2014 New Year's Res: Can Terror Management Lead to Better Time Management?

I used to be phenomenally well organized.  But after I retired I decided to become, not disorganized, but more like non-organized.  That led to occasional missed meetings and things not getting done (like the clutter room downstairs) and I learned to not worry about such things. 

But I do have to get that downstairs room cleaned up - we have someone moving into it in February - and I'm going to be teaching a class at UAA in the spring and that means deadlines I have to meet for the students' sakes.  Plus this blog has - so it tells me - 4387 published posts and 183 unpublished drafts.  I need to do some housekeeping here. I want to give readers better guidance to what's here.  What can I do with the redistricting posts?  What about the notes to readers that need updating?  And there are some academic articles to finish up and submit.

I can do this.  I know how.  But being non-organized for the last six or seven years has also helped me understand those of my students who could never get their work in on time.

I was already thinking about this when I heard the NPR piece on the tikker this morning.  A Swedish guy has created a wristwatch that tells you how much time you have until you die.  That's supposed to be a reminder to use the time you have on things you really want to do.  That's how I'd use it.  But the piece cited terror management experts who said that thinking about death makes people xenophobic.  I don't think that would be a problem for me, since I think of myself as part of the human tribe.

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions and this isn't so much of a resolution as a decision and the new year is a good time to start. 

Anyone else resolving things?  Don't worry if you're not.  Have a great new year's eve and day and may you enjoy the beauty around you in 2014.  It's there if you look. 

Court Sets Nov 7-14, 2013 Aside In Case Evidentiary Hearing Is Necessary

 Judge McConahy set aside a week in early November for an evidentiary hearing in the Alaska Redistricting Case, but says it's just in case there needs to be one. 

"Various motions are pending before the court.  It is not clear whether an evidentiary hearing will be needed on any issue.  The court will make that decision after the pending motions are ripe.  At the time the court will issue an omnibus order addressing all pending issues and note what, if any, issues require an evidentiary hearing.

For planning purposes the court has reserved full trial days [8:30 am to 4:30 pm] from 7 November 2013 through 15 November 2013.  The court expresses no opinion at this time whether such an evidentiary hearing will be necessary or that any such hearing would require all the allotted time.  The omnibus summary judgment order will address those details, including any time limitations on specific issues.  The intent of this order is simply to allow the parties to plan their schedules accordingly."

To show how far behind I am, this Order was dated September 19.  I was busy all day, so this short post will have to do.  Mark your calendars.  The hearing, if there is one, will be in Fairbanks, though the last time they had court hearings in Fairbanks, they were accessible by phone. 

"The troubles of today are sufficient unto themselves and the troubles of tomorrow will take care of themselves." Court Accepts Late Filings By Alaska Democratic Party In Redistricting Case

The court wrote a short decision to accept the late motions.

The Alaska Democratic Party filed three late motions in support of the Riley plaintiffs' challenge to Alaska Redistricting Board's plan.  The judge's decision to accept the late filings was short and philosophical.

"The Alaska Democratic Party [ADP] filed its motins several days late.  Counsel for ADP contends he miscalculated the due date and then was unable to file the motion due to electronic difficulties.  Basically ADP requests relief due to excusable neglect, i.e., the ordinary frailties of mankind.  The Riley plaintiffs support accepting the late filed motions.  The Board does not given the unique nature of the case and the expedited briefing schedule.

The troubles of today are sufficient unto themselves and the troubles of tomorrow will take care of themselves.  The court accepts the ADP motions as filed as of 16 September 2013 and any opposition to those motions are due ten days from that date and replies are due accordingly in five days.  The troubles of tomorrow will not be appreciably increased by this modest exception."

What exactly does this mean?  That the court is leaning toward the challenge?  I decided I needed to know whether accepting late challenges is common, normal, rare or what?

While waiting for an attorney friend to return my phone call, I tried to find out on line.  Either this isn't addressed, is on very low ranking websites, or I just used the wrong search words.  I found various court statistics, but nothing that addressed my question.

But I did  find a video tape of the Supreme Court of Ghana accepting a late petition on an election appeal in July this year.  I couldn't quite understand all the words, but the Justice established some criteria for waiving the deadline:

• Counsel should be guided by the reasonable foreseeability  test.
• Must not lightly be thought that court orders are any but solemn matters which ought to be treated as such. 
• Close [couldn't catch] of the delay filed at 9am this morning
• Sins of the counsel should not be on the head of the client
• Convenience of the Court
• Sheer magnitude and gravity of this case

This seems like a better list than 'frailties of mankind.'

The video is really short and it's a reminder that despite our stereotypes, other countries, even African countries, use the rule of law.





But what's common in Alaska courts. My attorney friend called back and said:

• it is very common for late filings to be submitted
• it is equally common for them to be accepted

The only time when a motion to waive a deadline is not accepted, if you can show it is significantly prejudicial to the other side.  This means, as I understood his explanation, that the other side would not be able to respond because of the delay.  He gave an extreme example of a client who went into a coma during the delay and so they wouldn't be able to respond to the filing.

He couldn't think of a reason for other the attorney to strongly object.
However, if a party has made a practice of filing everything late and is delaying the case, then it it taken more seriously by the court.  The closer you get to a trial date or resolution date, the more problematic.  But even then, the real assumption is that pleadings will be accepted. 

Supreme Court will review and no judge wants to be seen as rule obsessed or pedantic. 

The Supreme Court, he said, is far more serious and the assumption there is the opposite.  Won’t be accepted unless you have a good reason.  But they require it be accepted in lower courts.   

The point he made at the end was:

If the judge had enforced the deadline, you could say the judge was prejudiced.

So waiving the deadline means nothing.  It's routine.

What are the motions that were filed?  I've looked at them, but am not ready to post about them.  Briefly they cover:

1.  Challenge to the splitting of the Matsu and Kenai Boroughs
2.  Challenge to the splitting up of TCC/Doyon villages in the Interior into four different districts.
3.  Challenge to the lack of compactness of Fairbanks districts 3 and 5.





You can see the three motions at the Redistricting Board's website here. Documents 385, 386, 387.

Chasing My Tail

This is sort of how I feel this week.  I'm supposed to send in my paper (for the PATNET conference in San Francisco at the end of May) by next week.  I've got several blog posts - including one on Begich's press memo on his vote against universal background checks - that need more work.  I've got some work to do with the Citizens Climate Lobby local group today and tomorrow, and tomorrow I'm doing a workshop with Warren Jones at the YWCA on "Why is it so difficult to talk about racism?"  (It's from noon to 1:30 with a suggested $5 donation to cover costs if you want to come.) 

Also, I finally broke down and bought a new camera that I'm hoping will let me take better distance shots.  Like this dog next door.   He was barking a lot yesterday, but they were so sweet about it when I asked them to take him in. 


I've been looking at cameras for a couple of years now as I pass the cameras at Costco and this seemed like the right combination of features and price.  (Though it cost more than my first car.)  I did notice right away that the manual focus is a lot less smooth than my old film Pentax.  And the instruction book is over 300 pages.  I wanted a Canon on the grounds that there might be some overlap between how my Powershot works and this one does. 

How Important Is The Arctic? “. . . if this were a ball game, the US wouldn’t be on the field, in the stands, or even in the stadium.”

I picked up Bob Reiss' The Eskimo and the Oil Man (May 2012)  at the library the other day.  The Eskimo in the title is Edward Itta, whaling captain and former Mayor of Barrow.  The oil man is Pete Slaiby, Shell's lead man in Alaska.  I figured it might give me some insight into who this man leading Shell's troubled project to drill the Arctic. 

I'm about one-third of the way in, but it's already clear this book has information that every American should know.  And Alaskans, who think they know about the North, should be paying attention too. 

While some are still denying global climate change and humans' role in it, the world is changing fast and the North is going to take on a very big role in the world we will soon be living in. 

I suspect I'll be giving you bits and pieces as I go through this book.  Here's stuff on the importance of the Arctic and how far behind the US is compared to other Arctic nations.


Will the Northwest Passage become the new Panama Canal?

“. . . the Northwest Passage - the long-dreamed-of trade route between Europe and Asia, and the US, around the top of Canada and Alaska - could open to ships in summers as soon as 2020, some computer models predicted.

“If that happened up to 25 percent of the earth’s shipping might be passing Barrow within ten years, and if the specter of one drill rig could bother whalers, the idea of hundreds of unregulated ships out there was a nightmare.  (p. 29)

 “A single Chinese container ship sailing between Shanghai and New York could save up to $2 million on fuel and fees each way, using the northern route instead of the Panama Canal,”  Scott Borgerson, Oceans Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, had told me." (p. 30 )

There's no permanent Coast Guard base in Arctic.  

 '[The Coast Guard has [n]o way to monitor ship traffic or know whether or not a vessel was friendly, or about to rupture and spill oil, or whether it carried proper lifeboats for passengers.'

"Arctic could become pivotal place like Arabian Peninsula, Panama Canal."  (p. 30 )

Barrow the next Singapore?

"Borgerson predicted, “In twenty years the Arctic coast of Alaska may look like the Coast of Louisiana today, lit by the lights of ships and oil rigs.  One port there may become a trade hub as important as Singapore.  Singapore, once a mangrove swamp, is now the biggest seaport in the world.”(p. 31)

The US lags way behind other Arctic nations

“By spring 2010 many offshore oil advoates and opponents could agree on one thing at least:  the United States was notoriously unprepared for changes occurring in the region.  The nation had not signed the Law of the Sea Treaty.  It had not filed a claim for territory.  The US had one functioning icebreaker to address emergencies, while the Russians had twenty.  The US lacked proper communications equipment, lacked a deepwater port, lacked even basic science that could inform decision makers as to natural processes in the region before they made plans.  There was no cohesive national policy for addressing Arctic energy extraction. 

“In contrast other Arctic countries - Russia, Canada, Norway, Denmark - were much further along when it came to purchasing new icebreakers and awarding undersea oil and gas leases, and they had begun the process of expanding their national territories through the Law of the Sea Treaty.

“‘The Arctic is crucial and the Arctic is now,”  said Adm Gene Brooks of the Coast Guard.  “But if this were a ball game, the US wouldn’t be on the field, in the stands, or even in the stadium.” (pp. 38-39)

 People make grandiose claims all the time, but Alaskans, because we travel a lot, understand that although we look remote on flat maps of the world, we are a in the middle of the shortest routes between Europe, Asia, and the US East Coast - about 8 hours by air to each.  From Europe to Asia via Barrow would be much shorter than the Panama Canal as the example above so clearly demonstrates.

Barrow might not become the new Singapore, but it will soon be on everyone's map.  I know a few people in Anchorage who have been very involved with Arctic issues and they are always telling me this same message.

It's understandable that the US is behind.  Alaska is the only Arctic state and we're not even attached to the other states.  The other nations - Russia, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland,  and Denmark (representing Greenland and the Faroe Islands) - have a much larger proportion of their land on or near the Arctic.  You can learn more about the organization of Arctic nations - the Arctic Council - here.

But for us to ignore what we have, as these quotes suggest, will cost us dearly in the future.

Studs On Bikes

Studded bike tires, along with LED lights, have transformed winter biking in Anchorage in the last ten years.  But while we think of ourselves as state of the art in these things, I discovered this studded tire in Michael Embacher's Cyclepedia that is listed as 1966! 























UPDATE 4:25pm:  Sorry, I was in a hurry and didn't get this part up. 

Another part of winter biking is being in a community where bike trails are cleared of snow.  Some Anchorage bike trails are cleared fairly quickly by small snow plows, though there is the problem of street plows then throwing street snow back into the bike paths. 

For another view on this, here's a post from BicyleDutch  about bike trail clearing in Holland:

When I mentioned the city of ’s-Hertogenbosch had forgotten to clear one new cycle route of snow in my post two weeks ago, the city quickly responded and the route was gritted right away. For the future the route is now included in the ‘to be cleared main cycle routes’. That was possible because the ‘city’ is of course a number of people working hard. One person read my post and contacted another person who is in charge of planning the actual gritting. A few days later I was contacted, and asked if I’d like to have a look at how ’s-Hertogenbosch works to keep its city streets safe, by clearing the main routes for motorised traffic and those for cyclists of snow and ice. Well, yes of course I was interested!

 There's pictures and more of the story if you go to the site.

So Much To Learn

Inside this featherweight lump of flesh, cradled on my arm, ebbing and flowing with my breathing, a human being is exploring her body, figuring out how it works.  So many parts and pieces to master.  An arm flails.  Gurgling sounds from the belly.  She’s in there, emerging into awareness of this body.   And the body itself is still unfinished.  Her lips move up and down.  The mouth opens a little, now a lot.  The head moves seeking a nipple.  When none is found a soft cry calls out.

Later, satisfied and back on my arm,  An eyelid opens to a slit.  Then closes again.  Now  wide open.  What does she see?  Whoops, her eyeball rolls up leaving a white orb before the lids close. 

Is there any more challenging adventure than mastering one’s own body?  Gaining control of the arms and legs. Slowly gaining full consciousness, bit by bit.  Making sense of the light hitting the eye and the sound waves coming in through the ear holes?  Shaping the involuntary chirps into intentional sounds and then words? 



I look down at her nose and lips and eyes and cheeks and wonder who this little girl is and who she will become.  My daughter’s daughter.  A new being that only my wife and I and two others we only met a year ago call granddaughter.  I watch in wonder as she awakens into life and begins to take control of her body parts, so very slowly, day be day discovering new secrets.  Almost two weeks now I’ve had my heart lightened by her tiny body resting against me. 

Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

I can't recall reading any science fiction since I read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and then Snow Crash.


Both those books are huge and incredibly rich in detail, great characters, and mind-stretching ideas. 

Really good science fiction - like Stephenson's - is just good literature.  I found though that much science fiction is good in one area - new worlds, new tech, different takes on human life, good story line -  or another, but often just one area and the characters are often flat.  Women now have much stronger roles than they used to, but character development is often secondary.  Of course, all of this is based more on past reading of science fiction, so I don't read much these days.  Things could have changed a lot.  I know, for example, that strong women characters play a much bigger role in science fiction today than in the past.  I stopped reading it except by strong recommendation, since I couldn't keep track of what was really good.

My daughter gave me this one to read when I was looking for a book in her place.   I've been reading large chunks of pages and then having to put it down so I can do other things.  It's not even close to Stephenson, but it offers some interesting ideas - like the packs which live live in small clusters of individuals that share each others' minds.  It was published in 1992 and every chapter seems to have one or two newsgroup posts.  I read newsgroups in 1992, so that means he was using a technology of the period, not really pushing it out into the future.  Though the importance of data in the economy is a central theme of the book, which is still something most of us haven't considered to the level that he takes it.  Much of the time I'm not completely sure what is happening, though I know enough to be able to follow along.  I don't really knowwhat the title means, but maybe it will become clear by the end.  Though I'm over 500 pages into the book.  So far, the story plot has been fairly predictable, but, again, the book isn't finished.  If there are surprises at the very end, I'll add to this post. 

Grandpa Meets Granddaughter

My family prefers not to appear on the blog and I mention them, usually, only in passing to give regular readers some context for my comings and goings.  But there are some events that demand more than the cryptic message I posted when she was born last week.  Meeting and greeting my new granddaughter is one of them.

There is no shortage of new children arriving into the world every day.  According to the BabyCenter a little over 4 million are born each year in the US alone, which comes to about 11,000 each day.  Vizwiz tells me that her birthday ranks 337 out of the 366 possible birthdays.  Christmas ranks 365 and February 29, leap year day, ranks 366. 

Yet each birth is an amazing event.  Connecting us to our pasts and our futures and stirring mystical bonds and giddy expectations that the world can be a better place.  What an honor and treat to hold this precious child. 

Famous People Born In 1913 Part I: The Events of 1913

As 2013 opens, it's instructive to look back 100 years to 1913.  Particularly I want to look at some of the people whose lives impacted the world enough to gain widespread attention.  From the lists I've found, I've narrowed the list to 44 people who I was aware of or who seem to have made important contributions even if their names weren't well known.

The list has few giant events - but it was a year building up to World War I.  The Balkan War was ending. (pdf)

First though, let's review some of the things that happened that year:

Feb 17 - March 15 - Armory Show in New York - Duchamps Nude Descending a Staircase
Feb 25th - 16th Amendment ratified, authorizing income tax
Mar 4th - 1st US law regulating the shooting of migratory birds passed
Mar 4th - Woodrow Wilson inaugurated as 28th president
Mar 12th - Foundation stone of the Australian capital in Canberra laid
Mar 14th - John D Rockefeller gives $100 million to Rockefeller Foundation
Mar 21st - -26] Flood in Ohio, kills 400
Apr 8th - 17th amendment, requiring direct election of senators, ratified
Apr 9th - Brooklyn Dodger's Ebbets Field opens, Phillies win 1-0
Apr 21st - Gideon Sundback of Sweden patents the zipper
May 7th - British House of Commons rejects woman's right to vote
May 12th - Harry Green runs world record marathon (2:38:16.2)
May 13th - 1st four engine aircraft built and flown (Igor Sikorsky-Russia)
May 19th - Webb Alien Land-Holding Bill passes, forbidding Japanese from owning land
May 26th - Actors' Equity Association forms (NYC)
May 29th - Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris, provoking a riot.
May 30th - New country of Albania, forms
Jun 2nd - 1st strike settlement mediated by US Dept of Labor-RR clerks
Jun 4th - Suffragette Emily Davison steps in front of King George V's horse Anmer at the Epsom Derby
Jun 5th - Dutch Disability laws go into effect
Jun 16th - South-African parliament forbids blacks owning land
Jun 21st - Tiny Broadwick is 1st woman to parachute from an airplane
Jul 3rd - Common tern banded in Maine; found dead in 1919 in Africa (1st bird known to have crossed the Atlantic)
Jul 3rd - Confederate veterans at the Great Reunion of 1913 reenact Pickett's Charge; upon reaching the high-water mark of the Confederacy they are met by the outstretched hands of friendship from Union survivors.
Jul 10th - Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C), which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States.
Jul 19th - Billboard publishes earliest known "Last Week's 10 Best Sellers among Popular Songs" Malinda's Wedding Day is #1
Jul 23rd - Arabs attack Jewish community of Rechovot Palestine
Jul 30th - Conclusion of 2nd Balkan War
Aug 13th - Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley.
Aug 16th - Tōhoku Imperial University of Japan (modern day Tōhoku University) admits its first female students.
Aug 19th - Frenchman Pégoud makes 1st parachute jump in Europe
Aug 28th - Queen Wilhelmina opens Peace Palace (The Hague)
Sep 10th - Lincoln Highway opens as 1st paved coast-to-coast highway
Sep 29th - Sam S Shubert Theater opens at 225 W 44th St NYC
Oct 7th - Henry Ford institutes moving assembly line
Oct 14th - Explosion in coal mine at Cardiff kills 439
Oct 22nd - Coal mine explosion kills 263 at Dawson New Mexico
Nov 6th - Mohandas K Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners march in S Africa
Nov 13th - 1st modern elastic brassiere patented by Mary Phelps Jacob
Nov 17th - 1st US dental hygienists course forms, Bridgeport, Ct
Dec 1st - 1st drive-up gasoline station opens (Pitts)
Dec 1st - Continuous moving assembly line introduced by Ford (car every 2:38)
Dec 8th - Construction starts on Palace of Fine Arts in SF
Dec 12th - "Mona Lisa," stolen from Louvre Museum in 1911, recovered
Dec 12th - Hebrew language officially used to teach in Palestinian schools
Dec 13th - Mona Lisa stolen in Aug 1911 returned to Louvre
Dec 16th - Charlie Chaplin began his film career at Keystone for $150 a week
Dec 21st - 1st crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in NY World
Dec 23rd - President Woodrow Wilson signs Federal Reserve Act into law
Other Events in 1913:
Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr describe atomic structure.
Nobel Prize for Literature: Rabindranath Tagore (India)
US Population: 97,225,000

List sources: historyorb and  Infoplease.  I did find some errors, but haven't double checked every date, so there may still be a few.

Culturally, this was, apparently a major year of change.  Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was introduced and the Armory Show in New York introduced many European artists to the US.  

The Green Space offers a 70 minute video discussion of this tumultuous cultural environment of 1913.  Well worth listening to to get a sense of the cultural upheavels of 1913.  At about 50 minutes in, the discuss 1913's similarities to and differences from today. 

Post II has video of the two folks that appear to still be alive (both opera singers), Risë Stevens and Licia Albanese.   It also has the list of all 44 that I chose in birth order.  So the 'oldest' born January 4, 1913, Rosa Parks, starts the list.

Post III includes short bios and images in the order of their deaths, beginning with Albert Camus (1960) and ending with William Casey (1987).  Since these posts are so long, I'll divide them up into shorter posts.

Post IV has a video of Ruth Ungar Marx who's planning to celebrate her 100th birthday on May 26, 2013.

2013 Calendar Same As 1985, 1991, 2002

If you are looking to recycle old calendars, this is a good year - there are three relatively recent years that will work again for this year.

1985

1991

2002

This chart comes from a post I did for the 2012 Calendar.  The info comes from Time and Date, an interesting site dedicated to, well, you know, the time and the date.

Current Year	Old Matching Calendar Years
2012	1928, 1956, 1984  (Leap Year)
2013	1985, 1991, 2002
2014	1986, 1997, 2003
2015	1987, 1998, 2009
2016	1932, 1960, 1988  (Leap Year)
2017	1989, 1995, 2006

HTML Tables

Wood Stove Is Off - That's A Good Thing

Our heating system has been a problem for a while now.  Our plumber had been out here way too often trying to figure it out.  He changed this, added that.  We got a new water heater.  But we were still having trouble.  When we got back from a trip early November, our house sitter only 12 hours out of the house, it was in the 40s F in the house and I couldn't get the boiler to fire up.  The pilot was on, but the rest wouldn't kick in.

Our old wood stove saved us that night and the plumber managed to get it working the next day.  But the waterheater kept showing ERR3 - which meant it wasn't getting hot water fast enough.

For a while, when we got ERR3, we could flip the switch that turned off the electricity and turn it on again, but it was happening more and more frequently.  During the film festival I was regularly coming home to a chilly house.

The plumber was out several more times to tweak this and that.  The last thing he did for us was lock the air vent open, "if it is closed, the heat won't fire up."

Jon Replacing Pilot Assembly

Yes, I was beginning to wonder if he actually knew what he was doing.  I didn't know anything about heating systems (I know a bit more now) but I do know about problem solving and his method didn't seem right to me.  Rather than thinking about the whole system and then identifying the possible problems and testing to eliminate the false leads, he seemed to be just trying this and that. Maybe he was just a poor communicator and he was really thinking a lot, but I don't think so.

Here's an example of not thinking beyond the immediate situation.  He was replacing the water heater.  He complained that there was a pipe placed so that you couldn't get the water heater out without taking the pipe off first.  When he got the new water tank in place, instead of redesigning the piping to leave an opening for the water heater, he just put it back the way it had already been.  When I asked about that, it was clear he hadn't even thought about it.  He said, 'Yeah, I could have done that, but I just wanted to finish the job.'  Later, when he had to play with that pipe again to put a pump on it, I suggested making the change while he was at it and he did.

So, a week ago today, flipping the switch after ERR3 wouldn't get the furnace to fire up.  I knew the plumber was closed on Sundays, but I left a message and started the wood stove again.  We caught it before the house had cooled down, so we were able to keep the house relatively comfy with the wood stove.

New pilot assembly going in

When I called the plumber Monday, they hadn't gotten the voice message.  When I expressed some concern about the tech who'd been playing with our boiler all this time and how he didn't seem to be getting to the heart of the problem, the message came back through the receptionist from the owner that if I wasn't happy with the tech, maybe I should find someone else to work on it.

Really.  That was the message.  I'd already been getting to that decision.  The company had come well recommended from a contractor friend, so I had given them the benefit of the doubt.

Jon taking off old gas valve

I called a friend who'd recently had a new heating system installed and got a name of another company that had 'Heating' in the name.

Jon would come out the next afternoon.  The wood stove was keeping us warm and we had plenty of dry wood.  Plus, the furnace had finally kicked in again when I flipped the switch (I'd been doing that with no result, but kept trying.)

Jon and I talked when he got here.  He asked me questions and finally said that it could be one of two things:

1.  The pilot assembly or
2.  The gas valve

Since the pilot assembly was cheaper, he tried that first.

We went twenty four hours before we got ERR3.  Flipping the switch got the heat back on. Called them back and Jon was out that afternoon with a gas valve.

It's been 48 hours now with no problems.  I'm waiting for two weeks before I declare a victory.  But I did let the wood stove burn out and cleaned out the ashes.  It was a wonderful heat that came from the stove and it could go all night on two logs.

Reconnecting gas pipe

Jon was a great technician.  He was thinking about this problem holistically and took the clues and narrowed it down to two possibilities.  But the parts were pretty expensive - the gas valve was $443.  And for this post when I tried to look it up to be sure my terminology was ok, I've found the part online for $161.  Even if the shipping cost me $40, that's a 100% markup.

So, I hope this might be of help to others.  While heating systems are reasonably complex with their mix of mechanical and electronic equipment, they aren't all that complicated and people who work with them should be able to solve the problems fairly quickly.

Screenshot form Pex Supply

And, if you (I'm thinking about people living in Alaska) can wait a week, you can probably get the part online a lot cheaper.  And if your tech company is reasonable, they won't insist on their supplying the part with 100% markup. 



I thought about using the names of the two companies.  I don't think the first company was conning me to keep getting business.  A lot of the trips I wasn't charged for.  I just think their tech wasn't much of a problem solver and the small company was in a bind and that the owner just doesn't know what to do either - in this case how to deal with a decent, but not real good tech.

And we've been dealing with problems with the heating system for so long now - at least a year - that I'm not ready to say things are all settled until it's been a lot longer.

But if anyone in Anchorage wants to know names, just email me.

So, Will The World End Time Zone By Time Zone?

A hidden advantage of dividing the world into time zones, it seems, is that it's harder to destroy the world on any given day, because it becomes the next day at different times all over the world.

It's already December 21 in China.  And it appears that, at least in Anchorage, the world is still here. 

The way we divide time into hours and minutes and seconds and into time zones is a good example of social construction of reality.  It is based on physical reality - sunrise to sunset is roughly a day, the earth orbits the sun in roughly a year - but then humans went beyond 'natural' and designed systems that worked for them. We do that with everything that is human created. 

How we track time has always been dependent on technologies that could track the time better than watching the sun set and rise and where it is at noon.

It wasn't until the late 1800's that time zones were created, again, in response to technology - the telegraph and the railroad.  From Time and Date:

Trade, communications and transport became more globalized during the 19th century, which made it convenient that all maps and charts should indicate the same longitudes in whichever country they were produced, as being so many degrees east or west of a prime meridian. Moreover, the international telegraph needed at least a single standard to which all local times could be referred. 

American railroads maintained many different time zones during the late 1800s. Each train station set its own clock so it was difficult to coordinate train schedules. Time calculation became a serious problem for people traveling by train (sometimes hundreds of miles in a day), according to the Library of Congress. Every city in the United States used a different time standard so there were more than 300 local sun times to choose from. Railroad managers tried to address the problem by establishing 100 railroad time zones, but this was only a partial solution to the problem.

Operators of the new railroad lines needed a new time plan that would offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. Four standard time zones for the continental United States were introduced on November 18, 1883. Britain, which already adopted its own standard time system for England, Scotland, and Wales, helped gather international consensus for global time zones in 1884.

One could argue that since the people who are tracing the end of the world prediction to Mayans [and no one who knows anything about Mayan calendars seems to think they predicted the end of the world] it would make sense that if they had predicted the world's demise on Dec. 21, 2012, it would be on Dec. 21, 2012, Mayan time (Greenwich Mean Time -6).

I did try to figure out if there is a time when the whole world is the same day.  Wikianswers says:

Yes, everyday when it is point midnight on the International Dateline and midday on the Greenwich line (in London)

So, is this saying that for an instant, as the day changes at the international dateline, we are all the same day?  If that's the case, it would be the instant before the Asian side of the line changes to Dec. 22.

But if you look at a map of time zones - near the dateline - you see strange things.  First, as you cross the Date Line, you have to add 24 hours.  But as you scroll down the map, you'll see strange local time zones.  Tonga is GMT 13 and Tokalau is GMT 14, and American Samoa is GMT 15.  So there are places with extra time zones that wouldn't be on the right day.  I think.  It's all very confusing. 

Screenshot from Wikipeidia's Time Zone Map

It seems the only people who think the world might end on Dec. 21 are those who are (and these are not mutually exclusive categories) the uneducated, the easily persuaded, the people looking for any excuse to party, and the Republicans in the House who see no reason to back down on the "Fiscal Cliff" showdown,  because the world will end before January 1, 2013.  First they denied global warming, then they were certain Romney would win, then there's their denial of the connection between our gun policies and firearm deaths, so why shouldn't they believe twisted interpretations of the Mayan calendar? 

Maybe I'm being too hard on Republicans.  After all, even Fox News cites experts who say it ain't so.  But then, if it were arguing the world would end Dec. 21, how could they sell advertising spots for next week and beyond?

:)

What Would You Do If Your Daughter (Sister, Wife, Mother) Went Missing

I read about this in the ADN when Valerie first disappeared and was mildly disturbed.  I stopped at Granite Creek campground on my way back from Hope a month ago.

  It's a beautiful spot.  Lots of green and trees along the creek.  It's close enough to the Seward Highway that you can hear the traffic if the wind is going the right way.

But it's one of those places where you can escape from the everyday and surround yourself in nature.

I stopped there because I knew that Valerie disappeared there.  I walked around thinking about people disappearing.  About times when my kids weren't home when they were supposed to be.

Then I got a comment on a post yesterday.  I'm not usually sympathetic to people using comments to post something totally unrelated.

"Great post.
Sorry to hijack your comment section. Post and forward, if you don't mind. Missing person search on Sunday.
http://callanx.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/search-on-sunday/
Thanks."

It takes you to a website of Girdwood snowboarder Callan Chythlook-Sifsof who's aiming for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. 

There are too many women missing in the world.  Too many abused and beaten.  There are so many ills in the world that need our attention, yet we can't focus just on them.  We need to live and enjoy life as well.  Our lives are busy.  But we all need to put aside some time to help make the world a better place.  Like helping Valerie's family. 

We don't know what happened.  If someone else was involved, if she simply got lost and/or hurt.  But you know this family is still hurting badly.  It always seems so far away, until it happens to you.  What would you do?  It doesn't have to be this issue, but if you aren't giving time to others, in some small way, please do.  I'm guessing, most readers here are already giving back more than their fair share.  Thanks.

The More Decisions You Have To Make, The Worse You Get At It

Michael Lewis was on NPR's Fresh Air talking about his assignment hanging out with the president over six months to write about what it's like to be the president. It was published in Vanity Fair.

One comment he made caught my attention.  He said that President Obama knew of research that shows the more decisions you have to make the worse you get at making decisions.   So Obama avoids many simple decisions - like what clothes to wear, what to eat - so that he can save his decision making energy for the important decisions a president faces.  (Lewis said Obama had thrown out all but his blue and gray suits so he doesn't have to think about what he's going to wear and that someone else makes the menu.)  

I thought about this today after making decisions on the Alaska Airlines website today, taking advantage of discounted fares to LA to visit my mom.  I used up way too much decision making energy. 

It seemed a good time to check into this decision making fatigue story.  I found two interesting articles on this. First was a 2008 Scientific American article "Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain" by On Amir. 

He mentions something called executive function which includes focused activity, decision making, and will power (as in resisting temptation.)

It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. (See here and here.) . . .

For example, in one study the researchers found that participants who made more choices in a mall were less likely to persist and do well in solving simple algebra problems. In another task in the same study, students who had to mark preferences about the courses they would take to satisfy their degree requirements were much more likely to procrastinate on preparing for an important test. Instead of studying, these "tired" minds engaged in distracting leisure activities.These experimental insights suggest that the brain works like a muscle: when depleted, it becomes less effective. Furthermore, we should take this knowledge into account when making decisions. If we've just spent lots of time focusing on a particular task, exercising self-control or even if we've just made lots of seemingly minor choices, then we probably shouldn't try to make a major decision. These deleterious carryover effects from a tired brain may have a strong shaping effect on our lives.

One finding was particularly relevant to how I felt booking the tickets: It's harder to make the decision than to just weigh the tradeoffs.

Why is making a determination so taxing? Evidence implicates two important components: commitment and tradeoff resolution. The first is predicated on the notion that committing to a given course requires switching from a state of deliberation to one of implementation. In other words, you have to make a transition from thinking about options to actually following through on a decision. This switch, according to Vohs, requires executive resources.

It was a pain coordinating the different days and times with commitments we have in Anchorage and getting to see my son on the trip,  and of course the different prices.  But as taxing as that was, I think actually making the decision to push the purchase button and finalizing the dates and times and transferring $900 from my credit card to Alaska Airlines seemed to use up even more energy.  Now I know it's the switch from deliberation to implementation that got to me.

 A 2011 New York Times article, "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" by John Tierney goes into the background research even further.  If this topic interests you at all, this is a good article to pursue.  Tierney starts by talking about the decisions of an Israeli parole board.  It turns out they are more likely to parole you if your case is heard early in the morning.  By the late afternoon, the odds go way down.  He explains they're fatigued by then and rather than make a mistake, they just say no.

It also turns out that glucose can help pick you up, and snacks helped the parole board somewhat.

The mere expectation of having to exert self-control makes people hunger for sweets. A similar effect helps explain why many women yearn for chocolate and other sugary treats just before menstruation: their bodies are seeking a quick replacement as glucose levels fluctuate. A sugar-filled snack or drink will provide a quick improvement in self-control (that’s why it’s convenient to use in experiments), but it’s just a temporary solution. The problem is that what we identify as sugar doesn’t help as much over the course of the day as the steadier supply of glucose we would get from eating proteins and other more nutritious foods.

And it adds some information to an important question of mine:  why do some people make short term decisions while others make longer term decisions.  This is just one part of the answer, but it's interesting.

Your brain does not stop working when glucose is low. It stops doing some things and starts doing others. It responds more strongly to immediate rewards and pays less attention to long-term prospects. 

 That's the main reason, I guess, you're supposed to eat before going shopping.  This physiological information about how the body is affected by decision making adds a lot to planning good decisions.

“Good decision making is not a trait of the person, in the sense that it’s always there,” Baumeister says. “It’s a state that fluctuates.” His studies show that people with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule endless back-to-back meetings. They avoid temptations like all-you-can-eat buffets, and they establish habits that eliminate the mental effort of making choices. Instead of deciding every morning whether or not to force themselves to exercise, they set up regular appointments to work out with a friend. Instead of counting on willpower to remain robust all day, they conserve it so that it’s available for emergencies and important decisions. 

 I've always known that signing up for a PE class made it much easier to exercise more faithfully.  And that resting and eating well are important.  Knowing what causes these problems, means for us, like it does for the president, that we can avoid unnecessary taxing of our executive function:

“Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when they’re not rested and their glucose is low,” Baumeister points out. That’s why the truly wise don’t restructure the company at 4 p.m. They don’t make major commitments during the cocktail hour. And if a decision must be made late in the day, they know not to do it on an empty stomach. “The best decision makers,” Baumeister says, “are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.”

 There is A LOT more interesting stuff in the Tierney's whole article. 

Lost Tooth

I was visiting friends on the way home from getting some errands done the other day when the youngest daughter suddenly said she lost a tooth. 

It's been a while since I was around when a tooth was lost.  But I'd been thinking about this milestone, because just a couple days before, while cleaning the garage - yes, that's still happening - I came across our kids' tooth fairy pillow case.  My wife says she thinks that Auntie Esther made it.   The tooth pocket  is at that little rectangle at the bottom with Bambi on it. 

This Is The Third Friday The 13th This Year

The other two this year were in January and April.  Next year (2013) there will only be two (September and December).  Last year there was only one (May). 

So, is three a lot?  According to Paul Lutus at Arachnoid:

• The probability that there will be a Friday the 13th during any given month is equal to the reciprocal of the number of weekdays: 1/7 or 14.1%.
• The average number of Friday the 13ths in a year is equal to the number of months divided by the number of weekdays: 12/7 or 1.71.

So, almost 2 per year.  But according to Jim Loy, who figured the 1/7 figure as well,

It turns out that this is not quite true. It was shown by Brown (I don't know his first name) in 1933 that the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) repeats itself exactly, every 400 years. In that time, there are 4800 months and 4800 13ths. Of those 4800 13ths, 688 occur on Friday. So the probability of a Friday the 13th is 688/4800 which is .143333..., which is slightly greater than 1/7. In fact, Friday is the most likely 13th, slightly. Of the 4800 13ths, Sunday is the 13th 687 times, Monday 685, Tuesday 685, Wednesday 687, Thursday 684, Friday 688, and Saturday 684.

Six Years Began With Spittle Bug Post

That first post went up July 9, 2006.  There was another spittle bug post after I learned how to put up photos. And the spittle bugs are back this year, but now I know they don't do my plants harm and I can just wash them off if it gets too much.

I've posted a lot since then.  Blogging has taught me a lot and introduced me to neat people. If some folks are to be believed, the blog has added a bit of value to the world.  As I think back on this last year, the biggest single focus was the Alaska Redistricting Board.  There's a tab above that gets you to an overview of my posts on the board.  But there was a lot more. 

What surprises me most is the wide range of topics I've posted about - which is brought home when I look at the search terms people use to get here.  Here's a March 2012 post on search terms people used to get here as an example. And for most of them, I actually have what they are looking for.

So far I haven't mentioned another highlight here.  I'm still examining my reluctance to share things like this.  In some cultures you don't brag about your children lest you attract evil eye.  I also have an aversion to competitive contests - the choosing of 'best' and how that is defined are complicated and imperfect processes.  That's the closest I can get to explaining why I haven't mentioned the two Alaska Press Club Awards I received in April. 

I got third best Current Events/News Blog.  The Anchorage Daily News' Iditarod Live: The Sled Blog written by Kyle Hopkins, Scott Levin, Mike Campbell, Beth Bragg, David Hulen, and Bob Hallinen was first and Scott Woodham's The Concerned - Current Issues of Alaska at the Alaska Dispatch was second.  The judge, Ellyn Angelotti, wrote:

The "What Do I Know?" blog provides in-depth information about current events complete with direct copies of memos and email. It also boasts active personal engagement in the comments section.

 I got second Best Commentary Blog.  First went to Craig Medred's Alaska Life at the Alaska Dispatch.  The judge in this category, Abraham Hyatt, wrote:

"Aufrecht's posts are a reminder of the journalistic freedom and fun that blogging allows. Jumping from topic to topic, he successfully treads that delicate line in blogging between ego fulfillment and serious insight."

You can read all the press awards yourself here.  The list goes on for 31 pages (only 22 for the one without comments.)

I'm sure that most Alaskan bloggers didn't even know there were categories for bloggers.  I only learned last year when I accidentally ran into the Press Club conference at UAA. 

I wasn't sure how a blog would be judged.  I had to pick about ten posts for each category.  But that hardly gives a sense of a blog.  Plus it was hard to separate news posts from commentary posts.  And it's hard to say the blog is one or the other.  Having Outsiders judge is good because it minimizes bias based on who you know - a big problem in a state where everyone knows everyone.  But it also means that they are looking at posts without any context of the state and the media coverage here.



Anniversaries stimulate reflection and I've decided it's time to review how I've got the blog set up.  At the beginning, when I knew nothing and things were less complicated, I was constantly making changes.  But I've grown into a routine and leaving the basic platform alone is easier.  But I know I want to add a tab on top that will focus on the why's and wherefore's of the blog to make it a little easier for people trying to navigate.  But I'd rather spend more time blogging than monitoring all the new gizmos available to spiff up the blog.

When I started, I purposely left my identity vague.  I wanted people to read my posts without being colored by what I looked like or by how I was labeled.  If they wanted to know about me, they could read the posts.  Over time a lot is revealed.  I'm still vaguely identified, but I don't hide who I am  when i talk to people or when it's relevant to the post - like this one - and I've been identified publicly on other blogs.

Finally my appreciation goes out to all of you who read this blog and especially to those of you who take time to comment or email.   And those who point people my way.  Google has made this more than a private notebook and the Immoral Minority and Progressive Alaska have sent quite a few readers this way too.  Thanks to you all.  

Night to Day - LAX to ANC

Leaving from the Lower 48 in the summer at night flying north to Anchorage always gives that bizarre experience of flying from dark to light as it gets later at night.

We left LAX at 8:55pm.

Leaving LAX 8:55pm Pacific Daylight Time (PDT)

Still light to NW - 9:01 PDT

12:25 am PDT (11:25 Alaska DT)

Looking North 12:26 am PDT (11:26 ADT)

Over clouds 1:01 am PDT (12:01 am ADT)

Over the Chugach Range 12:34 am ADT

Approaching ANC at 12:47am ADT

Coincidence? - Documenta 13 Opened Today in Kassel

At the National Gallery of Art's East Wing two years ago, I saw this Max Ernst sculpture and told J that I'd once sat on it.  Back when I was a student in Germany, at big art exhibit in Kassel, Dokumenta 3.  I thought.  And somewhere there is a picture of me on it.  Maybe.  Possibly it was just a similar piece. I was tempted to sit on it again and have her take my picture, but the guard was watching me.


Today, June 9, 2012, I have been cleaning up downstairs.  Throwing away old papers I no longer need, resorting the ones I'm not ready to toss, and thinking about converting some old papers into articles.

When I ran across, finally, this picture.

OK, so this isn't such a big coincidence.  Eventually I was going to find this picture.

BUT, then I looked up Documenta.  This exhibit happens every five years.  And it turns out, (from the Daily Beast):

The twice-a-decade show is launching Saturday, June 9, in Kassel, Germany, in its 13th incarnation.

From Deutsche Welle:

The German President Joachim Gauck has opened one of the world's biggest contemporary exhibitions of modern and contemporary art in Kassel, central Germany.

The thirteenth edition of one of the world's biggest and most ambitious contemporary art fairs opens in Kassel on the Fulda River in the northern part of the state Hesse in Germany.
Held every five years since 1955, the fair exhibits works by artists over a period of 100 days. This year's event features works by nearly 300 artists from 56 countries. Exhibits include cottages brimming with strange objects, sounds of the Brazilian jungle and a West African theatrical performance.
Artistic Director, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, a US-born Italian-Bulgarian, explained the festival's role at the opening: "Documenta is dedicated to artistic research and forms of imagination that explore commitment, matter, things, embodiment."

And here's a video from Documenta 13 from Newsweek and Daily Beast art critic Blake Gropnik:


There are some questions though. If it's every 5 years, and this is 2012, how did I see it in September 1964? Wikipedia answers that quickly.  Its entry has a list of the 13 Documentas since 1955. The second one was in 1959, and the third one in 1964. They don't seem to have gotten onto a regular five year cycle until 1972.

People like to attribute events like my finding this picture on the day Documenta opens this year on something more than coincidence.  With 365 days in a year, and with there being a Documenta every five years, the odds of my finding the picture on this particular day is a bit more than 1800 to 1.  You had a much better chance of picking the winner of the Belmont today.  1800 to 1 is roughly 50 chances in 100,000, which is about twice as likely as dying from Alzheimers in the US in 2009.   (Some of you may think that's a strange relationship, but it is important for people to think about numbers and statistics with rationality and with facts.  The odds were high, but these coincidences do happen.)

The Deutsche Welle piece says that there will be three other Documenta locations this year:

Kassel is not the only venue for Documenta; this year a fifth of the works are being shown in other locations including Kabul, Afghanistan, Kairo, Egypt and Banff in Canada.

 So, Alaskans driving Outside this summer, can stop by in Banff.   And those stationed in Afghanistan might be able to partake as well.

OK, one more bit of trivia.  While I was looking for the Max Ernst piece on my blog, I found him mentioned in one of my posts in honor of Claude Lévi-Strauss' 100th birthday.  Lévi-Strauss is being interviewed in 1940 or 41 about his time teaching at NYU:

D.E. You were a young, unknown university professor, and you became part of a group of famous artists - stars, even - Breton, Tanguy, Duchamp...
C.L-S. And Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Matta, Wifredo Lam. . . Masson and Calder were living in the country. I went to see them on a few weekends.
D.E. Did you like the members of the group?
C.L-S. Some of them. I liked Max Ernst right away, and he is the one I stayed closest to. Tanguy, whose painting I admired a great deal, was not an easy person. Duchamp had great kindness, and for awhile Masson and I were very close. I also became friends with Patrick Waldberg. Our friendship continued after the war ended.
D.E. Peggy Guggenheim was financing the existence of the group?
C.L-S. She helped this or that one out financially, but Max Ernst, whom she married, was more affluent than the others. They were leading the Bohemian life in Greenwich Village. Until Max Ernst left Peggy Guggenheim. One day, Breton called to ask me if I had a small sum of money to buy back one of his Indian objects from Max Ernst, who was now broke. This historic object is now in the Musée de l'Homme.

 And things mentioned in here lead in a thousand more directions which I'll leave for any of you reading this to pursue on your own.