burned by the Bush Administration over his Iran testimony at the UN, as a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was probably pulled in different directions, but I just don't see how he could do anything but endorse Obama. If Obama were a Palin type candidate, there's no way Powell would have endorsed him, simply because he was black. But a very credible candidate like this? How could he not?

If Obama is elected (yes, I know, I just don't count my chickens early) just his election will change the landscape of the United States and the world. We'll have a president whose consciousness is open to the future, not the past. Powell has to know this.


Don't hold you breath waiting for Clarence Thomas' Obama endorsement, though.

Why the mistakes at the Ted Stevens' trial?

After conducting the three Anchorage trials with intimidating precision, the Prosecution seems to have been uncharacteristically sloppy when they got to DC. We heard things like this from the Washington Post:

Prosecutors seriously bungled evidence and witnesses but Sen. Ted Stevens' corruption trial will proceed as planned, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

There are a number of significant changes between last year's trials and this trial: a different judge, a different venue, a different chief of the prosecution, and a different defense attorney, this one with a team. I've only taken in the trial through the news reports and blogs, but here are some hypotheses that ought to be explored further by those on the scene.

1. The Judge. Judge Sedwick in Anchorage was always very calm, and even when he admonished attorneys, he showed, at his worst, only annoyance. The Anchorage based prosecutors have worked with him often over the years. My reaction to the judge during the trials was that he was scrupulously fair and reasonable, but that was based on my novice court observer perspective. Looking back, he was an Alaskan judge who voiced clear concern for the people of Alaska given the corruption of their legislators and when discussing the sentencing guidelines, he weighed the violation of the people's trust heavily against the defendants.

Judge Sullivan, from the news reports, has been much more demonstrative in voicing his displeasure with the prosecution. Is he legitimately giving them less slack than did Sedwick? Does he just enjoy wielding his power? Is he making sure that if there is an appeal, that he can't be accused of favoring the prosecution? I have no idea, I'm just trying to spin out the possibilities.

2. Venue. Having the trial in DC means that the jury's knowledge of and relationship with the defendant is much different from an Anchorage jury's would be. The racial make up of the jury - predominantly black - could make a difference. The prosecutors would appear to think so since they added a new chief of the prosecution - a black woman - and the defense has a black attorney too. And the judge is black. While this may or may not impact the trial (I used the assumption that it would by whites as a lead into a discussion of race and the presidential election in a previous post) in general, it doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the question of the prosecution's reported bungling.

3 Chief of the prosecution. The team in Anchorage seemed to know everything (about the case, about the procedures, etc.) and to be ready for any contingency. Was there something about the new head of the prosecution that affected the way the case was run? She hadn't been visibly involved with the previous trials and now was the lead. Were there disagreements among the team members and this is causing loss of the laser like focus they seemed to have in Anchorage? Again, this is simply speculation, not based on any hard evidence, but just looking at what has changed.

4. Defense attorney, this one with a team. Brendan Sullivan is characterized as one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country and one of the most expensive. Is it just that the prosecution is up against a better attorney this time? Or that they are up against a much bigger team of attorneys with far more resources than the previous legal defense teams? That there is more of a level playing field this time?

Another, more disturbing thought is the possibility that someone on the defense team has intentionally botched things up. Given the Justice Department's various breaches during this Administration - from using partisan political tests of applicants to firing attorneys for not pursuing politically motivated investigations and everything in-between - one cannot rule this out totally. Again, this is merely speculation, as I try to map out the possible explanations for why what seemed like a well oiled legal machine was found to have sand in its gears for this trial.

Ultimately, we may never know, which of these, or which combination of these, led to the actions that raised the judge's ire. And it may not even matter. The jury will get this case Monday or Tuesday. We should have a verdict by the end of next week if not sooner. If Stevens is found guilty, it won't matter to the public. But I would hope the prosecution, which still has some indictments up its sleeve, will figure it out, if they haven't already.

Happy Go Lucky Day

The sky was still very blue when I ran around the Santa Monica Airport this morning (instead of down to the beach.) Just before I'd left, the doorbell rang and two people were there to get my mom to vote for Proposition 9[8], the proposition that is attempting to overthrow the California Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage in California. I was agitated just thinking these people were at the door. When my mother said she agreed it was terrible to teach gay marriage to 2nd graders (that's what a political ad that keeps playing on the television asserts) I lost it completely. "You believe that bullshit?" They left. Fortunately, when I explained what the proposition wanted to do, my mom said she was opposed to it. But I still really needed to run.
By the time I saw this sign amongst someone's Halloween decorations - yes the people around here get excited about Halloween - I'd forgotten all about it, but was pleased to see the sign.
In the afternoon we went to the movies at Pico and Westwood. I hate parking garages, and this one was bumper-to-bumper both ways when I drove in.

Where's the Happy-Go-Lucky part, you're asking. Well, that was the name of the movie. My mom still likes movies, but she can't keep up with subtitles any more. This one seemed to get good reviews and was supposed to be an upbeat movie.

It is and it isn't. All the reviews focus on Sally Hawkin's performance. It is outstanding, but so are a number of other actors. There isn't much of a story. It's like a dozen scenes edited together. We hang out with Poppy and her friends for a couple of days in and around London. There are teachers - primary school, Flamenco (worth it alone), and driving (another incredible performance.) And there's a perfect performance by a six or seven year old kid. Everyone is outstanding. And the opening credits are shown around Poppy riding her bike.
Then dinner next door at Jaipur Indian restaurant. Just the name of the place was enough to pull me in, but they were so busy and brusque, that I figured they were not interested in knowing that'd I'd been to Jaipur. The food was ok, but not special. But it's nice to have a mom who's willing to eat strange food.

Self Realization Fellowship takes me back many years

I went to the Lake Shrine as a child and young adult. I never thought about the religious significance of it back then. It was just a beautiful walk with these somewhat unlikely decorations. Yesterday, when I called B, he surprised me when he asked me to show him something in LA. He lives in Anchorage, but his daughters - and more important his grandson - live in LA now. So he and J are here for the winter. But I haven't lived in LA for thirty years. But I remembered this place and no, they hadn't been here. So today we went.

The monarch butterflies are arriving. There's more explanation at Best-California-Beach:

Millions of Monarchs travel every year from the colder regions of North America to warmer sites where they can safely overwinter. They fly, en masse, as high as 10,000 feet, returning to the same groves as preceding generations.

Monarch butterflies usually only live for about six weeks, but the migrating generation can live for up to eight months. So Monarch butterflies manage to travel thousands of miles to arrive at a destination they've never been to before.

This windmill was on the site when the meditation group bought the property in the 1950's. There's a meditation chapel inside.



















And this Indian arch is across the lake from the windmill.















There are many, many, many flowers in the garden around the lake. Here's a rose.















On the hill above the garden is a Hindu temple. This was not here when we left LA 30 some years ago.


The orchid was in the temple.




From the Self-Realization Fellowship we drove up Sunset past the school I worked at while I was a student at UCLA. It was a great time. I had morning classes. Rode my Honda 50 down Sunset to the school where I worked noon duty on the playground, then rode the rest of the way - past the self-realization center - to the beach to play volley ball and body surf. Then back up to the school for after school playground, then back to UCLA, along a Sunset that had a lot less traffic than it does today.

No one had eaten much today, so we stopped at an upscale supermarket (we were in Pacific Palisades, so everything is upscale) where we got focaccia sandwiches cooked in the oven.








While waiting for the sandwiches to cook I wandered around the market. Here are some olives.








And, of course, I can't fail to notice the salmon. This is for formerly frozen salmon. This was the most expensive. They had some other wild salmon for as low as $15 a pound.




Then on the way home, B said we were relatively close to their daughter's place, so we took a small detour and visited her for a few minutes while the baby was napping.

It's Hot in LA

Trying to pull back on the computer stuff and spend more time with my mom and doing some other writing. But old friends are also distractions. It's been hot these two days - high 80's to low 90s. But a lot drier than Thailand. Today and yesterday mornings I ran down to Venice Beach - pretty much a straight shot from my mom's house - about 2 miles each way.

I got a surprise yesterday as a pod (?) of dolphins passed by just off shore (but not that close for my 3X optical zoom). And then I ran past what I thought was the house of an old friend of mine from boy scouts - it was for sale. The neighbor was out so I confirmed with her it was the right house. She was lots of fun - she's on the video.


Some friends are coming over to pick me up now, so I'll post this and add the other pictures later.

Pictures are of yesterday and today. They were just setting up the booths on the boardwalk at Venice Beach.

And some freeway pictures from going out to the valley for dinner with other relatives. It wasn't that much warmer there than at the beach.

October 17 pm update: Added pictures:

Venice Beach Promenade - just setting up - looking South at Rose.

Venice Promenade looking North at Rose.

The Promenade is on Ocean Front Walk.

These pictures are on the back of a building at the intersection of what streets? Answer at the bottom.

Switching from the Santa Monica Freeway east to the San Diego Freeway north about 3:30pm. I know these freeways have numbers now, but I remember when they didn't exist. When they were built they were given real names, not just numbers. Going down to the beach was great, but driving out to the Valley reminded me why I'm living in Anchorage.



Would you believe Lincoln and Rose?

Anchorage to LA

A trip LA to visit my mom has been waiting for a good time and cheap seats. I finally pulled out the mileage and got tickets, but the 10,000 mile legs were scarce (more 20,000 mile ones) so I'm in LA already. The cloud cover was heavy leaving Anchorage, but just out of Anchorage (minutes out) you could see glimpses of land and sky through the clouds at once. Here was a cloudy view of mountains flying out.

Then above the clouds, and really looked just like this. Flat white cloud out to the blue. I had a three hour layover in Seattle, but when I checked on the gate, I saw there were two earlier flights to LA. So I spent an hour in Seattle, saw enough of the debate to realize it was the same content from the previous ones. It was interesting to see it on CNN and watch the lines with the male (green) and female (yellow) real time reactions of Ohio undecided voters. Actually it was bizarre. I imagine they have to actually do something, but how could you keep dialing your reaction as you watch? But it did seem to go up when someone said no taxes.



I was expecting to see smoke and maybe fires flying into LA, but it was very clear. And comparatively warm. Low 70s at 10pm felt a bit warm after low 30s.

Good to see my mom. Good to be unconnected most of the day.

Peter's Sushi Fire "Undetermined After Investigation"

I got a copy of the Incident Report on the fire at Peter's Sushi Spot today. I've never seen one before, but after I posted pictures of the burnt restaurant last July and the cleared lot in August, I thought I should ask to see the report. But it wasn't ready then. It is now. For those of you who just want the gist, here's the conclusion:

CONCLUSION: Based on the fire scene examination and statements of the firefighters and witnesses we believe the area of origin is under the floor at the area near the SE corner of the office. We were unable to locate the point of origin so we were not able to identify the ignition source. The official fire cause classification will be pending until the lab results are received.[p. 15]

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: On 10/13/08 I received lab results from the State of Alaska Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory for the items submitted for accelerant testing on 7/21/08. The testing did not detect any ignitable liquids in the samples.

Since the lab results did not detect any ignitable liquids the fire will be classified as "Undetermined after Investigation.[p.15]

The cover page is ... terse. Actually, I like that, just facts.
Then there are a bunch of narratives from the different firefighters at the scene. These are also terse and lots of jargon. The first one says:

CAD Master Incident Number 20082310000022268 Jurisdiction Incident #: 2310020080018069 Primary Jurisdiction Inc. #: 2310020080018069 [p. 2]

Whatever that means. The next one is mostly in English:

Assigned RIC by command along with E-1. Pulled 2 1/2" line and set up on C side for extinguishment.

Then:

Upon arrival E1 was assigned to RIC duties. EO1 did a walk around he [sic] building and opened the door on the C side of the structure. There was light brown smoke coming from the D side of the building and a light amount of smoke coming from the C side. The B side had no visible smoke. There was heavy brown smoke mixed with steam coming from the point of attack door on the A side. E14 was assigned to RIC. EO1 took RC duties for the B/C corner and E14 had RIC for the A/D corner. After Command ordered the evacuation of the building E01 was replaced from RIC duties by R04. E01 made a brief entry into the building before being ordered out by B division. E01 then set up a monitor on the C side and remained there until being put in-service.[pp. 2-3]

I'm not sure what the letters mean. The restaurant was on B street and C street is on the other side, but A and D don't fit. There are no pictures or diagrams attached to the copy I got. On page 10 it does say:

EXTERIOR:
a. (East) - Extensive fire damage with wall collapse.
b. (South) -Extensive fire damage from door and windows.
c. (West) - Extensive fire damage with wall collapse.
d. (North)- Fire damage from exterior openings
e. (Roof) - Complete collapse [p. 10]

Are these letters (a-e) related to the ones back on page 3?

There are about 18 more "narratives." Some a little longer, most done on July 12, but others scattered until July 22.

The most interesting part was the:

INTERVIEW with [redacted] [redacted] said that he, his wife, and the head waitress left the building at approximately 2330 hours. He said they did a final walk-through to ensure all the appliances were turned off and the doors were locked. [redacted] said he did not notice any unfamiliar odors, such as something burning, when he left. He said there were no electrical or mechanical problems at the restaurant. [redacted] said a fire department inspector had conducted an inspection prior to the 4th of July weekend and the hood and duct systems had been cleaned prior to the investigation.

[redacted] said he has owned the restaurant for approximately 2 1/2 years and the only electrical or mechanical problems he has had occurred during the initial remodeling. He said a HVAC unit had caught fire and damaged a portion of the roof and attic approximately two weeks prior to opening the restaurant.


[redacted] said he has had employee problems and he is currently involved in a law suit filed by two former employees. He said the court recently ruled in his favor but there was still some issues being litigated. He did not believe the former employees would be responsible for the fire..


[redacted] said some employees did smoke near the east side employee entrance, but they usually smoke near the garage door or along the outside north wall of the garage. [redacted] said they usually extinguished the cigarettes in various buckets filled with water.


[redacted] said he had recently received two offers to purchase the property. One was from Alaska USA Federal Credit Union (AKUSA FCU) and a second was from a private investor who wanted to keep the structure as a restaurant.

Then,

INVESTIGATION CONTINUED: I instructed [redacted] to contact his insurance company and we discussed what would be needed to secure the property for the pending origin and cause investigation.

A short time later I was approached by [redacted] from AKUSA FCU, who is the insurance broker for [redacted]. We discussed what would be needed for the pending origin and cause investigation, and he confirmed AKUSA FCU had made an offer to purchase the property. However, AKUSA FCU had been out bid by the private investor who wanted to keep the structure as a restaurant.
[redacted]said he was meeting the private investor on Monday to discuss his
[redacted] previous profits, etc. [redacted] said the property was not advertised to sell, he was just made offers from people interested in the property.

[redacted] did not know how the fire might have started.

Then there is a section called ORIGIN AND CAUSE INVESTIGATION. Here are some excerpts:

From Day 1 July 15:

An examination of fire movement and intensity patterns indicated the area of origin was under the floor at an area near the SE corner of the office. The patterns indicate the fire moved upwards through the exterior deck, which created a hole; and upwards through the east wall of the office and then into the attic area. At that point the fire moved through-out the attic space, which eventually caused the roof to collapse.

"Accelerant Detection K-9" Jodi seemed to think there was something suspicious.

Proceeded to "employee entrance" on the east side of structure. Structure sustained major damage - with roof collapsed. Proceeded to search deck/entry area which faced east. K9 first alerted on burned edge of rubber matting adjacent to an appx 3 foot hole furned [sic] through to the crawlspace. K-9 then alerted on burned edge of hole on the deck. Investigators secured water from crawlspace below the deck. K-9 alerted on water from crawlspace. K-9 alerted on charred wood from structural members in crawlspace. All alert areas were marked and photographed. All alert area samples were secured as evidence and placed into evicence [sic] containers.

As I said at the beginning, this is the first fire incident report I've ever seen. These are just bits and pieces of the report. The whole report is 16 pages long. Since I really know nothing about this, I'll just leave it at this - with the parts I found interesting excerpted - and leave it for others to figure out what it all means.

Aravind Adiga Wins Booker Prize

I listed the Booker Prize Finalists September 10. From the Booker Prize website:

Now in its 40th year, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide readership plus a dramatic increase in book sales.

Today Aravind Adiga was announced as the winner for "The White Tiger."

From the BBC:

The chairman of the judges, former politician Michael Portillo, said: "In many ways it was the perfect novel."

The White Tiger, a tale of two Indias, tells the story of Balram, the son of a rickshaw puller in the heartlands, one of the "faceless" poor left behind by the country's recent economic boom.

It charts his journey from working in a teashop to entrepreneurial success.

Announcing the winner at a ceremony in London, Mr Portillo said: "My criteria were 'Does it knock my socks off?' and this one did ... the others impressed me ... this one knocked my socks off."

You can watch a brief video with the winner on the BBC site.

Sarah Barracuda

Local Anchorage artist, Mariano Gonzales, shared his latest creation with me. Part of me wants to enjoy this privately and not add this to the political free for all going on. But Sarah has been proud of her barracuda nickname and I suspect that she'll want to frame this one.

Disclosure time: Mariano is teaching the computer art class I'm taking and I asked him if I could post the fish.

Who is that Masked Man?

I sort of got mentioned in the Bangkok Post today. There's a story about Somprasong Mang-ana, headmaster of a school in a remote rural Thailand village. (From an Alaskan perspective it isn't all that remote, since you can drive to it, but that's a lot of other stories.) Here's the reference:

Somprasong himself knows first-hand of the perils of being poor and lacking in opportunities. While growing up in the northern province of Kamphaeng Phet in the 1960s, he studied English thanks to a Peace Corps volunteer.

I'm the English teacher. I posted about Somprasong when we visited Umphang in 2007. He's done incredible things with this school and is the Northern Thailand teacher of the year. This is the sort of thing that makes teaching so worthwhile.

The story begins this way:

Rare dedication

English in the hills of Tak at the Umphang Wittayakom School

Story by NIKI THONGBORISUTE

It is the daily roll call in one of Thailand's most remote schools. Khaiwan stands in front of her fellow students and announces:

"There are 15 in our dorm, but today there are 14 because Lata has gone home. Thank you. Please sit down."

This is not a translation. The shy 16-year-old has just stood in front of 325 of her classmates and spoken in English.

Yes, that's right. Daily roll call in the remote school is in English, which is not bad considering these are students whose first language isn't even Thai. In fact, 11 dialects are represented at the school, and the students come from all 26 hill tribe communities in the region.

Niki contacted me because she saw my posts on Somprasong - blogging has its rewards too. For the full story go to the Bangkok Post.

DELTA Meeting - Working to Prevent Intimate Partner Violence

I spent the afternoon at a steering committee meeting for DELTA. Don't ask about the acronym, the group is working on developing a plan for prevention of intimate partner violence (IPV). The link takes you to a post on a previous meeting, and it has links to earlier ones even. The project is funded by the National Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Alaska is one of 14 states to have such a grant.

Coming up with a state plan on something like this feels a bit presumptuous, but actually, I'm the only member who isn't closely involved in the field of IPV. I'm supposed to be contributing with my public administration expertise. For the last two years we've been trying to inventory how the state tracks intimate partner violence and what ways people and agencies are trying to prevent it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the CDC is strongly interested in prevention rather than intervention. (Intervention being defined as reaction by authorities AFTER IPV.)

We're also trying to document what programs exist, where, and how one determines whether they are effective. A current buzzword in the field is "evidence-based programs" meaning that there are studies to test whether things work not so that money is spent on the most effective programs. As a guiding principle, that's great, but there are many obstacles. What works in Philadelphia may not work in rural Alaska. If you strictly follow the idea of evidence-based programs, you could never have a new program because there'd be no evidence that it will work. And measuring what hasn't happened (we're about prevention) is also tricky. Statistics has lots of sophisticated techniques for doing all this, but collecting sensitive data about people in small communities can increase risks for people as well. It's all pretty tricky, but there is so much to do. So we have to do what we can. Like most things, the more you learn about things, the more complex it gets.


But what little data there are tend to focus on incidents of IPV and there is little funding for prevention and measuring it is also elusive. We've worked hard over the last two years to let others in the field know what we're doing, mostly by talking about it with people members meet professionally who are in the field one way or another and through putting on workshops at professional conferences of people who are in positions to do prevention work (community health people, social workers, teachers, law enforcement,etc.)

[While the chart might look messy, making it helped us communicate our different understandings of the root causes of the problems and to focus on the areas and levels that would be most fruitful. And someone has transcribed it all so we can see it neatly.]


I continue to be impressed with the professionalism, knowledge, enthusiasm, and dedication of the other steering committee members. We're hoping to have a draft plan ready in January 2009. The idea is to have done a significant amount of work, but not have it so far along that it is a done deal when people get to look at it. We know that, despite our efforts, there are people who should be involved but haven't been. We just don't know who they are.



We'll have plenty of time next year to move it along to something the state can adopt to minimize the incidence of IPV through prevention rather than deal with victims and perpetrators AFTER things have gone wrong. Some of the committee members are working with people dealing with prevention of other health and social problems (alcohol and drug abuse for example) since there is considerable overlap.

We'll meet again tomorrow morning.

As You Like It Sheds Light on Sarah Palin

We went to see As You Like It this afternoon. Basically, I wanted to hear Philip Munger's songs. You can listen here. And you really should have this playing while you read the rest of this.

Sitting through a Shakespeare play, even a relatively light one like this, I was reminded of why we still put on his plays 400 years after he wrote them. If only more Americans would know the characters of Shakespeare the way they know the Desperate Housewives, perhaps this election season would be less contentious. While I would particularly like the people flocking to cheer our governor to have been schooled in Shakespeare, it would also be good for those who are Obama supporters, so that their expectations for his possible Presidency will be realistic.

In any case, I was struck by this early conversation between Oliver - hero Orlando's older brother who has kept Orlando from gaining his inheritance - and a wrestler Orlando has challenged.

As You Like it By William Shakespeare, George Lyman Kittredge:

Oliver: "... I tell thee, Charles, it is the stubbornest young fellow of France; full of ambition, an envious emulator of every man's good parts, a secret and villainous contriver against me his natural brother: therefore use thy discretion; I had as lief thou didst break his neck as his finger. And thou wert best look to't; for if thou dost him any slight disgrace, or if he do not mightily grace himself on thee, he will practise against thee by poison, entrap thee by some treacherous device, and never leave thee till he hath ta 'en thy life by some indirect means or other; for, I assure thee, and almost with tears I speak it, there is not one so young and so villainous this day living."

The wrestler Charles agrees to take care of Orlando should he show up for the match.

Oliver: Farewell good Charles. [Exit CHARLES] Now will I stir this gamester: I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he. Yet he's gentle; never school'd, and yet learned; full of noble device of all sorts; enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised. But it shall not be so long; this wrestler shall clear all; nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither; which now I'll go about. [Exit]"

I dare say we know of those who knowingly lie about their rivals in hopes that their 'wrestler' friends will dispatch them. And, sad to say, were the wrestler to know the truth, I suspect he'd dispatch him anyway.

Oliver lies to Charles, totally misrepresents Orlando's character, knowingly. Why? Because Orlando's goodness blocks Oliver's ambitions. Of course, we know no one like this. No one who speaks untruths about rivals who block their path to power.

But in As You Like It, this sort of jealousy of another who makes oneself look bad in comparison comes up again. Soon after the scene above, Duke Frederick, who, has housed Rosalind after he expelled her father years ago, has decided Rosalind too must go.

[Enter Duke FREDERICK with Lords]
Duke F: Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste, And get you from our Court.
Ros: Me? uncle?
Duke F: You, cousin:
Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our public Court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.

Rosalind, appealing to logic and reason, asks what she has done to cause this.

Ros: I do beseech your Grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me;
If with myself I hold intelligence,
Or have acquaintance with mine own desires;
If that I do not dream, or be not frantic, --
As I do trust I am not, -- then, dear uncle,
Never so much as in a thought unborn,
Did I offend your Highness.

The Duke then basically says, I don't have to answer your questions, I'll just start another line of attack. Oh, my, this starts sounding so familiar. You are a traitor he tells her. Your words are pretty, but no one can trust your words.

Duke F: Thus do all traitors:
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself;
Let it suffice thee, that I trust thee not.

Rosalind, still using reason, responds:

Ros: Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.

Duke F: Thou art thy father's daughter there's enough.

Does this not sound terribly familiar? How is it that Obama is a Muslim if not because "he art his father's son"? How do Reverend Wright's words make Obama a traitor?

Ros: So was I when your Highness took his dukedom:
So was I when your Highness banish d him:
Treason is not inherited my lord;
Or if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? my father was no traitor.
Then, good my liege, mistake me not so much
To think my poverty is treacherous.

Oh dear, poverty is very near community organizing. Now Duke Frederick's daughter, Celia, pleads on behalf of her dearest friend.

Cel: Dear sovereign hear me speak.

Duke F: Ay Celia; we stay'd her for your sake,
Else had she with her father ranged along.

Basically, we kept this traitor because of you, her father tells her. But she disputes this lie.

Cel: I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her: if she be a traitor,
Why, so am I; we still have slept together;
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And, wheresoe'er we went like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.

Every lie the Duke constructs is torn down, and finally, he tells her the truth. It is similar to Oliver's truth about Orlando: Stupid Celia, Rosalind is so good, she makes you look terrible in comparison. That's why she must go.

Duke F: She is too subtle for thee; and her smoothness,
Her very silence, and her patience,
Speak to the people, and they pity her.
Thou art a fool: she robs thee of thy name;
And thou wilt show more bright and seem more virtuous
When she is gone. Then open not thy lips:
Firm and irrevocable is my doom
Which I have pass'd upon her: she is banish'd.

Fortunately, Palin and her right wing spewers of hate (I got another email pointing me to another racist anti-Obama YouTube video today) cannot decree McCain's election as easily as the Duke can banish Rosalind. They can only hope that they can con enough Americans to feel the same fears about Obama, that they willingly buy into their lies and vote for McCain.

A lot of Kings, Dukes, Emperors, etc. (no Presidents in those days) are murdered in Shakespeare's plays and Sarah Palin's speeches have been getting people to say those sorts of things out loud. If Obama were harmed by anyone, this country's future would be grimmer than grim. The only people who would 'win' are those who would rather be dead than see a Black man President.

So, go see or read Shakespeare. Yes, it takes a bit to get used to the old words. If you don't read an annotated version, you won't recognize all the references that Shakespeare's contemporary audience would have understood. But he is much more understandable than Jon Stewart will be in 400 years, and has lots to teach us about human beings.

Well, maybe someone more familiar than I with the characters in Desperate Housewives or some other relevant TV show can figure out which characters would help get the undecideds to understand what is going on.



The pictures: The poster. (You can buy tickets before the performance in the Theater and Arts Building at UAA. Free parking on Fridays nights and weekends. There's a discount for 15 or more people. How about a bloggers' night at the theater to hear Phil's music?)

Some of the cast after the performance.

Walking home.

Art in Motion - West High Dance Performance

This is a follow up of yesterday's post about interesting stuff going out of sight that having kids helps you to find. In the evening we went to West High's Dance Department's show. Wow! This was good stuff - original choreography, interesting music, great lighting, and some fine dancing. I've seen little kids from Barbara's School of Dance to the Martha Graham Dance Troupe at West High. This was closer to the Martha Graham in quality and interest.




I didn't get going with the video until the first three pieces were over, but here's a hint.

The video does give you a good sense of the variety and quality of what we saw last night. Lori Bradford, I'm told, is the Dance teacher who is basically responsible and she's listed as the director for the show. Leslie Kimiko Ward choreographed several of the pieces and danced solo in Spectrum. Michael Alfaro is listed as a guest artist in Moving Statues, and if he's the dancer I caught in that one, you can see why I highlight him. There were lots and lots of talented students and it was good to see that they had various shapes. They were all good dancers. It reminds me of some of the great things going on in the Anchorage School District.

The program says you can buy a DVD of the performance if you email creativemotionproductions@gmail.com.


[Video has been closed to public access at request of Lori Bradford. Recognizable faces on photos have been blurred also.]



In the hallway after the performance.

Breaking Bad Habits Through TaeKwonDo Kickathon

Today was one of those days that reminded me

• how much I'm missing because my kids are grown up and gone
• how much is happening, but invisible
  
  
  
  
  

I got invited to see some friends at their TaeKwonDo Kickathon. If you drive, even walk or bike, by this mall, you'd have no idea of the excitement going on inside. In other cultures much of what is going on is much more out in the open and the whole community is at least aware if not involved. But here, lots of things are going on, well hidden from the rest of the world.




Malls like this aren't built for bikers. The positive spin would be this is a "natural and recyclable" bike rack. There are a lot of these in Anchorage, but not enough near destinations if more people start biking.




But what could be more fun for kids that breaking things and making noise. I have to say they were also very quiet and attentive when they were supposed to be, but they were also given time to break boards and make noise. All in the framework of breaking boards as an inspiration to break bad habits. (The only actual bad habit I heard about that someone was breaking was biting fingernails.)

So, here's the video.



Here's S taking his kindling home.

Fall or Winter or Fall?

First it snowed. Then the cottonwood lost its leaves. This was yesterday.


The Steller Jay came by to see what he could scavange. The snow's all melted and there are a lot more leaves on the deck. (I raked them later.)



Today in the front, there are mostly mountain ash leaves on the ground. Some birch.

This evening we walked around Goose Lake.

Celebrate Trash

OK, I have no problem with putting up signs so people can find their events, but when it's over, take them down please. There's another one across the intersection too.

Yom Kippur Begins This Evening [Whoops, this never went up]

From Judaism 101:

Yom Kippur is probably the most important holiday of the Jewish year. Many Jews who do not observe any other Jewish custom will refrain from work, fast and/or attend synagogue services on this day. Yom Kippur occurs on the 10th day of Tishri. The holiday is instituted at Leviticus 23:26 et seq.

The name "Yom Kippur" means "Day of Atonement," and that pretty much explains what the holiday is. It is a day set aside to "afflict the soul," to atone for the sins of the past year. In Days of Awe, I mentioned the "books" in which G-d inscribes all of our names. On Yom Kippur, the judgment entered in these books is sealed. This day is, essentially, your last appeal, your last chance to change the judgment, to demonstrate your repentance and make amends.

As I noted in Days of Awe, Yom Kippur atones only for sins between man and G-d, not for sins against another person. To atone for sins against another person, you must first seek reconciliation with that person, righting the wrongs you committed against them if possible. That must all be done before Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur is a complete Sabbath; no work can be performed on that day. It is well-known that you are supposed to refrain from eating and drinking (even water) on Yom Kippur. It is a complete, 25-hour fast beginning before sunset on the evening before Yom Kippur and ending after nightfall on the day of Yom Kippur. The Talmud also specifies additional restrictions that are less well-known: washing and bathing, anointing one's body (with cosmetics, deodorants, etc.), wearing leather shoes (Orthodox Jews routinely wear canvas sneakers under their dress clothes on Yom Kippur), and engaging in sexual relations are all prohibited on Yom Kippur

A good meal with family and friends before beginning services and fasting is customary.

Computer Art and Design

I've mentioned obliquely that I'm taking a class at UAA this semester. It's a computer art class. Actually, I've taken this class ten or 11 years ago, but the technology was somewhat different then. The shock then after the first day was that, "Oh dear, all the other students are artists." But I managed to survive.

So far, we're slowly playing (literally, we are supposed to be playing and experimenting) with basic tools in Photoshop and Painter. So, midterm time is next week and Prof. G talked about the exam on Monday. We will have a set of steps in which we will do certain things and play with certain tools. Prof. G gave us a demonstration, though he didn't precisely tell us the steps - he'll do that today. Basically, he started with one square. Duplicated the square and made it a different color. Then through grouping and copying and pasting, developed a checker board. Then distorted it, used the perspective tool. Added a sky. Then used the oval tool to make an egg, and then on and on. Here are some pictures of the transformation.









I didn't have much time Monday after this demonstration, because I was going to the funeral. But I did start my own version of what I thought were the steps. I, of course, have to be different so I made ovals instead of squares. Then stacked them up. I realized as I was shutting down the computer that I should have made two different colored ovals. Oh well, we'll get the precise steps today and see what students did with this in the past today.

Obama Wins Debate in First Five Minutes

The debate isn't even ten minutes old, but for me Obama won this debate when he said his choice for Treasury Secretary is Warren Buffet. He did say there were other qualified people, but that Buffet was one of his advisers and a great choice.

The economy is the biggest problem as we go into the election. I can't think of anyone who is more respected in this country in the area of business and investing than Warren Buffet.

OK, I know there's still about 75 minutes left in this debate.

Morris Ellis - Farewell after 100 Years

I had a post at the beginning of the year on famous people born in 1908. I could only confirm one who was still alive - Claude Levy Strauss. But there was a man here in Anchorage who was born September 9, 1908 who was at least famous in his family - with his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great great grandchildren.

Morris Ellis died Saturday October 4, 2008. Yesterday was his funeral. I'd only met him once or twice, but his son and daughter-in-law are people I feel very close to. At the funeral I learned about this family patriarch from his sons, and grandchildren.

1908. Four years after the Wright Brothers flew their plane at Kitty Hawk. Mr. Ellis worked for the US Post Office after leaving school in the 8th grade. Here's a picture of him with his Post Office delivery truck.



Later, he joined the navy and worked in Algeria - at a Naval Postal facility - during WW I. He moved his family from New York to Los Angeles after enjoying the weather in Algeria.

Eventually he came to Alaska about ten years ago with his wife at the invitation of his children and grandchildren.

A life ends. A rich, long life. Celebrated by a large and loving family.

Democrats Have Developed Anti-Swift Boat Attack Weapons System

Sarah Palin and others have been talking about Obama's supposed close friendship with Bill Ayers, who back in the 60's was a member of the Weather Underground involved in anti-war bombings.

She doesn't mention that Ayers was never convicted of anything and is now a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois - Chicago. The Washington Post Fact Checker looks at the whole story if you want more on this. As many have pointed out, Obama was eight years old when Ayers was in the Underground.

This sort of sniping from the Republicans - piecing together the flimsiest facts and blowing them up into a completely new and blatantly false, out of context, accusation - has a long history in US presidential campaigns, from Willie Horton, to Swift Boat, and to stuff like this.

What's new, is that the Democrats seem to have been ready for this and in response have released a very slick - music, shots, story - video about McCain's involvement in the Keating Five affair.




We'll see how the facts of this video play out, but the narrator was a banking regulator who was intimately involved in the trying to regulate Lincoln Savings. He's now a professor at the University of Kansas and the author of at least two books on this subject. Here are book reviews the University of Missouri Kansas City Law School Web Page on Black cites:

His book, The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One (University of Texas Press 2005) has been called “a classic” by George Akerlof, the Nobel Laureate (Economics, 2001).

More directly related is this:

Robert Kuttner, in his Business Week column, proclaimed:


Black's book is partly the definitive history of the savings-and-loan industry scandals of the early 1980s. More important, it is a general theory of how dishonest CEOs, crony directors, and corrupt middlemen can systematically defeat market discipline and conceal deliberate fraud for a long time -- enough to create massive damage.

Just compare the Palin speech and accusations to the Obama campaign produced video with Professor William Black. You can't help but believe that Black knows a lot more about Keating and McCain than Palin knows about Ayers and Obama. And that Black's motivation seems a lot less self serving than does Palin's.

The real story in my mind, though, is the Obama campaign seems to have developed an anti-swiftboat weapon. Do they have others ready and waiting in case the McCain campaign decides to keep fabricating more stories about Obama?

AARP Alaska Senate and House Debate 1

Tonight at UAA, Ted Stevens and Mark Begich debated videotronically and Don Young and Ethan Berkowitz debated live at the Wendy Williamson Auditorium. KTUU's John Tracy moderated.

I wish the rest of the country could see the debate. It wasn't great. But all the participants knew their subject matter in depth and debaters were civil to each other. The country would see that Alaskans DO NOT talk with a Beverly Hillbillies twang. They can address the questions they're asked knowledgeably.




The Stevens/Begich debate was a little peculiar since Stevens was in DC and so both candidates had been interviewed earlier and we watched that hour on a large screen. Both John Tracy (the moderator) and Mark Begich were in the Auditorium watching themselves on screen.

Stevens showed his age as he frequently stuttered getting the right word out. But his cognitive processes were intact. He knew exactly what he wanted to say, and while he stumbled getting the words out now and then, this is still a minor issue. He talks as though he's had three or four cups of coffee - fast and urgently. You have no doubt that he has a grasp of a lot of information and that you get in his way at your peril. Mark Begich matched him, but without the stutter, and without the coffee effect. He spoke calmly and much slower.




Don Young belied his reputation for malapropisms and spoke clearly, on topic, without rancor. He was clearly enjoying himself. Ethan Berkowitz had a moment of where he couldn't remember his next point early on and then he abandoned his notes and spoke passionately and knowledgeably the rest of the evening. He needs to loosen up a bit, though his wit came through a couple of times. At one point, when he paused, Tracy moved on to Don Young. Ethan said he wasn't finished. Tracy said,"Well, you paused so..." Ethan responded, "I paused...for effect" and the audience burst out laughing.


The topics I can recall (sorry, I wasn't taking notes) included the economic crisis, health care, earmarks, social security, energy, and whether the candidates endorsed Sarah Palin. The last was particularly significant because, Tracy pointed out in his questions, she hasn't endorsed fellow Republicans Young and Stevens. They both said they endorsed her, though in roundabout ways. The legal problems of the two Republican candidates were not raised.

There was a significant amount of agreement between both pairs of candidates - they all would open ANWR, and none would abandon getting earmarked projects for Alaska. Differnces were in things like who to blame the economic crisis on (the Republicans blamed Clinton for the bill that deregulated financial institutions, the Democrats blamed eight years of Bush.)

Sunday Pictures

Just a few pictures from today. Here's M at the Middle Way Cafe after we checked out the REI sale. I got a new bike lock.

















Then, driving down Minnesota, the sky got darker and darker. This is Westchester Lake on the East side of Minnesota.












Later we met friends at Thai Kitchen. Here Dad helps I out a bit.








And to add to my collection of pictures of the view from the Thai Kitchen parking lot - the snow was over and mostly gone here, but it had come way down on the mountains since our hike the other day.

First Snow

[Update later October 5:

Earliest Date of First Measurable Snowfall
September 20, 1947


Latest Date of First Measurable Snowfall
November 11, 1950
November 11, 1944

Here's the website for all the Anchorage weather records]

State Employees to Testify in Legislative Investigation

Thanks for the heads up from Dennis Zaki:

Attorney General Talis J. Colberg Releases Statement on Status of Subpoenaed Employees in Legislative Investigation

For Immediate Release:

October 5, 2008

( Anchorage , AK ) Alaska Attorney General Colberg announced today that the seven state employees who filed suit to quash the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas will make themselves available to testify in the legislative investigation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee issued the subpoenas for the benefit of Stephen Branchflower, who is conducting an investigation for the Legislative Council of events surrounding the removal of former Public Safety Commissioner Monegan. The Department of Law challenged the authority of that committee to subpoena the state employees in a lawsuit filed on September 25, 2008, Kiesel et al. v. Seven Subpoenas et al. In a decision dated October 2, Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski determined that those concerns were more properly considered by the legislature than by the courts. The Department of Law then consulted with the seven state employees and advised them of their options.

All seven employees have decided, in light of Judge Michalski’s decision, to cooperate with the legislative investigation. Attorney General Colberg said today, “Despite my initial concerns about the subpoenas, we respect the court’s decision to defer to the legislature. We are working with Senator Hollis French to arrange for the testimony of the seven state employee plaintiffs.”

# # #

Sharon Leighow

Deputy Press Secretary

Deputy Communications Director

465-4031 Juneau

269-7450 Anchorage

240-7943 cell

Word of the Day - Newspeak

The Republicans have taken the principles of George Orwell's fictional language in the book 1984 to help win elections since Ronald Reagan and even earlier. Swiftboating John Kerry was probably the low point - taking a war hero, who was running against a draft-dodger and turning his heroism into a lie. That's precisely the sort of thing that Newspeak, Orwell's future language of thought control, was designed for, to turn truth on its head.

From the Newspeak Dictionary:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc -- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.

To give a single example - The word free still existed in Newspeak, but could only be used in such statements as "The dog is free from lice" or "This field is free from weeds." It could not be used in its old sense of "politically free" or "intellectually free," since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless.

The Republicans have taken Madison Avenue marketing techniques and applied them ruthlessly and effectively to presidential politics. Part of their campaign was to take all the words that Democrats used to describe themselves and to turn them into pejoratives. Their biggest achievement was to essentially take away the word liberal as a positive label. Feminists were converted to feminazis. When the Democrats tried to get rid of racist and sexist terms, they were vilified as promoting political correctness. . The Republicans even took to calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party and linked "tax and spend" to the word Democrat. It became hard to talk about being a Democrat without using words that had been poisoned. I suspect they consciously attempted to use the principles of Newspeak - "making other modes of thought impossible" - to make talking about traditional liberal issues impossible. Sarah Palin tried to do this with the term 'community organizer' when she mocked Obama in her acceptance speech.

On page 4 of the online copy of 1984 Winston sees the Ministry of Truth which has three slogans of the Party painted on it:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

This was the goal of the Swiftboating campaign. In this election we see it in the stealth campaign that says Obama is a Muslim. If you tell a lie often enough, people believe it.

The Two Minutes of Hate begins on page 10. The Republicans have multiplied this into nearly 24 hours of hate on talk radio and Fox News. The image below comes from books.google.com.

I'd always thought that the fact that Bin Laden was still alive and free somewhere proved the ineffectiveness of the Bush Administration. But after rereading that passage, perhaps they find that Bin Laden far more useful alive, as the icon of evil, just as their mentors in Oceana used Goldstein.

Democrats who believe that truth and rationality are important for all voters are totally missing the boat. Yes, we need to expose all the lies for those who still use reason. But we also have to constantly examine language to be sure it isn't being shaped in ways that limit our ability to think. By talking about and demonstrating the manipulation of language, we can help people see how they are being manipulated.

Lisa Kron's Well - Interesting Play Totally Pulled Me In

We went to a local theater performance recently that got great reviews, but didn't really excite me all that much. It was good, but not THAT good. Which raised questions about what my purpose is here. Basically the purpose is to explore things that expand how I know the world and maybe expand readers' understanding of how they know. But how to apply that isn't always clear. I also consider how what I write might affect others. I'd rather cheer on something good than rag on something that didn't work.

So, if I see a local event - a performance, exhibit etc. - that is good - particularly if it explores how people know things in some way, which good art should do - I clearly want to let others know about it. I want people to go to local venues, give them appreciative audiences, keep them alive financially, so we continue to have access to them.

But what if I don't like it? Should I say so or should I just not write about it? If I think something is damaging I'll take it up if I have time and energy. But what if it is innocuously not very good? Their intent was good, but they just didn't excite me at all? At this point I think I'll just not deal with it. I'm not completely comfortable with that decision, so I'm open to other opinions on this.


Now, the Well. I like to come into a performance with no knowledge of what I'm going to see. Of course, this isn't easy, but my ideal is just to be told by someone I trust, that I should go. I want to discover it as it unfolds, be surprised by having my expectations ambushed.

I basically knew nothing about this play, except that we'd seen Lisa Kron here a couple years ago and that her piece and performance were stunning. That was enough to know.

The Well, which opened last night, experiments with the whole idea of a play - the roles of the actors, the audience, the story. It examines itself, and examines itself examining itself. I suspect that sort of thing could be too cerebral for some people, but I loved it.

The lead character seemed a little stiff at times, but I'm not sure that wasn't the role itself. The audience wasn't totally sure of its role either and that may have affected her opening night performance. Overall, it was a great experience and left us all talking about it. I thought it was much better than the highly praised performance we saw but were not so excited about. The other cast members totally inhabited their roles. So much so that even when they played different characters there was no confusion at all. When it was over I thought it was the intermission, but my watch showed that two hours had passed.

It's at Out North and will be here for a couple of weeks more. You can get tickets for slightly less on line.

About the picture. I normally wouldn't a take picture during live performances unless I have permission. This was at the very beginning. I thought it was before things had started, but now I'm not totally sure.

Does Race Matter?

[UPDATE:  I've posted Does Race Matter Part 2]

On September 28 the Anchorage Daily News reported:

The [Ted Stevens] jury is made up of nine black women, three black men, two white women and two white men -- a mix that reflects the population of Washington, which is more than 56 percent African American.

It's a far different jury than Stevens likely would have faced in Alaska, had he been successful in moving the trial to his home state. In Anchorage, U.S. Census figures show the population is about 72 percent white, 6.5 percent black and about 8 percent Alaska Native.

The D.C. jury also is reflective of the city's professional class, where 39 percent of the population has at least a four-year college degree. In Anchorage, that number is closer to 29 percent.

So, can Ted Stevens, an 84 year old white male, get a fair trial from a jury with a majority of black females? I'm sure, unless he is acquitted, some folks will insist he didn't get a fair trial .

Does race matter? The four attorneys for the prosecution who were active in the courtroom for the three previous trials resulting from this investigation were all white males. They convicted all three defendants in Anchorage. Two are based in Anchorage and two in DC.

Now that this trial is in Washington DC, suddenly there is a new lead attorney, plus those four white males. This new attorney is an African-American female. I'm in Anchorage, so I have no basis for evaluating Brenda Morris except what's on paper.

Here's the beginning of her bio at Georgetown Law School website where she is an adjunct professor. The rest of the bio can be found at that site.

Brenda Morris

Adjunct Professor of Law; Principal Deputy Chief, Public Integrity Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice
B.S., University of Southern California; J.D., Howard University

Biography

B.S., University of Southern California; J.D., Howard University. Brenda Morris joined the Public Integrity Section, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice in September 1991. After working for twelve years as a Trial Attorney with the Public Integrity Section, she was promoted in March 2004 to Deputy Chief for Litigation. In August 2006, Professor Morris was promoted to the position of Principal Deputy Chief. Her staff consists of 30 attorneys and 11 support staff. The Public Integrity Section is a distinctive unit within the Criminal Division which is responsible for the nationwide investigations and prosecutions of corrupt federal employees. As a Trial Attorney, Professor Morris investigated white-collar cases ranging from federal conflict of interest crimes to conspiracy to commit bribery of public officials...
the rest is here.

On paper there's good reason for her to take part in this case. But if the jury would have been predominantly white males, would she have been added? If she weren't African-American, would she have been put on the case? I have no idea. The defense also has an African-American attorney, Alex Romain.

So why do I bring this up?

Because we have an African-American candidate for President. When he or anyone brings up the issue of race and its effect on the political campaign, he's accused of 'playing the race card' (for example: "Obama Plays Race Card" "Is Obama Playing the Race Card?" "Media Play Race Card for Obama"). I use this phrase here in the sense that Wikipedia says Dei and Karmanchery use it

that the term itself is a "Rhetorical device" used in an effort to devalue and minimize claims of racism.

I'm sure some people who say 'Obama played the race card,' do so simply to win the election and have no concern about whether it is true or not. But others use the term because they believe that racism is no longer an issue in the United States.

Overt racism is often invisible for whites. And often the victims of racism can't be sure themselves. When their dinner reservations are lost when they arrive at the restaurant and there are no other openings for the evening. When the apartment that was available when they called 3o minutes ago has 'just been rented.' When Lakisha Washington's resume is eliminated and Emily Walsh gets the job, even though Lakisha has better educational achievements and work experience

The only time many white folk see racism is when a white person finds his fate in the hands of black folks. When someone like Ted Stevens is to be judged by mainly African American jurors. I can't imagine that Ted Stevens isn't aware that his jury is black. And that he hasn't, at the very least, toyed with the idea that they might simply see him as a old, white male. But African-Americans live in a mostly white world and so they feel that way - judged by their skin color - all the time. I'm not saying this makes someone bad, we all live in a culture that has taught us to do this. But it is important that we realize what is happening, that we don't deny that race still matters, that we don't act on our deep seated racial prejudices.

Race does still matter in the United States. African-Americans still bear the legacy of the slavery. Even if people could conceal their race the way they can conceal their religion or political party, African-Americans would still bear that legacy because

• White slave owners gained wealth from their slaves' labor, wealth that, in many cases, was increased through businesses, investments, and education and has been passed on to their heirs. Their slaves had little or no financial gain from their labors to invest and pass on.
  
• Many slave families were split up by owners who sold children away from their parents. Women who had to sexually service their white masters. And their husbands who could do nothing to stop it. These all leave terrible psychological scars that have affected African-American families to this day.
• Education both in the North and the South for African-Americans has, and in many cases still is, separate and unequal.
• People are alive today who lived in a world where, by law, blacks were not allowed to drink from white water fountains, sit in the front of the bus, or in the white section of theaters, or swim in white public swimming pools; where the law prohibited whites and blacks to marry. Many whites who grew up with this still harbor prejudices from this period. (And many also do not.) The psychological impacts on blacks varies too. It made some stronger and more determined, but probably for most it embedded a form of self loathing - manifested in products like skin-lightener and hair straighteners.
  

The fact that Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president clearly demonstrates that the United States has come a very long way on the issue of race. But race is down there under the surface. Pundits have pointed to race as a factor that explains how

• an attractive, articulate, charismatic Democratic candidate
  
• appearing after eight years of Republican rule by
  
• a president with the lowest ratings in history,
  

can only be slightly ahead of the Republican candidate many in his party don't like.

Race seems like a pretty obvious factor for many. I've heard anecdotal stories such as one about the normally Democratic elderly customers of a manicurist in Buffalo, New York who "just don't trust Obama." Or about others who say they can't vote for a Muslim. [Just in case anyone reading this thinks I'm saying Obama is a Muslim, I'm not. He's not. But people keep saying that.]

There are a lot of people quietly mumbling my line of thinking - the shark of racial prejudice is swimming just below the surface of the presidential race . Most prominently was a Stanford survey. But people are getting at this point in various ways.

Here's a story from the Chicago Tribune

...Sociologists have found that racial bias pervades the subconscious of most Americans and that the elderly hold more such prejudices than those who are younger.

For example, 35 percent of Americans age 60 and older believe it's unacceptable for whites to date blacks, according to surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Yet just 16 percent of Baby Boomers disapprove of interracial dating—and among Americans age 30 and younger, the disapproval figure is only 6 percent...

And one in Slate on a CBS/New York Times poll:

In the poll, 26 percent of whites say they have been victims of discrimination. Twenty-seven percent say too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Twenty-four percent say the country isn't ready to elect a black president. Five percent of white voters acknowledge that they, personally, would not vote for a black candidate.

Or this June Washington Post article on another poll:

More than six in 10 African Americans now rate race relations as "not so good" or "poor," while 53 percent of whites hold more positive views. Opinions are also divided along racial lines, though less so, on whether blacks face discrimination. There is more similarity on feelings of personal racial prejudice: Thirty percent of whites and 34 percent of blacks admit such sentiments.

Maybe this low key, statistical analysis of poll data is the best way for us to discuss this. Just acknowledging how race impacts us is a big step. We can never be absolutely sure of other people's motives, but I'm sure that a statistically significant portion of the US population emotionally find it difficult to vote for a black man for president.

And I know there are people out there trying to exploit those racial prejudices. There's a local political blog in Anchorage with lists of links to white supremacist websites. I got an email the other day from an unfamiliar email address with a link to an anti-Obama video not so subtly called Race for the Truth - The State of Obama Part I.

It has a series of stark black screens with a white "Fact" on each and a voice that proclaims each time: "FACT!" Except the facts they list are totally bogus. "Fact" - Obama's campaign is about censorship. "Fact" - censorship was the basis of the Nazi Party's control of Germany. [The irony of linking a black candidate to Nazis seems lost on the authors of this hate mongering video.] I'm not even going to link to the video I don't want to encourage them, but it is clearly meant to appeal to those who want 'legitimate' reasons to vote against a black man.

But for white people to really feel in their gut that race is still an issue, I ask them to just think about Ted Stevens' trial and whether you believe that a majority black jury will treat Ted Stevens the same as a majority white jury. I'm not saying it will or it won't, I'm just asking readers to honestly assess what they believe, what they feel. And then tell me, honestly, that race is no longer an issue in the US.

Put your own title on this one.

Interpreting Sarah Palin

We heard the Vice Presidential debate at the Student Center of the University of Alaska Anchorage. There were perhaps 100 or more people. Free pizza didn't hurt. But as you can see from the pictures, they stayed after they finished the pizza. The picture on the right is at 5pm.








The one on the left is at 6:10pm.







A good place NOT to put your hand. (Yes, these chairs rock.)













Watching the debate from the back of the room.










I'd have to give the debate to Biden, easily. While Palin did have some moments, not saying something completely wrong is not my standard for a debate. Most of the time she avoided the questions by ignoring them and reciting something she'd studied with her trainers. She talked in vague generalities that didn't make much sense, though she did have some specifics - like how Obama voted X times to raise taxes - that also didn't make any sense.

Meanwhile Biden clearly knew what he was talking about and a few times, very politely, but firmly called her on her nonsense. This was particularly the case when he finally got tired of her talking about how she and McCain were mavericks. He went on to list a series of things - like the war, health care, subprime loans, etc. - where McCain was not a maverick. He wasn't a maverick, Biden told us, on anything of importance. I did wonder about his saying that the VP only presided over the Senate when there was a tie vote. The Constitution says the VP is the President of the Senate, but only votes on a tie. He might have explained this when he said that "the only authority the VP has in the legislature is the vote." So I think he meant that otherwise the presiding is basically ceremonial and the VP has no power over the agenda or anything else, except to vote when there is a tie.

I did catch a little of the debate on video. At UAA the audience was not asked to remain silent during the debate. Listen to the difference in the kind of answers they give to the question about whether they would agree with Cheney's interpretation of the role of the vice president as not simply under the executive, but also as part of the legislative branch.



It might be easier to figure out what Palin said if you read it. Here's the best I could do transcribing it with the laughter blocking out a couple of words in two places:

Well our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the Vice President and we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the President’s agenda in that position. Yeah. So. And I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility there and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very corporately the plan ????. It is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as VP with McCain not only as a Governor, but early on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, and as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the ????.

I'm sorry, but if a graduate student had turned in a test with an answer like this to the question, I would have had to mark it a D or an F. It doesn't answer the question, it rambles. If this was a strategy to not say something wrong - "Sarah, if you aren't sure, if it isn't one of the questions we prepped you on, just go back to something you do know. There's no need to answer the question" - it worked. She was like a doll. You pull the string in back and it answers what it's programmed to answer, not the question you asked.

In her response to the question about Cheney's VP model, she never mentioned Cheney (she did say ‘him’) and never discussed Cheney’s interpretation of the Vice Presidency as partly a member of the legislative branch. She just gave us platitudes and then her resume.

What did she say?

Here are the key points - if you are trying to understand content.

1. Our Founding Fathers were wise and allowed much flexibility for the Vice President
2. We’ll do what’s best for American people
   - tapping into that position
   - ushering in an agenda
   ------that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda
   [Whatever that means]
   
3. Yeah, I agree with him
   - that we have a lot of flexibility
4. We’ll administer very corporately the plan
   [what plan?]
   [Now she starts talking about her qualifications]
5. I was picked for McCain’s VP running mate because of
   -being Governor
   -being Mayor
   -being an oil and gas regulator
   -being a business owner
   

In contrrast, Biden responded directly to the question and went into the Constitutional duties of the vice president and why he (Biden) believed Cheney's views were in conflict with the Constitution.

Even if we say the VP isn't that important, Palin's performance raises serious questions about McCain's decision making abilities.

Perhaps, Joe Sixpack, who Palin mentioned in the debate, might think, "Wow, there's someone just like me." But when Joe Sixpack breaks a leg, he doesn't drive down to the Palin house to get his leg fixed. He goes to a hospital where there are doctors who have spent years and years studying medicine. Why would he want a someone with as little training for the job as himself to be in a position to be called on to run one of the most important countries in the world? To make decisions about health care, global warming, banking, foreign policy, etc.?

Hike to the Ballpark

I didn't get a chance to mention that our daughter is visiting this week for Rosh Hashana and her Mom's birthday. So today M and I took advantage of the cool (40s F - 5-9C) but sunny weather to hike to the Ball Park, a plateau above Powerline Pass. The Glen Alps parking lot is about a 20 minute ride from our house.

Picture from GoogleEarth - Anchorage.

As we got to Powerline Pass trail from the parking lot, we had a decent view of Denali (officially known in Washington and Ohio as Mt. McKinley) about 250 miles north. It was slightly hazy, but you can see the mountain pretty well. This is the tallest mountain in North America - 20320 feet, 6194 meters.

Here's why it's called Powerline Pass.

There are at least three moose in this picture, but even if you double click to enlarge this they aren't easy to spot.


Part of the trail has a relatively new boardwalk. While this sort of addition intrudes into the natural experience of the hike, there are so many people hiking here now that it is probably necessary to save the landscape. As we got near the top and then on the way down, there are many different trails that hikers have created. Coming down, particularly, when the trails - pretty much straight up and down, not zig-zagged - are muddy is pretty tricky and people, trying to escape the mud, go onto the vegetation, eventually creating new trails. And soon all the natural vegetation will be gone. And since the upper part of the trail often has a large chunk of ice and snow on it, it is usually wet. Coming back - below - it was great to get off the mud and onto this smaller walkway.

Here's the trail going up. Even at about 1:30 when we got to this poing, the trail still had tiny icicles on it. We were headed for that little notch in the ridge on the upper left. From here it looks like a gentle slope, but it's pretty steep when you're closer. Steep enough that the mud paths get really tricky. They were relatively hard still on the way up, but on the way back, they'd thawed a bit more.

Here's a leaf with ice crystals.

There's still a small snow pack at the top.

And here M is just above the lip of the ridge looking at the Ball Park. This was also the snowline today. That's O'Malley Peak in the background. We stopped here to eat before turning back.


Here I'm looking down from the snow pack at the top. You get a better sense of the steepness. My older knees were complaining on the way back. I think it's time to get hiking poles for trips like this. I've marked the parking lot. To the left (outside of the picture) is Flattop. Way in the back, you can see the tide is out in Turnagain Arm and the mudflats are visible.

Here's a view of a little bit of fall color in the tundra.

M's knees are much younger than mine.

This moose was much closer than the ones in the earlier pictures. He was going one way and we another.

Catherine, what are these?

A ground squirrel catching some rays.

Cliff Groh is Blogging the Stevens' Trial

Anyone out there like me who's been wanting to read an Alaskan blogger covering the Stevens trial can do so. Here's Cliff Groh's new blog. Cliff is an attorney who attended many of the trial sessions last year here in Anchorage and he's blogging from DC. From today's post:

Day Nine--October 2, 2008

Washington, D.C.--

The judge smacked the prosecutors hard but let the trial go on.

Judge Emmet Sullivan denied the defense’s request for a dismissal of the indictment or a mistrial, ruling that the government’s failure to disclose material to the defense was not so egregious that he needed to shut down the trial.

The judge did, however, grant the defense’s motion for a continuance until Monday morning. The delay gives the defense time to review the additional materials the judge ordered the prosecution to disclose before the defense cross-examines Bill Allen, the prosecution’s key witness against Sen. Ted Stevens.

The rest is at Alaska Political Corruption. There's posts from Day 1.

Subprime Primer

This presentation was sent to me by a professor friend. He didn't know its origins - so I'll just say thanks to whoever put it together. It's the clearest explanation of how we got here that I've seen. It matches well with the story I heard from another friend who was on a grand jury on subprime lenders in the US Southwest. The red ink was added for use in classes.

I'm still looking for the presentation that takes us step-by-step through the expected consequences of not committing $700 billion of our money.

[You can enlarge it to read it easier by clicking the + button on the top.]

Subprime Mess - Upload a Document to Scribd

Theresa, It's still Fall in Anchorage

Theresa has a picture of Fairbanks snow up. While it's still fall down here in Anchorage, my wife did get her snow tires put on today.

So, Anchorage folks, where was this shot taken from this afternoon? It's very much within city limits.

Bear Tooth VP Debate Sold Out

If you don't have tickets to watch the debate Thursday at the Bear Tooth, find another venue. UAA will also have a large screen TV in the Student Center. With all the attention focused on Palin for the last month, I'm hoping that we're all going to be pleasantly surprised at how good Biden is.