Spittle Bugs and Aphid

My first blog post - July 9, 2006 - was on spittle bugs. I didn't have my digital camera then. So now that they are back, I can show you. As I said, it looks like really clean spit. Inside is a little bug that creates all this stuff to keep wet and protected. It's easy to spray off with a hose and apparently the little guys don't do much damage.






















However, aphid are a different story altogether. Here the larvae (at least I think these are aphid larvae) cover the soft, green shoots of our thalactrum. Well this plant is pretty easy to deal with - I just use the jet level on my hose attachment and blast the plant. It's hardy enough that the water doesn't break it, but the aphid are gone. When they get into the birch trees it's another story. There were a few years back when the yard was covered with black syrup dripping from the birch trees. It wasn't so bad last year and so far this year seems ok.

More Anchorage Airport Railroad Depot Background

This comes from Andrew Halcro's website. Halcro was a Republican state representative from 1999-2003. On his site his biography says he is

President, Avis/Alaska (Statewide Family business owned and operated
since 1955) 2002-Present

He ran for governor of Alaska in 2006 as an Independent. He's sharp and talks straight. Below is his account of how the depot got built from a discussion of a candidate forum in Seward in March 2006. He's discussing John Binkley, then a Republican primary candidate for Governor.

Basically this is consistent with what I wrote earlier and fills in a few more details.

But the most amusing comments was his defense of the $28 million dollar cruise ship passenger depot at the Anchorage Airport. In fact, reconciling his comments to the audience on Friday with history, is a great lesson on how some politicians tend to lose memory when they run for office.

In the spring of 2001 while I was in the legislature I had my first conversation with John Binkley. He came to my office to address my concerns as a vocal critic of the railroad spending $28 million dollars of taxpayer money to construct a facility that was going to serve a limited use (cruise ship passengers) and be closed for 8 months a year.

During that conversation, Binkley who was the Railroad's Chairman of the Board and supported the rail depot, told me that the reason they went ahead with the project was that they didn't want to embarass Senator Ted Stevens by giving back the money. Even though the railroads own feasibility study raised questions about the project.

However on Friday, the rail depot turned from a "must do" to a "must have".

In his comments on Friday, Binkley defended the depot as a vision for the future. We built this so we could encourage commuter transportation and not have the roads clogged up with rental cars, eliminate the need for $56 million dollar parking garages (referring to the new Anchorage Airport car rental facility under construction) and to eliminate the need for expanding the Glenn Highway to four lanes. [Although Halcro has his rental car background on his biography on his webpage, and may assume that people know this about him, it would be nice if had made that clear for people who find this on the web and don't know. It doesn't change anything, but letting people know your connection to an issue a good habit to get into.]

Now lets stop here.

First, when the railroad board gave the rail depot the green light there was no car rental garage planned yet. Even so, would you rather have a $56 million private structure that generates millions in revenue or a $28 federally subsidized rail depot that's closed eight months a year?

Second, those rental cars clogging all the highways (unlike the tour buses from cruiseships) actually pay local and state taxes that reduce tax burdens of Alaskans. In Anchorage alone, the industry contributes almost $10 million dollars a year. Not to mention another $5 million dollars a year to the Anchorage Airport in concessionare and lease fees that help keep the airport open.

Third, I'm sure the 40,000 Alaskans a day that commute from the Mat-Su would love to know that John Binkley's vision for improved transportation in the region is based on them giving up there vehicles for a train ride.

Ironically, the railroads own economic feasibility study panned the idea of commuter rail to the airport due to a lack of railroad infrastructure, a sparse population base and the reality of infrequent trips.

But then again, anybody who would have taken the time to read the airport rail depot's feasibility study would have known that. But this was never an issue of what was best for taxpayers, this was about self interest.

In December 1998, a month after being elected to the State House I was invited to lunch with former Governor Sheffield who was head of the railroad at the time. I brought up the subject of the proposed rail depot. At the time, the railroad was still in the process of having a local firm conduct the feasibility study.

I told the governor I thought the project had a limited appeal and was a bad use of taxpayer money. However, it was very clear from his response that regardless of what the projected economics concluded, his was going to spend $28 million on the depot.

In December 2002, Sheffield and others sipped champagne as they celebrated the grand opening of the Bill Sheffield Airport Railroad Depot complete with a bronze bust of the former governor.

Today the rail depot is open on a regular basis only for cruise ship passengers from mid-May to September who pay nothing for the facility. The total yearly passengers are less than 50% of what their feasibility study projected they'd be by this date.

At least the next generation of taxpayers won't have to look down the tracks very far to see why they're inheriting an $8 trillion national debt.

All aboard.

Arti-Circle Picture Framing - Hidden Oasis in Anchorage

Catherine had told me to go to ArtiCircle Framing to frame the painting I had from Luang Prabang. (I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it so I could post it now, you'll just have to wait til it's ready.)

I finally took it in today. The hours posted in the Yellow Pages -

M-F 9:28 - 5:35 Sat 11:00 - 4:32

- were a hopeful sign. I walked out of the clutter of Arctic (Alaskans tend to drop the first 'c' ) Blvd between 36th and Tudor into another world of plants, paintings, a glass coffee table on a beautiful rug, with comfortable chairs just begging me to relax and chat a while.

Ava came out, looked at what I had. I said I'd thought a black matte, but my friend
Catherine had said, "No." "Catherine was right. We'll take care of it. We'll call when it's ready." And while I did feel comfortable, I did ask for an approximate price range, and she gave me one, but said she'd call with the exact price when they figured out how they would do it.




Then Paul Landis came out and I was introduced and we talked about the shop - "we don't have customers, we have friends;" "we're the best kept secret in Anchorage." Well, I sure never have been here before. A customer, excuse me, a friend, came in and I was introduced to the Emperor - of Alaska, California, and Baja and the rest of Mexico. Chuck Norton turned out to be a retired Anchorage school teacher who'd been born and raised in Anchorage - Spenard to be exact. And Landis had nicknamed him the Emperor when they first met because his name
was Norton








The Emperor offered me a coffee and I sat with them around the table and we chatted about a wide range of things, including health care for seniors when Larry Flynn, Paul's pharmacist, came by to drop off Paul's meds. I could go on, but I'll stop with the offer Larry has for people who switch from their old pharmacy to his - a free ride around town in one of his two Rolls Royces.

As you can tell, it is not your every day shop.

Das Leben Der Anderen - The Lives of Others

OK, so why did I like this film? (I walked out saying something like, "It's nice to see a really good film now and then.")

1. It's a serious film about serious topics - totalitarian government, freedom, abuse of power, free speech, making difficult choices, betrayal.
2. Only one is seen in a totally negative role. None in a totally positive role. All the others are complex and tempted - to do what is right (working in a bad system) or what is wrong (to continue working in a bad system), and must make impossible choices.
3. The script was smart. The actors - well I was totally drawn in and forgot I was watching a movie.
4. The filming and editing were unobtrusively good. I didn't even notice it. Nothing glitzy, nothing clumsy, to jerk me out of the story. It just captured the action without calling attention to itself. Driving home I asked, "Was it in black and white?" but then remembered the red typewriter ribbon and the blood on the final report.
5. It was in German. I studied in Germany long ago, so I could catch much of it.
6. There were small and giant acts of kindness.
7. We saw "Knocked Up" last night. The Lives of Others absolved me of Knocked up.

This is the kind of film people should see and discuss in a country that builds secret prisons, uses torture, wiretapping and other types of information gathering about citizens, that snatches 'suspects' and imprisons them without notice to their families or access to lawyers.

Alaska Airlines Great Alaska Deals

Alaska Airlines right now (June 1-August 28) is offering travel between Anchorage and many places they go in Alaska for 5000 award miles one way.

Anchorage - Fairbanks 5000
Anchorage - Juneau 5000
Anchorage - Nome 5000
Anchorage - Kotzebue 5000
Anchorage - Bethel 5000
Anchorage - King Salmon 5000
Anchorage - Dillingham 5000
Anchorage - Glacier Bay 5000
Anchorage - Gustavus 5000

I don't see Sitka or Kodiak or Cordova, but this is a great chance to see parts of Alaska that are generally too expensive to visit.

I don't normally 'advertise' but this is one of the better deals in Alaska air travel I can remember.

Blogging Thoughts - Does Traffic Matter?

The key purpose when I started this was to get an understanding of blogging. I'm far from there, but one of the issues that I have raised and still seems to be an issue for lots of bloggers is the one about who's reading the blog and getting more readers. Wherever you look there is advice for how to increase traffic. Technorati gives ratings for blogs. My Technorati authority is 1 (0 is the lowest) and my rank is 2,202,298. Such rankings certainly increase some people's interest in increasing traffic and raising their ratings. Here are a couple examples of blogs that post about how to increase rankings. The first is more like my blog - someone who is blogging and learning. The other two look more like professional blogs with lots of ads, etc.



From UPC, a personal tech blog, comes this advice:

18 Ways You Can Help My Blog [Of course you could turn that around to help your own blog]

Today, for some reason I've been imagining all of my visitors and readers as very kind and generous souls. So, in order to take advantage of this possibly true fact about all of you, I decided to compile a list of things you could do to help me and my blog. I know, you have already read thousands of posts about how to promote and help your blog, but this one is about helping my blog. As a semi-new blogger I am still spending a lot of time establishing myself, and you can help me out! As you read through this list you might be thinking, "hey, I wouldn't mind some help myself!" - if that's the case, feel free to take my list, expand upon it, customize it, and post it on your own blog. Of course, if you do use my list, I'd appreciate if you...

1. Post this list to your blog, and link back here telling everyone where you got the original list! Come back here and comment that you've used my list, and I'll come check out your entry and help your blog too. [And so I'm doing his first suggestion]

2. Give me a thumbs-up on your StumbleUpon toolbar.

3. Vote for me at FuelMyBlog.com.

4. Add me to your links page or blogroll.

5. Click this redirect to visit my site through Alexa.com (it helps to boost my Alexa ranking).

6. Comment on something I've written.

7. Add me to your Technorati favorites.

8. Give me some constructive critiCism.

9. Subscribe to my feed, or subscribe by email.

10. Ask me a tech question (so I can blog it), or suggest a tech topic for me to write about.

11. Vote for me at the Blog For A Year contest.

12. Visit 25 Peeps, and click on my picture (if you don't know what I look like, check out the "About" section of this site).

13. Bookmark an entry you like at del.icio.us.

14. Interview me for your blog.

15. Digg an entry you like.

16. Send me cash so I can buy pay-per-click advertisements.

17. Join my community on MyBlogLog.

18. Comment on this post with more ways in which people can help promote my blog.

Doshdosh offers 20 ways to increase your Alexa rating (and tells you what an Alexa rating is) Here are the first few to get an idea:

1. Install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension and set your blog as your homepage. This is the most basic step.
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget on your website. I did this a few days ago and receive a fair amount of clicks every day. According to some, each click counts as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.
3. Encourage others to use the Alexa toolbar. This includes friends, fellow webmasters as well as site visitors/blog readers. Be sure to link to Alexa’s full explanation of their toolbar and tracking system so your readers know what installing the toolbar or extension entails.
4. Work in an Office or own a company? Get the Alexa toolbar or SS Firefox extension installed on all computers and set your website as the homepage for all browsers. Perhaps it will be useful to note that this may work only when dynamic or different IPs are used.
5. Get friends to review and rate your Alexa website profile. Not entirely sure of its impact on rankings but it might help in some way.
6. Write or Blog about Alexa. Webmaster and bloggers love to hear about ways to increase their Alexa rank. They’ll link to you and send you targeted traffic (i.e. visitors with the toolbar already installed). This gradually has effects on your Alexa ranking.
7. Flaunt your URL in webmaster forums. Webmasters usually have the toolbar installed. You’ll get webmasters to visit your website and offer useful feedback. It’s also a good way to give back to the community if you have useful articles to share with others.

Betabloggerfordummies gives lots of advice including this. If I understand it correctly - that he is saying to hide links in icons - I'd say this is a little deceptive.

Here is another viral idea to increase your Page Rank. Viral link building is a technique to increase backlinks to your site at an exponential rate thus increasing your blog Page Rank. This in turn will increase traffic to your blog.........

This scheme has been introduced by Ilker Yoldas from The Thinking Blog. He uses the ALT tags inside image links to increase page relevance. The keywords placed inside image links in ALT tags increase the value of the link due to the weightage given to these tags by search engine spiders.

I'm having real doubts about all this rush for traffic. Traffic doesn't matter if people don't stay and read anything. But I'm looking through these ideas to see if I can find ways to let people who might be interested find me. Of course, that's what search engines are for, and I seem to be showing up on the first page of some Google searches that get people to my site. Today for example someone got to me googling "Anchorage Airport Railroad Depot."

I guess it depends on why you're blogging. I'm just enjoying the chance to keep friends up to date on what I'm doing - especially my mother, especially when we're traveling - and it's a way to keep me doing some writing most days. So I guess a good question to other bloggers is why are you blogging and why is traffic important to you?

This Week's Blooming Flowers -2

The garden is coloring up.






The wild rose








And the Alaskan wild iris.












I don't remember what this is. Anyone know? Leave a comment if you do.








The person who gave me the cutting for this said it was Aleutian Speedwell. Since then I've seen several things called Aleutian Speedwell. Again, any clarification would be appreciated.



And the wild geranium which is blooming everywhere.




And a little less common, a white wild geranium.

Dan Fagan, Billy Muldoon, and Bogus Quotations on the Internet

After reading today's Comment by Dan Fagan, my first reaction was, "Wow, after last week's rambling condemnation of surrendering (and my having to read it carefully to post on it), this week's piece is well organized and actually has an argument, with supporting statements." Basically it's a worthy replacement of the VECO space since it tells us we shouldn't mess with the oil companies. I thought it interesting too, after telling us last week that we shouldn't surrender to bullies, this week he's telling us to roll over to the gang who told Alaskan legislators (taped by the FBI) "I own your ass." He talks about alleged (no specific names here) bureaucratic harassment of small businesses and then extrapolates that to harassing the big three oil companies. These are the guys who made more profit than our state budget last year. Given the radical difference in writing style between last week's Comment and this week's I can't help wondering if he had some help writing this one.

As I was starting to google around to check on what he wrote, the first site I found was Tribal Fires who wrote under the title " He could of looked it up!":

If, like Billy [Muldoon, the blogger], you ripped open this morning's ADN to read the latest from Dandy Dan Fagan, you may have thrilled to the righteous thunder of this passage in his opening paragraph:

In 1797, George Washington said it this way; "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master.

?Hay problema? !Si!

As mentioned previously on the Fires, any time Dan gets within spittin' distance of a testable proposition, he's apt to get it wrong, and this is another such case. It turns out that the Father of Our Country never said no such of a thang! You can read the debunker here at an excellent reality-check site called Bartleby.com

I went to comment on the good catch and read Anonymous' comment:

Methinks Billy is wrong. Here's a link for ya: http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/george_washington/

So, I googled "Government is not reason" and found that there are lots of people quoting George on this. No precise sources, in fact very few sources at all.

I did find this site which said it was a bogus quote:

Bogus Quotes Attributed to the Founders

SAF [The Second Amendment Foundation] mentions another fabricated George Washington quote:

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

SAF's analysis from the same page follows:

While this quote is often attributed to George Washington in his Farewell Address, this quote cannot be found there. Many people have tried to verify its origin, but cannot confirm its authenticity.

Dan Gifford tried to track this quote down but was unsuccessful for his article. See: "The Conceptual Foundations of Anglo-American Jurisprudence in Religion and Reason", The Tennessee Law Review: A Second Amendment Symposium Issue, Page 801, footnote 201. This issue of the Tennessee Law Review is part of the SAF bookshelf.

Perhaps the American Freedom Library available from Laissez Faire Books features the best history of this alleged quote on their Version 3.1 CD-ROM. The searchable CD-ROM notes that the above statement is:

"Attributed to George Washington.--Frank J. Wilstach, A Dictionary of Similes, 2d ed., p. 526 (1924). This can be found with minor variations in wording and in punctuation, and with 'fearful' for 'troublesome,' in George Seldes, The Great Quotations, p. 727 (1966). Unverified. In his most recent book of quotations, The Great Thoughts (1985), Seldes Says, p. 441, col. 2, footnote, this paragraph 'although credited to the 'Farewell' [address] cannot be found in it. Lawson Hamblin, who owns a facsimile, and Horace Peck, America's foremost authority on quotations, informed me this paragraph is apocryphal [fake].'"

http://www.guncite.com/gc2ndbog.html

This is from a site that is AGAINST gun control but they debunked this quote and some others touting gun use, so I give them credit for not perpetuating these bogus quotations that would help their cause. And this is pretty similar to the Bartleby citation that Tribal Fires first used to say it was a fake.


But I finally found one with a source.

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a
troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
-- George Washington, in a speech of January 7, 1790
http://www.catb.org/~esr/fortunes/liberty

So I looked for George Washington speeches of January 7, 1790. Couldn't find such a speech, though a number of people actually cited "George Washington, speech of January 7, 1790 in the Boston Independent Chronicle, January 14, 1790"

So everyone is blindly quoting each other when they find something they like.

But Washington did give (well I found it on several sites, two from major universities so I'm guessing it's accurate) what is now listed under the first "State of the Union" speech, then called his "First Annual Message to Congress" on January 8, 1790 (not January 7). I'm not an expert on that time of American history, but as I recall, things were still pretty shaky, and the government was far from strong. The British were going to return in 1812 to burn Washington DC. In fact he spoke in this address about the need for government. Here's a part:

Knowledge is in every Country the surest basis of public happiness. In one, in which the measures of Government recieve their impression so immediately from the sense of the Community as in our's, it is proportionably essential. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways: . . . And by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority; between burthens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society; to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last, and uniting a speedy, but temperate vigilence against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the laws. [Emphasis mine]

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/union/state1.html

So in this case I think Billy Muldoon may be a little harsh on Dan Fagan. It's pretty easy to get sucked into that quote - it's all over the place. But then my standards may have been lowered by last week's Fagan Comment. At least he didn't totally make it up. Others are also confused. But my hat's off to Billy for spotting it.

Almost Solstice, Midnight Scum Finale

The Sopranos ended last Sunday after, what, five years? Well, Midnight Soapscum, ended after its ninth episode this morning. And as we walked out of Out North theater at 1am, the sky was still light. The longest day is just a few days away.

And how did it end? Spoiler Warning. There was a KQED panel discussion on porn with Svetlana Smirnoff, head of Smirnoff Studios porn empire, Maya Hansberry, UCB feminist professor, and Father Aubrey Khepera of the Catholic Church. Philippe and Luka get married. Smirnoff Studies win a Golden Palme at Cannes. Karl Lagerfeld and Bridget Bardot make appearances. And they fly to Alaska from Cannes to free Maggie the elephant with the help of the Space Aliens from the planet Barbarella. And Gov. Sarah Palin gets a new look. And Brie Savage and Narciso sing "Born Free."

Each individual act was well acted and scripted - definitely the best episode we saw. They didn't necessarily all need to be there. The acts were almost their own Saturday Night Live skits, though they did all loosely fit into an overall plot. The porn panel discussion was a great spoof on pretentious talk shows, though it was reasonably serious about the topic. But it didn't particularly move the plot along. The singing was a surprise - that it was there and that the voices were so good. Heppinstall kept up his Svetlana accent throughout and was a strong presence holding things together. The announcer, David Haynes, was also outstanding. And the space aliens had a language and jerky motions that both made some sort of perfect cosmic sense and spoofed every alien in every tv show and movie. Even the elephants were good. But 10pm to 1am with one intermission is a long show.

So life soap opera has had its first go in Anchorage, getting stronger as it went along. Like Tony Soprano, the characters of Midnight Soapscum, were becoming real people and we'll miss them. For videos from Soapscum, click here.

Sierra Leone Refugee All Star Band Rolls Anchorage

The movie didn't really prepare us for how fantastic this concert would be. These guys have come a long way from their first concerts at the refugee camp in Guinea after they fled the slaughter in Freetown, Sierra Leone. But the movie had introduced us to the story of how they formed and we felt we knew most of those on stage.

The concert was incredible. From the very first note, there were people in front and some in the audience dancing. By the two encore pieces, only the deaf and lame were still in their seats, the rest of us were up and moving to the music. I'd strongly recommend checking out their schedule and going to see them when they are nearby. They have a very busy travel schedule, through the US - west coast from here - with some stops in Europe as well. It's an interesting mix of venues from the University here to the Hollywood Bowl in LA. Get their CD Living Like a Refugee

The video just captures a few snippets. Remember, this is with a little Canon digital camera, so the video and audio are just a hint at what we experienced.















After the show, members of the band came out of the auditorium and talked with audience members in the parking lot. Reuben wrote most of the songs and was the original leader of the band.






Ashade Pearce just bubbled with warmth as we talked.



Signing autographs on posters and CD covers.