"But, Son, the thing is, Thula wants you to stay here. "

Joe gets home one evening from school to find the rest of the family packed up in the car.

"What's up, Pop? Where are we going?" Joe murmured.
Harry looked down at the boards planking the porch, then raised his eyes and gazed off into the dark, wet woods over Joe's shoulder.
"We can't make it here, Joe.  There's nothing else for it.  Thula won't stay, at any rate.  She's insisting."
"Where are we going to go?"
Harry turned to meet Joe's eyes.
"I'm not sure.  Seattle, for now, then California maybe.  But, Son, the thing is, Thula wants you to stay here.  I would stay with you, but I can't.  The little kids are going to need a father more than you are.  You're pretty much all grown up now anyway."

 Joe was ten at the time.  It was 1924 in timber country near Seattle.  Joe's life wasn't easy.

The Boys in the Boat slips back and forth between Joe's time on the University of
Washington crew team as they push themselves to the limit in hopes of making it to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and his challenging life growing up as a kid whose mother dies and whose step-mother really can't deal with him.  And then, from the passage above, how he scrambles to survive as best he can on his own.

Along the way we get a good deal of Northwest history - the 1920s and 30s.  We visit downtown Seattle's Hooverville.  Joe helps  build the Grand Coolie Dam, and we get intimate with the anatomy of spruce.  A second track, though much shorter,  carries us through the planning of the 1936 Olympics, particularly the role of film maker Leni Riefenstahl.  Along these two tracks are two stories headed for a collision at the end of the book.  We know, going in, what's going to happen.  It's the telling of the story that keeps the pages turning.

There's a good reason this book is selling well.  Even though author Daniel James Brown covers the seamier sides of things, this really is a fairy tale where Cinderella is going to marry the prince in the end.

Here's the clip of the final rowing event at the 1936 Olympics with Joe in the winning skull, from Riefenstahl's movie glorifying Nazi Germain and, the way Brown writes, the first really spectacular media event Olympics. It makes much more sense after you've read the book.

Q: Who Was The Greatest Wrestler Of All Time?

A:  Milo of Croton (according to  listverse)

"Most historians agree that Milo remains to this day the greatest wrestler and fighter (from any combat sport) the world has ever known. Milo of Croton became an Olympic champion several times during his nearly thirty-year career. His size and physique were intimidating, and his strength and technique perfect—and many people accordingly believed that he was  the son of Zeus."

Perseus tells us more:

"According to our ancient sources, Milo enjoyed showing off his unrivaled strength. For instance, he would clasp a pomegranate in his hand and have others try to take it away from him. Even though he was holding it so tightly that no one could remove it, he never damaged the fruit. Sometimes, he would stand on a greased iron disk and challenge others to push him off of it. Another of his favorite exhibitions was tying a cord around his forehead, holding his breath, and breaking the cord with his bulging forehead veins. Other times, the wrestler would stand with his right arm at his side, his elbow against him, and hold out his hand with thumb pointed upwards and fingers spread. No one could successfully bend even his little finger. "

A Princeton webpage tells us he is supposed to have been close to Pythagoras:

"Milo was said to be an associate of Pythagoras. One story tells of the wrestler saving the philosopher's life when a roof was about to collapse upon him, and another that Milo may have married the philosopher's daughter Myia."

UCLA IS THE CHAMP - Sports Illustrated Cover Story 50 Years Ago Today

When I was a college student, sports was a big deal.  Probably because I started college when UCLA started winning basketball championships.  When I was at my mom's in LA recently, I found this old copy of Sports Illustrated with the cover story of UCLA's first championship.  It was exciting times.







Here's the article inside.  I saved these as really big files so you can click on the pictures below and magnify them and you'll be able to read them.

Click on the picture and use the magnifying glass and you can read this

To get some perspective, that cheerleader on the right has got to be somewhere between 67 and 72 today.

This is, in no way, intended to take any glory from today's final four.  I just thought it appropriate to post this on the 50th anniversary of the publication.  In fact, I did post on this once, but I didn't have the pictures.  I thought I'd just add the pictures to that post, but since it is the exact day today, another post seemed appropriate.

50 Years Since UCLA Bruins Won Their First Basketball Championship

My first semester at UCLA, Spring 1963 (yes, back then you can start school and graduate in the mid-semester, not just June).  I remember watching the basketball championships on a big tv screen in the student union.  UCLA lost somewhere well before the championship game.

But the next semester, things were different.  Walt Hazard, Gail Goodrich, Fred Slaughter,  Keith Erickson, Kenny Washington started off with a bang.  They won their first few games and then there was the LA championship (I don't recall the exact title of the tournament) at the Sports Arena.  They were playing Michigan, a traditionally good team.  A friend in LA had a boyfriend from Michigan who told us UCLA hadn't played any real teams and when they played Michigan, the winning streak would be over.  I just recall the first four minutes of the game, where UCLA put its full court press on display for the first time that I think it really got noticed.  At the end of four minutes it was 16-0 UCLA and they went on to win 30 games that season with no losses.

Every game was a nail biter as we wondered if they could extend their winning streak, which they did into the final game against Duke.

This all came back to me in January when I was cleaning things out in my mom's garage and ran across my copy of the mid-March 1964 Sports Illustrated with the cover story on UCLA's win.  I decided to wait until March to post it, but it seems, the picture I took is on an older sound card and the magazine is back home in Anchorage now.  But this is the time, so I'll put the picture up when we get back to Anchorage.

[UPDATE:   I posted the cover and the article here on the exact 50th anniversary of the Sports Illustrated date.]

A couple years later I remember watching the Freshman team with the new recruit Lew Alcindor, play the national champion varsity team and win.  A sign of even more championships to come.

UCLA basketball and football helped me understand the power of group spirit (and insanity), as the whole school, it seemed, had its spirit lifted and dashed if the team won or lost.  I got over that after I graduated, though at times in my rural Thailand town, I could listen to UCLA basketball games late at night coming via the Armed Forces Network in Saigon. 

Colorado Legalizing Marijuana Leads to Denver's Superbowl Debacle

That's the kind of simplistic cause and effect thinking we see so much of on the web.  Our tendency to, without any thought,  use events, to support what we believe, has become rampant.  (OK, I'm not sure it's more rampant now than in the past, but the net lets us see it more.) 

But given that Washington State also legalized marijuana, they should have lost badly too, by the title's logic.  But if you really want to believe that legal marijuana is the devil, you could still argue that Colorado is far ahead of Washington in terms of actually selling it. 

Or, we could leap off another illogical cliff and say legalizing marijuana will get your team into the Superbowl. 

People Born In 1914: Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Obiwan Ben Kenobi

When I did my first post on people born 100 years ago - 1908 - there weren't many lists like that available.  Nowadays, there's a lot more available. And mine got so elaborate that they took forever to write. So I'm going to leave it to others now to do the comprehensive lists and just focus on a few folks that were important to me and to the world.  To see one of the more comprehensive lists go to NNDB.

Here are two people whose roles were their public persona:  George Reeves (Superman) and Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger.)  And one more - Alec Guinness - whose acting career was much greater than the only role that many know him as - Obiwan Ben Kenobi. 

Alec Guinness April 2, 1914- August 5, 2000 (86) Guinness was a great actor.  I first remember him from The Horse's Mouth.  He went on to win an Academy Award as a Colonel in Bridge on The River Kwai.   He was a prince in Lawrence of Arabia and a general in Dr. Zhivago. A Business Insider article in 2013 quotes Guinness' biography: "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept, if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps." Guinness goes on to recall Twentieth Century Fox offered him $150,000 plus two percent of the producer's profit in January 1976 for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi – double what they offered him the week before." More about this great actor of the 20th Century here  and here.

George Reeves January 5, 1914 - June 15, 1959 One of my first memories of irony was that the man of steel committed suicide.  Below is a video bio of Reeves.  The video suggests maybe he didn't commit suicide.

From a Clayton More website Jack Carlton Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 14, 1914. He was the youngest of three boys who grew up in a loving family home. His father was a real estate developer. Before his rise to the silver screen, Moore first became an acrobat in a flying circus troupe when he was in his twenties. This troupe of talented daredevils was the first to work without the benefit of a net, and the first to work over water. After Moore left the troupe, he went on to do some modeling jobs in New York before he finally found his way to Hollywood in 1938. He had changed his name to Clayton Moore in the mean time, and he did some stuntman work and some extra parts for the movie industry. By 1941, Moore was working steady for Republic Pictures. He portrayed heroes, the guys in the white hats, as well as bad guys, who always wore the black hats, of course, in several western movies. But it was 1949 when Clayton Moore finally got the big break that would change his life forever. "The Lone Ranger Show" had been on the radio for fifteen years by now, and Republic Pictures had already produced a couple of low-cost Lone Ranger films. But the studio decided it was time to make a weekly series out of the famous "Lone Ranger." (From Weirdscifi - I originally got the picture above from there too, but it really is weird because the picture changed to something pretty weird and I had to find a new source.)

There are others of significance born in 1914 and I may do additional posts to cover some of them.  But for now, here are some highlights.

Jonas Salk Oct 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995 (80) - Probably the man born in 1914 who had the most positive impact on the world was Jonas Salk, the man who invented the polio vaccine.

Kenneth Bancroft Clark  - July 24, 1914 - May 1, 2004 (89) The first black fully tenured professor at City University of New York and first black president of the American Psychological Society, his study of the effects of discrimination in the US played a key role in the landmark Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education.  Also worked with Gunnar Myrdal on his classic study of race in the US. 

Sports:
Joe DiMaggio   November 25, 1014 - March 8, 1999 (84)
Joe Louis  May 13, 1914 - April 12, 1981 (66)
Tenzing Norgay  May 15, 1914 - May 9, 1986 (71)

Writers:
William Bourroughs  Feb 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997 (83)
Ralph Ellison   March 1, 1914 - April 16, 1994 (80)
John Hersey June 17, 1914 - March 24, 1993  (78)
Bernard Malahmud  April 26, 1914 - March 18, 1986 (71)
Octavio Paz  March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998 (84)
Dylan Thomas October 27, 1914 - Nov 9, 1953 (41)

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Alaskan Related:
Hale Boggs  Feb 15, 1914 - Oct 16, 1972  - Louisiana Congressman, and father of Cokie Roberts, died in plane crash with Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich. 
William A. Egan  Oct 8, 1914 - May 6 1984  - Two time Alaska governor.


War and Space:
 James Van Allen  Sept 7, 1914 - August 9 2006 (91)
William Westmoreland March 26, 1914 - July 18, 2005 (91)

Tale of Two Cities - Divided Between Anchorage And LA

Ice Wall Seward Highway south of Anchorage

It was several degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) when we left Anchorage just after midnight Christmas morning.  It was ridiculously warm (on the way to mid 80s) and clear as we arrived into LA almost 40 minutes early around 8 am.  (There'd been a stopover in Seattle)

So this post is going to mix some leftover Anchorage photos from a great sightseeing day with New York based film maker Thanachart Siripatrachai mid December with photos of flying into LA today.  That jumble of hot and cold, wilderness and urban has been the last year as we try to spend as much time with my mom in LA as possible, yet maintain our Anchorage activities.  So why shouldn't you go back and forth between the two too?

Anchorage sunset Dec. 12, about 3:45 pm returning from Glen Alps.









Flying into LA Christmas Day, looking south toward Palos Verdes with Catalina Island very clear in the background.  LAX in the foreground.  We were early and spent some time flightseeing over LA.









Benz (Thanachart) checking out mostly frozen Turnagain Arm.  It was about 10˚F (-7˚C) that day and while it was mostly clear when we left the house, twenty minutes later it was mostly cloudy in the Arm and soon began to snow lightly.

And there was a brisk wind.  We walked around Beluga Point checking the ice formation on the water.  It was getting really cold with the wind.  So it was a little surprising when we saw three people get out of a car.  She was wearing lots of white. They climbed over the barricade and over the railroad tracks.  She pulled off her shawl and they started taking wedding pictures.  He had on an overcoat and scarf.

We came into LA, just north of the airport headed east (earlier photo above) came back a bit, and then looped around north with this view of downtown and all the mountain backdrops clearly displayed.  When we completed the circle we were headed west right over the Coliseum.

It was the 1984 Summer Olympics that made me realize what a huge part of my life the LA Coliseum had been.  From Boy Scout jamborees to rodeos,  early Dodger games and UCLA football games - I'd been to the Coliseum for various events all my early life.

Click to see map better

And at the LA Sports arena (the white oval)  I saw Lyndon Johnson nominated to be the vice presidential candidate with John Kennedy in 1960.  Someone had given my mom tickets and we were way up near the rafters, but we were there.  And I watched the UCLA basketball team in 1963 beat number one Michigan there - getting 16 points in a row at the beginning of the game - to go on for their first undefeated season and the beginning of their dynasty.  I also spent a lot of time in the museums and rose garden there at Exposition Park as a kid.  Followed by my graduate studies next door at USC.  Lots of my formative years spent in these few square blocks below us in the airplane yesterday morning.

 After we stopped at Bells Nursery (previous post on Christmas trees) Benz and I drove up to Glen Alps and walked to the Powerline Pass trail.





























We're closing in on the airport here.  I'm looking north as LA stretches to the hills.  It stretches even further over the hills in the valley.  And south out the other side of the plane.  And east.  But you can't see it quite this clear most days. 

This part of Chugach State Park is about 20 minutes from downtown Anchorage.  Nothing out there but nature- trees and bushes, a few trails, moose, bear, and other smaller critters. 

Here's Benz, tanning, Anchorage winter style. 









To put the top ice picture into perspective, I thought I better add this one Benz sent me.  All these are sharper if you click them.

AIFF2013: Surfing From Sitka To Homer - Video Intro with Fred Dickerson on Alaska Sessions

A month long winter surf trip from Sitka to Homer.  Why haven't I seen the Alaska Visitors' Bureau hyping this vacation package instead of cruises?

The director of Alaska Sessions:  Surfing The Last Frontier gives a brief intro in the video below.

The movie plays Sunday, Dec. 8 at 1pm at the Alaska Experience Theater.

Did You Tell Your Kids You Love Them Today?

"I want to tell you that from the moment you were in my belly, I loved you dearly. I love you then, today and always. You are my world, my everything. Without you, there's no me."

That's the letter high school football player Damian Sanchez got from his mom when his football coach sent letters home asking the parents to write down how they feel about their sons in a letter.

Then he had the players bring them back in a sealed envelope.  One day he had them all together for a meeting and passed out the letters.

What happened next took everyone by surprise. For the next 15 minutes or so, wherever Matsumoto looked he saw players sobbing — against walls, in corners, bent over in chairs.
"I've never seen anything like it," said Shalls Jacome, the team's 22-year-old offensive coordinator.

Letters of love

Players read letters their parents wrote to them.

Cesar Orozco, a senior offensive lineman, broke down when he read what his mother had written in Spanish: "You know deep inside I love you. And you're the most important thing in my life. You know I would die for you."
"I don't really get told that at home," Cesar said. "For me to be reading that, it really touches me."
John Mercado, a sophomore lineman, sobbed so hard reading his mother's letter that he had to pause before finishing. He had come close to quitting the team when his parents lost their jobs and needed financial help.
His mother wrote in Spanish: "I'm very proud. You're the nicest kid I've ever raised and during hard times you don't ever ask for anything."

 This is more than just a feel good human interest story.  This is a pretty stark and amazing testament to everyone's need for love.  While it makes total sense and I've believed that if everyone had a loving, caring family, there would be no wars, it still was surprising.   It's worth reading the whole thing.  We should always try to find the human being hidden in the bodies, and behind the facades, all around us.  When you find that real person inside  you can have authentic conversation and communication. 

Here's the link to the whole LA Times story. 

[Feedburner note:  This post was up on blogrolls in less than 15 minutes.  The two previous posts took two hours or less to get to blogrolls.  I'm hoping this was a problem that feedburner had and now they have fixed it.  We'll see.]

If Biogenesis Had a Contract With NSA - Headlines Would Be About Stolen Data, Not Baseball Players' Drug Use - Obama Responds

The information which led to the suspension of a dozen major league baseball players this week, was stolen from the company.  A disgruntled client/employee/investor took boxes of data and released the information to the press.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

"Porter Fischer, a former employee of the now-infamous Biogenesis clinic in Miami, told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that there are at least a dozen more athletes across numerous professional sports leagues that have yet to be exposed.
Fischer turned the Biogenesis clinic investigation into a national scandal when he turned boxes of documents over to the Miami New Times last year."

But the reaction of the nation led by the media is in stark contrast to the reaction to the whistle blowers who released information to the world, at great personal risk, because they thought the public needed to be aware of what was being done by the government.  I'm not necessarily endorsing the actions of the whistle-blowers, but I'm sympathetic to their motivation.

Propublica has a timeline of people prosecuted under the Espionage Act.   Here are the key people on it:

• 1971: Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo indicted
• 1985: Samuel Morison convicted
• January 2006: Lawrence Franklin convicted
• May 2010: Shamai Leibowitz convicted
• August 2010: Stephen Kim indicted
• December 2010: Jeffrey Sterling indicted
• Jun. 2011: Case against Thomas Drake dropped
• October 2012: John Kiriakou convicted
• June 14, 2013: Edward Snowden Charged  
• July 30, 2013: Bradley Manning Convicted 

John Kiriakou, one of the men on the list, recently wrote:

"President Obama has been unprecedented in his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute those whose whistleblowing he wants to curtail. The purpose of an Espionage Act prosecution, however, is not to punish a person for spying for the enemy, selling secrets for personal gain, or trying to undermine our way of life. It is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially. It is meant to send a message to anybody else considering speaking truth to power: challenge us and we will destroy you.

Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama."

 
The leaks of classified documents by people working for government raises many questions, about the leakers and about the government and its reaction to the leakers. However, there is a great difference between whistle blowers and spies.

Spies sell information to foreign governments for profit, because they are being blackmailed, because of ideology, or a combination of more than one of these.  A report on the motivation of spies on this US Department of Agriculture site by By Dr. Mike Gelles Naval Criminal Investigative Service says that most spies have personal issues that the organization should be looking for.  But this report is about spies, not about whistle blowers. 

True whistle blowers believe that the government is doing something that is in serious violation of the law and poses a danger to the public if the information is not released.  They can be right or wrong about this.  And its possible that the information they release causes some danger as well as needed information.  This has some similarity to when a dangerous prisoner is released because the technical rules of justice were violated.  We balance two different important values.

Reporters prosecuted for espionage raise even greater issues.  John Kiriakou writes:

Two of my espionage charges were the result of a conversation I had with a New York Times reporter about torture. I gave him no classified information – only the business card of a former CIA colleague who had never been undercover. The other espionage charge was for giving the same unclassified business card to a reporter for ABC News. All three espionage charges were eventually dropped.

People in power have always tried to keep information from the public.  Some of it is legitimately withheld - the Freedom of Information Act outlines the kinds of information that is exempted from release.  But often, information that the people should know is hidden by those exemptions.

The film  Dirty Wars  which we saw Monday night is one more account of the serious abuse of secrecy in the federal government.  The film raises many questions, I don't have time to pursue now.

Knowledge of what our government is doing is critical to citizens of a democracy making good choices when they vote.   One can't help wonder how much the government is hiding simply because it is embarrassing.  The Municipality of Anchorage, for example, when it settles with someone who has sued the Municipality, includes language which requires the person to not disclose the details of the settlement.  When asked by the media (if they are paying attention at all) about the settlement, the Muni officials say the conditions of the settlement prevent them from saying anything.  Even though this is a condition they insist on and require.  Basically, this is to keep the public from knowing what the Muni did wrong and how much they paid to make it go away.

And yesterday I read that the encrypted email service David Snowden used has shut down:

"The statement posted online by Lavabit owner Ladar Levison hinted that the Dallas-based company had been forbidden from revealing what was going on."

The release of millions of classified documents by Bradley Manning and David Snowden raises huge questions about [the culpability of the government's handling of this sort of data such as:]

• how these folks had access to all this information
• how they  could download and store this information without detection, without the computer programs alerting officials to what was happening
• why private contractors are doing this work 
• how contracting out this work sets up an interest group with motivation to lobby Congress to increase the amount of secrecy and spying

[The government has pushed the danger of terrorism, it seems, in part to keep the focus off questions on their lax security procedures.]

The amount of media attention on these issues has been tiny.

Yet, when Porter Fisher walks off with Biogenesis files and makes them public, the attention is on the drug use of the subjects of the files, not on the breach of the confidentiality of their medical records or on the theft of the files.

How we handle whistleblowers, whether government employees, private contractors, or the journalists who publish the information the leak, is a problem which may be evolving into the biggest danger to democracy in the US today as the NSA, FBI, CIA, the White House and their many corporate contractors, ruthlessly work to silence anyone who dares to reveal their actions.  


Obama came on the radio as I'm finishing this, responding to some of these issues.  Does that means he's monitoring my computer and reading my posts before I even publish them?  I'm sure they don't even know this blog exists.  Here are the four points Obama made:

1. Reforms to Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act
2. Oversight  over the FISA Court - they only hear one side of the issue, they can have adversarial procedures with civil liberty groups expressing their concerns act  in the courts
3. We can be more transparent - instructed inteeligence agency to be as transparent as possible and a website of intelligency agencies to be more transparent and explain what it's doing
4. High level group of outside experts to review and recommend - interim report in 60 days and final report by the end of the year

Now he's answering questions.  You can listen live here.

Took New Camera To Mariners Game - They Won, But Modern Cameras Can Be Creepy

Went to the Mariners game with Minnesota Thursday night.  It was balmy and shirt sleeves were comfortable even on the ferry ride back.  I also brought my new camera on this trip - my daughter's request - and I'm figuring out more things I can do with it.

But I've also concluded it can be a lot more clinical, almost forensic.  We were in the upper bleachers. Though this photo of the strike was a little closer.  R wanted to see what things looked like from the top of the bleachers in right field. I took this on the way back.

Strike

Safe at first

This was the beginning of the game.  I haven't been to a major league ball game in probably 15 years or more.  I remember when ball fields were named after the ball team - like Dodger stadium.  Nowadays companies buy the right to put their name on the stadium so every time you refer to it, it's a mini-advertisement for the comapny.   I don't do advertising here - though sometimes I'll tell people about something I thought was really good - so I won't mention the name of the field.  I'll just call it Mariners Field.

Seattle started scoring early.  They got six runs in the second inning.  This one is the first or second run. 

I took these pictures from up in the bleachers.  This camera takes really sharp pictures.  I have to learn how to make this less about sharp and more about beautiful.

When R and I went to check out right field, I saw how intrusive this camera can be.  Look at this:

 

The people in the bubble - upper right - were blown up from the little circle in the stands.  You can take pictures with cameras anyone can buy and get sharp enough pictures to id people from about a quarter of a mile away.  The right field was 326 feet from home plate and we were in the upper upper bleachers. It's a little creepy.  

It was knitting night at the game and we were sitting in the middle of the knitting section.  My son had his knitting with him.  More on that in another post.

R made sure he got some blue cotton candy before we got back to our seats.

And I made sure I got this picture of Mt. Ranier in the evening sun before we got back to our seats.

We left in the 6th inning.  It was 8-0 Mariners and we'd promised to try to get the 10:05 ferry back to Bainbridge so R could get to bed by 11pm.  Here was the view as the ferry was pulling out of downtown Seattle.  The Ferris wheel was more like the blue in the water, but I couldn't figure an easy way to get the right color.

And as we got into Bainbridge, they announced over the loudspeaker that the moon had just risen over Seattle.  So I went out and got this picture.  Other than using a telephoto lens and boosting the exposure - after the fact - of the city lights, this is pretty much undcotored and what it looked like.

Thanks J, it was a fun night out. 

“The bullshit part of it, isn’t that part of the story too?”

“Billy wonders if Norm will run for office someday.  He’s as polished a public speaker as any of the politicians Bravo has encountered over the past two weeks.  He has the presence, the werds, plus he’s mastered the wounded, vaguely petulant tone that is the style of political speech these days.  If there’s a grating artificiality in the performance - Norm’s awareness of himself as performer, sneaking peeks at a mental mirror off to the side - it’s no worse than any other fixture of the public realm.  Billy has noticed that audiences don’t seem to mind anymore.  All the fakeness just rolls right off them, maybe because the nonstop sales job of American life has instilled in them exceptionally high thresholds for sham, puff, spin, bullshit, and outright lies, in other words for advertising in all its forms.  Billy himself never noticed how fake it all is until he’d done time in a combat zone."  (p. 131)

That's Norman  Oglesby, President of the Dallas Cowboys.  To catch you up, Bravo Squad, media heroes because an embedded Fox news crew captured their victorious counterattack of insurgents, are on a two week war publicity tour across the US, before finishing their tour of duty in Iraq.  They are now at a Dallas Cowboys game, the guests of Cowboys president Norman Oglesby. Norm is talking to the press about the exploits of the Bravo Company.  Billy, the title's hero, whose voice we hear alongside that of the narrator, is constantly thinking.

I’m still reading Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a novel, by Benjamin Fountain.  Almost done though.  He’s carefully pulling the facade off everything, trying to expose what he can find of 'truth.' 


Later Billy’s thoughts turn to the media.

“Norm merely smiles for the cameras, which click away like parakeets cracking seeds.  A few of the medias keep on about the stadium, but Norm ignores them.  Billy begins to get a sense of the dynamic here, a power equation along the lines of the CEO of a giant corporation vis-á-vis the urinal puck he so thoughtfully studies as it’s drenched with his mighty personal stream.  It is Norm’s job to maximize the value of the Cowboys brand, and it is the job of the media to soak up every drop, dab, and dribble of PR he sends their way.  As sentient human beings endowed with reason and free will they naturally resent such treatment;  perhaps this explains their sourpuss attitude, the karmic dampness that breathes off them like the towel hamper at a gym.  Tomorrow he’ll read the newspaper and wonder why this, too, isn’t part of the story:  that the press, however grudgingly, gathered as instructed to record in its stenographic capacity Norm’s presentation of Bravo Squad, a blatantly formulaic marketing event that enlightened no one, revealed nothing, and served no tangible purpose other than to big-up awareness of the Cowboys brand.

The bullshit part of it, isn’t that part of the story too?  But not a word, not a murmur, not a peep from the press about how thoroughly they’ve been used, and no hint of their personal feelings toward Norm, which, as Billy infers from the body language, consist in roughly equal measure of resentment and fear.  If he so wished, Norm could probably get any one of them fired.  .   .” (pp. 144-145) [emphasis added]

I try here, as best I can, when in situations like that, to report the bullshit and not ignore it.  Or sometimes I just lay it out there with the assumption that it's so obvious that readers will figure it out. 



The previous post on the book is here. 


[UPDATE Nov 4, 2015:  A report requested by US Senators McCain and Flake:

"Americans deserve the ability to assume that tributes for our men and women in military uniform are genuine displays of national pride, which many are, rather than taxpayer-funded DOD marketing gimmicks," Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, the report's co-authors, wrote.

 Also, I see a movie of the book is due out in 2016.]

UAA Sports Program Provides More Excitement Than The Teams And Regents Don't Like It Public

Our ride home from the airport last night mentioned the brouhaha over the firing of the hockey coach at UAA.  All this happened after we left and despite the ADN subscription folks assuring me that I could follow the ADN online, while it has some things the print version doesn't (like nasty comments), it's harder for me to peruse the news stories. Besides, I prefer reading the newspapers where I'm traveling.

So I looked online, and found Wednesday's story in the sports section (where it belongs, but not where I'd look online.)  I was struck by the concern for keeping things from the public expressed by Regents:

"Regent Gloria O'Neill of Anchorage called the events 'extremely unfortunate, because it was so public.' 

"'As you think forward, what kind of communication strategy (can you) employ in the future ... so this nastiness does not have to play out in the community?' she asked Case."

Really?!  The university doesn't belong to the regents.  It belongs to the residents of Alaska.  It's not the regents job to hide things from the press and the public.  It's important that the public see the bad as well as the good so they can better judge how well the Regents and the President and the Chancellors are doing.  Here's another regent's comments:

"I don't like to read things in the newspaper before I hear about them (from you)," [Regent Fuller Cowell] said. "In this case I had a dozen emails before I heard anything from the university whatsoever.

"We've got to a figure out a way to communicate instantly with the Board of Regents, or at least keep us in the loop so we're aware this problem is developing so we can seem coherent when people ask us what is happening."

I can understand not wanting to be blind-sided, but exactly how much and about what does this Regent want to be told in advance?  Or is it just this one item because it's become a hot political potato?  It seems like, at least the way the ADN quoted him, his main concern is not to be embarrassed.

Then: 

After 25 minutes of public discussion, the board took the rest of the conversation behind closed doors. 

From the Board's by-laws:

"B.      Executive Sessions.
To the full extent allowed and pursuant to procedures provided by AS 44.62.310, the board or a committee of the board may go into executive session upon majority vote. Voice votes are authorized on all motions made during executive sessions. At any time during executive session, without regard to how the regent voted, a motion to reconsider the motion to go into executive session may be made by any regent, and discussed by the board or committee in executive session. If the board makes findings during an executive session, the findings will be made a part of the record of the proceedings and will be open to inspection by the public at reasonable times."

AS 44.62.310 discusses what can be discussed in executive session:

(b) If permitted subjects are to be discussed at a meeting in executive session, the meeting must first be convened as a public meeting and the question of holding an executive session to discuss matters that are listed in (c) of this section shall be determined by a majority vote of the governmental body. The motion to convene in executive session must clearly and with specificity describe the subject of the proposed executive session without defeating the purpose of addressing the subject in private. Subjects may not be considered at the executive session except those mentioned in the motion calling for the executive session unless auxiliary to the main question. Action may not be taken at an executive session, except to give direction to an attorney or labor negotiator regarding the handling of a specific legal matter or pending labor negotiations.

(c) The following subjects may be considered in an executive session:

(1) matters, the immediate knowledge of which would clearly have an adverse effect upon the finances of the public entity;

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential;

(4) matters involving consideration of government records that by law are not subject to public disclosure.

(d) This section does not apply to

(1) a governmental body performing a judicial or quasi-judicial function when holding a meeting solely to make a decision in an adjudicatory proceeding;

(2) juries;

(3) parole or pardon boards;

(4) meetings of a hospital medical staff;

(5) meetings of the governmental body or any committee of a hospital when holding a meeting solely to act upon matters of professional qualifications, privileges or discipline;

(6) staff meetings or other gatherings of the employees of a public entity, including meetings of an employee group established by policy of the Board of Regents of the University of Alaska or held while acting in an advisory capacity to the Board of Regents; or

(7) meetings held for the purpose of participating in or attending a gathering of a national, state, or regional organization of which the public entity, governmental body, or member of the governmental body is a member, but only if no action is taken and no business of the governmental body is conducted at the meetings.  [If anyone can tell me what's in the html code that is making this all bold, please do.  I copied it from the statutes.  It doesn't show bold in the compose page, but does in my preview.]

The ADN article does not tell us what the motion to go into executive session said, so it's not clear why they went into executive session.  Of the four, the only possible two, would be:

(2) subjects that tend to prejudice the reputation and character of any person, provided the person may request a public discussion;

(3) matters which by law, municipal charter, or ordinance are required to be confidential;

(2) would generally have to do with personnel issues which this is, but it seems to me the discussion was less about Cobb than about the process that led to his firing and possibly pressure applied to the university.  (3) most likely here would also be personnel issues, but there could be other things.  But the motion to take the issue to executive session should have clearly stated the reason.  

What person's reputation and character might have been prejudiced?  It seems the key people involved were Chancellor Case and ex-Athletic Director Cobb.  Case was there and could have asked for the meeting to be public.  Cobb, presumably, wasn't there, so he couldn't.  I'm guessing he well might have.  Or was it because they wanted to discuss the roles of President Gamble and Governor Parnell in the firing of Cobb?  [See Anchorage Daily News May 29, 2013] Those shouldn't have been shielded by an executive session, but I'm not positive. 

Looking at both articles, including some of the comments, it seems to me that the hockey supporters were strongly opposed to Cobb and that supporters of other sports thought he was ok to good.

It also looks like this decision might not have been made by Chancellor Case.  I don't believe that executive session is legitimate if the purpose is to hide the role of University administrators and the governor.  And Cobb's character couldn't be prejudiced any more than it already has been publicly by his opponents and by his own comments given to the ADN.

In a blistering statement given to the Daily News, Cobb said Gamble didn't speak to him or anyone in the athletic department before the university's decision to fire him. He also took aim at Ashley Reed, a lobbyist who was among those who encouraged Parnell to get involved.

"Patrick Gamble may be mentally ill," Cobb said in the statement, "when you give away the university to Ashley Reed and a few local scoundrels, you are by definition insane and I intend to prove it in court.

"Gamble made the decision to fire me without speaking to one employee of the UAA Athletic Department, not one staff member, not one coach, not one student-athlete and certainly not me. Apparently Ashley Reed is the final authority.

Taking this a slightly different direction,  I also want to point out how easy it is for us to read something in newspaper article and remember selected parts.  It was only the Regent statements expressing concern about keeping nastiness out of the public view and not wanting to be embarrassed that I remembered.  Where were the substantive comments about the actual problems raised about sports?  Well, in a second reading, I found that they were there all along.

Regent Jo Heckman of Fairbanks seemed to be referencing that incident when she asked about policies addressing the behavior of authority figures.

"Do we have very stringent policies on acceptable behavior of the heads of different arenas, whether it's hockey or basketball coaches or athletic directors or assistant coaches?'' she said. "Do we have good policies we can hang our hats on?"

 And

Regent Mary Hughes of Anchorage urged the chancellors at UAA and UAF, Alaska's only schools with intercollegiate sports, to stay on top of what's happening in their athletic departments and to make sure those departments don't become too separate from the rest of the university.

UAA Hockey Coach Search Gets Saturation Coverage, Chancellor Search Was Ignored

When the University of Alaska Anchorage sought a Chancellor several of years ago, the Anchorage Daily News, as I recall, ignored the story completely.  The head of the whole campus, the dominant institution of higher education, a major economic and cultural driver of the city, the region, and state even, was searching for a CEO, and no one paid attention except a blogger and the school newspaper.

But when it comes time to hire a hockey coach and the Daily News is all over the story:

UAA names 4 finalists for hockey coach position

Corbett states his case to take over at UAA

Prospective UAA hockey coach cites work with legends   

Prospective UAA hockey coach cites work with legends

Ex-UAA assistant ready to take over Seawolves

Utica's Heenan wants to rebuild UAA

UAA puts search for hockey coach on hold to revamp committee

UAA suspends search for head hockey coach
Heenan, Brown still interested in UAA hockey job



Even the Denver Post and, gasp, the Wall Street Journal covered this search.

Say, maybe they would have paid more attention to the Chancellor search if they had realized that the Chancellor is responsible for hiring a hockey coach. 

Reptile Man, Soccer Game, And Pigs' Ears

Been busy with the family here.  Last night we went to see the Reptile Man at R's school. 

An hour of aligators and snakes.  The kids really ate it up.   A good way to welcome in the Year of the Snake. 








Today, we went over an hour - car and ferry - to Snohomish for T's soccer game.  It was gray and slightly drizzly the whole time, but I got to walk about 3.5 miles around the track while I watched the game. 

This turned out to be the winning goal was made in the first ten minutes or so.

 

Then, after a Pho lunch, we went to 99 Ranch in Lynnwood on the way back to the ferry to Kingston.  This is a huge Asian grocery store.  And on the day before Chinese New Year, it was really crowded.  But lots and lots of great things.  

 

Venice Beach Skate Board Whiz

Besides catching a great white shark on the Venice Pier Friday, there were lots of other things going on along Venice Beach.  At the skate board plaza, things were less crowded than I've seen in the past, but this young kid with a black helmet, is well on his way to his 10,000 hours.  He's comes on about 20 seconds into the video.

Alaska Native Republican Shootout Supporter Loses in Southeast Election

[UPDATE Nov. 21:  The final tally had Kreiss-Tomkins ahead by 32.   KCAW reported that Thomas, when asked if he'd ask for a recount, replied

“I’m not going to say because I want the suspense to lay there. The guy was such an a–hole,” he said. “You know, he lied on so many things and he was supposed to run a clean campaign and he didn’t. So I’m just going to wait.”
Thomas also didn’t hesitate to make his feelings known about the results of the election.
“The district just committed hara-kiri,” he said. “They just didn’t realize what they had as far as seniority and leadership position.”

Not a lot of class, I'm afraid.  But I'd wager that he'll ask for the recount.  He's still in the free recount zone.]


Bill Thomas, the Republican representative from Haines,  seems to have lost reelection by 28 votes.  Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka is now ahead with 100% of the votes counted.   Thomas can request a recount.



From the Division of Elections website:

HOUSE DISTRICT 34
		Total
Number of Precincts		15
Precincts Reporting		15	100.0%
Times Counted		8398/13964	60.1%
Total Votes		8207
Kreiss-Tomkins, Jona	DEM	4110	50.08%
Thomas, William A. "	REP	4082	49.74
Write-in Votes		15	0.18%

 Recount?

According to BallotPedia  (They make things easier to find than the Alaska statutes):

There are no automatic recount provisions in Alaska election law, except in the event of a tie vote for two or more candidates for the same office for which there is to be elected only one candidate. A recount may be requested by a defeated candidate or ten voters within a particular precinct or state house district. Recount requests must made by filing an application with the elections director within five days of the state review of the votes . . .

If the difference between the number of votes cast was 20 or less or was less than 0.5% of the total number of votes cast for the two candidates for a contested office, the state bears the cost of the recount.  Otherwise the application for recount must include a deposit of $300 per precinct, $750 per state house district, and $10,000 for a state recount request.

The difference was more than 20 votes, but less than 0.5% (which would be 40 votes if there was a total of 8000) so he wouldn't have to pay for the recount.  He has nothing to lose by asking for a recount. 


Thomas and the Shootout

It may be fitting that we learn this the week of the Great Alaska Shootout, because Rep. Thomas put money into the budget to subsidize rural Alaskans' flights to Anchorage to attend the basketball tournament.

KTUU reported in June:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The University of Alaska Anchorage says more than 1,500 people could receive free plane tickets in November -- funded by an appropriation from the state’s capital budget -- from 18 Alaska cities to Anchorage with the purchase of tickets to the 35th annual Great Alaska Shootout. House Finance Committee co-chair Rep. Bill Stoltze’s (R-Chugiak) office confirmed the source of the funds Friday afternoon.

The committee’s other co-chair, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Haines), pushed for the $2.5 million appropriation to UAA. He said the money was meant to keep the Shootout alive, but didn’t come with restrictions on what UAA could do with it.

Dermot Cole had a blistering editorial on this, also last June, in the Fairbanks News Miner.


Loss of Minority Legislators Due To Redistricting

If this vote count holds, it would make the second Southeast Alaska Native to lose after this redistricting. Also, the legislature's only black member, Senator Bettye Davis lost after her district was gerrymandered to take away her base constituents and add much more conservative and white Eagle River into her district.

Meanwhile, Richard Mauer at the ADN has reported that the attorney who represented the parties challenging redistricting has a new filing in to prevent the current redistricting map, which was a temporary fix so there would be something in place for the 2012 elections, from becoming permanent.

In his filing with the Supreme Court, Walleri said his evidence shows the 2012 redistricting plan "resulted in the destruction of the Senate bipartisan coalition, and the racial gerrymandering in HD 38 greatly contributed to achieving that result." Wallari is a Democrat who has represented Native groups in past redistricting battles in Alaska.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/11/13/2691904/fairbanks-lawyer-accuses-board.html#storylink=cpy

The impact of the redistricting on minority legislators was a topic I've been wanting to write about, but I've been swamped with other things.  I'll try to get to it before too long.  

Presidential Race As Sporting Event Part 2: The Computer Game - What if it's a tie?

The NY Times has a little game you can play on your computer to see the different ways the states could fall and how it would affect the election.

I got a tie, by giving Romney most of the 'tossup' states and leaving all the 'leaning' states where they were. (At least the NYTimes uses the neutral term 'tossup' instead of the LA Times' 'battleground' states.)

Click image to see it bigger and sharper - or click here to go to the NYT page

So what happens if my scenario - a tie - is the result election night?  It just turns out the Washington Post asked the same question yesterday.  They say there are 32 different ways to get to a tie.  And they say a tie doesn't look good for Obama.

If somehow, though, we got to a 269-vote tie, the task of electing the president would fall to the House of Representatives — the new one that will assume office in January. According to the 12th Amendment, each state delegation would cast one vote, with the winner determined by whoever wins more states.

Since we don’t know exactly what the House will look like, we can’t say with certainty who would have the edge. But it’s very unlikely that an Electoral College tie would wind up in Obama’s favor.

At the NYTimes you can move the states over to either candidate. Is this sport? Or is this just a clever graphic way of helping people grasp the effect of each state's electoral college votes? Probably a little of both, and it certainly plays into the "Winner - Loser" narrative I discussed in Presidential Race As Sporting Event Part 1.   Are they making equally clever graphics to show how to balance the budget?  As I'm typing that question, I'm thinking, "Yes, they did, and I posted about it."

Bookmark this page for election night.  It will be a handy way to keep track as the votes are counted.

This was not the Part 2 I had in mind, but it seemed appropriate.  I guess there will be a Part 3. 

The Presidential Race As A Sporting Event - Part 1

Anyone else getting tired of the sporting event treatment of the presidential election?

The political season, it seems, has less than a month to go and we're into the playoffs.  There are two basic themes I hear in the coverage:

1.  Who's up and who's down?  There's a sense of the multistage competition of gymnastics or diving.  Each event (from the primary elections to the debates) gives the candidate to gain or lose in relation to the other competitors.  The announcers discuss their strengths and weaknesses and what they are going to have to do to gain points and to avoid errors in each event. But there's also the one-to-one battle of boxing.  Other sports metaphors abound.   Some examples:

San Francisco Chronicle:

"Obama, Romney rematch could set TV ratings records"

Forbes:

"It’s almost kick off time to the second presidential debate. Before we begin, a few things to watch for—

. . . the key for Governor Romney will be to make a connection with the people in the audience who will be posing the questions. If Romney can make the people believe that he ‘feels their pain’, it will be difficult for Romney to be declared a loser tonight, no matter how well the President may perform. For President Obama, it is not just a matter of ‘showing up’, he is going to have to both defend the past four years and, more importantly, lay out a very clear vision for what he has in mind for the next four years. He will also need to find a way to be far more aggressive than his first debate performance without crossing the line into Joe Biden territory

From the Washington Post website:

More from PostPolitics

Second debate: Winners and losers

Chris Cillizza OCT 16

THE FIX | The second presidential debate is history. Who did the best? Who did the worst?

2.  Then there is the addition of fact checking this year.  It's been there in the past, but mostly it was done on blogs.  Now fact checking has gone mainstream.  This would seem to be a positive development.  Someone is paying attention to what people are actually saying, not just whether they look and sound presidential saying it.

But it's mostly "did he say X on this Tuesday and Y on Monday?"   Tuesday night I heard them checking whether Obama had used the word terrorism in his Rose Garden speech after the Benghazi consulate was attacked.  Yes, fact checking is important, and I applaud this addition to the scene.  But often it too becomes trivial.  What's missing are the bigger questions about policy and what it all means.

Generally,  the fact checking is just an extension of 1) - who is up and who is down?  We aren't checking facts in a quest for truth and understanding, but to get closer to determining who will win or lose.

For the media, it probably makes sense to treat elections the way they treat sporting events.  It reduces the election to a contest to determine the winners and losers, not to elevate everyone's understanding of the issues.  It raises suspense.  It doesn't require a lot of research or figuring out how to interpret complicated subjects like health care or the economy.   The hype brings in viewers.  More viewers mean more ad revenue.

And for most of us, it simply doesn't matter.

The candidates have figured out that most people already know how they will vote.  Because the winner is chosen by the electoral college vote and not the popular vote, most states aren't even in play.   Even if a candidate wins by a million votes in California, that extra million doesn't count for anything.

So, the candidates' focus is on the small group of undecideds in a few states.  270TOWin identifies eleven states.  (270 electoral votes are needed to win the election.)

The LA Times, in May, created a map that shows 8 "battleground" (sports announcers love war imagery) states.   Let's look at who the candidates are wooing. 

State- 270 To win list	% undecided	LA Times List	Total Reg Voters	Number of Undecided
Colorado	5	√	2,300,000	115,000
Florida	5	√	8,000,000	400,000
Iowa	5	√	1,500,000	75,000
Michigan	6		5,000,000	300,000
Nevada	5		1,000,000	50,000
New Hampshire	6	√	700,000	42,000
North Carolina	3	√	4,500,000	135,000
Ohio	4	√	5,600,000	224,000
Pennsylvania	4		6,000,000	240,000
Virginia	9	√	3,500,000	315,000
Wisconsin	2	√	2,900,000	58,000
Total USA:	1.4%		137,000,000	1,954,000

HTML Tables

   
According to this, all the media coverage we're getting is about  less than 2 million people, 1.4% of registered voters, who can't make up their minds.  Bill Maher's comment on this situation, summed up from this video, is:

"And that, in a nutshell, is America's celebrated, undecided voter: put on a pedestal by the media as if they were Hamlet in a think-tank, searching out every last bit of information, high-minded arbiters pouring over policy positions and matching them against their own philosophies. Please, they mostly fall into a category political scientists call 'low information voters,' otherwise known as 'dipsh*ts.'"

I imagine that people who can't make up their minds are NOT going to decide whom to vote for based on the issues.  It's going to be how they feel about the candidates.
So,  the candidates are pretty much ignoring the 135 million people who either have made up their minds already or are in states where the outcome is pretty certain and they're  pouring their campaign attention and dollars on the 1.9 million undecideds in the 'battleground' states.

The only thing the candidates want from the rest of us is money and labor to turn those undecideds  and to make sure their supporters vote.  I've heard of Anchorage political volunteers being used to call people in Colorado. 

The media, on the other hand, need all of us to watch or read or listen, so they are using the simplest and most successful story line they know:  a sports battle. 

This is politics as entertainment.  It's not politics as an opportunity for national discussion about our future.  It's not analysis of critical issues.  It's simple, black and white:  who's going to win and who's going to lose?  Foreign policy, the economy, the environment, education, war, and all the other burning issues we face are just tea leaves for pundits to ponder to predict who will win and and who will lose. 

And this probably isn't very different from every other election in our history. A little more divisive maybe, but just as simplistic.