Tigers, Human/Nature Relationship, Free Enterprise, Romney

The tigers are coming, but hold on for some context.

Contrasting world views is an important underlying factor in the sharp political divisions in the US today.  Republicans call this "the culture wars."  There are lots of factors to consider, but let's look narrowly at one very important one:  differences in people's idea of the relationship between humans and nature.

John Vaillant, in his book Tiger:  True Story of Vengeance and Survival (here's a previous post on that book), looks at how differing world views clash in the frontiers of the Russian Far East. His book focuses on the survival of wild tigers, but the process is repeated all over the world with different species and different indigenous peoples.

The modern world came about when humans began to apply science to most human activities including the economy.  With science, it was believed,  humans were no longer at the mercy of nature.  Using science, humans could now control, even conquer nature.

Science has enabled humans to create what in previous times would have been considered miracles.  Free enterprise enabled us to make and sell the amazing feats of science.  We became gods who could rearrange nature to suit us.  But there have been terrible side effects.  So let's go to Vaillant's Russian Far East - near Kharbarovsk - to see the contrasting views on nature and humans.

"Prior to the arrival of Chinese gold miners and Russian settlers, there appeared to be minimum conflict between humans and tigers in what is now Primorye.  Game was abundant, human populations were relatively small, and there was plenty of room for all in the vast temperate jungles of coastal Manchuria.  Furthermore, the Manchus, Udeghe, Nania, and Orochi, all of whom are Tunguisic peoples long habituated to living with tigers, knew their place;  they were animists who held tigers in the highest regard and did their best to stay out of their way.  But when Russian colonists began arriving in the seventeenth century, these carefully managed agreements began to break down.  People in Krasny Yar still tell stories about the first time their grandparents saw Russians: huge creatures covered in red hair with blue eyes and skin as pale as a dead man’s." (141)

Earlier in the book he wrote about how the indigenous populations in other parts of the world - like the Bushmen in the Kalahari desert - who had similar relationships with lions.   He also makes comparisons between the Russian Far East and the conquest of North America. 

"Some of these newcomers were Orthodox missionaries and though they were unarmed, their rigid convictions took a serious toll on native society.  The word “shaman” is a Tungusic word, and in the Far East in the mid-nineteenth century, shamanism had reached a highly evolved state.  For shamans and their followers who truly believed in the gods they served and in the powers they wielded, to have them disdained by missionaries and swept into irrelevance by foreign governments and technology was psychically devastating - a catastrophic loss of power and status comparable to that experience by the Russian nobility when the Bolsheviks came to power.  (141-142)

Anyone familiar with Alaska Native history is familiar with stories of Native drumming and dancing being banned and  kids having their mouths washed out with soap for speaking their own languages at school. And I can't help think that part of today's cultural wars are due to the same sense of loss of power and sense of entitlement by those Americans who are threatened by the rapid changes in the world today. 

In Primorye, this traumatic process continued into the 1950s.  The Udeghe author Alexander Konchuga is descended from a line of shamans and shamankas, and he grew up in their company.  “Local authorities did not prohibit it,”  he explained.  “The attitude was, if you’re drumming at night, that’s your business.  But the officials in the regional centers were against it and, in 1955, when I was still a student, some militia came to my cousin’s grandmother.  Someone must have snitched on her and told them she was a shamanka because they took away her drums and burned them  She couldn’t take it and she hanged herself.”  The drum is the membrane through which the shaman communicates with, and travels to, the spirit world.  For the shaman, the drum is a vital organ and life is inconceivable without it. 

Along with spiritual and social disruption came dramatic changes in the environment.  One Nanai story collected around 1915 begins, “Once upon a time, before the Russians burned the forests down . . .” (142)

It wasn't until the arrival of foreign settlers with livestock that tiger problems arose.  Vaillant met and interviewed Valery Yankovsky and writes about the history of settlement with a focuses on the Yankovsky family. 

“. . . the Yankovsky family hadn’t lived in their new home a year before they registered their first losses.  Between 1889 and 1920, tigers killed scores of the Yankovskys’ animals - everything from dogs to cattle.  Once a tiger dragged one of their hired men from his horse.

In the eyes of the Russian settlers, tigers were simply four-legged bandits, and the Yankovskys retaliated accordingly.  Unlike the animist Udeghe who were native to the region, or the Chinese and Korean Buddhists who pioneered there, the Christian Russians behaved like owners as opposed to inhabiters.  As with lion-human relations in the Kalahari, the breakdown began in earnest with the introduction of domestic animals.  But it wasn’t just the animals, it was the attitude that went with them.  These newcomers arrived as entitled conquerors with no understanding of, or particular interest in, the local culture - human or otherwise.  Like their New World counterparts across the Pacific, theirs, too, was a manifest destiny:  they had a mandate, in many cases from the czar himself, and they took an Orthodox, Old Testament approach to both property and predators.  (148) (emphasis added)

So similar to whites moving into Indian country in North American, and Westerners colonizing much of the world.  There was a sense of their superiority.  Manifest destiny.  They had better weapons, better ships, and better science created technology, not to mention religion.  Many truly believed they were entitled to take over, because of their perceived superiority, and some - particularly the missionaries - believed their presence would "help the natives."

Vaillant compares Yankovsky world view to that of an indigenous inhabitant of the region.

“. . .Even a hundred years later, Ivan Dunkai’s son Vasily’s description of his relationship to the local tigers stands in stark contrast to a Russian settler’s.  “You know, there are two hunters in the taiga:  a man and a tiger,”  he explained in March 2007.  “As professional hunters, we respect each other:  he chooses his path and I choose mine.  Sometimes our paths intersect, but we do not intrude on each other in any way.  The taiga is his home;  he is the master.  I am also a master in my own home, but he lives in the taiga all the time;  I don’t.” 

This disparity between the Yankovskys and the Dunkais is traceable to a fundamental conflict - not just between Russians and indigenous peoples, but with tigers - around the role of human beings in the natural world.  In Primorye, ambitious Russian homesteaders operated under the assumption that they had been granted dominion over the land - just as God had granted it to Noah, the original homesteader:

1.   Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth
2.  And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth

Implicit in these lines from Genesis 9 is the belief that there is no room for two on the forest throne.  And yet, in a different context, these words could apply as easily to tigers as they do to humans.  In so many words, God puts the earth and all its creatures at their disposal:

3.  Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you;  even as the green herb have I given you all things.  (150)

. . .It is only in the past two hundred years - out of two million - that humans have seriously contested the tiger’s claim to the forest and all it contains.  As adaptable as tigers are, they have not evolved to accommodate this latest change in their environment, and this lack of flexibility, when combined with armed, entitled humans and domestic animals, is a recipe for disaster.  (151)

The past two hundred years.  The onset of the modern world in which science was applied to human enterprise and the market system, articulated by Adam Smith in 1776, began to  develop into the industrial revolution.

 Mitt Romney seems clearly entrenched in the modern ideal of science  helping humans conquer nature, which has led to globe threatening development.  Romney referred to this period this week in his talk at the Clinton Global Initiative:

The best example of the good free enterprise can do for the developing world is the example of the developed world itself. My friend Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out that before the year 1800, living standards in the West were appalling. A person born in the eighteenth century lived essentially as his great-great-grandfather had. Life was filled with disease and danger.

But starting in 1800, the West began two centuries of free enterprise and trade. Living standards rose. Literacy spread. Health improved. In our own country, between 1820 and 1998, real per capita GDP increased twenty-two-fold.  (emphasis added)

While modern medicine and agriculture have improved the lives of many, and living conditions of Europe and the United States improved greatly, those European nations had colonies around the world that gave them cheap resources and labor.  The US, itself a colony before it broke off from England, took advantage of the enormous wealth of North America by displacing the indigenous populations and exploiting the resources, with slave labor, with waves and waves of immigrant labor, and with imported, cheap Asian labor.

Also, the world population has increased from a billion in 1804 to over 7 billion in 2012.  Yet despite the improvements Romney cites the World Food Programme reports that:

10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths;

Actually another of their statistics shows that the number of hungry people in the world today is almost as high as the total world population in 1804.  So, there is probably much more suffering in the world today than 200 years ago.

• 925 million people do not have enough to eat  and 98 percent of them live in developing countries. (Source: FAO news release, 14 September 2010)

And during that period, to achieve the physical standard of living that the most 'developed' countries have,  humans have had to destroy the world's forests and oceans and sky, so that most indigenous populations have been either physically or culturally annihilated, and untold numbers of animal, bird, and plant species have gone extinct and more are threatened with extinction at an even faster rate today.  See Global Issues, library index, Forest Transitions, or the Sustainable Scale Project for details.

Vaillant's The Tiger details some of that change from living in harmony with nature to the sense of entitlement and dominance over nature in one small part of the world. 

Mitt Romney would continue this trend by expanding US businesses into every possible country where they can continue to exploit the resources to the detriment of the inhabitants.  Romney, like the Russian Czars and the Soviet bosses, sees this as humans' natural dominance over nature and doesn't seem to consider the possibility that Western colonization and exploitation of African and Asian nations (where most of today's world poverty exists) might have something to do with the poverty in those continents today.  To him it's simply the lack of free enterprise, not because they were the victims of free enterprise.

Conditions among indigenous peoples around the world may have been primitive compared to modern Western standards, but most of those cultures had survived intact over the millennia and now many, if not most, have been destroyed or are endangered - usually because their habitats have been devastated by deforestation or other resource extraction by Western business interests. Romney goes on:

"As the most prosperous nation in history, it is our duty to keep the engine of prosperity running—to open markets across the globe and to spread prosperity to all corners of the earth. We should do it because it’s the right moral course to help others." (emphasis added)

We are, he tells us, the most prosperous nation in history.  And so we have a duty to spread the free market system:

To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and in other developing countries, I will initiate “Prosperity Pacts.” Working with the private sector, the program will identify the barriers to investment, trade, and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. In exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights. (emphasis added)

Let's see, in order for us to help you, we, the most prosperous nation in history, require you to open your markets to our powerful corporations to take your raw materials (forests, oil, minerals, etc.) with no pesky environmental protections, use your cheaper labor,  and sell our products to your citizens.

Explain to me how the new businesses in these most undeveloped countries are going to compete with the businesses in the most prosperous nation in history.  Tell me how Romney will keep foreign business interests from bribing the local politicians even more blatantly than they do our politicians.  How he will keep them from spoiling their environments and setting up horrible working conditions like in the factory in China Romney bought.

I want to be clear here.  I believe that the free market does unleash human energy and creativity and allows the growth of wealth.  But it's not a panacea.  It comes at a cost.  Economists have noted externalities as a failure of free enterprise.  These are things like pollution and other side effects businesses do NOT pay for when manufacturing their products, but end up as costs to the society as a whole.  As pollution clean up, as health problems, as destroyed forests and cultures. 

These externalities are destroying our planet.  Free enterprise, without government controls to make corporations assume the costs of those externalities, destroys our natural world and those cultures that don't embrace our economic system.

Romney appears to be the bearer of the philosophy that destroyed the forests in the Russian Far East.  It's not the philosophy of free enterprise, because the Soviets destroyed the Russian Far East with the help of the Chinese.  Rather it is the philosophy that man can conquer nature rather than man must live in harmony with nature.  I'm not excusing Obama in this either, though he does, at least, talk about the need to stop global climate change and protect the environment.  But you can't raise enough money to run for national office without the help of all those corporations that want access to foreign markets and easing of government oversight.  But Romney seems to believe all this stuff about the great effects of the unbridled market place. Of conquering nature through science.  Has he been to Russia lately?  Has he inspected the oil fields of the Amazon?  Or in Nigeria? 

One value of Vaillant's book is to show us up close this clash of values in one location in the world.  There are many other books that show how it happened in other locations.  In Alaska we see how Russian fur traders did the same thing to indigenous peoples of our coastal areas as they almost brought extinction to the sea otter population.  And American whaling ships almost wiped out the whales that summer in Alaska waters.  Elsewhere we see it in the depletion of various Atlantic fish species.  And the near extinction of wild tigers.

The free enterprise system has to be restrained so that its profit doesn't come from the depletion of the earth's resources.  We need world views that understand that for humans and other living things, to survive, we must live in harmony with nature. 

Borage

 As most leaves turn orange, yellow, and red, the borage flower is still out and its leaves are green.



From Botanical.com:

 "The whole plant is rough with white, stiff, prickly hairs. The round stems, about 1 1/2 feet high, are branched, hollow and succulent; the leaves alternate, large, wrinkled, deep green, oval and pointed, 3

inches long or more, and about 1 1/2 inch broad, the lower ones stalked, with stiff, one celled hairs on the upper surfaces and on the veins below, the margins entire, but wavy. The flowers, which terminate the cells, are bright blue and star-shaped, distinguished from those of every plant in this order by their prominent black anthers, which form a cone in the centre and have been described as their beauty spot. The fruit consists of four brownish-black nutlets.

 From Honest Food

"Even the question is a little ridiculous: What do you do with too much borage? Most people barely even know that borage exists, let alone that a) it is edible and b) what you might do to highlight its flavor. Borage arrived in my garden five years ago when I planted it not to eat, but as a bee attractant: The more bees in your garden, the better they pollinate its other plants.
Once you plant borage, you have it forever. It so readily seeds itself I get volunteers sprouting all year long; sometimes those seedlings get, well, a little aggressive."

The Alaska Senator The Oil Companies Most Hate

 "This election will present two very clear choices for the people of Alaska:  Do we want to be an owner state or do we want to be an owned state?

Do we want to go back to the failed policies of 30 years that have left us with little to show or do we want a new direction, a new vision where we follow our constitution and get the maximum benefit for our resources?

[Note:  I always try to be objective and even-handed in my blog posts, but sometimes, there is only one right choice.  This really is about the richest companies in the world trying to snatch back $2 billion in taxes a year from the people of Alaska.  They're trying to get back to where things were before the FBI stepped in to expose the corruption in Juneau over oil taxes.  They've waited a few years and now they're back at it, buying legislators to pass their tax cut.  Those opposed to the tax in the Senate were both Republicans and Democrats. Watch the video.]




 This is the video tape that every Alaskan voter should see before the election.  Senator Bill Wielechowki lays out the argument against the Governor's plan to cut the oil companies' taxes by $2 Billion (yes with a B) per year.

For 30 years we had a policy of low or no taxes on the North Slope.  The philosophy was, low taxes will lead to more investment, low taxes will lead to more jobs, low taxes will lead to more oil.  [Thus ?] we have a 30 year experiment.  How did it work?

It failed.  For 30 years we peaked at 2.1 million barrels a day of oil.  30 years later in 2006 with a zero percent tax rate on 15 out of 19 fields we had 740,000 barrels flowing down the pipeline.  The policy failed. Jobs declined. Investment declined.  Production declined.  Do we want to go back to that failed policy?  Are you willing to work to insure that we don’t go back to that failed policy?

They hate him because he has fought hard against the Governor's bill and because he's able to articulate clearly and passionately why it's all wrong.  There's no vague ideology and empty promises of more jobs.  It's full of facts that show that there is no good reason for Alaskans to give any money to the oil companies and plenty of reasons not to.  Most of his short speech is quoted here.  It's heavy with facts. 

We have a new policy in place.  It’s called ACES.  It’s working and there are two people I need to pay homage to . . . two of the legislators who stood up and said enough is enough and filed the first oil tax bill are with us today.  It is Senator Hollis French and Representative Les Gara.   

So how has that new policy worked?
Since we passed ACES, we’ve had all time highs in jobs every year since the bill passed.  We’ve had all time highs in investment every year since the bill passed.  We’ve had all time highs in the number of companies doing business in Alaska every year since the bill passed.   

We have more people working on the North Slope today than ever in the history of the state.  We have more  invested in the North Slope than ever in the history of the state.  We have a 253 percent increase in the number of companies doing business in Alaska in the oil patch.  I’d say it’s working pretty well, wouldn’t you?

I remember I was running six years ago and people were saying, “Are you going to raid the Permanent Fund?   Are you going to have an income tax?  Or a sales tax? Because the failed policies left us with nothing.  

Norway came to Alaska and studied our Permanent Fund.  

They started their Permanent Fund 19 years after ours.  They did it with less oil than ours.  Our Permanent Fund is worth 42 billion dollars.  Norway’s permanent fund is worth 600 billion dollars.  We have lost hundreds of billions of dollars because of the failed policies of 30 years.  We’re not going back to that are we?

But I recommend you listen to the video.  Wielechowski isn't some party hack.  He's a regular guy, a Mr. Smith Goes to Juneau, who looked around and saw how bad it was and got angry.  He's taken a stand that makes him a prime target for the oil companies who are taking advantage of Citizens United to get their $2 billion gift from their delivery boy in the Governor's Mansion in Juneau.  If they spent $100 million and succeeded in getting a Senate that supports their $2 billion a year tax cut, it would be the best investment in Alaska history.

Watch the video and see why oil company execs hate him so much.  See how clearly and well he exposes the fraud the Governor is trying to commit against the people of Alaska.


We have villages in Alaska without running water or sewage systems, but our Governor, a former ConocoPhillips lobbyist, wants to give back $2 billion a year to some of the richest companies in the world.  The governor is supposed to represent all the people of Alaska.  We've had governors like Hickel and Hammond, even Palin,  who have stood up to the oil companies.  But he wants to give them this money and in return we get vague mantras, but no promises, about jobs, jobs, jobs. 

The video was made Saturday, September 22, 2012 at a gathering of people in support of Save Our Oil and supported by a resurrected Alaska Backbone - the bi-partisan group that formed when ConocoPhilips bought ARCO.  Backbone demanded the state and feds hold out for better conditions before the deal was approved.

The key to preventing this giveaway is to elect enough coalition friendly senators to continue to block the oil companies' assault on the people of Alaska.


Who are the Senators in the Bi-Partisan Working Group?  From the Backbone website:

Senator Bill Wielechowski • Senator Bert Stedman • Senator Joe Thomas • Senator Joe Paskvan • Senator Linda Menard • Senator Lesil McGuire • Senator Johnny Ellis • Senator Gary Stevens • Senator Kevin Meyer • Senator Don Olson • Senator Hollis French • Senator Bettye Davis • Senator Tom Wagoner • Senator Lyman Hoffman • Senator Dennis Egan • Senator Al Kookesh

The Alaska Redistricting Board whittled away at the districts as much as the Supreme Court would let them.

Coalition Incumbents running against each other:

• Senators Kookesh (Southeast) and Stedman (Southeast) are running against each other in Southeast, so one of them will be gone.  
• Senator Joe Thomas (Fairbanks) was redistricted so that he is facing Senator John Coghill (Fairbanks).  

Coalition Incumbents lost in the primaries to anti-coalition Republicans:

• Senators Linda Menard (Palmer)  
• Tom Wagoner (Kenai).  

Redistricted into more conservative districts:

• Senator Joe Paskvan (Fairbanks).
• Senator Bettye Davis (Anchorage).  
• Senator Bill Wielechowski (Anchorage).
• Senator Hollis French (Anchorage).

New District with no Senate Incumbent (Anchorage)

• Senate District H: Democratic Representative Berta Gardner v. Republican Don Smith

Here's the list of Senate Candidates adapted from the Division of Elections.

Sen Seat	Republican	Democrat (unafilliated for Seat N)
A	John B. Coghill Jr. (Republican) P.O. Box 58003 Fairbanks, AK 99711 Phone: (907) 488-7886 Candidate's web site: http://www.johncoghill.com	Joe J. Thomas (Democrat)* 879 Vide Way Fairbanks, AK 99712 Phone: (907) 457-6710 Candidate's web site: http://www.alaskansforjoethomas.com
B	Pete Kelly (Republican) 511 East Slater Drive Fairbanks, AK 99701 Candidate's web site: http://www.petekellyforsenate.co	Joe Paskvan (Democrat)* 3275 Riverview Drive Fairbanks, AK 99709 Phone: (907) 474-0551
C	Click Bishop (Republican)**(see comments) 3365 Sandvik Rd. Fairbanks, AK 99709 Phone: (907) 479-3969 e-mail: click@clickbishop.com Candidate's web site: http://www.clickbishop.com	Anne Sudkamp (Democrat)** P.O. Box 83304 Fairbanks, AK 99708 Phone: (907) 479-5192 e-mail: anne.sudkamp@gmail.com Candidate's web site: www.annesudkamp.com
D	Mike J. Dunleavy (Republican) 1830 E Parks Hwy, Ste A-113, PMB #550 Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone: (907) 841-0399
E	Charles R. "Charlie" Huggins (Republican) 3375 N Edgewater Drive Wasilla, AK 99623 Phone: (907) 373-6419 e-mail: reelectcharliehuggins@gmail.com Candidate's web site: www.charliehuggins.com	Susan M. Parsons Herman (Democrat)** 3101 E. Palmdale Dr. Wasilla, AK 99654 Phone: (907) 376-8281
F	Fred J. Dyson (Republican) 12239 Lugene Lane Eagle River, AK 99577 Phone: (907) 694-3744	Martin J. Lindeke (Democrat)** 16111 Cline Street Eagle River, AK 99577 Phone: (907) 354-4402
G	Bob Roses (Republican) 8200 E. 2nd Avenue Anchorage, AK 99504 Phone: (907) 350-0684 Candidate's web site: http://www.bobroses.com	Bill Wielechowski (Democrat)* 1300 Farrow Circle Anchorage, AK 99504 Phone: (907) 242-1558 e-mail: wielechowskiforsenate@gmail.com Candidate's web site: www.wielechowski.org
H	Don Smith (Republican) 2121 Tudor Hills Court Anchorage, AK 99507 Phone: (907) 529-6170	Berta Gardner (Democrat)** 1405 Matterhorn Way Anchorage, AK 99508 Phone: (907) 274-1334
I	Paul D. Kendall (Republican) 1342 Hyder Street Anchorage, AK 99501 Phone: (907) 222-7882 e-mail: pauldkendall@yahoo.co	Johnny Ellis (Democrat)* 1231 W. Northern Lights #533 Anchorage, AK 99503 Phone: (907) 223-7724
J	Bob Bell (Republican) P.O. Box 92520 Anchorage, AK 99509-2520 Phone: (907) 272-5160	Hollis S. French II (Democrat)* 2640 Telequana Drive Anchorage, AK 99517 Phone: (907) 244-7135 e-mail: info@frenchforstatesenate.com Candidate's web site: www.Frenchforstatesenate.com
K	Lesil L. McGuire (Republican)* 2022 Kimberly Lynn Cir Anchorage, AK 99515 Candidate's web site: http://www.lesilmcguire.com/	Roselynn Cacy (Democrat)** 11930 Johns Road Anchorage, AK 99515 Phone: (907) 344-1261
L	Kevin Meyer (Republican)* 4020 Winchester Loop Anchorage, AK 99507 Phone: (907) 349-6511 Candidate's web site: http://www.senatormeyer.com	Jacob O. "Jake" Hale (Democrat)** 3561 Hollyberry Cir Anchorage, AK 99507 Phone: (907) 351-6762
M	Anna I. Fairclough (Republican) P.O. Box 771112 Eagle River, AK 99577 Phone: (907) 694-7090 Candidate's web site: http://www.annafairclough.com	Bettye Davis (Democrat)* 2240 Foxhall Drive Anchorage, AK 99504 Phone: (907) 337-2034
N	Catherine A. "Cathy" Giessel (Republican) 12701 Ridgewood Road Anchorage, AK 99516 Phone: (907) 345-5470 e-mail: Cathy@Giessel.org Candidate's web site: www.CathyGiessel.com	Ron Devon (Non-Affiliated) -  ** Nominating Petition Candidate 6520 Italy Circle Anchorage, AK 99516 Phone: (907) 301-1601
O	Peter A. Micciche (Republican) P.O. Box 1544 Soldotna, AK 99669 Phone: (907) 262-6165
P		Sen. Egan* is the only legislator not up for election this year.
Q	Bert K. Stedman (Republican)* 118 American St. Sitka, AK 99835 Phone: (907) 821-2378 e-mail: bertstedman@yahoo.com Candidate's web site: www.stedmanforsenate.com	Albert M. Kookesh (Democrat)* P.O. Box 91 Angoon, AK 99820 Phone: (907) 788-3615 e-mail: amkookesh@gmail.com
R	Gary L. Stevens (Republican)* P.O. Box 201 Kodiak, AK 99615 Phone: (907) 486-4205	Robert J. Henrichs (Democrat)** P.O. Box 1000 Cordova, AK 99574 Phone: (907) 424-7783
S		Lyman F. Hoffman (Democrat)* P.O. Box 763 Bethel, AK 99559 Phone: (907) 543-3583
T	Allen Minish (Republican) P.O. Box 118 Chitina, AK 99566 Phone: (907) 823-2280	Donald C. "Donny" Olson (Democrat)* P.O. Box 241248 Anchorage, AK 99524 Phone: (907) 240-3795
*Were Coalition Members in last Legislative Session, but if Republicans gain majority, not guaranteed next time **Likely Coalition Members in future Legislsative Session

HTML Tables

Actually, Bill Wielechowki is a pretty nice guy, and maybe the oil company people actually like him personally and hate someone else more. But they sure don't like his strong stand against changing the taxes and would love to see his opponent win.

[UPDATE 9/26/12:  Someone emailed me this link to Alaskans United to Stop Our Oil Wealth Giveaway (that's a mouthful)  for more information.

You Can't Have Another Planet Until You Take Care Of Your Own

"In 1925, Nikolai Baikov calculated that roughly a hundred tigers were being taken out of greater Manchuria annually . . . virtually all of them bound for the Chinese market. . . Between trophy hunters, tiger catchers, gun traps, pit traps, snares, and bait laced with strychnine and bite-sensitive bombs, these animals were being besieged from all sides.  Even as Baikov's monograph was going to press, his "Manchurian tiger" was in imminent danger of joining the woolly mammoth and the cave bear in the past tense.  Midway through the 1930's, a handful of men saw this coming, and began to wonder just what it was they stood to lose." [From The Tiger, p. 96]

Image from Time

 Another side effect of the market system* is the extinction of species.  Will the market for tiger parts in Asia, for land in tiger country. and the lack of protection of habitat for wild tigers, doom the tiger?

I remember reading pessimistic stories about the ultimate demise of wild tigers back in the 1990's like this 1994 Time Magazine  cover story.

It seems people just gave up.  Accepted that it was inevitable!

The same people who could fly to the moon and Mars, couldn't save their own planet from being plundered.  If there were a god, I think it would say, with an eye to the Mars rover, "You can't have another planet until you take care of your own."


I'm reading The Tiger: True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant for next Sunday's book club meeting.

I thought I'd share some excerpts.

During the winters of 1939 and 1940, [Lev Kaplanov] logged close to a thousand miles crisscrossing the Sikhote-Alin range as he tracked tigers through blizzards and paralyzing cold, sleeping rough, and feeding himself from tiger kills.  His findings were alarming:  along with two forest guards who helped him with tracking, estimates and interviews with hunters across Primorye, Kaplanov concluded that no more than thirty Amur tigers remained in Russian Manchuria.  In the Bikin valley, he found no tigers at all. With barely a dozen breeding females left in Russia, the subspecies now known as Panthera tigris altaica  was a handful of bullets and a few hard winters away from extinction.

Despite the fact that local opinion and state ideology were weighted heavily against tigers at the time, these men understood that tigers were an integral part of the taiga picture, regardless of whether Marxists saw a role for them in the transformation of society.  Given the mood of the time, this was an almost treasonous line of thinking, and it is what makes this collaborative effort so remarkable:  as dangerous as it was to be a tiger, it had become just as dangerous to be a Russian.  [pp. 98-99]

. . . In 1943, at the age of thirty-three, Lev Kaplanov was murdered by poachers in southern Primorye where he had recently been promoted to director of the small but important Lazovski Zapovednik. [p. 102]

 Primorye is where The Tiger is focused.  It starts on December 5, 1997 with an unusual, almost murder, of a hunter named Markov, by a huge tiger. I say murder, because this cat seems to have taken vengeance on this particular man.  It was not a simple case of opportunistic hunting by a starving tiger.   The book follows Yuri Trush, a member of a government team of game wardens - The Tigers - that protects tigers in the Primorye.

Primorye  . . . is about the size of Washington state.  Tucked into the southeast corner of Russia by the Sea of Japan, it is a thickly forested and mountainous region that combines the backwoods claustrophobia of Appalachia with the frontier roughness of the Yukon.  Industry here is of the crudest kind:  logging, mining, fishing, and hunting, all of which are complicated by poor wages, corrupt offiials, thriving black markets - and some of the world's largest cats. [p. 8]

Vaillant uses this death to explore Primorye (an incredible biologically unique piece of geography where subarctic and tropic flora and fauna mix), the history of tigers protection in Russia, the relationships between indigenous peoples living in big cat country and their big cat neighbors, and the possibility of saving wild tigers.  I like the combination of murder mystery and tiger history, though Vaillant has a chamber of commerce way of  making descriptions into dramatic declaratory statements.

Trush's physicality is intense and often barely suppressed.  He is a grabber, a hugger, and a roughhouser, but the hands initiating - and controlling - these games are thinly disguised weapons.  His fists are knuckled mallets, and he can break bricks with them.  

This reminds me of all the New Yorkers I've met who only went to the best doctor in the city, sent their kids to the best schools, and shopped at the best market in Manhattan.  I was impressed at first, but then it seemed everyone I met did the same thing.  I don't doubt  that Trush is an amazing man, but he almost sounds like a comic book character in descriptions like this.  


But that's a minor criticism.  And I'm only a third of the way through the book.  Here's a bit more on Russia's contradictory place in world animal conservation.

There is a famous quote:  "You can't understand Russia with your mind," and the zapovednik is a case in point.  In spite of the contemptuous attitude the Soviets had toward nature, they also allowed for some of the most stringent conservation practices in the world.  A zapovednik is a wildlife refuge into which no one but guards and scientists are allowed - period.  The only exceptions are guests - typically fellow scientists - with written permission from the zapovednik's director.  There are scores of these reserves scattered across Russia, ranging in size from more than sixteen thousand square miles down to a dozen square miles.  The Sikhote-Alin Zapovednik was established in 1935 to promote the restoration of the sable population, which had nearly been wiped out in the Kremlin's eagerness to capitalize on the formerly booming U.S. market.  Since then, the role of this and other zapovedniks has expanded to include the preservation of noncommercial animals and plants.

This holistic approach to conservation has coexisted in the Russian scientific consciousness alongside more utilitarian views of nature since it was first imported from the West in the 1860's.  At its root is a deceptively simple idea:  don't just preserve the species, preserve the entire system in which the species occurs, and do so by sealing it off from human interference and allowing nature to do its work.  It is, essentially, a federal policy of enforced non-management directly contradicting the communist notion that nature is an outmoded machine in neeed of a total overhaul.  Paradoxically, the idea not only survived but, in some cases, flourished under the Soviets:  by the late 1970's, nearly 80 percent of the zapovednik sites originally recommended by the Russian Geographical Society's permanent conservation commission in 1917 had been protected (though many have been redued in size over the years.) [pp. 97-98]

If it were merely hunting and habitat destruction that threatened the tiger and the polar bear and the rhinoceros and the countless other smaller species, I would say that it was possible for humans to save them.  Possible, but not necessarily likely.  But given the  global climate change, another collective by product of how humans treat their planet, I have grave doubts.  But we shouldn't give up.

Today, "The Tiger in the Sikhote-Alin" [Nikolai Baikov's 1925 monograph] remains a milestone in the field of tiger researh, and was a first step in the pivotal transformation of the Amur tiger - and the species as a whole - from trophy-vermin to celebrated icon.  In 1947, Russia became the first country in the world to recognize the tiger as a protected species.  However, active protection was sporadic at best and poaching and live capture continued.  In spite of this, the Amur tiger population has rebounded to a sustainable level over the past sixty years, a recovery unmatched by any other subspecies of tiger.  Even with the upsurge in poaching over the past fifteen years, the Amur tiger has, for now, been able to hold its own. 

A telling side-effect of the crash prior to this recovery, one caused in part by trophy hunters, is that today's Amur tiger is not as big as the older ones were.  With a lesson that Alaskans should pay attention to, Vaillant writes:

It wouldn't be the first time this kind of anthropogenic selection has occurred:  the moose of eastern North America went through a similar process of "trophy engineering" at roughly the same time.  Sport hunters wanted bull moose with big antlers, and local guides were eager to accommodate them.  Thus, the moose with the biggest racks were systematically removed from the gene pool while the smaller-antlered bulls were left to pass on their more modest genes, year after year.

Humans, when they believe something is unfair and wrong, can do amazing things.  The fact that there are still Siberian tigers, and that their population is healthier than it was, is an example.  Those who know, now need to convince those who still doubt, and we can save many of the species otherwise destined for extinction.

There are many, many people working to save the tiger and other species.  We aren't helpless.  You aren't powerless.  You can help save endangered species.  For inspiration and ways you can help, check out

• Save the tiger crusader Steve Galster
• The Wildlife Alliance
• The New York Times says the US has no system for tracking the 5000 captive tigers in the US
• Pantera

And here's a video from the World Wildlife Foundation:





*The market is an important and valuable part of human economy, but it isn't the panacea for all problems some proclaim.  (The world is too complex for panaceas.)  Milton Friedman himself listed market failures that need to be regulated by government.  One, he called "neighborhood effects" and others renamed 'externalities.'  These are the costs to society that the producer doesn't pay - the pollution and other environmental damage for example that isn't factored into the price of the product because the manufacturer doesn't have to pay for it.  Destruction of habitat to the extent that species are endangered is another externality as is the extinction caused by over hunting - as nearly happened to sea otters and sable and whales.  Government regulation is necessary to counteract market failures.  (I know, there are those who say the regulations are worse than the problem, but killing off the remaining big (and small animals) is not the price we should have to pay to let entrepreneurs make money. Plus, such an externality isn't an efficient use of our resources which it is why market economists label externalities market failures.)

The Working Rich and And Chinese Factory Girls From Romney's 47% Speech

As I wrote the title of this post, I realized "the 47% speech" might be as linked in history to Romney as Gettysburg address and Lincoln are linked.  But that's not what this post is about.

Jamie left a comment on my post that raised questions about whether Romney had Asperger Syndrome symptoms.  In the comments other readers declared Romney a sociopath.  Jamie wrote (in part):

What I find more disconcerting is how Romney represents to so many The Real American®™ by exhibiting said traits that also define a sociopath, in other words, he exemplifies the model businessman.
Case in point is the hand-waving over that “47%” secret recording of the talk he gave to wealthy elite donors. But what’s most disgusting of all (and a most telling symptom that reveals more of our own culture) is how virtually nobody is focusing on his off-the-cuff recounting during that speech of his visit to the Chinese factory. This where the women workers were corralled and treated like cattle, even kept from escaping their barracks by barbed wire and guards.
Romney never morally flinched, didn’t even think of them (or for that matter anybody poor today) as actual, live human beings, they were just assets, cogs in the machine he was buying. Ethically no different than the one-time revered pillars of society that upheld everything from the days of the robber barons to the horrors of institutionalized slavery in our own not-too distant national history.

Jamie raises a whole slew of issues.  But my first reaction was, "What Chinese factory comments?"  I'm afraid the 47% part was significant enough and I confess I didn't go looking for the rest of the speech.  Well, it's up and probably worth listening to.  Mother Jones has highlighted some parts they thought significant.

But I had to read the text to find the Chinese factory part Jamie referred to.  Jamie's point was that (I'm taking some liberties here, but you can see Jamie's words above)  the Romney model of a capitalist businessman (yes, man), is quite a bit like the heroes of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.   They apply principles of efficiency and no other values need be considered.  They work hard and deserve the wealth that inevitably comes from it.

In fact here's a comment from an audience member at the infamous speech:

Romney: Yeah, yeah.
Audience member: My question to you is, Why don't you stick up for yourself? To me, you should be so proud of your wealth. That's what we all aspire to be—we kill ourselves, we don't work a nine to five. We're away from our families five days a week. I'm away from my four girls five days a week and my wife. Why not stick up for yourself and say, "Why is it bad to be, to aspire to be wealthy and successful? You know, why is it bad to kill yourself? And why is it bad to cut 30 jobs that protect 300?" And, when people talk about you cutting jobs, you save companies that were failing...[unintelligible]. So my question is, when does that stand up…[unintelligible].

Let's see.  The important things in life are:

• being wealthy and 'successful' 
• killing yourself working
• not seeing your kids and wife five days a week?

Actually, this is vaguely the American ideal.  To work hard and 'succeed' by getting rich. In some families this macho capitalism, demonstrated by millions of dollars, and mansions and yachts, is the definition of success.  We can see it in HBO's Mad Men and many other portrayals.  This was the ethics-free creed that caused people in the home financing business to make loans that they knew could not be repaid, because they got their hefty cut upfront.  That creates multi-million bonuses for bankers while people are losing their houses because of those bankers.

Our military are away from their families for months at a time, shouldn't they have a cool million on separation from the military?  Instead those millions go to oil companies to pay for fuel, food suppliers, the weapons manufacturers, and a whole host of contracted companies that in turn pay hefty salaries to contract workers from first world countries (if you're from Bangladesh, your contract pay only looks good to your family back home who compare it to local salaries.) And our soldiers fight with the VA to get help with the war souvenirs in their heads.

And there are lots of poor folks whose work life is killing them with long days too, but it's not by choice.  They get up early to feed the kids and take long bus rides across town to clean the houses of better off folks.  They work as service people in various retail establishments often without health insurance or much hope of increasing their salaries. 

I was lucky to have a family that modeled being a good human being over being a rich human being and gave me the opportunities to choose a career that added value to human beings and our society and gave me a comfortable, but by no means luxurious, life.  And gave me time to spend with my family every day.  Some of that came from choices we made such as living a five minute walk from my work so I didn't spend my time or money on transportation to and from work.  Some of it was the luck of coming into the job market at a favorable time.   Some was not coveting more than I could afford.  My point here is that being wealthy, in and of itself, is not, in my mind, a noble life goal.

But let's look at the Chinese factory part of Romney's talk that Jamie cited:

And I remember going to—sorry just to bore you with stories—but I was, when I was back in my private equity days, we went to China to buy a factory there, employed about 20,000 people, and they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23. They were saving for potentially becoming married, and they worked in these huge factories, they made various small appliances, and as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at the end with maybe ten rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen them.
Audience member: Oh, yeah.

Romney: And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers. And we said, "Gosh, I can't believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No, no, no—this is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out, or they'll just come in here and start working and try and get compensated. So, we—this is to keep people out." And they said, "Actually, Chinese New Year, is the girls go home, sometimes they decide they've saved enough money and they don't come back to the factory." And he said, "And so on the weekend after Chinese New Year, there'll be a line of people hundreds long outside the factory, hoping that some girls haven't come back and they can come to the factory. And so, as we were experiencing this for the first time, for me to see a factory like this in China some years ago, the Bain partner I was with turned to me and said, "You know, 95 percent of life is settled if you're born in America." This is an amazing land. And what we have is unique, and fortunately it is so special we're sharing it with the world.

Jamie's point, as I understand it, is that Romney looks at these terrible conditions and is easily persuaded that these conditions are so good that people have to be fenced out.  And he's more than happy to have work done for 'a pittance' in China under terrible conditions, because it will improve his bottom line, because he will make millions from the labor of these young Chinese women.  And he's actually doing them a favor because they'll earn enough money to get married.  And Americans are sharing our amazingly blessed life with these people by giving them a chance to work in these wretched factories.  While American factories are shut down and Americans lose their jobs and saw their American dream disappear.  But these, for Romney, are all problems caused by Obama's oppressive regulations on business.

This is the model of the American businessman that Jamie is disgusted with and I can't say I disagree with him.  If you watch the videos, you wonder what the waiters who walk back and forth in front of the camera were thinking.  To the wealthy, these servers are invisible, and they can comfortably talk about the problems of being misunderstood because of their wealth in front of them without considering their lives or what they are thinking.

Here are some links to see or read more of what was said at this event:

Mother Jones piece with highlight clips from the talk, including:

• Mitt Romney on Obama voters
• Mitt Romney on treating Obama gingerly
• Mitt Romney on his consultants
• Mitt Romney on what wins an election (money from his listeners)
• Mitt Romney on the economy

Mother Jones second piece with highlight clips including:

• Mitt Romney on the Mideast Conflict
• Mitt Romney on Iran's Nuclear Program
• Mitt Romney on Obama's Foreign Policy

Mother Jones complete transcript of the speech.


Romney might even be right on some of the topics.  But it's his certainty that he is right about everything that is so distressing.  These are not things that anyone can be certain about.  And one might be skeptical that this is, in fact, what Romney really thinks, since he seems to tailor his comments to his audiences.  Except this seems to be an audience of his economic peers, so he may think that what they want to hear is what he truly believes.

Another interesting exchange began with a question about whether there might be an opportunity like Reagan had with the Iran hostage situation that faced Jimmy Carter. (Reagan is alleged to have worked out a secret agreement with the Iranians to keep the hostages through the election and as it happened, the hostages were freed immediately after Reagan's inauguration.)

Audience member: If you get the call as president, and you had hostages…Ronald Reagan was able to make a statement, even before he became, was actually sworn in—

Romney: Yeah—
Audience member: the hostages were released—
Romney: on the day of his inauguration, yeah.
Audience member: So my question is, really, how can you sort of duplicate that scenario?
Romney: Ohhhh. [A few chuckles in audience.] I'm gonna ask you, how do I duplicate that scenario.
Audience member: I think that had to do with the fact that the Iranians perceived Reagan would do something to really get them out. In other words [unintelligible]…and that's why I'm suggesting that something that you say over the next few months gets the Iranians to understand that their pursuit of the bomb is something that you would predict and I think that's something that could possibly resonate very well with American Republican voters.
Romney: I appreciate the idea. I can't—one of the other things that's frustrating to me is that at a typical day like this, when I do three or four events like this, the number of foreign policy questions that I get are between zero and one. And the American people are not concentrated at all on China, on Russia, Iran, Iraq. This president's failure to put in place a status forces agreement allowing 10-20,000 troops to stay in Iraq? Unthinkable! And yet, in that election, in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we have hostages in Iran, I mean, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the desert, I mean that's—that was—that was the focus, and so him solving that made all the difference in the world. I'm afraid today if you said, "We got Iran to agree to stand down a nuclear weapon," they'd go hold on. It's really a, but…by the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.

Is this why Romney jumped to condemn Obama when he first learned about the Egyptians attacking the US embassy in Cairo?  So many things to think about.

Campbell Creek Flooding Demonstrates Why Title 21 Is So Important

The white line is approximately where the shoreline is normally.   This is one of the first houses as Campbell Creek moves into populated area, so there are no artificial constrictions above stream that would raise the water higher here. 

I'm on the bike trail, the white line is about normal shoreline.

As developers try to push back the set back distance from creeks proposed in the Title 21 provisionally approved, this recent flooding gives a good example of why other cities have much stricter setbacks than Anchorage.






You can see the white line again over by the posts and the sign at the normal shoreline where the creek is supposed to go under the bridge.

 

And below is Campbell Creek just after crossing under Lake Otis.  It's been constrained by the concrete barriers under the road right here and it has fairly steep banks, so it's kept relatively close within its banks.  But even so you can see the difference between Thursday and Friday. (Note:  We were already at flood levels on Thursday.) The little white lines on each photo show the water line for Friday and the same place on Thursday. The vertical white line in the upper right just shows the distance from the base of the tree to the water.

And most telling of all, the pipe in the lower right is completely covered on Friday. 

And as I continued on the bike trail, I could see that the creek strayed far beyond its normal banks.   At the point in the picture below, there are houses between the trail and the creek. 


I decided to go off the trail and find a relatively dry pathway through the woods on the right.  It had some elevation.  But then I got out of the woods and to the soccer fields at Waldron Park.

In the above picture I'm looking back to where I came out of the woods onto the soccer fields.  There was a long, narrow body of water bordering the fields.  As I went down toward the field from the woods, I knew the ground would be soggy but I was hoping I could jump to the grassy island.  Well, both shoes were soaked by the time I leapt to the little grass patch, which wobbled like a water bed under me.  I think it was floating. 

This is Waldron Lake, on the edge of the soccer fields.  This area was saved this year by a bill in the legislature which bought the property to preserve it as a park.  This year the governor didn't veto the appropriation like he did last year.  As I looked at the lake, it seemed that this big open body of water was better equipped to absorb some of the flooding.   Nah, don't you think they should drain the lake and put in condos?  We need to get tax dollars from this land.  Well, what we get is a natural flooding abatement and water filtration plant that would cost the city hundreds of millions to match if this lake and the creek and the green belt around the creek weren't here.

Then I wandered on down to the Seward Highway and the project begun this summer to raise the four bridges to allow a real bike trail under the highway instead of the dirt and rock obstacle course that's been the way to get past the highway all these years.

This picture shows my bike under the first bridge in August 2008, negotiating the rocks and the dirt.  You can see the second bridge in the background (and then there are two more) and the normal water level.

Here's pretty much that same spot earlier this summer after they closed it off for the construction.  

And here it was Friday morning. (You can click on the picture to get it bigger and clearer. The bottom of the fence is in the water which was about three and a half feet below the bottom of the bridge.  The trail was completely obliterated.  You can compare the water levels to the first of these three pictures. 

If I've understood correctly (it's hard to keep current with the many changes), the builders in town have gotten the Planning and Zoning Commission to shrink the setback from creeks and waterways for new development.  I understand that people want to build on as much land as possible.  But this week's flooding along the creeks shows why those setbacks are necessary.  Are floods like this normal?  Not really. But there has been speculation that the shrinking polar ice cap is having an effect on our weather patterns.  If that's true, this may be the new normal.

This storm and the flooding highlight the problems of having developers be the main lobbyists to roll back the changes on Title 21. (Not counting those who have been to meetings to explain that Title 21 is directly related to UN resolution 21 on global climate change and is an international conspiracy to take over the world.)  They want to make as much money as they can developing land and while I'm sure the vast majority of the developers do not want to have their projects flooded - even after they've collected their money and gone - I am sure that they simply discount the safety, health, and aesthetic goals set into the Title 21 process by citizens panels over the years.  The creek set back is one of the more visible problems with the changes they are proposing.  There are many, many more that will have long term negative effects on Anchorage as a livable city.

The Anchorage Citizens Coalition has a lot more detailed information of what's going on.  They'll need people to contact their Assembly members right away. 

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. 

The Man Who Changed How We Think About Music

John Cage's life spanned most of the 20th Century.  Born 100 years ago this year, he died in 1992.  [I get enough google searches for "If I were born in 1912 how old would I be?" to think about putting the birth date down, but I'll assume most of my readers can figure it out.]

Cage truly revolutionized how we think about music. Maybe not directly, since most people have never heard of him, but he did change how musicians think about and how they make the music we listen to.

He moved beyond the idea of human created melodies and musical structures and focused on the sounds that exist in our world - Manhattan traffic sounds was one example - that had no meaning beyond themselves.  And silence was part of the sound palette for Cage.  To the extent that one piece, 4:33, was written for a pianist who sits at the piano not playing the notes for four minutes and 33 seconds.

His music focuses on sounds, not organized into the patterns we normally think of as music, so many people do not know how to interpret what they hear.  But it set the foundations for much modern music, including electronic music.  

I was particularly struck, at UAA's bookstore faculty forum last Thursday (September 13),  by a video clip of Cage as the guest on the 1950's tv show "I've Got a Secret." (See the I've Got A Secret YouTube is below.)  The celebrity panel is supposed to guess what the guest's secret is.

Cage's secret was that he composed a piece for three radios, a bathtub, ice cubes, blender, water pitcher, goose call, bottle of wine, whistle, and a bunch more items.  And was going to play it for them.  Watching Cage run from item to item to create the sounds in sequence, I realized that seeing the music performed was far more accessible for an audience than simply listening to what, without the visuals, would be random sounds.





This realization was reinforced when faculty member Dr. Laura Koenig described watching a performance of ball bearings frozen in a block of ice that melted allowing the ball bearings to drop and make different sounds depending on where they landed followed by a violinist responding to the ball bearing sound.  Dr. Koenig describes it on the video excerpts  below from Thursday's forum.  There are also some excerpts of John Cage discussing his music in the video.




There were three music faculty - Chris Sweeney, Phil Munger, and Laura Koenig - and art professor Sean Licka.   The bookstore's Rachel Epstein, who works so hard to create these interesting panels, was hovering around making sure people were speaking into the microphone so it would be caught for the UAA podcast that is now up.

You can hear the podcast of the whole talk here.

This post is totally inadequate for the subject.  I feel I should be writing more.  This was a man, not wealthy, who had an obsession.  Who lived close to poverty for years to pursue that obsession.  People understood that he was talented, but his ideas seemed crazy to most.  (Listen to how Gary Moore talks about his secret in the video.)  Yet he persevered.

A couple of people mentioned that Cage wouldn't be in most people's top 10 American composers of the 20th Century, yet he probably had the most influence on music.  This speaks to the contributions that people, who we tend to think of as odd, can make if they are allowed to.  He heard a different beat and didn't let it go.  He's both an inspiration to me to pursue what I think is important, and a lesson to see through the masks of the people around me to find their inner humanity and worth. 

Last Week Republicans Thought Taxes Were Evil, Now They Think People Who Don't Pay Taxes Are Evil!

Until last week, all I heard from Republicans was that taxes were evil and should be avoided if at all possible.  For years, Grover Norquist has been twisting Republican congressional arms to sign a taxpayer protection pledge.

Some members of congress major in tax loopholes and when they graduate from congress they get high paying jobs helping the wealthy avoid taxes.  And Romney, we've been told, avoids taxes with the best of them including off-shore accounts in the Caymans and Switzerland.  When you fly over to check on your accounts it's probably tax deductible too.

Yesterday my head spun as it followed the Republican tax philosophy tennis ball being slammed in the other direction.   I learned that Romney disdained the 47% of Americans (actually US households, not people) who didn't pay income taxes.  You'd think he'd admire their ability to legally avoid income taxes, just as he thinks we should admire his ability to avoid taxes.  But no, it turns out he doesn't.  They think they're victims, he said.  Hell, all this time I believed that Republicans thought people who PAID taxes were victims.

He also thinks they're all Democrats or at least they plan to vote for Obama.  If that's true, then why doesn't Romney just concede the election now?  After all, there must be other US tax paying Americans like myself who plan to vote for Obama.  If just 3.1% of us income tax payers voted along with the 47% deadbeats - in the right states of course - Obama would win.

Mitt, I hate to tell you this, but what people say they believe and what they actually do are two different things.   I know because I live in the socialist Red state of Alaska where we follow the Republican Wally Hickel's (may he rest in peace) Owner State philosophy.  We collectively own the oil on the North Slope (and elsewhere) and we collectively get paid dividends on it.

Just yesterday our Republican governor's Revenue Commissioner announced that this year's checks would be  $875[8].    And big families like yours Mitt, five kids, get seven checks!  We're all like shareholders in the state of Alaska. We don't pay state income taxes, we don't pay state sales taxes, and we get a check from our collective ownership of the state's natural resources.  Yes, we're all victims, dependent on the state.  And just like corporate victims whose companies get federal contracts and various tax breaks, we use the money to create jobs.

And we're a red state that will, without a doubt,  vote for you in November Mitt.  I hope you can explain all this to me. 

Click here to see a CBS fact checking and explaining post of the 47% figure here.

Office Jerk, Asperger Syndrome, and Mitt Romney

Lynne Curry, a local management consultant who has a weekly advice column in the Anchorage Daily News, had a letter today from an employee who'd been sent by his boss to "charm school" and he though it was a big waste of time:

"I was given hundreds of nonsensical suggestions. These included saying "please" and "thank you" when asking employees to do tasks they're paid to do. I was also told to listen to "all others" without interruption, even when idiots talk and I've got things I need to do.

I told my boss he could choose between me being "nice" and me getting my work done. He told me to call you."

The gist of Curry's answer was:

"Allow me to shorten the list of suggestions to just one: Stop being a jerk."

It's easy to dismiss this as far-fetched and conclude the letter is a hoax.  But I suspect many of you know someone like this.  So I'm going to continue on the assumption it's for real.

For everyday practical responses, "Stop being a jerk" probably works for all of us reading it, but what about the guy who wrote the letter?  Or Mitt Romney?* (Curry does say more, but it is all in the same vein that he's already dismissed as 'nonsensical suggestions.')

Labeling someone - especially a pejorative like 'jerk' - doesn't work well if the person truly doesn't understand what the problem is.  And even if they do understand, this will likely make them defensive, though in some cases it might work. 

My preference is to try to understand the underlying reasons one gets put into the 'jerk' category and whether there might be other ways to phrase it.  Jerk just means 'you aren't a good person.'  But people don't choose to be jerks. They may choose behaviors that cause others to label them jerks, but being a jerk is a side effect of how they act, not their goal. 

They need more help understanding their 'jerkhood.' 

In fact, his behaviors remind me of Asperger Syndrome.  (I confess that I see Asperger symptoms a lot.  I don't know if this is because my understanding of mental health is so limited I apply Asperberger inappropriately or that there really are a lot of people who display a few or more Asperger symptoms.)

 About.com's overview of Asperbergers offers a simplified list of symptoms from the Cambridge Lifespan Asperger Syndrome Service(CLASS) in UK.  Let's look at the list with my comments applying them to Curry's letter writer.

• I find social situations confusing.
• Clearly the case here.
  
• I find it hard to make small talk. 
• Seems to be the case here
  
• I did not enjoy imaginative story-writing at school. 
• No evidence presented.
• I am good at picking up details and facts. 
• Seems to do his job well which may involve these skills.  Not sure.
• I find it hard to work out what other people are thinking and feeling. 
• Definitely
• I can focus on certain things for very long periods. 
• Again, possibly.  He focuses on his work and isn't distracted by the social aspects at work and doesn't like to be distracted by others asking him questions
• People often say I was rude even when this was not intended. 
• Definitely
• I have unusually strong, narrow interests. 
• We don't have enough evidence, but he does his work - possibly one of those strong interests -  and it seems like those interests do not broaden out to things his co-workers are interested in, or even to his co-workers themselves.
• I do certain things in an inflexible, repetitive way.
• May explain why he's so impatient with how others do things or even listening to them making suggestions.  And he certainly doesn't want to change how he interacts with them.  They are the problem, not he.
• I have always had difficulty making friends.
• Definitely true at work and I suspect elsewhere.

This doesn't mean he has Asperger Syndrome, but it does suggest it's a possibility.  Even if he doesn't, it lays out some of his issues in relatively neutral language that he can understand.  People with Asperger Syndrome can be highly functioning and highly intelligent, but have difficulty picking up social cues. 


I looked for the source of the checklist above and found a paper at MD Junction which appears to have as the lead author the head of the Cambridge Lifespan Asperbers Syndrome Services, Simon Baron-Cohen. (For the interminably curious, Wikipedia says he is the cousin of actor Sacha Baron-Cohen.)  Here are some of the most relevant symptoms to Curry's worker's case from in Appendix A of the paper.

• doesn't think it's their problem if they offend someone (EQ27
• can't always see why someone should have felt offended by a remark (EQ29)
• prefers to do things on own rather than with others (AQ1)
• finds friendships and relationships difficult so tends not to bother with them (EQ12) .
• often told has been impolite even though they think they have been polite (AQ7)
• Lack of social or emotional reciprocity (e.g. not knowing how to comfort
  someone; and/or lack of empathy).
• finds it hard to see why some things upset people so much (EQ21)
• does not spot when someone in a group is feeling awkward or uncomfortable (EQ26)
• is not upset by seeing people cry (EQ32) 
• makes decisions without being influenced by people's feelings (EQ39) 
• does not get emotionally involved with friends' problems (EQ59)
• does not enjoy social chit-chat (AQ17)
•  is not good at social chit-chat (AQ38)
• can't tell if someone else wants to enter a conversation (EQ1)
• can't work out what other person might want to talk about (EQ54)
• not a good diplomat (AQ48)
• often finds it difficult to judge if something is rude or polite (EQ14)
• is very blunt without being intentionally rude (EQ34)

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/09/16/2627671/prince-charmless-doesnt-want-to.html#storylink=cpy

As I understand it, people with Asperger Syndrome aren't willfully being jerks, but rather they don't 'see' the signals most people see.  They either don't pick them up or their brains don't know how to interpret them.  It's like interpersonal deafness or colorblindness.

*I think Mitt Romney's more awkward behaviors could be pinned to these lists.  In fact his  comments to wealthy donors reported yesterday sound familiar: 

“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care of them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it,”

"[M]y job is not to worry about those people,” Romney said, referring to Obama supporters. “I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The message is the same as Curry's office 'jerk':  

I'm not the problem, the other people are impossible and unreachable so why should I bother?  

OK, I acknowledge that Romney's problem is bigger than Asperger Syndrome, but I suspect Asperger - or something similar - is part of it. 

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/09/16/2627671/prince-charmless-doesnt-want-to.html#storylink=cpy