More Waste In Packaging

 Waste in packaging is another thing that has become normalized.  Unless it's egregious, we just wade our way through it, without even thinking about it.

I felt this one qualified as egregious.

The pills came in these three plastic bottles inside the box behind.

Each plastic bottle had 14 - FOURTEEN - pills!

When I put them all into one bottle they reached up to the blue line. (That was supposed to be an arrow pointing down to the blue line.)

That's about 1/5 of the bottle.  There were three bottles, so only 1/15 of the bottles' volume was actually needed for the pills.  That's not counting the box the three bottles were packaged in.

So the contents needed about 7% of the packaging (again, not counting the box this was all in.)  So about 93% of the packaging was unnecessary.  

OK, I get that stores don't want to sell things so small that it's easy for a shopper to put something into a pocket or purse without paying.  There have to be more creative solutions to stopping shoplifting.  If humans can figure out how to get to the moon, they can figure out how to not pollute the earth with excessive packaging.  

I'd also note a story in the LA Times Sunday.  Mike Hiltzik wrote a follow up to the big story earlier this year that stores were losing $45 billion to organized crime shoplifting.  

Politicians and the media both repeated the fabricated number without question.  And law enforcement agencies love it because such stories help them get ever increasing budgets to fight crime.  But for them crime means the guy who shoplifts $30 worth of groceries, not companies that steal billions from their employees and customers.

Why do I add all these other issues to a simple story about badly packaged pills?  Cause everything has a context.  Telling stories without the larger context is just relating miscellaneous anecdotes.  There's a lot more context for this pill story, but I'm just adding a little here so that readers at least think about the larger context and maybe even add more themselves.  

.  

AIFF: Sunday Offers Impressive Crime/Prison Lessons

 I missed the noon movie Sunday.  I just needed a little more time to recuperate. 

Saturday morning had a great set of Alaska themed or made films.  I was very pleased that we are past the days when Alaska films were any Alaskan project where someone writes a story and goes out (usually) into the woods and experiments with how their cameras and mics work.  

That elation didn't survive Sunday's Alaska Shorts Program.  There were good ones mostly.  And that's all I'll say.  

The afternoon Documentary Feature - The Body Politic - was a riveting look at Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott.   We see Scott elected into office as a young Black man who saw his first shooting at 10, and vowed that the basic approach of mass arresting of Black men had to be replaced.  The alternative was to give people options in life other than crime and prison.    He comes into office after 327 (maybe it was 37) people had been murdered in the previous year, vowing to cut murders by 15%.  But pro-active reaching out to folks is a long term strategy and takes a while to work.  He monitored every murder as they outpaced his target.  The Republican governor, who controlled prisons, parole, and critical social services, refused to meet with Scott and said he needed to beef up the police to stop the crime.

The discussion afterward included director Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough, film subject Erricka Bridgeford, and another film maker whose name and role I didn't quite catch.  Ida, the director of the festival is on the right.  Ericka is in the middle.  

You can read more about the film from a Baltimore paper and read an interview with the director here.

The next shorts program began with another excellent film - The Bond - which was short and packed a powerful punch as we see an incarcerated woman having her baby, shackled, and then having the baby taken from her.  The filming, the story, the acting were all just right.  

The last program were three films related to prison and domestic violence.  

Infraction told the true story of an inmate who the judge had, at some point concluded was innocent, but was still locked up.

Seeds of Change told the story of a farmer who takes on the project of setting up a farm adjacent to a prison and then utilizing prisoners to work on the farm.  The fresh food is served in the prison.  The film shows the effect of the farm work on the prisoners who worked there and the effects of having fresh food prepared well on the prisoners. 

Where I Learned Not to Sleep  - The camera follows two retired police who grew up with domestic violence, doing training programs for police on how to approach domestic violence situations.  

The whole afternoon and evening illustrated the need to treat citizens, abused women,  and prisoners with dignity and respect to break the cycle of violence and criminality.  

There's much more to say, but this at least gives you a sense of what I got out of the festival on Sunday.  

How Much Do You Know About Kyle Rittenhouse?

True or False?

1. Kyle Rittenhouse 
1. was bullied as a kid  
2. was a bully at his school
3. fled the scene of the crime
4. turned himself in
5. was a Proud Boy
6. drove 200 miles to be in Kenosha
2. His
1. parents had three kids in less than four years
2. mother is a certified nursing assistant
3. sister is a Bernie Sanders supporter
3. Rittenhouse fundraising efforts 
1. raised over more than $1 million
2. were misused by his attorneys

Just letting you check how much you know.

I realized lately that the name Kyle Rittenhouse was bombarding my consciousness.  I knew he was the kid who traveled from Illinois to Kenosha and  killed two people who were demonstrating against police violence in Kenosha.  And his trial was starting.

But I realized I knew really very little about who the person was and what actually happened that night in Kenosha.  

So I googled Rittenhouse biography and came up with this New Yorker article on how he got to Kenosha, what happened there, and how the right raised money for him and the Proud Boys claimed him.  

Too often the relentless repetition from the media and social media implants images into our heads that take root there without our attention and we unconsciously and uncritically form opinions on things.  

For instance - something I learned in the article - 

"The Rittenhouse apartment was a mile south of the Wisconsin border, and Rittenhouse had been storing his gun in Kenosha, at the house of a friend’s stepfather."

There wasn't too much about his family life, but here's some of it:

"Wendy [his mom] sometimes felt too overwhelmed to help her kids navigate difficulties. In 2017, when Kyle was fourteen, she tried to resolve a conflict between him and two classmates, twins named Anthony and Jonathan, by seeking restraining orders. In a handwritten petition to the court, Wendy, who has dyslexia, wrote, “Anthony calls Klye dumb stupid say that going to hurt Kyle. Anthony follows Kyle around to take picture of Klye and post them on soical media.”

"That fall, Rittenhouse, a pudgy ninth grader in dark-framed glasses, joined the Explorers program at the Grayslake Police Department, near Antioch. The police chief viewed the program as a way to “teach self-discipline, responsibility and other appropriate ‘life lessons’ ” to youths who “may have a challenging home, social, or school life.” Rittenhouse participated in a similar cadet program through the Antioch Fire Department. Jon Cokefair, the fire chief, told me, “Most of the kids that are doing this, they don’t play football, they’re not cheerleaders—this is their focus.”

Jeff Myhra, the deputy chief who ran Grayslake’s Police Explorers program, told me that participants trained with harmless replicas of service weapons. Explorers wore uniforms and often helped manage parade traffic. Rittenhouse went on police ride-alongs, a practice that may impart a false sense of competence, or authority. One brochure declared, “Like Police Officers, Explorers must be ready and willing to encounter any emergency situation such as first responders to accidents or injuries.”

There's also a lot about how prominent Trump related lawyers swooped in to raise money for Kyle's defense and took big payments from the accounts for themselves.  

There is usually a way to find out more about what's happening than we get through normal life.  But we also have to take accounts like this New Yorker article with a grain of salt too until we have enough evidence that it's accurate.  

I recommend using normal channels of information to find out what's happening and who's getting attention.  From there it makes more sense to find someone who has done a deep dive to find out a lot more details about the person and/or the situation.  

You can find answers to the True or False quiz in the article.  Yes, I could give you the answers, but then you'd just have a lot of out-of-context trivia that would not make you wiser about what's going on.  

Short Takes - RPCV Joins Alaska SC, Maxwell Arrest, Racism Like Apple Pie, Russian Bounty

Note: Another big COVID increase today.  Click COVID tab above for daily updates on state case counts

1.   Alaska's newly appointed Supreme Court justice Dario Borghesan is an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who served in Togo.



2.   Just hearing her name on the news for being involved with Jeffrey Epstein doesn't give you a sense of Ghislaine* Maxwell's role in the Jeffrey Epstein world.   The Netflix series Jeffrey Epstein:  Filthy Rich brings their crimes clearly into the light.  And how well connected rich people can get away with things on a scale 'normal' folks would never even imagine.  Well worth watching.


3.

“Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you’re protesting America.”

— romy🦋 (@romyreiner) July 2, 2020

This says it all.  But for many people it makes no sense at all.  Which proves the point.**



4.  Did Russia pay the Taliban bounties to kill US troops?  Of course.  Just like we armed and paid the Mujahideen to do the same in Afghanistan when the Soviet Union took over there.  But since Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union** and the US is half a world away - it's much easier for Russia to do.  But even with the geographic advantage, the Soviet Union was forced out of Afghanistan.


*Throughout the Netflix series the pronunciation of her name was in serious conflict with my natural visual bent.  I'd have done better had I never seen it written.  But this is irrelevant.  She's a seriously evil person and her arrest may bring some comfort to her many victims.

**I realize this is a bit enigmatic for those who don't think of racism as being like apple pie.  If this leaves you scratching your head, just leave a (civil) comment and we can talk about it.

***Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were then part of the Soviet Union.  Today they are independent countries and are between Russia and Afghanistan.

Green Grass In December, Parasite, Broken Glass

This is not what our front yard normally looks like in December.  And it was covered with snow a few days ago.  But then it got into the 40s.

OK, we've often had bits of warm weather once or twice in winter, but we've had record warm months just about every month this year.

Trump calls Climate Change a hoax.  Note that he also calls the impeachment a hoax.


I also managed to fix a faucet that had been causing a drip.

And last night we skipped the film festival to see the movie Parasite.  They'd been showing the trailer at the Bear Tooth during the festival and people were saying it was really good.  It was playing here just for three nights and I decided this was the best night to miss the festival films.  

Director Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year.  Bong's Snowpiercer was one of the early Netflix films we saw that convinced us to stick with Netflix.  All I'll say is that Parasite is a dark movie about rich and poor in Korea.  And the preview that we saw several times waiting for film festival movies, was always worth watching and didn't really give anything away. That's all I'll say for now because I think people should see it for themselves.  

And in line with the theme of economic inequality, when we got out to the car, J found the passenger side window had been smashed in.    911 told me to call 311 and they told me to report online.  

I went back into the Bear Tooth to tell them and they said they'd check the security cameras.  Meanwhile outside J saw another woman who's window had also been smashed.  

Here's what it looked like when we got it home after a chilly ride.  From what we can tell, nothing was actually taken.  J had a cloth shopping back on the seat, but nothing was in it.  The quarters for parking meters weren't touched.  The garage door opener was there.  The timer light plug and the book I'd just bought were all there.   I think they probably couldn't figure out how to unlock the door on that old Subaru.

State Farm and Speedy Glass were quick and efficient and J's waiting for the new window already.  But whether this is a homeless issue or a drug issue or just petty theft, it's a symptom of our economic inequalities and our lack of good, effective schooling and and physical and mental health care.

Back to the film festival tonight.

While Death Penalty Executions Have Gone Down, Police Still Meting Out Death Penalty On The Streets

California's new governor, Gavin Newsom, has imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in California.

However, the death penalty is being meted out by police officers around the country.  And while convicted murderers and rapists are spared the death penalty, often innocent citizens are not.

2019
Killed By Police* lists 197 people who have been killed by police in the US this year (and we're only in the middle of March.)

Death Penalty Info lists 3 people killed so far this year as a result of death penalty executions.

2018
The Root tells us 2165 people were killed by police in 2018.
Mapping Police Violence puts the number at 2166 people killed by police in 2018.  They also have a lot of related information and graphics - including comparisons between cities, crime rates, and other factors which show huge differences.
The Washington Post lists only 998 people killed by police in 2018.   (Including 7 in Alaska.)  These are only people shot and killed by police.  The others include all deaths caused by police.

Death Penalty Info lists 25 people dying by state sanctioned death penalty executions in 2018.  (Of that number, 11 are identified as Black or Latino.  13 (more than half) were in Texas.)

	Killed By Police	Killed By Execution
2018	2166	25
2019	197	3

When police shoot and kill 'suspects' - the victim gets no  presumption of innocence, no trial, no jury. No appeal.  And police shooters almost never get prosecuted, let alone convicted.


OK.  Let's acknowledge that police have a difficult job.  They meet most of their 'customers' at some of the worst times in their lives.  They're asked to intervene in crimes being committed, often, by people with guns and other weapons.  They have to make fast decisions.   Most of us don't want to do these jobs.

Chart from PEW Research

Does It Have To Be This Way?

But when we look at the numbers, only a relatively small percent (less than 1/3) of police officers ever report firing their gun while on duty!  From the  Pew Research article (and reflected in the chart):

"To start, male officers, white officers, those working in larger cities and those who are military veterans are more likely than female officers, racial and ethnic minorities, those in smaller communities and non-veterans to have ever fired their service weapon while on duty. Each relationship is significant after controlling for other factors that could be associated with firing a service weapon." 

The article points out that there is no cause and effect relationship proven between these characteristics.

My main point for using the data is to show that the vast majority of police NEVER even fire their guns in the line of duty.

In a 2000 Associated Press article we get this quote:

"Well over 95 percent never shoot their weapons here," said New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir.

But we don't know if that's because they aren't ever in situations where they apprehend armed suspects or because they handle those situations differently from officers who do shoot.  (Well maybe someone does, but this study didn't make any such claims.)

But the data do suggest that shooting suspects is NOT necessary in most cases.

Are there ways to reduce the number of police caused deaths?

I would also suggest that officers who do kill suspects are also victims of systems that make that option more likely.  They see innumerable shootings on television, in movies, and in video games they participate in the shootings.  They are nearly all given guns, which makes shooting (rather than other options, like talking, like waiting, like non-lethal weapons) an easy option.  (We tend to use the tools we have to solve most problems.**)  They don't necessarily get adequate training for dealing with the mentally ill.  Internalized racism (again, television and movies play a big part here) will make many if not most officers more likely to assume the worst for suspects of color.  (And officers of color are also the victims of internalized racism so when they are the shooters it's not proof that racism wasn't involved.)

Use of Force Project offers specific systemic actions that reduce deaths by police.  (In this list the wording is reversed - what departments DON"T do that they should.  There's a lot of info on this site, including a long list of police departments (including Anchorage) and which of these these standards they meet.)

1. "Failing to require officers to de-escalate situations, where possible, by communicating with subjects, maintaining distance, and otherwise eliminating the need to use force
2. Allowing officers to choke or strangle civilians, in many cases where less lethal force could be used instead, resulting in the unnecessary death or serious injury of civilians
3. Failing to require officers to intervene and stop excessive force used by other officers and report these incidents immediately to a supervisor 
4. Failing to restrict officers from shooting at moving vehicles, which is regarded as a particularly dangerous and ineffective tactic
5. Failing to develop a Force Continuum that limits the types of force and/or weapons that can be used to respond to specific types of resistance
6. Failing to require officers to exhaust all other reasonable means before resorting to deadly force
7. Failing to require officers to give a verbal warning, when possible, before shooting at a civilian
8. Failing to require officers to report each time they use force or threaten to use force against civilians"

I think it's important as fewer Americans die because of death penalty executions, to remember that in essence, police who kill suspects are, de facto, applying the death penalty.


Notes:

*Killed By Police lists a cumulative number for 2019 (197), but they don't for 2018.  Each page is a month, and so I looked for other sources rather than try to count each specific death they list.  The sources I used for 2018 did not have (at least I couldn't find) 2019 data.

**I learned about The Law of The Instrument long ago in a research methodology book  It goes something like this:  If you give a a child a hammer, it will find that most things need to be pounded.

It's Abe's Birthday Already? This Post Took Me Places I Didn't Expect

I've been derelict here.  We've been spending a lot of time away from the computer - either transporting the grandkids to pre-school and elsewhere, or playing with them.  Or helping with food and pajamas and story times.   Also we had lunch yesterday with a former student from Beijing who is visiting the US.  It's been nearly 15 years since we've seen each other, though we've kept online contact.  But there were lots of questions we had for each other.

So here are a few pictures of the last few days until I have more time to think more clearly.  Some of these building pictures lead to architectural and technology issues I wasn't expecting.  And Lincoln's birthday tempted me into the question of whether the civil war was necessary and had it been avoided would we be more united today.  I'm still working on exit row issues including a promising incident on our flight to San Francisco.  Stay tuned for that.

The building with the turrets on top is an Episcopal Church whose red doors are usually closed.


But Sunday I was strollering by with my nieta (the Spanish word for granddaughter sounds so much nicer and is much shorter to write) and the doors were open.  We got invited in to listen to the organ.

We looked at our shadows at the playground and while we were walking.  

We also experimented with foot prints since the grass was wet.  

My nieto (o makes it grandson) and I spent about 90 minutes at the Japanese Garden.  He was interested in all the bridges and shrines and paths and, of course, the dragon made of a winding hedge and a rock head and rock tail.  

We also checked out St. Mary's Cathedral.  the basic structure is set on four points like the one in the lower center of the picture.  Arch Daily gives lots of details and more pictures:

"Pylons support the 19-story cupola at each corner of the floor plan, each constructed to withstand ten million pounds of pressure. With a circumference of 24 feet at their narrowest points, the pylons are embedded 90 feet down into the bedrock. A surprising 1680 pre-cast triangular coffers comprose the inner area of the cupola, featuring 128 different triangular sizes. These transfer all the weight of the structure down to the ground, while allowing large windows to frame views of the city of Saint Francis of Assisi. To call on memories of historic mission architecture, red brick is used on the floor in sweeping patterns."

And San Francisco is not without broken glass.  Here's part of the bus stop on the way to pre-school yesterday.  I've seen a couple of vehicles with broken windows and the shattered pieces lying on ground below. like in this picture.


By the afternoon, most of the glass was swept up and there was tape across the ad.  

And this car was making its point pretty loudly.







We ate at a Ramen place in Japantown with my Chinese friend.

And finally, here's the tallest building in San Francisco with its top in the clouds.  It's called the Salesforce Tower, though it used to be called the Transbay Tower.  And since I dislike branding everything so that people are forced to say some corporation's name when they mention it (it's much worse for public or semi-public places like stadiums), I'll stick with Transbay. From Wikipedia:

The site of the tower was in a dilapidated area, formerly used as a ground-level entrance to the San Francisco Transbay Terminal, which was demolished in 2011. The TJPA sold the parcel to Boston Properties and Hines for US$192 million,[14] and ceremonial groundbreaking for the new tower occurred on March 27, 2013, with below-grade construction work starting in late 2013.[15][16] The project is a joint venture between general contractors Clark Construction and Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction.[16][17]
The footprint of Salesforce Tower rests on land fill near San Francisco's original waterfront, an area prone to soil liquefaction during earthquakes. To account for this seismic risk, the tower uses a design that is modeled to withstand the strongest earthquakes expected in the region.[18] Its foundation includes 42 piles driven down nearly 300 feet (91 m) to bedrock and a 14-foot (4.3 m) thick foundation mat.[19]

My son explained to me exactly what Salesforce (the company) does.  They make and run the software for tracking communications between companies and customers.  So when you call up a company and they can look to see all the times you've called and what you said and what they said, they could be using Salesforce technology.  Here's how their website describes it: 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. The goal is simple: Improve business relationships. A CRM system helps companies stay connected to customers, streamline processes, and improve profitability.

Select Hub offers some alternatives to Salesforce CRM technology after this introduction:

"Saying Salesforce is a big name in the CRM software space is like saying Christianity is a popular religion — it’s pretty obvious to most people who know anything about CRM. But it doesn’t have to be the only option. For those who may be looking for something else, we gathered data on the best Salesforce alternatives to help you find the right match for your organization."

So, I bet you weren't expecting some of this.  Neither was I.  Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln.  What would the US be like today if didn't have the Civil War?  Would slavery have died out naturally because it became economically unsound?  Would African-Americans gained legal status without creating the race divisions that our president has reignited today?

Could Slavery Have Died A Peaceful Death?

Would Slavery Have Survived Without the Civil War?   This is a journal article you need a library connection to reach.  For those without that access, here's an excerpt from the intro to the article:

"My argument here is two-fold: (1) slavery, though generally profitable, had a harmful, long-term developmental impact on the southern economy; and (2) that the institution would gradually have evolved into something else in the late nineteenth century even without the Civil War. Before moving on, however, a necessary disclaimer: I well recognize the moral enormity that was slavery, and my comments here pertain only to the economic aspects of the peculiar institution, and, even delimited to the economic realm, should be seen as an attempt to analyze “what was” rather than “what ought to have been.”1"

Here are some interesting, related articles that don't address the question head on:

Without Slavery, Would The U.S. Be The Leading Economic Power?

Could Compromise Have Prevented the Civil War?

Civil War's dirty secret about slavery

The Economics of the Civil War - This one gives a lot more detail, but doesn't really answer the question

Would there be less animosity between Americans today had we not fought the civil war?  I'm guessing not.  Scapegoating the other is practiced by the power hungry throughout time and in all parts of the world.  The legacy of slavery would still have left the US divided, in my humble and unsupported opinion here.  Perhaps the support is for another post.

We Give Thanks Today, But Few United States Citizens Contemplate Giving Back

History books have given us a pretty story of the origin of this holiday.  But as time has passed and the stories of the victors have been challenged, more and more people are jumping in to tell a different version.  Some just quibble over the facts.

Some excerpts from the Daily Signal

"The Pilgrims very famously didn’t celebrate Christmas. They said, “There’s not a place in Scripture that authorizes the celebration of Jesus’ birth. There’s no scripture that tells us when it occurred.” And they saw it as an invention that the Catholic Church had basically created. . ."

". . . The first time that you really would say that Thanksgiving becomes a national holiday is during the American Civil War. And that would not have been realized at the time—we see it more from hindsight. But Abraham Lincoln in 1863 issued a proclamation in the fall, making the fourth Thursday in November of that year a day of national Thanksgiving. And he primarily means it as a day of thanksgiving for the way that God was aiding Northern armies in the war against the South. And that also doesn’t endear Southerners to a Thanksgiving holiday."

" . . .And I joke—but also sort of mean it seriously—that one of the things that ultimately reconciles Southerners to Thanksgiving is the development of football.
And by the 1890s, the national championship game for what was the forerunner of the NCAA was being held annually in New York City on Thanksgiving Day. And well before 1900, the tradition of having football games on Thanksgiving Day is sweeping across the country. And Southerners find out that the holiday isn’t that bad after all."

"There had been 18 wives on the Mayflower, 14 of whom had died in the first winter. And so most of the married couples now were separated by death.
Large numbers of the children had lost a parent, there were some children present who had lost all parents and siblings. It was an overwhelmingly male, now single gathering, and also a young gathering, in that about half of the group was teenagers or younger."

Some put the relationship with the indigenous peoples into a different perspective like this one titled "The Real Story of Thanksgiving" (again, some excerpts)

"The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to  England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped.  By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language.  He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.
But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest.  But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.
In 1637 near present day  Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside.  Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered."

Or give the indigenous credit for being more than the 'savages' that they were portrayed as in this more academic look at the government to government relationships between the new country and Indian tribes in Flashpoint:

"When Christopher Columbus thought he had discovered the “New World” in 1492, it is estimated that 10-30 million native people lived in North America, that is, in the present day countries of Mexico, United States and Canada. These millions of people lived under governments of varying sophistication and complexity. These native governments were viable and fully operational political bodies which controlled their citizens and their territories and were an important factor in the development of the United States government we live under today."

This National Geographic article says the population dropped in half not long after Columbus arrived.

European Americans justified their decimation of the Native population first on what they saw as their obvious superiority - based on not only their technical superiority, but also on their Christianity.  They also, of course, justified killing Indians based on self-defense.  The fact that they had invaded Indian land didn't seem to cross their minds.

The wealth of the United States - national and personal - is based on the take over of the land that had been inhabited by the indigenous people, through lopsided treaties (often signed by representatives of a tribe picked by the whites), through removal (ie Trail of Tears), and through massacre.

Our debt is so massive that for most US citizens, repaying that debt is inconceivable.  But it's a debt we owe, and which should be repaid, if not in whole, in a significant way that is more than a token reparation.

We need to start imagining how this can be done.  As well as recognize how much we still commit the kinds of crimes against other people today, that we committed against North America's indigenous people.  

[Sorry, this one is rushed - being called to dinner.]

You Notice Things Biking That You Miss Driving

I've been riding about 8-10 miles round trip each morning along the bike path next to the Plane Highway.  The first days on this route I notice the big things.  Here's a previous post that shows what I noticed then.

Like litter.  A couple of days ago, I started to notice how much trash there was.  Lots of plastic, fast food debris - cups, styrofoam.  Sometimes bigger stuff - mattresses, a refrigerator today on the other side, down a hill.  From a car, a lot of this stuff isn't visible.  The clear plastic bottles might just be a sparkle, or things are hidden by the grass.  But on a bike you can see them.

It's scattered around, not obvious, but I suddenly realized how much there was.  I wondered as I rode along how many bags of trash I could collect.















And then the next day, I got my answer.

From the point where the bags were sitting, there wasn't any trash any more, but they only collected a portion of the roadside.

Biking also gives you the opportunity to stop and check things out.  The red car along the side of the road was still there today, a week after I first saw it with its emergency lights blinking.





Sunday it had a handicapped permit hanging from the rear view mirror.

Yesterday (Monday) it was gone.




But there was a lot of other stuff in there.

And there was another car on the side of he road today/

You notice other stuff.  Like the telephone wires.  They go along most of the highway across the road.  (There are some on the side with the bike path too.)  Here are two other landmarks I haven't posted that show those wires across the road.

The Still Missing Wall lists people and the dates they went missing.  The wall looks different in a 2017 Maui News story on the building, which it identifies as a telephone exchange building built in 1942 at the navy air base.   And here's another source that tells a little more about the wall and the names.    If you click on the image, it gets bigger and sharper.


But also notice the telephone wires.











Here's another building - that's advertising for foster parents on that side of the road.  It also has the wires in front of it.

But in this picture, there's no telephone wires.  I took the picture because I noticed there were no wires, but when I wanted to take a similar picture, there were always wires in the way.  So I paid closer attention.  There's about a quarter mile (maybe half mile) stretch of the highway with no wires.  Well, there are wires, but they have been routed away from the highway and then back again a little later.  The thing I noticed was this:  the section without the wires along the west side of the highway includes the entrance to the electric company.  A coincidence?  Bears more research.

 Another interesting entrance is one to Maui Concrete.  As you can see, the highway above is asphalt.  But the road that goes to Maui Concrete looks like this:

Lots to see and ponder when you bike.  Especially when you take the same route for a while.  And walking, you see even more of the detail, but for a smaller area than cycling.

The Kealia Pond Nature Reserve had a tour today at 9am, so I met J there near the end of my bike ride.  There was a local couple with their 20 month old and 4 year grand children.  I'm afraid I didn't learn that much about the reserve, because they let me play grandpa with the kids.  Only two days left on Maui.  Then maybe we can catch some of the great October weather we've been hearing about in Anchorage.

Can You Figure Out What's Wrong with These Alaska Crime Report Charts?

Alaska's CRIME IN ALASKA 2017:  Uniform Crime Reporting Program Annual Report came out today.  You can get to the whole report  here.  I haven't read through the whole thing, because the first chart was so bad.  I got distracted looking at what was wrong with this chart.

Charts are supposed to help visual words or numbers, help you see relationships the column of numbers or verbal descriptions the visualize.  So here's the first chart in the report.

Look at this chart.  Can you tell what the numbers represent?  The gold (Non-Reporting) if I understand this right, is the number of people in jurisdictions that do not report crime statistics.  That makes sense because the population in 2017 was 739,000 people.

That is a problem, but not the major problem I see here.

Can you tell what my real problem is?  I'm going to distract you with some pictures that have nothing to do with this so you can think and not be distracted by my corrected chart.  Think about jeopardy music playing while you look at the pictures.

The raspberries are ripening daily in the back yard.













Have you figure out what's wrong with the chart?  If yes, scroll down.  If not, go back and figure it out.

A while back I posted about the city turning off the water one day because they're doing work on the old pipes.

Well, there are some upsides to this.  They're putting in new sidewalk/bike path along Lake Otis. Unfortunately, I think it's not related to which parts need it the most, but rather to where they had to dig to put in new pipes.  But it's better than nothing.  It was pretty gnarly.



OK, now go look at the chart I made of these numbers.  (I'm afraid I got green instead of gold for the non-reported population. I'm doing this in Mac's Numbers and it has limited combinations of colors.)

Here's a more accurate representation of the numbers:

As I said, the point of a chart is to help visualize the meaning of the data.  In the State report's chart, the vertical columns segment out the two different populations, but the length of the blue and gold has no relationship to the numbers.  The gold for 2013 is about 40% of the chart, when the actual number of unreported population is less than 1%.  The same distortion exists for all five years.   And the difference in total population for each year is also exaggerated.  In fact, the differences are so small that in a proportionally correct chart, you can barely see the gold (green in my chart) or the differences between the years.  They're really insignificant.  

Here's another unrealized chart.  (I'm trying to be diplomatic here.)  

The chart is better than trying to find this information in the text, but it could have organized the information in much more useful ways.  

My biggest problem is that I can see no order in the crimes selected.  The point seems to be to graphically show us how frequently different crimes occur.  So why not put them in order from least frequent to most frequent?  

The spacing around a clock isn't really relevant to anything.  The clock tells us nothing except this is about time.  But why is ROBBERY at the 3?  All the critical information is presented in words, not images.  As I said, all this does (and this is not unimportant) is highlight these frequencies by pulling them out of the text of the report and putting them in an image.  But the image itself doesn't show much thought about how to convey the numbers visually.  

Data visualization is one of the hottest fields in journalism today.  DATAVIZ folks are taking vast amounts of data and putting them into great charts that help people see complex ideas.  Here are some ideas on this from one of the leaders in the field, Alberto Cairo.

But these examples take Stone Age data charts and botch them.  

"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.  

"Nextdoor: An alternative reality where black Audis terrorize and everyone is a meth-addled menace"

Someone convinced me I should join Nextdoor - an online community where you can get to know people in your neighborhood and keep up with very local news - and it sounded like a good idea, so I did.  That was about a year ago.

More recently I've been noticing that a lot of people are posting about crime and suspicious people and situations.  I was beginning to think that there were a lot of fearful people on Nextdoor.  Sure, if someone breaks into you car or house, it's reasonable to be upset.  But if most of the posts on something like Nextdoor are about crime, it also magnifies people's perception of the dangers of their neighborhood.  (The same can be said for newspapers and tv news.)

Here are some recent posts from the Nextdoor pages from my neighborhood in Anchorage:

• Unsupervised Kids in Subsidized Housing Neighborhood [she's seen them carry hatchets and guns and take drugs]
• 2003 Black Tahoe stolen in midtown 1/30
• Car rifled. Stolen change, coffee cards, glasses and keys. They keys are for out o state property so not usable for them but a pain for us
• Abandoned Vehicle
• Mail thieves

These were interspersed with lost (and found) cats and dogs, items for sale, but I'd say at least 50% were crime or safety related.    

I guess it came to a head for me when someone posted a warning  earlier this month to be careful during the political seasons for misleading posts:

"Be aware of political actors for 2018, even now
Hey all, you may or may not have seen my activity in a thread regarding the mail voting situation. Just know, the Koch brothers have spent a TON of money in this area(I'm not joking or exaggerating), especially regarding unions, and don't take every resident at their word, because they may not be residents. You can talk to me in person, I'm not a member of anyone except my dance group."

That led M to write:

This is not a political site please do not post political posts .

Followed with:

Thank you M.  I'm thinking of quitting this site as I don't appreciate the nasty attitudes of some of these people.  When I signed up for this site I thought it was for neighbors to let neighbors know about thefts, car break-ins, etc., not an agenda to spout your political views no matter which side.  Surely there are other sites where you can go to vent.

Did that "Be aware of political actors" post sound nasty to you?  I guess "nasty attitudes" means things I disagree with because "Thank you M" was the nastiest attitude I saw.  Then others pointed out the guidelines allow for civil discussions of political issues that impact the local area.  But it appears that some people think this is just for reporting crimes and it seems there are people who see nothing but suspicious people and vehicles.

I'm not sure if people who aren't members can go to the link, but here are the guidelines for Don't Use Nextdoor as a Soapbox.


And so yesterday, when I saw this LA Times opinion piece, I felt a kindred spirit had written it.

Nextdoor: An alternative reality where black Audis terrorize and everyone is a meth-addled menace

He says all I've said, but he's much funnier.  Here's a brief sample:

"In the alternative reality that is Nextdoor, people are committing crimes I’ve never even thought of: casing, lurking, knocking on doors at 11:45 p.m., coating mailbox flaps with glue, “asking people for jumper cables but not actually having a car,” light bulb stealing, taking photos of homes, being an “unstable female” and “stashing a car in my private garage.”
From the very first time I logged on, my mission was clear: Do not let my lovely wife Cassandra find out about Nextdoor. Not because I didn’t want to worry her pretty little head, but because I didn’t want her bothering my pretty little head in panic about every black Audi driving down our block."

Prepare For The Coming Fall Of Trump

Trump's past has been glossed over for many, but it seems to be bubbling up in the Justice Department.  If you want to understand how Trump got where he is and why that is soon to undo him, you need to dig deeper than social media and mainstream media.

I'd recommend a few sources of information to get you up to speed if you aren't already there.

This New Yorker article by Adam Davidson steps back then steps forward to explain why even Trump supporters will start having doubts when all the facts about his business dealings come out.  He talks about how, as a reporter in Iraq, he saw the inevitable, but it took the American public much longer to realize we weren't winning there.  Then he talks about studying the Collateralized Debt Obligations and realizing that the banking world was going to come crashing down.  Again before the public did.

"I thought of those earlier experiences this week as I began to feel a familiar clarity about what will unfold next in the Trump Presidency. There are lots of details and surprises to come, but the endgame of this Presidency seems as clear now as those of Iraq and the financial crisis did months before they unfolded. Last week, federal investigators raided the offices of Michael Cohen, the man who has been closer than anybody to Trump’s most problematic business and personal relationships. This week, we learned that Cohen has been under criminal investigation for months—his e-mails have been read, presumably his phones have been tapped, and his meetings have been monitored. Trump has long declared a red line: Robert Mueller must not investigate his businesses, and must only look at any possible collusion with Russia. That red line is now crossed and, for Trump, in the most troubling of ways. Even if he were to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then had Mueller and his investigation put on ice, and even if—as is disturbingly possible—Congress did nothing, the Cohen prosecution would continue. Even if Trump pardons Cohen, the information the Feds have on him can become the basis for charges against others in the Trump Organization.
This is the week we know, with increasing certainty, that we are entering the last phase of the Trump Presidency. This doesn’t feel like a prophecy; it feels like a simple statement of the apparent truth."

Essentially, when the remaining Trump faithful see behind the curtain, they too will realize they've been swindled.  Eventually it happens to all frauds.  Watch as Toto pulls down the wizard's curtain.



Next, for those of you who have Netflix, the documentary series Dirty Money  ends with an episode on Donald Trump.  For those who have been paying attention there isn't that much new, but as names like Michael Cohen start getting more airtime, this gives some background on them and their relationship with Trump .  Just search for Dirty Money on Netflix, then go to the last episode of that series.  [I don't think I can link you straight to the movie within Netflix since you have to put in your passwords, so the link just goes to Netflix and you have to find Dirty Money episode six yourself.]

If you have more time, Netflix also has a four episode series called Trump: The American Dream.  This one gets much deeper into the Trump story.  (The use of superlatives to describe everything he does goes back a long time.)

Watching these videos will be like reading the program at the opera.  Soon the names and stories of Trump's henchmen and cronies will flash by in the news.  If you read the program now you'll know the backstories of these folks.

Just like with Nixon, there was a majority of Americans who stood by the President, simply because he was the President.  But slowly the circle around him got smaller and smaller as people in his administration were indicted.

At that time the Vietnam War also had the country polarized and those who held onto their belief in the President's innocence the longest were those who didn't want to believe these things about the president who was waging the war they so strongly believed in.

The details will be different this time round, but I suspect the end will be similar.  Nixon was much more traditional, much better informed about how Washington worked (he'd been a member of Congress and Eisenhower's vice president for eight years.)  Trump, I guess, believed that saying  "if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere."  He's in way over his head. And he has no self-control.   So his decline will  probably much more volatile.


And here are some posts I did to understand who Trump was back in 2016 that give background into his father and his mentor:

March 13, 2016:  To Know The Son, Know the Dad - So What Can We Learn From Trump's Dad?

June 24, 2016 -  "Roy Cohn was one of the most loathsome characters in American history, so why did he have so many influential friends?"] Roy Cohn was important in Trump's rise to power and appears in the videos.

November 6, 2016:    What A Trump Presidency Would Look Like   -  If you do your homework, some predictions aren't that hard.  I suspect many of you would have made similar predictions.  I'm comfortable pointing out what I said before we knew who won the election.