Graham v MOA #4: Some Media Coverage, Finally

Casey Grove reported about the trial on APRN (it's dated 12/19/17 online).  His piece begins:

"The municipality of Anchorage has paid one of its firefighters more than three-quarters of a million dollars after his successful lawsuit against the fire department. 

It’s the second large civil award this year the municipality has paid to a public safety employee, after two police officers won $2.7 million last summer in a lawsuit over racial discrimination."

The dollar amount is different from what I reported back in August because Casey has added in the lawyers fees while I only had what the jury awarded Graham at the end of the trial.

It's been frustrating that, besides this blog, I'm unaware of any other media coverage of the case aside from this report and an earlier one by Casey back in April.  Obviously the MOA is happy that this is not covered and Graham's attorney doesn't feel it is professional to seek out publicity.  I've followed his lead here.

That said, I'd note that Casey learned about the case from me last April at the Alaska Press Club conference.  Casey had given an interesting talk on covering court cases which included different ways to get information on cases.  Afterward I mentioned one he hadn't mentioned - depositions.  Jeff Jarvi (Graham's attorney) had told me that depositions were open to the public.  The only problem was that the public doesn't have any way of knowing when they are held and who is being deposed.  I didn't know that before this case.  Casey asked how I knew this and I told him I was involved in a case, then asked me about the case I was involved in and I reluctantly told him. He looked it up and called the attorneys for both sides.  Jeff Jarvi questioned Casey about how he found out about the case, and like a good reporter, Casey said he couldn't divulge his sources.  I know that because attorney Jarvi told me about Casey's call and asked me if I had been Casey's source.

So why am I telling you this?   First, I think people should know about how the media work.  I didn't intend to tell Casey about the case, but as he pressed, I had no reason not to tell him the name of the case.
Second, and more importantly, is that this case was below the radar of Anchorage media. Even though it ended in the jury finding for the firefighter to the tune of $660,000.  And as Casey reports it was the second major case the MOA lost in 2017 - the first one involved the police department.

How many other stories are we missing?  This was a case where the jury, after three weeks of trial, found that the Municipality of Anchorage had breached its contractural duties of good faith and fair treatment.  That's a pretty big deal in my opinion.  And if it had been settled back in 2012 when Graham initially complained to the department of the unfairness, it could have easily been handled internally.  And, as I hope to explain in this series of posts, this was not simply about Jeff Graham. He was one of the few foolhardy enough or stubborn enough or mistreated enough  to stand up to the, yes, good old boy system in the fire department.

My Reaction To The Story Itself

It's hard to cover a lengthy trial that you didn't attend.  I salute Casey for making the effort.  You can read, or listen to the whole story yourself, but I did want to pull out this quote from  Anchorage Fire Department Deputy Chief Jodie Hettrick:

“It was a little frustrating for our side not to know exactly what they [the jury] felt that we did wrong,” Hettrick said. “Because we want to treat our employees fairly and equally and make sure that they don’t feel the department is doing something wrong. We want to fix things. It’s just hard to do that when you don’t have all the details.”
Hettrick said the oral exams are very similar to a job interview for any employer, and the fire department uses a scoring system for each question.

This is more than a little disingenuous.  It's the jury's job to determine the verdict.  In this case the jury wasn't asked if the MOA was "guilty" or "not guilty."  Instead, the jury had a series of yes/no questions that were finally agreed on by the two attorneys with the judge, as best as I can tell, being the final arbiter of what the jury instructions would be.  It isn't the jury's job to tell the MOA how Jeff Graham was mistreated.  It was their job to answer those yes/no questions.  And to calculate a monetary remedy.

I wish Casey had asked her if she had contacted any of the jurors to ask them.

Jeff Graham's attorney outlined in great detail how Graham was mistreated and what specific problems existed with the testing during the trial.  At least as much as he was allowed by the MOA's attorney's objections and the judge's sustaining the objections.  Deputy Chief Hettrick sat through the whole trial.  So if she doesn't know what the problems were, that, in itself, is a problem.

I will spell all that out in detail once again in these posts as best as I can - particularly concerning the highly subjective oral exams.  I will go through them in more detail than most people want to hear I'm sure.

A lot of it is technical and at first blush might not seem problematic, except to someone who has been trained in testing.  Unfortunately, the people in charge of testing (and the training for the tests) did not have the state certification that would have qualified them to designed the training and created the tests.  They had Fire Safety Instructor Training Certificate Level I.  (This includes now Deputy Chief Hettrick who was in charge of Training overall in the Fire Department at the time.  Though in her defense, she'd only just been hired.)  Level I certifies you as qualified to give training and exams that were designed by someone else.  Someone who had a Fire Safety Instructor Training Certificate Level II.  Hettrick defended this lack of proper certification by saying that there was no law in Anchorage that required it.  That doesn't change the fact that these folks didn't have the training which would certify their ability to create a training program and develop promotion tests.

I've concluded that these posts will have a lot of repetition and that isn't a bad thing.  It takes awhile to have enough context for specific facts to gain significance, like the training certificate levels.

Then And Now The Rich Use Their Power To Change The Laws To Further Enrich Themselves To the Detriment of Everyone Else And Nature

From The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf's biography of Alexander Von Humboldt:

"In the Political Essay of New Spain Humboldt had doggedly woven together his observations of geography, plants, conflicts of race and Spanish exploits with the environmental consequences of colonial rule and labour conditions in manufacturing, mines and agriculture.  He provide information about revenues and military defense, about roads and ports, and he included table upon table of data ranging from silver production in mines to agricultural yields, as well as total amounts of imports and exports to and from the different colonies.
The volumes made several points very clear:  colonialism was disastrous for people and the environment;  colonial society was based on inequality;  the indigenous people were neither barbaric nor savages, and the colonists were as capable of scientific discoveries, art and craftsmanship as the Europeans;  and the future of South America was based on subsistence farming and not on monoculture or mining.  Though found on the Vieroyalty of New Sapin, Humboldt always compared his data with that from Europe, the United States and the other Spanish colonies in South America.  Just as he had looked at plants in the context of a wider world and with a focus on revealing global patterns, he now conceded colonialism, slavery and economics.  The Political Essay of New Spain was neither a travel narrative nor an evocation of marvelous landscapes, but a handbook of facts, hard data and numbers.  It was so detailed and overwhelmingly meticulous that the English translator wrote in the preface to the English edition that the book tended to 'fatigue the attention of the reader'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Humboldt choose another traitor for his later publications."

This is early 1800s.

And yes, the Humboldt that the current is named after.

[An earlier post on The Invention of Nature is here.]

Graham v. MOA #3: Following The Merit Principles In The MOA Charter Could Have Prevented All This

[This is post #3 of a series on Graham v MOA.  You can get an overview and index of all the posts here. Or just go to the Graham v. Municipality of Anchorage tab up above.]

Understanding the merit system and how to measure people's skills for a job are important to understanding why this case is important.  So I beg your indulgence here.  I've tried to make this pretty easy to digest.

Briefly, before the Merit System (and principles) governments were run on the spoils system - you got a government job if you helped get a candidate elected.  Loyalty, not skill and public spirit, were the key job qualification.  Merit principles don't guarantee fair hiring and promotion, but they go a long way in that direction.

Below is excerpted from the expert witness report I wrote up October 2016.  The judge did not allow the plaintiff to use the MOA (Municipality of Anchorage) charter because he said the promotion process is part of the collective bargaining agreement.  Collective bargaining agreements are approved (on the MOA side) by the Assembly.  But the Charter can only be amended by a vote of the people of Anchorage.  So I still don't understand how the contract would trump the Charter.  But I'm not a lawyer.

Here's from my report:

Background and Purpose of Merit Principles and Systems  

Race and age bias, in the context of promotion of a public employee, is an important issue. But the bigger issue is merit system principles.  Modern human resources departments in reasonably sized organizations both public and private use what is known as a merit system.  The system stems from the 19th Century when governmental structures were evolving from feudal systems based on loyalty to the ruler, to more modern ones, based on rationality.  Scholar Max Weber noted that a new form of organization was emerging which he called a bureaucracy, that was based on rational rules rather than the arbitrary decisions of a ruler.
The point was that organizations that hired people based on their ability to do specific jobs and not on their relationship and loyalty to the ruler were more effective, more efficient, and more permanent.
These ideas of selecting the best person for the job were also promoted in the factory in the early 20th Century by Frederick Taylor and his idea of Scientific Management became widely adopted.  Over time, the ideas underlying Weber and Taylor - the idea that rational, scientific analysis can be applied to management - took hold in private companies.  Applicants would be evaluated by their qualifications to hold their jobs, though personal connections and other biases still were a factor.
In government the change took place both on the federal level  and state and local levels.  In 1883, the Pendleton Act established the US Civil Service after President Garfield was shot by a disgruntled job seeker.  It only applied to a small percentage of jobs at first, but over the years, it has come to cover most federal positions in the career civil service.
On the local level, reformists pushed for merit systems as a way to combat the big city political machines like Tammany Hall that recruited immigrants into their political party with promises of government jobs, as they arrived in the US from Europe.
So, both in government and in the private sector these ideas of rational rules to develop a competent workforce took hold.  But the biases of the times often got written into the rules.  Job tests were written so that new immigrants wouldn’t pass.  Women were assumed ineligible for most jobs and fired from those they could take - like teacher - if they got married.  The societal structure which kept people of color in segregated housing, deficient schools, in poverty, prevented most people of color from getting the needed qualifications, or even from knowing about job openings.  And overt racism prevented those who could qualify from being hired in most cases.
The civil rights movement changed that.  Brown v. Board of Education struck down segregated schools.  This was supposed to lead to African-Americans (particularly) getting better high school educations, then into universities, and then into good jobs.  But many communities opposed busing and set up all-white private schools, leaving the public schools for African-Americans and the poor.
The Voting Rights Act was intended to prevent laws that kept Blacks from voting.  Griggs v. Duke Power was a groundbreaking case in terms of job discrimination.  Black workers traditionally got the lowest level jobs and got paid less than white workers.  When they were required to put in tests for employees seeking supervisory positions, Duke Power created tests that were unrelated to the position and intended to keep blacks from passing. The Supreme Court struck this down saying that the tests for the jobs had to be related to the work that would be done.  They also said that the plaintiffs didn’t have to prove intentional discrimination, only that the test had a disparate impact on the minority candidates.
The merit system was an outgrowth of science being applied to management to ensure more qualified employees got hired.  Businesses developed measures that focused on someone’s ability to successfully do the job.  The civil rights movement fit perfectly into this theoretical ideal.  Job requirements should focus on qualifications, not race or gender.  Griggs v. Duke Power drew back the curtain on the hidden biases that were blocking access to better employment for women and minorities.
Today we’ve come a long way, but we are still a society that sees minority actors in movie roles as criminals or maids or chauffeurs much more than as doctors or lawyers or accountants.  Many people still cringe at the idea of their daughter marrying someone of a different race or religion.  When those feelings spill over into the workplace, into hiring, it’s illegal discrimination.
Unconscious racial bias perpetuates discrimination through assumptions about people based on their race or other characteristics.  Conscious bias attempts to set up barriers that seem legitimate, but are actually intended to keep out undesired applicants.
The merit system is one of the best ways to thwart discrimination so that the most qualified candidates, not the most ‘like us’ candidates, get hired.  It’s the best antidote we have to cronyism, racism, and other forms of discrimination in hiring and promoting employees.

Merit Principles and Systems at Municipality of Anchorage 

The MOA Charter at Section 5.06(c) mandates the Anchorage Assembly to adopt “Personnel policy and rules preserving the merit principle of employment.”   AMC 3.30.041 and 3.30.044 explain examination types, content, and procedures consistent with these merit principles.
Âs defined in the Anchorage Municipal Code Personnel Policies and Rules, “Examination means objective evaluation of skills, experience, education and other characteristics demonstrating the ability of a person to perform the duties required of a class or position.” (AMC 3.30.005)
According to the Firefighters collective bargaining agreement, the conduct and administration of the Anchorage Fire Department, including selection and promotion of employees, are retained by the Municipality. (IAFF-MOA CBA Section 3.1)

Application of Merit Principles to Making And Evaluating Objective Examinations 

In practice, the term merit principles means using procedures that ensure that decisions are made rationally to select and promote those people who are most suited for a job.  They mean that organizations do their best to identify the factors that best predict which applicant is most likely to succeed in the position.  Factors that are irrelevant to someone’s success on the job should not be part of the process.
A test (or examination as used by the MOA) is any process used to evaluate an applicant’s suitability for a position.  An application form can be thought of as a test to the extent that information is used to distinguish between applicants who qualify and those who do not.  A written exam, a practical exam, an interview are all tests when it comes to activities like selection and promotion.
Two basic factors are important when evaluating tests used in personnel decisions.  First, is the test valid?  Second, is the test reliable?
Validity means that the test, in fact, tests what it is supposed to test.  In employment that generally means it is useful in separating those applicants most likely to do well in the position from those less likely to do well.  For example, if a college degree is required for a position, but those without college degrees do was well as those with a degree, then that is not a valid factor to consider, because it doesn’t predict success on the job.  It is common to give applicants a written or practical test or an interview.  These are scored and applicants with higher scores are selected over people with lower scores.
Such tests are valid only if it is true that people with higher scores are more likely to be successful in the position than those with lower scores.  That is, people with higher scores are more likely to do well AND people with lower scores are more likely to do poorly.  If that is not the case, the test is not valid.

Employment tests can be validated by checking scores against actual performance of employees, though this does require selecting employees with low scores as well as with high scores to determine if the lower scoring employees really do perform poorly compared to the higher scoring employees.  This can be expensive and many organizations use ‘common sense.’  But common sense may not be accurate and if an employer is accused of discrimination, they will have to defend the validity of the test.
For rare, specialized positions, validation is difficult to do.  For common positions that are similar across the nation, such as fire fighters, there are often companies that prepare, validate, and sell, and even administer employment tests.
Reliability means that the way a test is administered is consistent.  The same applicant, taking the test at different times or locations or with different testers, would have basically the same result every time.  When people take the college entrance exams, for instance, the conditions are standardized.  No matter where someone takes the test, they get exactly the same instructions, the physical conditions of the test room are within certain parameters (desk size, temperature, noise level, etc.) and they all have exactly the same amount of time to complete the exam.  The scoring of the exams is also the same for everyone.
To ensure reliability of the test taking, all conditions that could affect the outcome must be the same.  To ensure reliability of scoring, the way points are calculated must be as objective and measurable as possible.  Often tests are designed with scales that help a rater know how to give points or how to put applicants in the correct category.
At the most basic level you might just have a scale of 1 - 5 for instance, with ‘good’ at one end and ‘poor’ at the other end.  But how does the rater determine what’s good or bad?
Better would be to have a more objective descriptor such as “successfully completed task with no errors” on one end and “failed to complete the task” at the other end.  Even better would be to have descriptors for each point on the scale.  The more that the descriptor describes an actual objectively testable level of achievement, the more likely it is that different raters would come up with the same score.  For example, ‘meets expectations’ is not as objective as “accomplished the task within 2 minutes with no errors that compromised the outcome.”
Basically, the greater the objectivity of the scoring system, the greater the likelihood of reliability, because there is a clear standard attached to each number in the scale. And with a more objective system, discrepancies can be more easily spotted.  A biased evaluator has a harder job to select favored applicants or disqualify disfavored candidates.  Also, a candidate who was graded unfairly has a better chance of challenging the score.
Another way to increase reliability is to train evaluators on how to use the scoring system.  It is also helpful to have raters who do not have personal relationships with the applicants.
Given the need for validity and reliability, interviews, while frequently used, have been found to be prone to many biases unrelated to the job. There are ways to improve the validity and reliability of interviews.  The questions asked must be clearly tied to ability to be successful in the position, recognizing that being able to perform a task is not the same as being able to describe how one would perform a task.  If personality and speaking ability are not being tested, then interviews can become treacherous employment tests for the applicant and for the employer.  The more subjective a test and the rating system, the easier it is to bias the outcome, whether unintentionally or intentionally.
Since proving intent to discriminate requires overhearing private conversations or emails, this is an impossible hurdle for most applicants.  The courts have recognized this and have allowed ‘impact’ to be used in lieu of intent.  But employment tests can often give us evidence of intent if they are subjective and there is little or no validity or reliability.

Conclusion 

I have seen no materials that offer any information on the validity or reliability of the tests used in the engineer promotional examinations which Jeff Graham has taken.  The exam score sheets I have seen lack rigorous descriptors for raters (or proctors) to calculate scores for applicants and appear extremely subjective.  The materials I’ve seen that were used to train the raters were lacking in detail and substance.
Without evidence to show the exams are valid and reliable, one must assume that the exams do not comply with the Municipality’s mandate to follow merit principles. [Such proof of validation had been requested from but not provide by the MOA.] The point of merit systems is to identify the most qualified candidates for each position and to prevent the introduction of personal biases into their scoring of candidates.  The tests themselves may or may not be discriminatory.  But when they are subjective as the oral board/peer reviews are, biases of the raters are easily introduced into the scoring of candidates. The type of bias could be racial, sexual, age based, or personal depending on the rater.
It is my understanding that MOA has not produced all requested materials and that depositions still remain to be done in this case.  I therefore reserve the right, should additional materials and information become available, to modify or supplement this report.  

Because merit principles were ruled out as the measure the jury would use to evaluate the case, this report was not introduced in court or given to the jury.  However, I was allowed to testify on merit principles in general, but not allowed to relate them to the facts of the case, or even to the MOA.

I was also not allowed to refer to the Fire Safety Instructor Training Manual that the MOA uses which talks about validity in some detail and also talks about 'high stakes' tests - like a promotion test - needing to be professionally prepared and validated.

I was allowed to talk about, again in general terms and not relating what I said to the AFD exams, subjectivity and objectivity.  I acknowledged there is no such thing as 100% objective or subjective, but that there is a continuum from some theoretical total subjectivity to theoretical total objectivity.  The goal of test makers is to have tests as far to the objective side of the continuum as possible.  The more subjective a test, the easier it is to introduce bias, conscious or unconscious.

LA Poster Edged - Comics, Costco Liquor, Burmese Halal, and Skateboards

It seemed like the comic store would like better after a Photoshop poster edge filter was applied.  And then it seemed the whole day would look better that way.  I'd note they had 20-40% off on all the graphic novels.  I'm enjoying The Last Man credited to Brian K. Vaughan, writer; Pia Guerra, penciller; José Marzán, Jr., inker on the cover, and inside Pamela Rambo, colorist, and Clem Roberts, letterer.  I'm sure it will get its own post.




The filter did enhance it the store, but the poster edge filter not obvious in this photo.







Again, it's not obvious to the average person in this shot of a couple of graphic novels.  But look close at the wood and the background.

But you should be able to notice the effect on our lunch at a Burmese/Indian Halal restaurant, called Jasmine, on Sepulveda near Washington.

The Costco liquor department had some eye-popping prices.  Maybe I'm not looking carefully in Anchorage where the liquor department is separate from the rest of the store and I don't usually go in.  In this Costco it's right in the middle of everything else.



















And this Saturday afternoon's shot at the Venice Beach Skateboard Park also seemed to be begging to be poster edged.


[As you can tell, I'm avoiding more current event posts for a bit.  Not because I don't think they're important and not because I don't feel strongly about the issues.  But it takes time to say something that everyone else isn't saying and that is also useful.  Like how to at least make Lisa Murkowski feel a tinge of guilt as she votes for the 500 plus page so called tax reform bill that she and others really won't read first that surely includes all sorts of hidden gifts and thefts will only learn about later.  Though reporters say things like "most people will get a tax cut until the middle income tax cuts expire in five years,"  what they don't say is that other costs - health care, child care, insurance, and countless other necessities - will go up and people will pay more on those things than they will gain in their tax cuts.]

Animals In Kid Land Versus In The Real World

Jon Mooallem's introduction to "Wild Ones" caught me off guard:

"My daughter's world, like the world of most American four-year-olds, has overflowed with wild animals since it first came into focus:  lionesses puffins, hippos, bison,

sparrows, rabbits, narwhals, and wolves.  They are plush and whittled.  Knitted, batik, and bean-stuffed.  Appliquéd on onesies and embroidered into the ankles of her socks.
I don't remember buying most of them.  It feels as if they just appeared - like some Carnival Cruise Lines-esque Ark had docked outside our apartment and this wave of gaudy, grinning tourists came ashore.  Before long, they were foraging on the page of every bedtime story, and my daughter was sleeping in polar bear pajamas under a butterfly mobile with a downy snow owl clutched to her chin.  Her comb handle was a fish.  Her too brush handle was a whale.  She cut her first tooth on a rubber giraffe.
Our world is different, zoologically speaking - less straightforward and more grisly.  We are living in the eye of a great storm of extinction, on a planet hemorrhaging living things so fast that half of its nine million species could be gone by the end of the century.  At my place, the teddy bears and giggling penguins kept coming.  But I didn't realize the lengths to which humankind now has to go to keep some semblance of actual wildlife in the world."

He then goes on to discuss how far people have gone to help salmon swim up their blocked rivers, and how volunteers help seat turtle hatchlings safely into the sea, and giving plague vaccine to ferrets.

I've watched the menagerie that surrounds my granddaughter's every move, but I really hadn't come to the realization that it may be blinding us to the disappearance of real animals.  Food for thought.

Is 2017 Really 1984? Forbidden Words At CDC - Controlling Language Is Way To Control Thinking

According to the Washington Post:

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The article goes on to say the ban is related to the 2019 budget.  I guess if you can't say the words, you can't allocate funding to the projects.  Diversity, transgender people, science, and fetuses will, I guess, be ‘vaporized’ (see 'unperson' below) if there are no labels for them. But surely they don't want to get rid of babies, so fetus, I guess, will become 'unborn innocent baby.'


Tampering with Thinking Integral to 1984

This is really tampering with our ability to think.  This is so outrageous and dangerous that probably no one ever thought of a law to prevent it.   The NRA has already prevented the CDC from doing any research on gun deaths and injuries.  If you have no data, you can't do research and you can't prove anything.  But, of course, science based is now being banned as well.

I remember as a kid, thinking that the year 1984 was so far into the future.  Then it came.  And then it was 1985.  What I didn't know was that 1984 was really 2017.

George Orwell's 1984 introduced the term NEWSPEAK. Orwell envisioned an authoritarian world where thinking was controlled by the government.   Here are some of the ideas, if not the exact terms, we can now expect from our new regime as they revise the English language to their service.  Courtesy of Wikipedia:

• bellyfeel – a blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea

• blackwhite – to believe that black is white, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary

• crimestop – to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime

• crimethink, thoughtcrime – thoughts that are unorthodox or outside the official government platform

• doubleplusgood -Replaces excellent, best and benevolent

• doublethink – the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct

• duckspeak – Voicing political orthodoxies without thinking, lit. "to quack like a duck"

• equal – Only in the sense of physically equal, like equal height/size, etc. It does not mean socially – politically or economically – equal, since there is no such concept as social inequality in purportedly egalitarianistic Ingsoc

• facecrime – An indication that a person is guilty of thoughtcrime based on their facial expression

• free – Meaning Negative freedom (without) in a physical sense, only in statements like "This dog is free from lice", as the concepts of "political freedom" and "intellectual freedom" do not exist in Newspeak

• good – (Can also be used as a prefix vaguely meaning "orthodox")

• goodthink – thoughts that are approved by the Party and follow its policies, ideals and interpretations. It is the opposite of crimethink

• goodsex – intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children and without physical pleasure

• joycamp – Forced labour camp

• malquoted – flaws or inaccurate presentations of Party or Big Brother-related matters by the press. See misprints below

• miniluv – "Ministry of Love" (secret police, interrogation and torture)

• minipax – "Ministry of Peace" (Ministry of War, cf: 'Department of Defense' vs 'War Department')

• minitrue – "Ministry of Truth" (propaganda and altering history, culture and entertainment)

• miniplenty – "Ministry of Plenty" (keeping the population in a state of constant economic hardship)

• misprints – Errors or mispredictions which need to be rectified in order to prove that the Party is always right. See malquoted above

• oldspeak – English; perhaps any language that is not Newspeak

• oldthink – Ideas inspired by events or memories of times prior to the Revolution

• ownlife – the tendency to enjoy being solitary or individualistic

• plusgood - replaces the words better and great. Refers to good compliance with Party orthodoxy.

• pornosec – subunit of the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth that produces pornography

• prolefeed – The steady stream of mindless entertainment to distract and occupy the masses

• recdep – "Records Department" (division of the Ministry of Truth that deals with the rectification of records; department in which Winston works)

• rectify – used by the Ministry of Truth as a euphemism for the deliberate alteration (or 'correction') of the past

• sexcrime – all sexual activity which is not goodsex

• speakwrite – An instrument used by Party members to note or "write" down information by speaking into an apparatus as a faster alternative to an "ink pencil". It is, for example, used in the Ministry of Truth by the protagonist Winston Smith. Speakwrites are also apparently able to record everything that is spoken into the device

• telescreen – television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance

• thinkpol – the Thought Police

• thoughtcrime – the criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question Ingsoc

• Unperson – someone who has been "vaporized"—not only killed by the state, but erased from existence

I would note that banning words really doesn't make them go away.  People find other ways to say the ideas.  However, if the ban is supported by a capable government authority it can distort how people conceive of the world.  Just consider the people who only watch Fox News and people like Limbaugh.  They now live in an alternative reality that can't be breached.  Now, the people who created that alternative reality are running much of the US government.  

Fires Very Visible From The Air As We Fly Into LA [Updated]

It got up to 50˚F (10˚C) in Anchorage yesterday and about 60% of our yard was snow free.  Unusual for mid December in Anchorage.

Our red-eye to LA was pretty uneventful - which is a good thing - but as we flew over what was about where Santa Barbara should be, I could see the fires in the mountains.  There was one big raging conflagration and then many little ones scattered all over.  These pictures demonstrate why I need to get serious about learning how to take control of my camera.  It works pretty well under normal circumstances, but not in unusual ones, like taking night pictures of forest fires from an airplane.  The first shot was the biggest fire.

Mind you, that's way off in the distance, and we were 30 minutes out of LA, so maybe a pilot can figure out what our elevation probably was - well over 10,000 feet I would guess.

These next two pictures are more 'artistic.'  The lens was open a long time so there's some jiggle and lots of reflection in the window.  This is with a wider angle view.  It gives a better sense of there being fire in a lot of different places, not just one ridge.

And this last one shows totally different hot spots.

As we got closer to LA we headed out over the ocean, so if there were any fires closer to LA I couldn't see them from the right side of the plane.


 My computer tells me it was 48˚F at 7 am in LA.  

UPDATE 4:30pm:  We got the bus to my mom's house, slept until 2pm, then I biked to the beach and up along the coast.  Felt great.  The only sign of the fires was smoke along the mountains to the north.
You can see that as you get closer, things clear up a bit.

From Santa Monica pier looking north.

A couple miles closer and you can see where the mountains meet the ocean.

Another mile closer and you can distinguish three different points meeting the ocean.

Anchorage's First Thai Restaurant, Thai Kitchen, Closing After 33 Years

On December 23, 2017, the Thai Kitchen will close its doors for the last time.  But don't worry.  In January, they will open new doors a few spaces to the east in the same Tudor Avenue mall, right next to the Frozen Yogurt shop that their family also runs.  They're hoping to open early January, but new construction being what it is, they know it might take longer.

So if you want to eat at the old store before it closes, you have about ten days left.  When we first went in, the 'restaurant' was four tables and a kitchen stove in the back of the Express Market.  Over the years they added tables and the market got smaller until it was all restaurant and no market.  They also got a more serious stove and a commercial hood for the stove.

It's been a family operation from the beginning with the four boys helping out their mom, Sommai, their dad, Ben, and their aunt Orathai.  Here's a picture after a great dinner at the Thai Kitchen with an old Peace Corps Thailand friend when she and her family visited Anchorage back in 2008.










Here's the Yogurt Works - the new Thai Kitchen will be next door, and connected.

Here's a guy we met at the Thai Kitchen who'd biked to Anchorage from Argentina.  This was 2013.





A picture from the parking lot after a dinner at the Thai Kitchen.  This view is always changing with the light and clouds and is always a reminder of why we live in Anchorage.

Alabama Means Red States No Longer Reliably Red

Sure, this was an exceptional race with a particularly awful Republican candidate.  And 48% of Alabamans still voted for Moore.  But let's look at the demographics from the Washington Post.

Now let's look at Alaska demographics:

White:  66.7%
Black    3.6%
Asian    5.4%
American Indian or Alaskan Nativee  14.8%
Pacific Islander - 1%
Two or more races - 7.3%
Other   - 1.7%

These are 2010 stats.  Things have gotten more diverse since.  And the Alabama numbers are just people who voted today while Alaska numbers are the whole population, not just voter aged.

65% of Alabama's voters were white, and in 2010 66% of Alaska's population was white.

Anchorage is already a blue city as of the last mayoral and assembly election.

There are lots of differences between Alaska and Alabama besides the middle letters.
Alabama's non-white vote is mostly black, Alaska's is more diverse.
Roy Moore was a particularly terrible candidate.

The Post article broke the elections down by a lot of different factors.  It's worth checking.  I didn't see anything about first time voters.  But I suspect this election will provide great motivation for first time voters to see that their vote does really count.

But let's also look at age of voters - this is really telling.

But Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski better not take Alaska for granted.  Alabama proves what new voters can do, even in the reddest state in the union.  Red states are no longer reliably red.

[UPDATE 11:30 pm - We just watched Mudbound on Netflix.  An excellent way to bring meaning to the Alabama election. It takes place in Mississippi, but close enough.]

Sexual Harassment - The New Environment And The Alaska Legislature

Today I got an email with a statement by Alaska State Senator Berta Garner about an investigation into a sexual harassment of State Senator David Wilson.  Senator Berta Gardner is my state Senator.  She's smart, warm, and not prone to speak without doing her homework.

I must admit that this is the first I've heard about this.  I'll plead Anchorage International Film Festival as my alibi for missing this last week.  Here are some earlier reports on the incident:

APRN piece dated Dec. 7, 2017.

KTUU report dated this afternoon.  It includes video of Sen. Wilson's statement, in which he asks for the Legislative Agency report be released along with the video, which is below. (I can't get the video to embed right, something's wrong with the code, so go to the KTUU link.  It's just blank on Safari and on Firefox there's a message saying the KTUU link is insecure.  I'm just deleting the embed code. Sorry.)

Here's Senator Gardner's response to the Legislative Report.

Senator Gardner Responds to Legislative Report on Behavior of Senator Wilson

ANCHORAGE - Today, Senate Minority Leader and member of the Senate Rules Committee Berta Gardner gave the following statement in response to a vote taken to release a report from the Legislative Affairs Agency on the professional conduct of Senator David Wilson and his interaction with a legislative staffer. The members of the committee voted unanimously to release the content of the report, with the support of the staffer involved in the incident.

“Senator Wilson took out his cellphone, placed it down at the level of the hem of her skirt from a foot away for four seconds, saying he was going to record a closed meeting of House leadership. This behavior is consistent with what the staffer reported at the time. Such behavior is clearly intrusive, intimidating, and inappropriate to the staffer. It is also grossly unprofessional and unethical behavior from anyone, let alone a sitting member of the Senate.

“Coupled with the fact that Senator Wilson slapped a political reporter across the face in the Capitol building a short time before this incident, it demonstrates a disturbing pattern of poor judgement, bullying, and aggressive behavior. Senator Wilson should acknowledge his bad behavior, and apologize immediately to both the reporter and the staffer, taking full responsibility for his actions.”

Members of the press with questions may contact the Alaska Senate Democratic Press Secretary, Jeanne Devon, at 907-269-0129.

Senator Wilson argues that he's been exonerated.  I found a copy of the report at MidnightSun in a form that I can't seem to embed here.  You can see it at the Midnight Sun.  Here's a screenshot of the factual findings.

The report, by Skiff Lobaugh of the Legislative Affairs Agency - a pretty objective body does that analysis for legislators - goes on to look at the federal workplace harassment law and then matches the incident to the law.  It doesn't at all match the quid pro quo definition of harassment.  The second form requires a 'hostile work environment" which looks at

1. frequency,
2. severity, 
3. whether it interferes with the employee's ability to her work, and
4. whether it affects the employee's well being

Lobaugh noted that there was just one incident reported, that his intention was ambiguous - it seemed he was jokingly trying to record a behind closed doors meeting that the employee had been assigned to keep people out.   It did, he found, affect the employee's well being in the short run, but not in the long run.

He did acknowledge the unequal balance of power between an elected official and a legislator staffer who can be fired without cause.  

I'd note that while the employee discussed the incident at the time with others, including legislators, she never filed a complaint.  The staffer, on hearing various reports on the incident, requested a clarification from Leg Legal (the legal advisors to the legislature) about whether he was required to investigate since there are punishments for people who know but don't report, and was told he should.



We're in new territory here as long term social norms are getting reevaluated.  I think many of us tend to get defensive when accused of something we believe we didn't do.  My experience is we get worse if we actually did it.  I don't see how lowering a cell phone to hem level of a staffer's skirt is necessary to try to record a meeting behind the staffer and behind a door.  Playfulness only works between people who know each other well and/or are relatively equal in power.

Sen. Gardner's memo raises the issue of this incident happening about the same time as Sen. Wilson was reported as slapping a journalist, which is clearly out of line.  (The journalist didn't press charges.)

I find it interesting that the first two accusations we've heard of sexual harassment of Alaska state legislators in the post Weinstein era have been against a first term Alaska Native and a first term African-American.  Is this a coincidence?  The vast majority of legislators are white.  There is only one African-American in the legislature and a handful of Alaska Natives out of a total of 60 in both houses.