Mushrooms

It's been raining. Which is why the roofer hasn't been out yet to give us a new roof. But today was a beautiful sunny day, and in the woods along the bike trail, the results of all that rain were popping up. The first set, in honor of Mirk, is called The Three Mushkateers. The rest shall remain anonymush.

Donald Johanson and Freshman and Honors Convocation

This morning I went to honors freshman convocation because I will probably be working with some of the senior honors students this semester. I think I will be supervising a directed study for three students.








Then tonight we went to hear Donald Johanson the paleanthropologist who discovered Lucy. I'm really too tired to say anything worthy of the topic and the presentation, but I'll put in a little here. Here he talks about Lucy and what he's going to talk about.
DJ at UAA1 uploaded by AKRaven 
[UPDATE Oct. 13, 2011: the website that hosted my audio shut down, but they did recently email me and said they would try to get me my audio.  Sorry.]




Here's Lucy. She's going to tour the US starting soon in Houston, Texas. He pointed out that this is controversial among anthropologists because many feel that something this unique shouldn't do anything that might endanger it. (The article linked above identifies Richard Leakey as condeming the visit. Johanson didn't mention him by name.) Lucy belongs to the Ethiopian government and they are hoping Lucy will help make people more aware of Ethiope and attract tourists. Johanson seemed to hope that she would help enlighten some Americans who still do not believe in evolution.





The last slide compares the pelvis of Lucy to that of a human and of a chimp to show how much closer Lucy is to a human. The human and Lucy are built for walking upright, while the chimp pelvis is more for walking on all fours.

Sicko

Say what you want, but Michael Moore knows how to frame an issue. And we all have had enough experience with US health care to know that he's not just making this up. Stories of people who didn't qualify for health care. About a lady who had a surgery and then her insurance said she had lied about her health record - a minor yeast infection that had absolutely nothing to do with her condition - and so she really wasn't eligible for the surgery and should return the $7,000 payment.

Then they interviewed someone who had worked for the insurance companies whose job it was to go thru people's medical records - after they'd had an expensive procedure - and find something in their record - like a yeast infection - they could use as an excuse to drop them.

The interviewed doctors who talked about the incentives - bonuses for rejecting the most procedures, promotions because they had saved the company money by rejecting needed procedures. We heard stories of people who died because of refused procedures. Here are a few clips I took in the theater to go with this review.



Moore effectively attacks the stories that Americans have been taught about health care. Here are a couple of the myths he challenges:

1. America has the best health care in the world
2. The free public health systems in Canada and England are second class, you have to wait forever for treatment, and the doctors are poor.
3. Cuba is a wretched country
4. Americans take care of their own

He challenges #s 1 and 2 by looking at people with similar health issues in the US and in other countries and how they got treated. A man in the US without health insurance who cut off the ends of two fingers is told - the middle finger will cost you $70,000 to fix, the ring finger $12,000. Which do you want? Then they showed a guy in Canada who cut off four whole fingers and had them all reattached - and he could move them - for free. You saw the sick baby comparison in the movie. They tour health care in England looking for the terribly things people say about it and find it pretty good.

OK, I'm sure you can find horror stories in Canada and England, just as you can find stories of good care in the US. My wife and I have had good care with caring doctors in nice facilities. But we are also hearing from friends who are turning 65 who are having trouble finding doctors who will take patients on medicare.

The real issue is the outcomes. The statistics he gives are consistent with others I've heard showing the US lower in critical stats such as infant mortality rate and life expectancy than these other countries with free health care - even Cuba. If you're thinking, "that's BS," I'd ask you to stop and think why you think that. Probably because it goes against the stories in your head that we have the best health care. Go look up the statistics - not on Rush Limbaugh's site, but at the US Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization. Here's a table I put together from two WHO stats, you can see life expectancy and costs.



According to this table, Moore was wrong. Cuban life expectancy for both males and females for infants is .7 years lower than US life expectancy. On the other hand, Cuba manages to be that close paying 3.7% of what the US pays for health care. Maybe the US should contract out our health care system to Cuba.

And finally Moore shows footage of various politicians, including Bush, talking about our great heroes who worked to rescue people after 9/11. Then he interviews some of them five years later with respiratory diseases and other problems who can't get the health care they need. He takes them and other people he's interviewed for the movie to Cuba where one gets $120 worth of medication at home for 3 cents, and everyone gets looked at with fancy equipment, diagnosed, and some treatment and a health plan for home. Would you get treated like that in Cuba if you walked in off the street and didn't have a camera crew with you? I don't know. I do know years ago an older friend of ours got great treatment for a stroke while visiting Canada at no cost. And in Thailand recently, my wife got rabies shots after she was bitten by a dog, for about $20 per shot. From a list serve discussion of rabies in North Carolina:

>Treatment involves at least 6 injections in the arm, given over 28 days.
>More injections are sometimes given near a wound, if the rabid animal has
>broken its victim's skin. The cost typically ranges from $1500 to $2000 and
>is often covered by insurance

If we take the low figure, that would be $250 per shot. More than 10 times the cost in Thailand.

This movie takes on people's myths about America's greatness, about the efficiency of the market, about how bad other countries are. This confrontation with a view of things different from the propaganda we're used to seeing will cause many people to go into denial. They will sit and squirm in this movie, because they'll have to deal with their own deception. But they'll know from their own experiences or from that of friends and relatives, that these stories ring true.

Truer than the images we get in commercials from the health care systems or from politicians who have received large campaign contributions from these industries. Politicians who have been wined and dined and flown to nice resorts by their lobbyists.

I read somewhere that the difference between Russian newspaper readers and Americans was that the Russians KNEW their papers were all lies and thus they learned how to read between the lines.

Liatris Spicata

The Liatris comes late, after most of the other perennials have bloomed and faded. So bright and perky. These plants have spread on their own, filling in the empty spaces. Out in front, in the sun.

Wear This T-Shirt, Win $80,000

CHARLESTON, WV - The American Civil Liberties Union today announced a successful resolution of the case of Jeffery and Nicole Rank, the young Texas couple arrested on the West Virginia capitol grounds on July 4, 2004 for peacefully expressing their opposition to President Bush. According to the settlement agreement, the United States government will pay the Ranks $80,000.

The Ranks, who wanted to attend the President's Fourth of July address without being mistaken for supporters of his policies, wore homemade t-shirts bearing the international "no" symbol (a circle with a diagonal line across it) superimposed over the word "Bush." One t-shirt said "Love America, Hate Bush" on the back and the other said "Regime Change Starts At Home." Click for more.

Don't have an anti-Bush T-shirt so you can get arrested and sue? ReadytoImpeach.com can solve that problem. Actually, these are aimed at impeaching Cheney, but I suspect the Bush crowd control manual doesn't make such fine distinctions. Unfortunately, we can't know for sure since most of the text the ACLU got was redacted.

Thanks to AlaskanAbroad for the lawsuit story.
Disclosure: My son and a friend set up readytoimpeach.com. T-shirt in the picture is the Pacific Northwest Edition. Others for the rest of the Congressional Districts are available.

OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL OIL

Nothing new here, except that there are still people who don't get it - that the most likely reason we are in Iraq is oil, and that the Bush administration isn't going to leave as long as they think there is a chance they can get control of the oil to their oil company cronies.

Both Bush and Cheney came to the White House as oil men.

As all the other excuses for starting the war, and the rosy views of how we are winning it and should keep fighting, are exposed as pr, there is only one solid explanation. I woke up thinking I just had to post something about oil.

For those who are still skeptical and haven't read Daniel Yergin's Pulitzer Prize winning book The Prize, just go read the book. Yes, it's big. But so is our bill in Iraq. Make a sacrifice for America and read the damn book and you'll quickly see how this war fits the pattern of wars the West has waged to secure sources of oil. I'm not dismissing the importance of oil in our world, but it can't be used to justify destroying Iraq and the US constitution. And even Cheney knows that. That's why national security and not oil is the official excuse.


And after starting this post I ran across this NYTimes editorial about the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today. It underscores the Cheney Administration's rapacious thirst for oil.

This is its first lawsuit against the government, and one it did not undertake lightly — in part because it is not a litigious group and partly because the hunters and anglers who make up the bulk of its membership tend to be largely Republican.

That the partnership is now going to court shows how distasteful the administration’s public lands policies have become and how little they have changed since Vice President Dick Cheney, in his notorious energy report, ordered up a full-court press for domestic oil and gas resources regardless of the environmental consequences. Like other conservation groups, the partnership has never disputed the need to develop supplies of natural gas, nor has it objected to responsible development undertaken at a measured pace with due regard for other values, including the protection of wildlife.

What drove the partnership over the edge and into court was the sheer one-sidedness of the administration’s approach, as well as its reckless disregard for the law, and if that does not get Mr. Kempthorne’s [secretary of interior] attention, nothing will.

Poor Dan Fagan

I thought maybe that all of the criticism of Dan Fagan had caused him to work on his writing, or at least find others to help him clean it up. But yesterday's article was like the first one. Just a lot of inconsistent ranting. But I have this hypothesis that might help explain Dan's problem. I even went online to listen to his radio show. It says June 4th, but it talked about preparing yesterday's article so it wasn't June 4. And as I'm checking it now, it sounds like it's today's show.

Anyway, if we look at last week's article, we see Dan praising his Dad as this great man, who modeled for him what a man should be. And then he went on to lament that men aren't like that. But what did his dad model?

He modeled a life of character, integrity and honesty. But most importantly he showed me how to treat a woman.

When a man is a real man, he does more to help build a better society than a hundred thousand government programs.

Manhood is not about I. It's about service, sacrifice, devotion, selflessness.

Manhood is about respecting, honoring, and yes, even loving.

Now if you read these columns and listen to Dan on the radio, which of these did he learn?

I guess we can give him credit for honest - I believe that he believes what he says. At least the moment he's saying it. And he doesn't hide what he's thinking, no matter how outrageous. And he certainly believes that government is useless. But what about the rest?

Treating a woman? Well, on the show, one caller said that Dan always said he was terrified of women. Dan protested and said he certainly didn't understand them and said they were emotional and often crazy. Hmmmmm. Is that how his Dad said to treat women? Is that respect? honoring? He did claim that he loved everything about women - just before he started saying they were emotional and not understandable. I suspect Dan if your dad really did teach you how to treat a woman (and he really knew how) then women would be falling all over you and you wouldn't still, at your age, be out looking for "a woman willing to procreate with [you]." I don't think he scores high here.

What about service, devotion, and selflessness? Again, that quote, "If I ever find a woman willing to procreate with me..." I take it he isn't doing his service, devotion, and selflessness at home with his family. And he certainly isn't doing it on his talk radio. On his radio show, contrary to what he says his father modeled, Dan is all about "I". It's his unexamined, self-centered opinions, and his own made up facts. ("Hand-made" is often a good thing Dan, but not when it comes to facts.) In fact (you could check it, but the tape's not online anymore) one comment on the radio show I heard was about liberals taking off from work to go protest the Knik Arm Bridge. "They all probably work for non-profits so they can take off work, not like a real job." So, people working selflessly, in service to others don't have real jobs? That's completely not what he wrote last week about what his Dad modeled.


On the Friday show, his dad calls in, and afterward he tells his co-host, that his father loved everyone and made friends easily and he wishes he could be like his father that way. Hmmm.


So, my hypothesis is that Dan doesn't feel too good about himself. His role model was this perfect man (at least in Dan's mind) whom everyone loved, and who treated his wife and daughters with constant compliments. (What about his son? Dan didn't mention the son getting compliments.) He worked hard and selflessly for his family.

But Dan is still looking for a wife. So he's failed already in being a good family man. He's not respectful, he's not selfless. He's so into "I" that he can't even imagine how those evil liberals could possibly believe the nonsense they believe. Dan is far smarter than any of them. He has it all figured out. Oh dear. Dan just doesn't live up to that great role model he's just praised as the kind of man we need to make this country work right." Is Dan really ranting against the world because he can't face the fact that he doesn't live up to the expectations set by his Dad? According to Wikipedia

psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes to others one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the ego recognize them.

Could this be Dan really talking about himself:

But where are the men today? Why are so many obsessed with their own needs instead of their families?

Unlike Dan, I'm just speculating a possible interpretation. I'm not offering my speculation as the Truth. I'm just putting together the evidence that shows his inconsistencies, shows that what he writes or says in one place, does not reflect what he writes and says other places. As I see it, he professes one set of values, but his behaviors demonstrate another.

Seeing the World From Ted Stevens' View

The first amendment to the US Constitition, part of what's known as the Bill of Rights reads as follows:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Alaska's senior US Senator, and the senior Republican in the US Senate, Ted Stevens is currently under investigation by the FBI. Last week he met with the editorial staff of the Anchorage Daily News. They taped the session. Here is the last part where he gives his opinion of the ADN.

Stevens_4 imported by AKRaven



[for the other interview segments go here you'll see in the center column the choice of audio links in the picture.]




Perhaps the Senator and the editors agree on the role of the media, perhaps not, but they certainly have different views of whether the ADN is playing its role correctly.

We can hear in the tape the Senator clearly feels put upon and betrayed by the media.

You've been hanging me weekly.
Your guys, they taunt me.
They taunt me with questions no respectable reporter would ask a Senator if it's already said I'm not going to answer questions.

Based on what the ADN has written lately, they believe it is their job to report on the conduct of Senator Stevens, and that they have a responsibility to probe to find out why the FBI searched Stevens' home in Girdwood recently.

So does Stevens know he's got something to hide and he's just being belligerent to the editors when they ask him questions he doesn't want to talk about? Or does he believe that he's being hounded by the ADN and the FBI for no good reason other than being a good Senator who has done what he was elected to do?


The New York Times had an interesting story today about the Norfolk Four. It's about people who confess to crimes they haven't committed. The article argues that what the prosecutor told the jury in one of these cases

"People just do not confess,” Hansen told jurors in Tice’s second trial, “to something of this magnitude, this heinous, this vicious, without having participated in it. It’s just not natural; it’s just not reasonable.”

That is certainly the conventional wisdom.

In fact, the article says there are at least 49 cases where DNA or a later confession by someone else has freed people who confessed.

Deskovic, like many false confessors, said he believed his life was in danger and that his interrogation wouldn’t stop unless he told the police what they wanted to hear.

Nevertheless, studies of proved false confessions suggest a number of recurring markers including actual violence, threats of violence, threats of harsh sentences like execution and extreme duress brought about by isolation, sleeplessness and lengthy, high-pressure interrogation. Police interrogation is designed to be stressful and disorienting and to keep the suspect off-balance. Guilt is frequently presumed. Police may legally pressure suspects using fabricated evidence, phony witnesses and lies about DNA or polygraph results.

In some cases, people are so worn down physically and psychologically that they actually come to believe they might have committed the crime.

But he said in an interview (and in an affidavit) that Ford treated him like a criminal from the outset, poking him in the chest, yelling in his face, calling him a liar and telling him, falsely, that he’d failed a polygraph test and that a witness saw him go into the apartment. The police got him to “second-guess” his memory, Williams said. “They wear you down to the point that you’re exhausted. I just wanted the questioning to end.”

If people can believe, even for a short time, that they are guilty of crimes they haven't committed, surely it's easy to believe someone can believe he's innocent of crimes he has committed. Stevens has been threatened with harsh punishment, treated like a criminal from the outset by some, yelled at in his face. And I'm sure the 83 year old Senator often feels worn down to the point that he's exhausted. That he just wants the questioning to end.


Clearly, a US Senator who has fought for years to raise funds for campaigns, to steer money into his young state that was sorely lacking in infratstructure, and to generally fight for his constituents, will understandably lose patience with reporters who don't understand that sometimes you have to make compromises to get things done. You can't make an omelette without breaking an egg.

And reporters taking their first amendment right to a free press seriously, see their role as asking the hard questions about the Senator's behavior and the alleged favors he might have passed on to financial supporters, friends, and relatives.

In fact, as I listen to the tape, the editor sounds almost timid as he addresses the Senator who is anything but timid.

This conflict isn't new.

"Legal Foundations of Press Freedom in the United States" an essay on a US State Department website, by Jane E. Kirtley, Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota, includes the following early history of press freedom in North America.

In 1734, John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was charged with seditious libel for having printed anonymous criticism of the colonial governor general in his newspaper, the Weekly Journal. After spending nearly one year in jail awaiting trial, he was acquitted by a jury who refused to follow the judge's instructions and convict him. Zenger's lawyer, a retired attorney from Philadelphia named Andrew Hamilton, convinced the jury that no man should be subject to criminal penalties simply for criticizing the government, especially when the facts he reported were true -- resulting in one of the earliest examples of "jury nullification" in what was to become the United States.

Backyard Bird Fest

There were so many birds in the backyard this afternoon. After seeing flashes of yellow and a couple of red breasted nuthatches were flitting right outside the window, I took the Canon Powershot 550 out to see what I could get. It took me about 15 minutes of waiting and shooting to fill my 2 gb sd-card. Downloaded and checked that video and decided to go find the old tripod. Wow, what a difference. Duh. Then as soon as I sat down, the Steller Jay came.

Rabbi Michael Oblath's Debut

We were out of town last spring when he first came to Anchorage, so this was our first chance to see and hear him. First impressions are tricky. What can I say? Reassuring. Experienced, a good clear voice, a comfortable manner. He joked about being nervous at one point, but it certainly didn't show. His sermon - and that word doesn't quite convey it - was a sharing of his understanding of the term "an eye for an eye." It was not, as I understood what he said, the cold retributive sentiment that it's so often interpreted to be. The context is what is important. This is the sentence for someone who falsely accuses another. What the other is accused of, this should be the fate of the false accuser. Or so I understood. I think this is going to be good. He let me take his picture as he was leaving. As usual, no flash.