INTERN DIES 8 TIMES - Why Everyone Should Be Familiar With Strunk & White's Elements Of Style

Here's the story headline in the Anchorage Daily News* (ADN) this morning  that got my attention here:

For my blind readers whose equipment can't read words in images, the headline is:

"DEPUTIES SHOT LION THAT KILLED INTERN AT WILDLIFE CENTER 8 TIMES"

"Lion that killed intern at wildlife center 8 times" - That's one tough intern.


Elements Of Style is one of the most used books on English writing style.  It may be a bit outdated here and there, but its succinct list of rules of grammar and style make it a great way to keep your prose concise and understandable.  It's available free as a PDF on line.  From page 36:

"20. Keep related words together.
The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. Confusion and ambiguity result when words are badly placed. The writer must, therefore, bring together the words and groups of words that are related in thought and keep apart those that are not so related."

They then give lots of examples, but this one is as good as any of them why this is important.


So how do we make it clear that the deputies shot the lion eight times, not that the lion killed the intern eight times?   Here's what other headline writers wrote:

Deputies shot lion eight times after it killed intern

Deputies fired 8 gunshots to subdue lion after fatal attack at NC wildlife center


Other papers, like the Miami Herald and the Chicago Tribune used the misleading headline the ADN used.


*I often can't find links to stories like this one that the ADN has rounded up from other sources, that's why I put in the screenshot.

I'd also note that in the 1979 Introduction is this advice on BREAKING rules:

"It is an old observation," he wrote, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."

Make No Mistake - Another Power Cliche To Shut Down The Opposition

In an editorial by the Anchorage Daily News (ADN) editorial staff today (Sunday), the title, "Setting the bar on homelessness", was followed with a quote that began:

"Make no mistake, the path out of the woods on the issue of homelessness is likely to be a winding one."

There a number of phrases that alert me to pay attention, and not in a good way, but rather in a skeptical way.   

• "To be (perfectly) honest" always suggests to me that up til now the speaker wasn't being honest. 
• "The reality is" implies the speaker has a direct line to "the truth" and is now shutting down all opposition, because, well, 'this is what is real,' and whatever anyone else has to say is, what, unreal?

"Make no mistake" is on that list of terms that quickstart my crap detector.  It too suggests, "what I'm about to tell you is the Truth."   If you believe otherwise, you are making a mistake.  (That was my personal reaction, but I double-checked.) 

The Free Dictionary lists definitions from a number of other sources.  They all are pretty much the same.  Here are a few which include some slight variations

• "What I have said or am about to say is absolutely certain; do not think otherwise."
• "do not be deceived into thinking otherwise"
• "used to emphasize what you are saying, especially when you want to warn somebody about something."

I'm not the only one who has a problem with this (now) cliché.  Slate complained already in 2004.

"The current president [George W. Bush] did not invent the phrase, "make no mistake," but he uses it a lot. The search engine for the White House Web site displays 227 instances, and, even discounting for the fact that some of these MNMs emanated from Bush apparatchiks like former press spokesman Ari Fleischer and Tom Ridge, I feel certain that's a gross undercount.

"It's the ripple effect that interests Chatterbox. For 1994, the Factiva news database finds 3,624 MNMs, with the phrase's usage heavily weighted to manly discussions about business or sports. MNMs climbed steadily through the 1990s, adding about one thousand references each year. Since the base number kept growing, the rate of growth actually declined. Then—bam!—MNMs jumped from 9,174 in 2000 to 12,062 in 2001, the first year of Bush's presidency. Last year yielded 13,141 MNMs, and the first four and a half months of this year have so far given us 5,223. Given that this is an election year, Chatterbox wouldn't be surprised to see MNMs break 15,000."

Make No Mistake is a verbal power play.  Note that the grammatical form of this phrase - Make No Mistake - is a command.  A forceful command - the reader is being told what to do.  It adds no content to support one's argument.  It suggests that the speaker (writer) knows better than everyone else.  If someone tells you otherwise, you shouldn't listen.  Sometimes the speaker does know better.  But I'm guessing, it's often just a verbal bluff.

For some, it might just be a filler, like "You know?" or "Um."   In which case it has no meaning at all other than, "Give me a sec to get my thoughts together."

I probably wouldn't have written this post except that on the same page was another opinion piece by a  doctor arguing for the 80th percentile rule used by insurance companies in Alaska when calculating what they should reimburse patients.

"Make no mistake, these are the forces driving insurers to undermine Alaska's 80th percentile rule — they want to lessen their obligations to pay for patient care, narrow their networks reducing your access and choice, and ultimately keep more of the sky-high premiums and deductibles they are charging." 

I'd note that the editorial misused this powerful phrase for a rather uncontroversial point. There was no important point that followed "Make No Mistake."  It wasn't about "the only way to reduce homelessness," or even their desire to keep the government accountable by identifying exactly how many homeless folks live in Anchorage.  Rather it was about their rather tortured metaphor about how difficult the task will be.  Few would argue it will be simple.  Which suggests to me, it just sounded strong and firm to the person who wrote it and that person really didn't even think about how it was being used.  Which raises questions about the actual points they made, which I do have questions about,  but let's save those for another post.  When I have it up, I'll link it here.

Image source

By the way, Frank Wilczek is an American Nobel Prize winning physicist.

"Stolen antifreeze, alcohol and fake fingernails: Fred Meyer shoplifting sting nabs 25 suspects

That was the headline in the story in the Anchorage Daily News about a shoplifting sting at Fred Meyer's on Northern Lights and New Seward Highway.  I'd been at a hearing on crime last year where lots of folks complained.  Particularly some guys from Home Depot and Lowe's about shoplifters regularly walking out with big ticket items like chain saws, and how the stores did nothing because of SB91that made such arrests futile.  One guy claimed they'd lost about $800,000 last year.

So this sting to catch shoplifters at Fred Meyer sounded like a good idea.  About time.  Until I read it.  The fake fingernails should have been a red flag, though they turned out to be one of the more expensive items.

This program, called "Retail Detail" is, it says, a partnership with the big box store loss prevention teams and the Anchorage Police Department (APD), and began about six months ago.  Well, that was just after that hearing I went to last October.

"Carson said about 20 police officers, both undercover and marked, took part in the shoplifting sting. The operation lasted about nine hours, from the afternoon into the night."

I don't know that all the police officers worked all nine hours or that they weren't doing other work and came when called.  But let's say 10 officers for nine hours.  Say their pay is $32-42/hour and  the State Labor Department says the mean statewide pay for police/sheriff is $39 and the median is $40. An Alaska Policy Forum report says on MOA salaries says that benefits are about 30% of salaries.  Though that's an average and I'm guessing it's a bit higher for police.  But let's use 30%.

So they'd be costing about $50/hour.  Times ten (we're being conservative and assuming not all were working all nine hours)  = $500.  Times nine hours = $4500.  This is an extremely conservative number because it doesn't count any time in preparation for this sting or follow up.  This doesn't count the time of the loss prevention team members.

So what did they get?  The headline says 25 suspects.  I'm assuming these are arrests, not convictions.  What grabbed my attention was the value of the merchandise of each shoplifter.  From the article:

#1 [the article includes name and age, but I don't see the point here] "was arrested after he ran into the side of a patrol car on a stolen bicycle. Dickson had taken the bike from outside of the store. . .  the bike brakes didn't work. #1 smashed into the side of the patrol car, causing "pretty good damage" to the rig." 

So we have to add the cost of the damage to the rig.  Not sure how much a bike with no brakes is worth.  Not much I'm guessing.  I'll put down $20 which I think is generous.  But it clearly wasn't store merchandise.  Just a brakeless bike someone left there.

#2 hid fake fingernails worth $48.25 in his jacket pocket 

#3A stole three cans of spray paint and ran from officers as #3B, sat waiting in a getaway vehicle, police say. #3A was arrested for theft, resisting arrest and violating conditions of release. #3B was arrested on two counts of misconduct involving a weapon

Fred Meyer's website wasn't very helpful (one kind of Spray Paint wasn't available at the Northern Lights store, another kind didn't have a price.)  At Walmart, spray paint ranges from $2.64 - $5.68. So let's say three cans were worth $15.

#4  and a 13-year-old girl stole $103.86 worth of food. #4 was arrested for theft, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and violating conditions of release. The teenager was arrested and released to her parents.

Age might be relevant here if these two aren't relatives.  He was 32.

#5  stole $47.83 worth of various merchandise. She was arrested for theft, and had an outstanding warrant for a probation violation.

#6A  and #6B stole $215.17 worth of food and merchandise. Both were arrested for theft; #6A had an outstanding warrant for a probation violation. 

#7  stole a comforter costing $34.99. He was arrested for theft. 

#8  stole $11.16 in food. He was arrested for theft. 

#9 stole $288.56 worth of merchandise. He was arrested for theft and failure to register as a sex offender.

#10 tried to run from the store with $40.55 worth of merchandise, but officers caught him. He was arrested for theft, resisting arrest and violating conditions of release.

#11 stole $5.48 worth of food. He was arrested for theft, and on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court.

#12 stole $13.69 in alcohol. He was arrested for theft.

#13  stole $54.99 in shoes. He had a concealed gun on him and didn't tell officers; he was arrested for theft and misconduct involving a weapon.

#14 stole $52.50 in shoes. He was arrested for theft.

#15 was recognized by employees as having an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for theft. She was arrested on the warrant.

#16  put $87.87 of merchandise in his backpack and walked out of the store. He had heroin on him. He was arrested for theft and misconduct involving a controlled substance.

#17 stole $22.98 in antifreeze. He was arrested for theft.

#18 was recognized by employees as a repeat trespass offender, and was arrested for trespassing.

#19 stole $6.59 of food. He was arrested for theft.

#20 was recognized by officers from two outstanding warrants: a felony warrant for promoting contraband and misconduct involving a controlled substance, and a misdemeanor warrant for failure to appear in court. She was arrested.

#21 stole $337.15 worth of assorted merchandise. She was arrested for theft. 

#22  stole $221.22 in merchandise. She was arrested on an outstanding felony warrant for failure to appear in court, as well as theft and resisting arrest.

The headline says 25 suspects, but the numbers only go up to #22.  There were two listed in #3, #4 (a 13 year old girl), and #6.

By the time I finished this list, I was nodding my head.  Let's look at the numbers:

Some Key Numbers
25 arrests Total value stolen = $1630 or $181/hour Average amount(mean) = $74 Median = about $38 (two middle numbers were $35 and $41) If you order from lowest to most, #16 is $19 below the average. The last six accounted for $1254. Conservative estimate of cost of sting:  $4500

We're looking at a people who stole $5, $6, and $11 worth of food.  Several people who hadn't taken anything, but were recognized by store employees as problems.  

This doesn't reflect the stories I heard about Home Depot and Lowe's.  Most of these sound like poor people - homeless? - who took small amounts. 

I'm not saying there's no problem here.  Fred Meyer is open (at least now) from 7am - 12 am, or 17 hours.  For simplicity sake, let's calculate  the other seven hours at the same rate.  We get $3070 per day in theft.  And assuming Fred Meyer is open every day, $1,123,470 a year.    (We don't really know if this is an average day, a high day, or a low day, or if the hours they didn't work the sting had the same level of theft.  So this is just a ball park guess.)

That's not peanuts.  But is the cost of preventing those thefts greater than the costs of the thefts?  For this particularly day it cost at least three times more than the value of the items stolen.  (I'm assuming that my $4500 figure is way low.)  Could the money be used in a way that prevented the most of the thefts instead of simply (temporarily for most) incarcerating the thieves.

Or, is there a certain number of shoplifters who cause the bulk of the problem  - like the ones who took over $88 each?  If they're removed would that cut the bulk of the problem?  In this sting, six people were responsible for 77% of the value of the stolen goods.   (from the table, $1254 (value taken by top six)/1630 (total value taken) = 77%)

Maybe there's some value to catching people with outstanding warrants or who violate their parole that goes beyond the value of what was stolen.  Some of these might be clever thieves.  But most sound like pretty desperate people.  Maybe some who aren't so desperate, but have some mental health needs to shoplift.  It's not clear how many of these people actually bought other items in addition to what they were stealing and how many just tried to walk out without paying anything.

I don't know the answer to this.  Obviously social and mental health services for those who are unable to work or cannot find a job or hold one  might help cut into this problem.

I just wanted to put all those costs together and match them to the cost of the sting.  There may well be costs and benefits I've missed.

It may seem like a trivial issue, but the kind of thinking through the numbers and different ways to spend the money, different ways to lessen shoplifting, is the kind of thinking we should be applying to all sort of issues from immigration to terrorism.  Arrests by law enforcement at Fred Meyer or on the border, or combat, only means that other means have failed, or haven't even been tried.  

What Does It Mean To Live To 117?

The Anchorage Daily News had the following short piece in its collection of short stories on Monday:

"THE WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON DIES AT 117

At 117, Nabi Tajima was older than modern-day Australia, and everyone else known to live on the planet. 

Tajima, born Aug. 4, 1900, in Araki, Japan, and recognized as the world's oldest person, has passed on that mantle. She died Saturday, having been hospitalized since January, the Associated Press reported, and was the last known person born in the 19th century. 

She was living in the town of Kikai on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, the AP reported. 

The title of 'world's oldest living person' is a remarkable, if not fleeting, one. Tajima claimed the distinction in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica. Brown was the oldest person in the world for about five months. 

Tajima straddled the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and is one of the few people who could recall a time before World War I.  Two days after her 45th birthday, the United States dropped the first of two atomic bombs northeast of her home island.
Tajima's secret to longevity was “eating delicious things and sleeping well,” the group said. She danced with her hands at the sound of a samisen, a traditional three-string instrument."

This is the kind of story the paper clips from elsewhere and so when I looked for it online, I found it in the Washington Post, with a few more paragraphs and some pictures.

My thoughts when I read this were about what was not in this piece.  What was her physical and mental condition when she died?  How long was she able to converse and recognize the people around her.  Did she still do the things she liked to do?  What did she eat and did she enjoy the food?  And how long has it been since she did those things?  What parts of her body were still functioning?   

I think about my own mom's two and a half year decline from going out, walking on her own, mental alertness.  The physical mobility went first.  She had some ailments which didn't bother her when she was in bed, so she started spending more time in bed.  That led to loss of her muscle strength and ability to walk.  For the last year or so getting into the car was a problem.  Eventually eating got difficult - things got caught in her throat and she'd start coughing.  Her mobility was via a wheel chair and someone to move it.  She sat out in the sun daily, reading, and I would walk her up the street and back.  Sometimes around the block, but the next street over was very steep and had terrible sidewalk breaks.  

While she had moments of confusion - particularly when she woke up in the morning and transitioned from her dreams to being awake - for the most part she was lucid and understood what people were saying and responded pretty normally.  She could answer our questions about the past as we found things in the garage whose history we didn't know.  My mom passed away at 93 after a vigorous life, which included working at a job she loved until she was 85.  

My father had a distant cousin who lived to 102.  The last time we saw him he was 101 I think and we picked him up at the assisted living home where he lived.  He was dressed in a suit - how he dressed himself every day - and we drove to a nearby Thai restaurant where we talked and he ate with relish.  I dropped him and J off and then parked the car.  But he walked, without a cane, the quarter mile or so back to the car.  At that point, I'd say he was in great condition and he helped fill me in on a lot of family history I hadn't known.  So living that long isn't necessarily a painful thing, though i don't know how the last year or so went.  

After watching my mom's decline, I read these stories about 'the oldest person on earth' with some skepticism.  I guess it's a remarkable thing to live that long, but is it something anyone would want to do?  The article says, 

Tajima claimed the distinction [of being the oldest in the world]  in September, when fellow 117-year-old Violet Brown died in Jamaica

I suspect people claimed it for her and I wonder what she thought about that title.  Our Guinness Book of Records Syndrome makes us note these oddities, and I realize that for medical researchers there is significance.  And if the title brought Tajima any joy, that's a good thing.

The Washington Post has a few more paragraphs the ADN left out as well as some pictures.

“She passed away as if falling asleep. As she had been a hard worker, I want to tell her 'rest well,'" said Tajima's 65-year-old grandson Hiroyuki, local media reported.Tajima was in the exclusive group of supercentenarians, people who have crossed the 110-year threshold. The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group, which tracks certified people who become supercentenarians, reports 36 worldwide. All but one of them are women, and 18 of them are Japanese. Good diets and supportive family structure have been linked to Japan's world-leading life expectancy.
Her legacy is similarly expansive; she had nine children and 160 descendants, including great-great-great grandchildren, the Gerontology Research Group said.
Chiyo Miyako, also in Japan, has become the world's oldest person, according to the group. At 116 years and 355 days, she has about nine months to reach her countrywoman's mark of 117 years and 260 days.
Miyako would not have to travel far to visit her male compatriot. Japan's Masazo Nonaka, at 112 years and 271 days old, was confirmed to be the world's oldest man by Guinness World Records this month. The organization had been set to recognize Tajima before she died, the AP reported."

I'd add that as old as 117 might seem, the National Geographic notes:

 One study in the journal Aging Research Reviews notes a deep-sea sponge from the species Monorhaphis chuni lived to be 11,000 years old. 

"Ming, a quahog clam, died at the age of 507 when researchers tried to dredge the bivalve up from Icelandic waters."  

"As far as mammals go, bowhead whales seem to have the most candles on their cake—over 200. It makes sense, since the marine mammals live in chilly waters, says Don Moore, director of the Oregon Zoo in Portland. . . 

A cold environment causes a low body temperature, which in turn means slow metabolism—and thus less damage to tissues, Moore says.

I knew there was a good reason to move to Alaska.

"Currently the world's oldest known land animal is Jonathan, an 183-year-old Aldabra giant tortoise that lives on the grounds of the governor’s mansion in St. Helena, an island off West Africa." 

Here's a picture of the still living Jonathan taken in 1900 [!] that I found at a website called ODDEE.  (It also has picture of the oldest clam.)

 I'm afraid the title question was not answered in the passing note of Tajima's death.  The missing Washington Post does hint at the research interest in such people.  For the ADN,  it's just a newsy tidbit like the picture of Jonathan.

Today's ADN Opinion Pages Fodder For A Dozen Posts From Salmon To Bears To Legislators

One problem with blogging is picking something worth writing about from the many things out there.  Today I'll just do a quick take on several items from today's newspaper.

Stand For Salmon Or Stand For Alaska

A former member of the Alaska Board of Fisheries, Tom Kluberton, writes a column in favor of an initiative that would force resource developers (and others I assume) to prove that their projects won't hurt Alaska's salmon fisheries.

Next to that column is one by the vice chairman of the Doyon, Ltd. board of directors and a former chief of Allaket, PJ Simon.

Alaskan's won't vote on this until August or November*, so we have plenty of time to hear about this initiative, and we can be sure that we will.

*From Alaska Statute 15.45.190

Setting Dates For Ballot Initiatives in Alaska

The lieutenant governor shall direct the director to place the ballot title and proposition on the election ballot of the first statewide general, special, or primary election that is held after (1) the petition has been filed;  (2) a legislative session has convened and adjourned; and  (3) a period of 120 days has expired since the adjournment of the legislative session.  Our primary election is August 21, 2018.  So if the legislature adjourns (including special sessions) more than 120 days before that (roughly around April 27), it will be on the primary ballot.  Otherwise on the general election ballot in November.  That's a whole other issue - having important propositions on primary ballots when relatively few people vote. As I say, we have time to learn more about this, but I was struck by PJ Simon's column which portrayed him as a simple man - " I am just a regular guy. I am not a high-powered lawyer or professional environmentalist paid by outside interest groups. I'm sandwich meat, the guy in the middle, the guy who works for wages to support my family." But despite the fact that he says he can't read all that fine print, he knows for a fact the initiative will "kill construction jobs and hurt Alaska's economy." Alaska has long been a colony for outside corporations to come in an exploit.  I've written about this in different posts, particularly The Vampire History of Alaska when we had another initiative on the ballot that would have taxed the oil companies more. It's very easy for large corporations to come into a small (population) state or country and buy off some locals to push their mega projects. John Perkins outlines the process in his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman.  Alaskans will recognize the process when he spells it out.  You can see him explain it in this video.  So when self-professed common folks like JP Simon side with the big development corporations, I can't help but wonder what he gets out of it.  What Doyon gets out of it.  But that's another story. In any case, I need to learn more about this initiative, but it reminds me of the law the legislature passed some years ago blocking public participation on development projects along the coast line.  My first assumption here is this is people fighting back for the power that's been taken from them.  But the devil is in the details.  We'll see. "Undeveloped Anchorage Bowl Area Being Managed For Bears" In a letter to the editor, Jim Lieb of Palmer rants against retired state biologist Rick Sinnott's commentary on keeping bears in mind in our wilderness areas.  I want to focus on the word "undeveloped" here.  He uses it again in the letter:  "It's hard not to conclude that the undeveloped portion of the Anchorage Bowl is being primarily managed for bears and their well-being." Think about it - the "undeveloped portion."  It's like that part of Anchorage isn't finished yet.  It doesn't have many roads, or buildings.  It's like trees and rivers and bushes and animals are there temporarily until we need their land.  I think about those areas as 'natural' or 'wilderness' or 'respites' from traffic and building and concrete.  And people have documented the benefits of nature to human health. I wrote a post a while back about the meaning of the word 'empty lot' which pointed out that no lots were actually empty waiting to be developed. Words matter. "Voter Turnout Was Awesome" In the same letter to the editor section (same link as above) Donna K. Daniels lauds Anchorage voters for dispelling her doubts about Anchorage's first 'vote by mail' election.  She's excited because 76,000 people voted.  Yes, that's more than any past Municipal election.  But it's technically only 35.6% of registered voters.  To me, that isn't awesome at all.  It's depressing.  Voter turnout like that is how democracies die.  (I said ' technically' because not all the people on the voter rolls are still living in Anchorage - some have moved, some have died, but they're still on the voter rolls.  But even if that number were 40%, it would mean that the election was decided by about 20% of the voters.   I think this is what people mean about 'the new normal.'  Compared to a 20% turnout, yeah, it's awesome.  But that's starting at a really low bar. "Alaska Legislators Would be Fired By Now In the Real World" I guess what Jim Bell means by "the real world" is the business world, or at least an organization that is hierarchical and someone has power to fire workers.  But the legislature is elected by voters (that same small portion in the previous section who vote).  They can be fired by the people in their districts. My concern here is putting the blame on the legislators instead of the electorate. I'm also concerned when everyone is blamed for the misdeeds of only some.  Republicans, supported by organizations like Koch Brothers funded Alaskans for Prosperity, complain about deficits, yet won't raise revenue.  They're obsessed with the notion that the less government the better.  But the less government simply means that rogue corporations get to do what they want because government doesn't have the capacity to monitor their behavior. Just read the book I mentioned above - Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. (I do strongly recommend it.)  And that kids in foster care or in dysfunctional family situations can't count on the state to protect them from abusive situations because social worker case loads are way beyond what they can reasonably handle. More help for these kids means lower crime and fewer prison cells in the future.  I see the Democrats being much more responsible by calling for a modest income tax to start gaining more income.  And the Republicans are barricaded against an income tax.  In Oklahoma we are now seeing the results of Republican tax cutting, as schools only teach four days a week and teachers are on poverty level wages.  That's our future if we don't go to the polls and elect responsible legislators.  That means NOT firing the ones that are already responsible.  But people have to pat attention to more than party labels and propaganda and they need to vote. That's just from one page in the Anchorage Daily News.

Checking With The Reporters On A Couple Of Amazing Claims They Made

There were two lines in the Anchorage Daily News today that caught my attention.  "Really?  How do they know that?"

The first was a line in Erica Martinson's story about Alaska's two US Senators' relationship with the President.  It talked about how they didn't support him, but they are getting policies that help Alaska. (Of course, what helps Alaska is open to interpretation and to whether one is looking short term or long term.)

Martinson wrote:

"More than 500 days have passed since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Alaska's Republican senators didn't vote for him . . ."

Wow!  They didn't vote for the presidential candidate in their own party.  (I have to say that it was a safe bet in Alaska, where their two votes were not going to swing the state to Clinton.)  But to tell people?  I assumed that Martinson had evidence, so I emailed her asking if she meant in the November election (which is what the sentence would seem to say) and if yes, how she knew this.

I got a quick response:

"I meant in the Nov. 2016 election.
I wasn't in the voting booth, but that's what they told me and others at the time. Sullivan said he was going to write in Mike Pence's name. Murkowski said she was going to write in a name, but she never did say who, at least to me.
https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/08/u-s-sen-lisa-murkowski-in-interview-said-decision-on-trump-was-instantaneous-after-seeing-video/
https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/08/alaska-sen-dan-sullivan-calls-on-donald-trump-to-drop-out-of-presidential-race/They both resigned their positions on the Alaska Republican Party's central committee until after the election because they would not support Trump: https://www.adn.com/politics/2016/10/11/alaska-republican-party-is-sticking-with-donald-trump/Not sure if it made it into a story that day (I think we ran a day-of blog?), but I spoke to both Senators about it on or around election day and they had not changed their plans."

I guess during the election coverage I missed this or forgot it.  Had I read the story on-line instead of in print, I'd have seen the link, but I didn't do that until I was getting the link for this post.

 

The second line that jumped out at me was from an article by Marc Fisher, also in the ADN, reprinted from the Washington Post, about Trump's campaign against Jeffrey Bezos - the Amazon head and owner of the Washington Post.

"But others who have heard Trump rail against Amazon as a “monopoly” say his central complaint is based more on a cultural gap than a financial one, deriving from the fact that the president has never been known to shop online and does not use a computer — and has therefore never experienced what has drawn so many Americans from local storefronts to Amazon and other online retailers." [emphasis aded]

That jumped right out at me.  The president doesn't use a computer!  I remember the uproar when George H. W. Bush expressed amazement at a demonstration of supermarket scanners.that checkers use.  (This Snopes assessment suggests the New York Times played up that story to Bush's detriment.)  I was thinking that the US president doesn't necessarily get too much time going to the supermarket and he'd been VP for the eight years before he became president.

But in 2018 it seems remarkable that the US president doesn't use a computer.  And if he doesn't, how can he tweet every day.  So I emailed Marc Fisher my questions - did he mean by 'computer' a laptop or desktop?  Surely Trump uses a smart phone or he wouldn't be able to tweet.  Before I sent the email I googled the topic and found quotes about Trump feeling no computer was secure to use.

I also got a quick reply from Marc Fisher:

"Yes, Trump uses a phone, primarily for voice calls and for tweeting, which he does only on his phone or by dictating to his digital politics advisor. What he does not and has not ever used is a desktop or laptop computer. He has, for example, never used email. As for his reasons, when he’s been asked about his avoidance of computers, he says he doesn’t have the time. Not a terribly enlightening answer, but there it is."

Given that a smart phone today is a mini-computer with access to the internet, I guess it isn't as shocking as it originally sounded.

What is shocking - and would seem to be illegal - is the possibility that Trump is intentionally using the office of the presidency to damage someone because he's offended by what Bezos' newspaper writes about him.  (Fisher cites several WP people who say Bezos plays no role in the content of the paper.)

"Later in the campaign, Trump complained that “every hour, we’re getting calls from reporters from The Washington Post asking ridiculous questions, and I will tell you, this is owned as a toy by Jeff Bezos.” Trump said Amazon was using The Post “as a tool for political power against me. . . . We can’t let him get away with it.”

"Amazon’s stock value declined by more than 5 percent after the president’s recent attacks but has gained ground this week."

"A Wells Fargo analysis concluded that although 'the arguments made by the president against Amazon have been undermined by third-party fact checkers . . . the president’s actions [could stir] additional scrutiny of Amazon beyond the federal government.'” 

"But Politico media critic Jack Shafer argues that Trump is right to connect Amazon, Bezos and The Post, because the retailer’s wealth made Bezos’s purchase of the paper possible. “If Amazon didn’t exist, it’s unlikely the Washington Post would exist in its current form,” wrote Shafer, whose wife, Nicole Arthur, is The Post’s travel editor. Shafer rejected the notion that The Post is lobbying on behalf of Amazon but said that by linking The Post to Amazon and driving down Amazon’s stock price, Trump had found a way to try to punish a news organization that he otherwise couldn’t harm."  [emphasis added]

 If a company is misbehaving, the president of the United States can say something about that.  and even call for an investigation.  But he's got to be careful not to bias that investigation.  But if the reason for the president's attack on a company is criticism in a newspaper whose owner also owns the other company, it seems to me there are real First Amendment issues being raised.

In any case, I was pleased that both these reporters were quick to respond to my questions and to have information to back up what they wrote.  Fisher clarified what using a computer meant, but didn't say how he knew about the president's computer use.  But when I looked back at my original email, I didn't ask that of him.  And it should be pointed out that Fisher works for the Washington Post, which is the target of the president's attacks.

The Anchorage Daily News Returns, After Three Years As The Alaska Dispatch News

For the last three years I've stumbled over the name Alaska Dispatch News.  Just Friday night, as I stumbled yet again, my daughter said, "Everyone I know calls it the "Anchorage Daily, I mean, Alaska Dispatch News."

And that night I got the message that the Anchorage Daily News was returning today.  So here are screenshots of the last edition of the Alaska Dispatch and the first of the resurrected Anchorage Daily News. (There is not Saturday paper, but that happened under the Dispatch name.)

One of the problems I had after the first name change in this new electronic age, was that when looking up old articles, the top bar said Alaska Dispatch News, even though the article was published in the Anchorage Daily News.  People who didn't know Alaska would cite the article as being in the Alaska Dispatch News, when it really wasn't.  

As I checked an ADN article I linked to last week, when it was published under the name Alaska Dispatch News, the banner now is Anchorage Daily News.  Same issue, now in reverse.

Even worse, I checked on this, looking up an old article I linked in 2013, I got this.

Wow, that's even worse than mixing up the name and dates.  Now it's just gone.  I hope they can go back and reroute people using the old url to the new url.  Talk about losing history.

Maybe I'm just to picky, but I think, as an academic, that it matters.  Some part of 'the record' has been corrupted.

Another, more vexing issue for me, is dates.  Articles in the print and electronic editions often are dated a day apart.  An article may go online after the print edition is done, and gets the date of when it goes online.  But that article in print, is dated the next day.  That's been a problem when I've read the print edition and then link on the blog to the online version of the story which has a different date than what I've cited for the print edition.  Sometimes I note the difference between the dates.

Another issue with online journalism is updates.  When you print a story on paper, the paper edition never changes.  There may be a later print notice of an error, but the old story is still there.
But online versions get updated.  Reputable online media note the update time and date.  But it isn't always clear what the change was.

On the blog, I don't necessarily mark spelling or grammatical corrections, or even minor style changes that make a sentence easier to understand, but don't change the substantive meaning.  When I do change substance, I strikeout the old version and [bracket the new version] so it's clear what was changed.

But technically, someone could go in and change the old stories and we wouldn't know.  What safeguards are there to rewriting history?  With paper editions archived in libraries, that couldn't happen.  But if there are no hard copies, it can.  Will cached versions still be available?  When will we know we have to check for the cached version?

Anyway, welcome back Anchorage Daily News.  It will be much easier to tell people where I read your articles again.

Johnson Tire Closure - Some Background

The ADN has had articles Thursday and today  on the closure of Johnson Tire.  This is a particularly critical time as people are changing their tires from summer to winter tires.  According to the article, people had left their snow tires at Johnson Tire and now they can't get access to them.

Kelly Gaede 2010 Leg Hearing

I  posted on Kelly Gaede back in 2010 when I was blogging the legislature.  He had proposed a mandatory winter tire bill which Rep. Harris had introduced.  At the hearing it was clear that this was a bill that would give Gaede and his company Johnson Tire a lot more business.  Rep. Tammy Wilson aggressively questioned the bill and how it would impact her constituents.


The state now lists inactive business licenses for Johnson's Tire Service - one for Dennis Gaede in Fairbanks and Kelly P. Gaede in Anchorage.

Here's a link to that old post:  Mandatory Winter Tire Bill.  One of the commenters - Anonymous July 7, 2010 - seemed to have more detailed personal information about the history of Johnson Tires and Gaede.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of the comment, but it seems like it's worth checking out.

By-Lines Alaska Dispatch Readers Won't See Anymore At The ADN [UPDATED AGAIN]

[UPDATE 9/24/17:  Charles Wohlforth has filled in a lot more information in his column this morning at the ADN - personal comments on colleagues he's worked with.]

The Alaska Dispatch News had a story Thursday (Sept 21, 2017) about layoffs at their newspaper.  We all know that the paper has been going through bankruptcy and is struggling to survive and that the new owners are trying to keep it going.  So, we were expecting some cuts and that hard decisions would have to be made - as the article says.

Two things struck me about the article:

1.  The new owners wouldn't say how many people were let go

A "significant" number of employees have been laid off at Alaska Dispatch News as part of a restructuring under the company's new owners.
Every department in the company — the newsroom, advertising, circulation, production and finance — was affected. The job reductions began last week and continued through Wednesday. Layoffs in the newsroom included editors, reporters and others.
"It's a significant change in the size of the newspaper," said Ryan Binkley, one of the new owners of ADN. He would not say how many people in total were let go.

The Binkley family, who bought the ADN, are more experienced in business than running newspapers so I understand going with their business instincts to keep things close to the vest.  But newspapers report on other businesses all the time and when there are layoffs, they push for a number or at least a percentage of people being laid off.  It's a matter of public interest to know how something like this is going to affect the local economy.  Newspapers should be models of transparency.  After all, other companies can now point to the ADN example when they decline to give ADN reporters this sort of information.

And how much is a reporter going to push her new boss to get more information, especially when the boss has just laid off a 'significant number' of her colleagues.  She doesn't want to get to the point where he says, "I told you 'no' now back off or I'll add you to the list."

Binkleys:  Bite the bullet and be good newspaper owners and set the example for other companies that your paper will be covering.  The information is going to come out eventually anyway - especially if you are a media organization.



2.  They didn't tell us which reporters', photographers' and others' by-lines we won't see any more were.

Publishing the names of people laid off may be a sensitive issue.  Shouldn't the employees involved have the right to let people know on their own terms?  Generally, I'd agree.  But in this case, we're talking about people whose names appear on by-lines every day in the newspaper (and, of course, online.)

Should readers just start guessing when names stop appearing?  "Oh, maybe this guy got laid off."

So, when I got a chance to talk to someone who worked at the ADN yesterday, I asked.  The person gave me a list of names, including some involved in less visible positions, like copy editors.  I didn't post yesterday because I wanted to get confirmation from another source.  I did that today.  For all but two of the names.  I got through to one, who confirmed, but not the other.  But he had on his Twitter account that he was a "former reporter."  I was told that Lisa Demer has posted on her Facebook account (not her public one so I couldn't confirm it) that a total of 17 were let go. [UPDATED 9/22/17 5pm - Lisa let me see her post.  In part (she goes on to pay tribute to all the people who were laid off) she wrote:

"One-third of the newsroom was cut — 17 newsroom positions gone — and the rest of ADN experienced something similar."

So here's a list of some of the people I know about, whose work appeared regularly in the ADN, some very prominently and frequently, others not so much.  I'm leaving out copy editors and advertising people who aren't directly responsible for telling us what is happening in our state. I must acknowledge though, that while their names aren't common knowledge, copy editors certainly influence how we see and read the stories.

Below is a list of people who work(ed) for the ADN.  You might have noticed these lists aren't showing up in current editions of the ADN in print or online.  I was able to find an old one online.  (It says 2012 and updated 2016, scroll down past the gibberish.) Then I went through ADN online bylines to get as many current folks as I could.  If you click on someone's by-line you get all their articles and a brief description of the reporter.  That's where I got my descriptions.  I put the folks laid off on top and bolded their names.

I'm also putting up the whole list (that I could gather, I may have missed some people) so you have a sense of the large impact of the layoffs.  These are the people whose names appear on articles or photos or illustrations only.

Those Laid Off:  

*Rich Mauer - Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and more recently a news editor [Updated: Sorry, I lost this name as I was reformatting the original list.]

*Columnist Dermot Cole, who lives in Fairbanks, has been a reporter, editor and author. For 40 years, he has written extensively about Alaska politics and history. 

*Yereth Rosen has been a journalist in Alaska since 1987. For most of that time, she was the sole Alaska-based reporter for Reuters. She has been reporting on energy issues, the environment, politics and all things Alaska  from oil spills to sled-dog races. She enjoys running, skiing and other outdoors pursuits. She lives in Anchorage with her family. 

*Erik Hill has been with ADN since December of 1984. Before that, he worked at The Kansas City Star following stops in Jacksonville, Florida, and Charleston, West Virginia. Originally from Oregon, Hill earned degrees at Stanford University and Ohio University. Memorable assignments have included the Exxon Valdez oil spill and several Iditarods. 

*Pamela Dunlap-Shohl - [couldn't find her description, but she does most of the charts that graphically help tell the stories hidden in numbers.]  

[UPDATE Sept 25, 2017 - I'm told now that Bob Hallinan was NOT laid off so I'm moving him down to the other list]  *Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state. 

*Jerzy Shedlock is a reporter. A graduate of the University of Alaska Anchorage, he worked at the Peninsula Clarion before coming to Alaska Dispatch News. [I couldn't get a second confirmation on this one, but his twitter account says "former reporter."] 

*Rugile Kaladyte is a visual journalist for Alaska Dispatch News. 

*Doyle Woody grew up in East Anchorage and is in his fourth decade at the ADN. He's been covering hockey since the Ice Age 

*Jeannette Lee Falsey joined Alaska Dispatch News as a business reporter in 2015. She has worked as a staff writer for The Associated Press and as a researcher for the federal government's Alaska gasline office in Anchorage and Washington, D.C..

Some of these folks were getting ready to retire.  I know that one volunteered to be laid off.  But most were not ready and I wish them a gentle landing and hope that the jolt ignites lots of new opportunities and ways of telling the stories they tell.


People Who Apparently Are Still On the ADN Staff 

Alex DeMarban is a longtime Alaska journalist who covers the oil and gas industries and general assignments for Alaska Dispatch News 

Michelle Theriault Boots is a reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. 

Marc Lester is a multimedia journalist for Alaska Dispatch News. 

Charles Wohlforth's column appears three times weekly. A lifelong Anchorage resident, he is the author of more than 10 books, and hosts radio shows on Alaska Public Media. More at wohlforth.com. 

Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist and the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News. 

Erica Martinson is Alaska Dispatch News' Washington, DC reporter, and she covers the legislation, regulation and litigation that impact the Last Frontier. Erica came to ADN after years as a reporter covering energy at POLITICO. Before that, she covered environmental policy at a DC trade publication.    

[UPDATE Sept 25 - told today that Bob was not laid off so moving him down to this list.  Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state. ]

Annie Zak covers business and general assignments for Alaska Dispatch News. She previously wrote for the Puget Sound Business Journal and the Orange County Register. 

Tegan Hanlon covers education and general assignments. She also covered the 2016 and 2017 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Reach her at 907-257-4589 or Bob Hallinen has been a photojournalist in Alaska since the 1980s and has traveled extensively around the state.thanlon@alaskadispatch.com. 

Devin Kelly covers Anchorage city government and general assignments. 

Beth Bragg is Alaska Dispatch News sports editor. 

Zaz Hollander is based in Wasilla and covers the Mat-Su region for the ADN. 

Lisa Demer is based in Bethel and covers rural Alaska stories. She has been a reporter more than three decades. Reach her at 907-543-3555. 

Nathaniel Herz covers politics and general assignments. 

Kelsey Lindsey is a 2017 graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is covering Arctic-related issues as part of an Alaska Dispatch News-Columbia fellowship. 

Laurel Andrews was born in Bethel and grew up in Fairbanks. She covers cannabis and general assignments. Reach her at laurel@alaskadispatch.com or 907-257-4382. 

Stephan Wiebe writes about all things Alaska sports. 

Is The Alaska Dispatch News For Sale?

Looks like it.  Oliver Optic, an occasional commenter here, sent me a link to this Craig Medred piece that says Alice Rogow is trying to sell the newspaper.  Interesting piece, though not in a good way.

This may be my shortest post ever.  Still occupied with other stuff.

I Keep Forgetting, There's No Saturday Newspaper Anymore

I went out to get the newspaper this morning.  I looked around, but it wasn't there.  Then I remembered.  There is no longer a Saturday edition of the Alaska Dispatch News.

Probably, lots of people reading this blog gave up paper editions long ago.  While other people, judging by letters to the editor, are miffed that they are paying for a subscription that now skips  Saturday.

Every print newpaper is struggling to find a way to make itself profitable.  The ADN has the best short term model - it's owned by a billionaire.  But that's not a sustainable model, and the readers are at the mercy of the owner's political and social tastes.

As a local blogger for the last ten years, I've seen the improvements in the ADN.  When I covered the legislature in 2010, the ADN rotated reporters to Juneau every three weeks or so and my coverage of the legislature really had no competition in Anchorage.  When I covered the Alaska Redistricting Board, 95% of the time, I was the only media there.  When I called the ADN editor and asked why they weren't covering the redistricting board, he said, "Because Seth is in Juneau." Seth was their one reporter for state news.

Fortunately, the ADN now has a lot more reporters covering state and local affairs.  And they've recently added a weekly Arctic section.  We're lucky to have all that extra content, even it is now squeezed into six days instead of seven.

If only Facebook and Twitter each shut down one day a week.  I suspect everyone's lives would greatly improve.

Cut Teachers Pay To Preserve Their Peers' Jobs?

There were a number of noteworthy (which literally means worthy of noting) clusters of words in today's Alaska Dispatch News.

Here's the letter that triggered this post's title:

"Teachers should work for less
To go along with the article "Senate education plan could cut hundreds more jobs statewide" by Dermot Cole, teachers statewide should consider taking a reduction in pay during this state of Alaska budget crisis to help save some of their peers' jobs!
— Richard N. Ramirez
Anchorage"

What sort of pay cuts is Mr. Ramirez suggesting?  Why should teachers alone take a cut in pay for the benefit of everyone else's children?   Why, "during this state of Alaska budget crisis" shouldn't all Alaskans take a cut in pay to help save some jobs?  And to help keep the student/teacher ratio a little lower so each kid gets more attention?

But why stop at teaching jobs?
If everyone who works in Alaska (including non-residents) took a cut in pay, no one would have to take too big a cut.  There is a way to, in effect, have all working Alaskans take a cut in pay to share the burden.  Now that oil isn't paying all our bills, shouldn't all of us pay equitably for the roads and  the bridges,  for our state parks, for keeping our water clean, for use of the airports, for disease prevention, and all the other, sometimes, invisible, benefits of having a state government?  All these things we use and like a lot that we don't notice until they stop working.  Shouldn't Alaskans take a little pay cut for what we get, like the people in other states and in the rest of the world?

There's a system already set up to do that.  It's called an income tax.

It does exactly what you are saying teachers should do - take a cut in pay.  We'll still get our PFD's. Come on all my mighty fellow Alaskans who get all these state benefits for free.  Let's stop whining and grow up and pay our fair share.  But, let the legislators know, you want them to design a tax that is as easy as filling out a PFD application.


Another opinion that caught my attention was Suzie Smith's 'aw shucks' defense of keeping our taxi regulations the way they are by voting yes on proposition 8.

"If having 300 cabs available on the streets to take us from A to B whenever we wanted them actually didn't cost us any more money than having 188, then why stop there? Can we have 1,000? 10,000?  Hey, can we have, like, a cab each? Parked outside our houses, with a private driver wearing a chauffeur's hat? He can take us wherever we need to go for the same rates … in fact, it should cost us less, because competition, right?"

Cute, but no one is asking for a cab for everyone.

Let's stick with 300 cabs for a minute.  Give us the numbers to show us how many hours cabs have fares and how many hours a day the average cab is riding empty.  Or which hours no cabs are available.  Show us how much income you get by owning a cab permit, the hours you work on cab stuff, and what that comes to as an hourly wage.  Maybe you have numbers that prove your point, but you didn't offer them here.  And you didn't mention things like access for handicapped passengers which was improved by the ordinance you want to repeal, or how Uber and Lyft are going to impact the taxi business.  Or is this really about how much you stand to lose if your permit loses its value?

There's also a great story in We Alaskans about an Indonesian 17 year old who is an exchange student in Kasilof told from the perspective of the student and her American temporary father.  I've spent ten minutes trying to find a way to link to the story for people who aren't ADN subscribers, but I can't.  Here's a link to We Alaskans with the other stories in today's edition, maybe it will show up eventually.

Finally, I'd note that Nathaniel Herz' brief interviews with new legislators gives us a chance to see these people as, well, people.  Nat got glimpses that add a little bit to our understanding of individual legislators and the legislature as a whole.  Rep. Jason Gren has a son named Atticus who's not pleased that his daddy isn't always home to tuck him into bed. Rep. Dean Westlake is part of the R.J. Reynolds Caucus which meets for smoke breaks and gives him a chance to spend time with Republicans.  Gary Knopp gets to ride excavators and road graders when he's not in the legislature. Rep. George Rauscher drove about 7000 miles in his Jeep campaigning in his huge Southcentral district.  Wasilla's Rep. David Wilson doesn't seem to like talking to the media.  Nothing huge here, but reminders that our legislators are not cartoon stereotypes, but real human beings trying to make a difference.

Yes, there should be more in depth articles about legislation that help spell it out for average folks, but I'm guessing far more readers will read this piece than more penetrating news on what they are and aren't doing in Juneau.

ADN: Fake Quote In Ad

Since the Anchorage Daily News became the Alaska Dispatch News, the local and state coverage has increased significantly.  There are more reporters covering the legislature, the assembly, the university, and other significant organizations and issues.  But in the new world of Fake News, I'd like to see the ADN also take on Fake Quotes in ads.


This anti-income tax ad appeared in the ADN Sunday.

Bob Gillam, Alaska's richest person according to Forbes, and the money behind the anti-Pebble Mine campaign, doesn't want Alaska to reestablish the income tax as this ad in Sunday's ADN suggests.  If I were a billionaire with lots and lots of income, I might feel the same.

But when I read the quote from Johnson - "The 20th Century proved, if you were paying any attention, that taxation is the great enemy of civilization"  - I was skeptical.  Johnson wasn't an anti-tax guy.

So I googled and couldn't find the quote linked to Johnson.  I emailed Jim Gillam's company to see if they could tell me when and where the quote was published or he said it.  Then I emailed the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas.

I haven't heard back from Gillem, but the library was back to me quickly.   Archives Specialist Ian Frederick-Rothwell wrote back:

"I can find no record in the Public Papers of Lyndon B. Johnson that he ever said this. I searched the American Presidency Project website, which holds full, searchable text of all of President Johnson's speeches, statements, messages, and remarks as delivered or published."

He did find an article that included the phrase written by Buffalo, New York attorney Jim Ostrowski.   But I guess Ostrowski's name and picture wouldn't be as meaningful as Johnson's.

And the statement under LBJ's picture about every state that introduced an income tax since 1960 experiencing economic decline seems pretty sketchy as well.  Most states have had periods of 'economic decline' (however one might define that) since 1960.  Is there any cause and effect relationship that can be proven here?  I doubt it since all but a handful of the other states already had income taxes before 1960, so they should be totally depressed by now.  The only 'truth' this add is might prove is that some folks will believe what they want to believe, without any thought.

Billionaires have the resources to check their facts, though as our current president proves, having money doesn't necessarily lead to the truth.

But in this day of FAKE NEWS, I's urge the ADN and other reputable media, to require ads like these to provide sources before they print them.

Another option is simply to put a fact check next to advertisements so that readers don't have to each do this kind of homework.

Random Notes: Origins of Hogwash, Tracks On Snow, Warm Young Fingers, And Überzeugen

Notes I've made in the last couple of days.  None is long enough for a post on its own.  

1.   I noticed that a few people have been finding their way to my post on the origins of hogwash in the last few days, but I didn't really take notice until I got this one:

(Yes, you do leave lots of tracks when you surf the internet.  Some people leave more tracks than others.  This is just part of what you leave.  Proxy servers help hide your tracks and there are other ways that probably will become more important in the future when government and other tracking will become more problematic.)

2.  Wow! The Alaska Dispatch News has a new online viewer and the pages don't randomly skip from here to there as I try to scroll down the story.  Now they scroll smoothly up and down like every other page.  Good move, about time.

3.  What a joy when your 3 year old granddaughter takes your hand in her warm soft fingers as you walk down the street.

4.  I was enjoying the wonderful resources for translation online these days while working on a synopsis of an Austrian film - Planet Ottakring - that's in competition at the Anchorage International Film Festival.  While I was checking my choice of the word 'eager' (not quite right) for überzeugt when this sentence popped up which seemed very appropriate for the times.

A number of sites now give lists of sentences with the word you are looking up so you can see how it's used in different contexts.   From http://en.bab.la/dictionary/german-english/ueberzeugter:

überzeugen [überzeugte |überzeugt ] {v.i.}
to satisfy [satisfied|satisfied] (be convincing) {v.i 

Example sentence:
Ich entscheide hiermit, dass die Abstimmung zu überprüfen ist, damit sich alle davon überzeugen können, dass das Ergebnis tatsächlich so ausgefallen ist. 

Translated sentence:
My decision is that the vote will be checked in order to satisfy everyone that that indeed was the result. 

5.  We got back last night from Seattle in time to see that our housesitter had nicely cleared our driveway of snow.  With a south facing inclined driveway, it's helpful to keep snow from building up. Otherwise, with vehicle tracks in the driveway pressing down the snow followed by freeze and thaw cycles, we get a treacherously icy driveway that is tricking to walk up and down.

This morning we woke up to about four new inches of snow.  I like shoveling snow and so I did before J drove off to do errands and left compressed snow tracks in the driveway.  It was still snowing  - almost like drizzling salt size pellets - so after I got the driveway and sidewalk and around my car in the street, there was a thin dusting of new snow.  I swept away some of it.  What you see on the right is the track J left on the swept and not swept snow.













6.  The Anchorage International Film Festival begins tomorrow night at the Bear Tooth.  My tab at the top left under the orange heading organizes all my posts on the festival and what's happening.

Sloppy Headline - Supreme Court Ruled for But Didn't Back Group Fighting Pebble Mine

Here's a headline from today's ADN:

Alaska Supreme Court backs group fighting Pebble mine 

The Supreme Court is NOT supposed to take sides in cases.   The justices are not supposed to 'back' one side or the other.  They are supposed to make decisions based on the law, not whether they like the one party in the case or another.

To say the Supreme Court 'backs' one party is misleading.  From the Oxford Dictionaries:

verb:  Back 1  Give financial, material, or moral support to: he had a newspaper empire backing him go up there and tell them—I’ll back you up Synonyms sponsor, finance, put up the money for, fund, subsidize, underwrite, be a patron of, act as guarantor of informal foot the bill for, pick up the tab for, bankroll, stake

Even when you use the right words, the listener might not understand exactly what you meant.  But when you use the wrong words you give the reader a license to get it wrong. 

The Supreme Court may not back one party or the other.  It can rule in favor of one side, but that rule should be based on the law, not on whether individual judges or the whole court likes one of the parties.   The ruling may be good for one party, one might even say the ruling supports the arguments of one of the parties, but the court itself can't. 

And while one could argue that the ruling gave moral support to the folks opposed to Pebble Mine happy, that isn't the Supreme Court's job.  And that isn't the main meaning of 'to back.'

There's enough political polarization already without the newspaper adding to it by making readers think that the Supreme Court has taken a position on Pebble Mine.  They've taken a position on the law, not the mine.

If, in fact, the court actually made its decision in order to support those opposing the mine and not based on the law, that would be very big news indeed.  People argue the US Supreme Court did that in their 2000 election ruling.  But there is nothing in the ADN article to support that idea here.

From October 2013 Post

I'd note that this brings to a close a huge dispute over the right of private citizens to bring public good lawsuits without the fear of being charged with the lawyers' fees if they lose.






[Reposted because of Feedburner problems]

Brian Williams, Memory, And What It Means For Everyone

An ADN letter writer today wasn't taking any crap about Brian Williams:

"The article about Brian Williams and his “misremembered” story in the paper is an unbelievable spin. The spin is even incorrect. Mr. Williams wasn’t in the helicopter behind the one that was shot at, either he was going in the opposite direction. Get your facts straight. A lie is a lie no matter how you want to spin it to protect one of your own."

I didn't know who Brian Williams was until the other day when reports about his inaccurate helicopter story came out.  I assume the letter writer above was responding to the ADN story (from the Washington Post) about a psychologist saying that memories can get conflated and we believe we remember things we heard about as things that happened to us.

It must be nice to live a world of black and white of the letter writer and to be so certain about what one knows.

Is he, without a doubt, a liar?  Was this a case of lying to bolster his credentials?  Or was it conflation of memories?  The event had enough witnesses that lying about it seems a bit stupid.  Someone would eventually challenge it.  But lots of successful people have a history of getting away with lies, or other abuses of their positions of power, so they may think they'll never get caught.  And they may start believing . . .   oh yeah, that's the point the psychologist was making.

Memory expert Lawrence Patihis said, in a New Republic interview:

In one of our studies, about 20 percent of our participants generated false memories of an event when something false was suggested. [For instance, if Patihis mentioned video footage of Flight 93 crashing in Pennsylvania on September 11, one in five participants said they remembered seeing it. No such footage exists.] If we repeated the false suggestion many times over a period of weeks or months, I am sure an even larger percentage would develop a false memory.
In the case of Brian Williams, that misleading information may have been in the form of seeing the footage of him and his film crew examining the damage of the helicopter that was actually hit, and seeing it over and over again.

Most somewhat sentient beings in the US have heard about convicted criminals who have been exonerated through DNA testing.  You can watch a 60 Minutes episode of such a case here, where a rape victim tells the story of how she identified this guy, how certain she was, and how mortified she was ten years later when DNA proved it was another, similar looking, man.

OK, recognizing the face of a stranger you've only seen once is hard.  I remember when my wife had her purse snatched in a subway station in NYC. I was looking eye to eye at the snatcher playing tug of war with the purse before he turned with it and jumped from the platform, ran across the tracks and caught a train going the other way.  A light skinned black man with dreadlocks.  Pretty easy.  But when the police later showed me a book of faces of light skinned black men with dreadlocks, I knew it was impossible to pick one over the other with any certainty.

But in the 60 Minutes episode (it's in four parts on YouTube) Leslie Stahl also talks about how the suspect's alibi turned out to be for a different weekend than the one of the crime.  His memory too was faulty. And he had good reason to get it right.  The faulty alibi story hurt him at the trial.  But that's still different from the idea Williams' creating a false memory.

But the last part of the 60 Minutes piece talks about showing people advertisements of Disneyland that included someone dressed as Bugs Bunny.  Then they were asked later about their memories of Disneyland.  A number of the experiment subjects said they remembered meeting Bugs Bunny, and when asked for details, they came up with stories of handshakes and more.  Of course, Bugs Bunny was a Warner Brothers character, not a Disney character and would never have been at Disneyland.  But the fake ad planted a seed that allowed people to remember meeting Bugs at Disneyland.  This is like the Patihis example above. (I wasn't so lucky on my first trip to Disneyland.  I don't remember meeting Micky, Donald, or Bugs.  I did see Richard Nixon, but that's another story.)

And I have a couple of old, old friends who remember things we did together  very differently than I do.  So I'm sure that memory is malleable.

Scientific American has an article that lists four myths about memory that most people believe:

1. Memory works like a video camera, recording the world around us onto a mental tape that we can later replay.
2. An unexpected occurrence is likely to be noticed—even when people’s attention is elsewhere.
3. Hypnosis can improve memory—especially when assisting a witness in recalling details associated with a crime.
4. Amnesia sufferers usually cannot remember their identity or name.

Number 1  is particularly relevant to the Williams case. The explanation notes that

"research . . . has shown events to be recalled based on “goals and expectations,” . . . It also “contradicts the well-established idea that memory retrieval is a constructive process,” too, which can be shaped by assumptions and beliefs"

Not only do we see events and interpret them in a way that aligns with what we want to see, we remember events the way we want them to have been. I'm sure everyone whose been married more than ten years has remembered an event entirely differently from what their spouse remembered. But what does that mean for us beyond the Brian Williams story?

• Does it mean we should be more sympathetic to people whose memories proven fictional?
• Should we be more skeptical of everyone's memories?
• Should we be more skeptical about our own memories?
• How can we verify other people's memories as well as our own?
• How do we distinguish between those who intentionally recreate a false past from those who simply misremember?  

1. I suspect each one of those questions is deserving of its own post, and I certainly don't know the answers to them.  But it would appear to me that a good strategy is to work on how we talk about such things.  Try to be more tentative rather than certain in our discussions.  Instead of "You're wrong" try "I don't remember it that way."
2. Find other witnesses to give their accounts of the same event.  
3. Google can often locate contemporaneous accounts of an old event.  For example, I located online audio of speeches I attended as a student at UCLA in the 1960s.  Let's just say there was a lot I forgot.  

I don't suspect the letter writer will be persuaded by any of this.  I do think that if you know people over a period of time, you gain more insight into whether they are likely to be lying or not.  

I also know that we tend to assume that other people behave the way we would behave.  So people who tell the truth (except maybe when a friend asks "can you tell that I've lost weight?") are more willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt.  People who frequently lie, will more likely assume that someone else is lying.  If you are dealing with a liar, giving the benefit of the doubt puts you at a disadvantage compared to the person who assumes he's lying.  But if you assume everyone you're dealing with is lying, I suspect your life won't be all that happy.  The key, for me, is to maintain a degree of skepticism, and find ways to test for the truth.  

This is one of those posts that jump right in to the basic theme of this blog - how do you know what you know?  If you were looking for answers, sorry to disappoint.  I learned long ago that the more I learn, the less I know.  Not because learning is a bad thing, but because you as you learn, you discover that the universe of things you don't know expands faster than the universe of things you do know.