What Does a Climate Change Worker Do? John Streicker

At the Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change (click link for all the posts on the summit) last week, one of the people I spoke with was John Streicker from the Yukon. He said his job was in climate change, so I asked him what that meant. And he gave me a well thought out reply.


He listed five things climate change workers do:

1. Monitoring
2. Creating Scenarios - Projecting Changes
3. Public Education
4. Mitigation
5. Responding To The Changes We're Feeling Now

In the video he gives a little more explanation of each.

Indigenous People's Global Summit - Felipe Iniquez, Mexico

It's late Saturday night already and I have a lot of video and pictures and thoughts about the Summit. Yesterday (Friday) afternoon I went with three of the African delegates on a short Anchorage tour. Their biggest interest was to go to the mountains and see the snow. We picked up my friend Jeremy on the way and went to Glen Alps and walked to Powerline Pass. I'm sorry I don't have any pictures - all my memory cards were full - but they had a great time playing in the snow for the first time. We even had some big fluffy snow flakes come down while they were up there.

On the way up the hill, Jeremy got a call that his Friday night live host couldn't do the show. Jeremy's been pestering me - and I've been pushing him - to do more live shows with interesting people. So I proposed that we had three delegates to the Summit from Africa who would make a great show. We ate dinner when we got back to Jeremy's and he played with wires, the mic, and his computer until he said, "OK, you're on in three minutes." And we talked about the Summit and their issues back home for the next hour plus. Jeremy's wife came home in the middle and I went to explain what was going on and she said, "I know, I've been listening in the car." Add my wife and I know there were at least two people listening to KWMD while we were on. I don't normally see myself as a radio type, but I was really into the topic and mostly what I had to do was ask the three guests questions.

Today I went with five others who had an extra day before heading back from Anchorage. We went to Hope and back with lots of stops on the way. And despite the strong winds along Turnagain Arm, they seemed to all have a good time.

Here's one video from the Summit - of Felipe de Jesus Iniguez Perez of Jalisco, Mexico.





Here's a link to all the Indigenous Peoples Summit posts.

Indigenous People's Global Summit - Elaine Abraham

Tuesday a beautiful woman whom I haven't seen for several years sat next to me and we starting talking. We knew each other at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I was asking her impressions of the summit so far. Eventually I asked if I could video tape some of what she had to say. . .



Indigenous Peoples Global Summit on Climate Change(click link for all the posts on the summit)

David Chalmers Extending Our Minds

It was standing room only at the talk by philosopher David Chalmers. In a room that sits maybe 200 people, about 15 or 20 had to stand because all the seats were full. On a Friday night. Thirty years ago you might have said that's because there's nothing to do in Anchorage, but that is definitely not true today.


Chalmers' talk at UAA reminded me of what I like and don't like about the discipline of philosophy. What I like is the imagination and creativity where a proposition is made that goes beyond how we normally think about things. A bit like science fiction. But philosophers then make careful and detailed, excruciatingly detailed arguments, to support this newly created conceit, to attack it, and to defend it. I like the conceits and the thought that goes into initially developing the logical argument to support the conceit. What gets old for me is how long they'll argue over things that seem irrelevant to anything that matters. But then I'm sure that people who accidentally get to this blog often react the same way to what they read here.



In any case, the conceit that Chalmers and his colleague Andy Clark created about ten years ago (in a paper called The Extended Mind)is the idea that something outside your skin - like your i-phone or like an Alzheimer's patient's notebook where he keeps track of things he needs to remember. I'm using 'he' because in his example, Otto is the Alzheimer's patient who is compared to a 'normal' human named Inge who performs the same functions (the notes in the notebook) in her mind.

Chalmers challenged us to think outside the skin and it was an interesting exercise. He argued that objects can act as mind extenders if they had several characteristics. Sort of like the way a cane helps aid in the act of walking, a calculator or a notebook, can aid the act of thinking. And when it does, it becomes part of the mind. Or put another way, the mind expands outside the skin to include the notebook.

The video gives a snippet of the talk. This is not the most important point, but it was a time when he walked over to our side of the room and there weren't so many heads in the way.



It was good to see so many people out for a philosophy talk. No, our governor was not there. But others were and they stayed around to ask questions afterward.

Golden Fronted Leaf birds and Black Drongo Say Goodbye

The birds were out this morning as we did last minute packing. The video is not good enough to see the details of the birds, so I put up this picture of the leaf bird from our Thai bird book. But you can see the drongo chase the leafbird off its perch and hear the leafbird singing. There are two leafbirds. The one on the far right is singing.




I'll set this to go up when the Anchorage folks are just waking up and we should be waiting in the Taiwan airport to fly to San Francisco.

Yuzo Sings

There was a flier in the shop where we had the strawberry smoothies. Doc pointed it out. A concert Friday night. I could make out that it said, besides the time and location,

60 minutes
60 years

I figured the concert would be sixty minutes long, but didn't know what the 60 years meant. So last night I went after work - it was close by. J had gone off to Tai Chi and I hadn't expected it to last long. But the music didn't start until 7:30. It was at a house that had a coffee shop attached. There was food and drinks. And I met some Thais my age who were academics and also working on the same issues we're working on.

So, here's the video. Be warned - both the video and the sound are from my little Canon Powershot. On the one hand, being able to capture anything with such a small camera still amazes me. On the other hand, it was dark and the video is poor and the sound doesn't do the musicians justice at all. But you can get a sense of the evening. There's a bit of Dan Bern in the air.

Yuzo sings in Thai, Japanese, and English, though you have to listen closely. See if you can hear him singing about democracy, freeing Aung San Suu Kyithe Burmese (Pamma in Thai) people, and the Tibetan people.

Yuzo is Japanese but I was told he has been coming to Thailand every year for 30 years. He turns 60 this year, so that was the 60 years.

And I put the animation skills I learned last fall to use. It took most of the day, what with my computer pretty full and having to ditch old video to have enough space to save things, even to work the animation in photoshop at times. Anyway, if you look closely - you only get about five seconds - I have a bit of the Thai change into English. But don't blink or you'll miss it.

When the King of Rock and Roll met the King of Thailand

[Update October 13, 2016: The King died today. My post today includes a picture of him I took at the Royal Ploughing Ceremony in 1969 and a few other pictures and thoughts.]



The King of Thailand was 7 years old when Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935. Today in a restaurant in Hang Dong, a district of Chiang Mai, there was a picture on the wall of the King and Queen of Thailand meeting Elvis Presley in the Buddhist year 2503 during the filming of GI Blues. (It's currently 2552 so that was 49 years ago, or 1960.) Elvis was 25 and the King was 32.



That also means that today, when the King is 81, Elvis would be 74



This is the coffee shop/restaurant where the picture was hanging on the wall.

Google provided a bit more background. Eric, on Ajarnforum (teacherforum) wrote a couple of years ago:

HM King of Thailand meets the King of Rock & Roll
I had read that His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit had met Elvis Presley at Paramount Studios, on the set of one of his movies, in June 1960. Apparently Duke Ellington was also present. HMK was 32 years old at the time and had just begun the 10th year of his reign.
After much scouring of the internet and eventually sending a guy $3 USD via PayPal I came up with this pic: [I couldn't open the link to the picture, but presumably it is the same one.)

Poking further I found this Youtube Thai television newscast of the event posted by Trevormeech. The newscast puts the date at May 21, 1960.

Mr. Delak Shows Me How To Make a Hat with a Pakima

Mr. Delak (I'm messing up the spelling, but I'm trying to be consistent) is a farmer our program works with. Last year I met him when I went with Doc to his village and we spent the night at his place. Since then I've met him a number of times.

But yesterday was the first time I saw him on this trip. We chatted about a number of things. He has a tiny shop open now in Chiang Mai, if I understood correctly, where he sells his organic vegetables. He had his pakima on his head in a unique (to me anyway) style, so I asked how he did that. He showed me:

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 4

Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 had three videos each from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The last one here is totally different from all the others, edgier. It's a little too long perhaps, but this student was working her own vision. The first one is also a very different approach from the others.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 2

I posted a few videos from Mariano Gonzales' Art 257 class - Computer Art and Design - last week. This was not a film or video class per se, but the last assignment was to use Painter or Photoshop animation to make a video that was more or less 30 seconds. Some did theirs totally animated, others, like me, did a combination. Some just used regular video. You can see the first ones I posted at the link above. Here are three more.

First Annual 30 Second (More or Less) Film Festival - Part 1

While the Anchorage International Film Festival has been going on, in Mariana Gonzales' Art 257 class - Computer Art and Design - we had our own mini festival. Actually, it was our last assignment. And Wednesday we saw everyone's videos - many of which included animation. So, for the next couple of days, I'm going to post a couple of the class videos. These are from art students (except mine) most of whom had not done animation or video before. I was impressed with the variety of things people did, though it seems for my fellow students, the music video is a pretty strong influence.







More tomorrow. Mine's not in this bunch.

AIFF - Sky in December Discussion

I guest lectured at a class at Wayland Baptist University this evening, so I missed the 5:30 films and barely got to the Fireweed to see Sky in December. The students seemed bright and I'm sorry I had to rush off. I don't have the energy, nor am I ready, to write about the film now. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I went. The black and white look was jarring in a new movie, but the characters were engaging, and a slow (by US standards) moving pace was a nice change. Peter Porco, writing for the Anchorage Daily News, does a good job of giving the basics of Sky in December.

After the movie I got a little of a discussion among three people with somewhat differing ideas about the film.

Election Night Video and Some Results

Here's a bit of video to give you a sense of the evening downtown.

[This is a new version with a short clip added of state house candidate Pete Petersen that inadvertently got left out in the original.)


And here's Alaska's disconnect from the rest of the US (for latest results):

It's Hot in LA

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

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


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

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

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

October 17 pm update: Added pictures:

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

Venice Promenade looking North at Rose.

The Promenade is on Ocean Front Walk.

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

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



Would you believe Lincoln and Rose?

Wasilla Alaska in 2 Minutes and 31 Seconds

His YouTube name is mahreeO, so I won't reveal more. But here's a tour of Wasilla he made recently. He's an artist and so this video is not ordinary.

A Day in Portland

We had lunch with Masami and Shpresha and Sharon, people I knew when I was a guest faculty member at Portland State University for six months in 2003-4.




After lunch they put me in my old seminar room to work on a few things and catch up with all the hits coming in about Palin. Like other Alaska blogs, apparently, this was my second highest hit day - 563 right now.








Later we walked around downtown before meeting friends for dinner. The sky was very blue, temps in the low 70s, as we passed the Art Museum.































In a little park area between streets the Oregon Ballet Theatre was practicing in a tent.













A costume store.


























One of the great book shops in the United States. Powell's is room after room after room on several floors or used and new books. A favorite place of our when we lived here.








































































We had dinner here with Gary and Roxanne who we knew from Anchorage and from when we lived here. It was great to see them again.







We checked the tram station near Marty's yesterday. It's about a 20 minute walk home from the end of the line. But both ticket machines at the stop were broken. We turned down Gary and Roxanne's offer of a ride home (way out of their way) and decided to board without tickets. The guy with the beard told us to push the emergency button and tell the driver who said we could ride free then. Then the two Obama canvassers got on. As we were pulling into one station we heard screaming at the other end of the train (about four cars away.) The driver came onto the loudspeaker calling for police. Who boarded immediately as we entered into the station. A young black woman and a young white woman slipped quickly off the train. The police - Wackenhut Security guys - stayed on the train to the end of the line where we got off. At the end we heard the driver reporting the incident - a white guy had been yelling racial epithets at a white girl and black girl sitting together.

Martini Glasses Then and Now

Marty has been educating us on a lot of things. I finally caught one important then-and-now history lesson on video.

American Dipper Video

I'm going out on a limb here and calling this an American Dipper. Let me know if I've messed up. It looks like the dipper in the book and it certainly dips regularly. This is a much better bird video than I normally put up because it isn't my video. Doug took it with his fancy Fuji digital camera with good optical zoom.



OK, I realized that I needed to look this bird up to be sure. The bird's eyes kept turning white, so we surmised it had white eyelids. So when I checked online, Wikipedia confirmed it was an American dipper:

The American Dipper (Cinclus mexicanus), also known as a Water Ouzel, is a stocky dark grey bird with a head sometimes tinged with brown, and white feathers on the eyelids cause the eyes to flash white as the bird blinks. It is 16.5 cm long and weighs on average 46 g. It has long legs, and bobs its whole body up and down during pauses as it feeds on the bottom of fast-moving, rocky streams. It inhabits the mountainous regions of Central America and western North America from Panama to Alaska.

This species, like other dippers, is equipped with an extra eyelid called a "nictitating membrane" that allows it to see underwater, and scales that close its nostrils when submerged. Dippers also produce more oil than most birds, which may help keep them warmer when seeking food underwater.

I also thought it strange that the English vernacular name is 'American' but the Latin name is 'mexicanus'. But given it's range, American is probably more accurate.

Falling Rain

The summer's most eagerly awaited sequel is now here. The end of the epic trilogy that began with Falling Leaves, then Falling Snow, is now at hand with the climactic Falling Rain.



I guess Doug, we won't be able to say, "Gee the weather was great until you got here." Actually, I'm working on squeezing out the last drops before you get here.

Fifty Years Ago John F. Kennedy Urged Alaskans to Elect Democrats

Going through the oral history section of the UAF Archives I found this speech by Senator John F. Kennedy given Nov. 11, 1958. The rest of the United States had voted on Nov. 4, 1958 and elected an overwhelmingly Democratic Senate and House. Alaskans would be voting on November 25. Kennedy, in Juneau, is urging his audience to elect Democrats. He is introduced by Ernest Gruening. Kennedy begins 4 minutes into the tape.

[Source: While this is basically audio, it is stored in video format. This page gives all the information. This is a direct link to the audio.It is housed in the Alaska State Library - Historical Collections, PO Box 110571, Juneau AK 99811-0571; mailto:asl.historical@alaska.gov]



The Division of Elections website tells us that Alaskans followed their advice. (Well if you look closely, the numbers and the words don't match. I'm guessing they

The General Election, November 25, 1958

Immediately following certification of the August primary election, campaigning by successful candidates began for the state’s first general election. Although general elections, nationwide, are held the first Tuesday in November, the 1958 general election in Alaska was scheduled for November 25.

The most hotly contested race in the election was between two former territorial governors, Gruening and Stepovich, both running for the U.S. Senate. In the uncontested primary election race, Stepovich had "beaten" Gruening by approximately 6,000 votes. In the general election, Gruening beat Stepovich by slightly more than 3,000 votes.

Republican secretary of state candidate Karl Dewey withdrew his nomination before the general election, and the party replaced him with Brad Phillips of Anchorage.

The day of the election the Anchorage Times wrote in its lead story, "The fruits of 42 years of effort will be the result of today’s election - the official proclamation that Alaska is a State of the Union." More than 50,000 Alaskan voters went to the polls to cast ballots on November 25.

Official Returns of the November 25, 1958 General Election

STATE OF ALASKA
PREPARED BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE

Thus, Bob Bartlett, Ernest Gruening and Ralph Rivers went to Washington to represent Alaska as voting members in Congress. Bartlett was to draw the two-year "A" term, and Gruening, the four-year "B" term. They stood for re-election again in 1960 and 1962, respectively, when each was elected to the six-year senatorial term prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.

After the November 25th election was certified, Bill Egan and Hugh Wade, working with members of the newly-elected first state legislature, immediately began the challenging task of organizing the 49th state’s new government.

Also, following certification, President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 3, 1959, consistent with the Admission Act, proclaimed Alaska a State of the Union.