What Don't We Know and Why Don't We Know It?

Yesterday's Anchorage Daily News headline was BIG. Today's is BIGGER. We know something big and bad has happened, but what?

How many of you went about your day yesterday as usual?

How come we weren't glued to our televisions all day watching the news unfold, watching economists explaining what was going on? How we got into this? What it means? What might happen next?

Because there are no good visuals for this story. This story could be the economic equivalent to jets crashing into the World Trade Center, but that's a VISIBLE story, which means it's a story we can understand, at least emotionally. We can see it, we can imagine "what if I were in that building?" We can FEEL it. We certainly didn't agree afterward on the causes and what to do about it.

But this story is one we can't see. Unless we've defaulted on a loan and lost our home, we can't connect to it. It's basically INVISIBLE except for the large headlines. It's harder to get film of millions of people losing their homes. Shots of for sale signs don't have the same emotional impact as giant buildings collapsing. We don't understand it, can't feel it, it doesn't fit into our brains in a way that connects directly to our emotional processing.

The debate about this election suffers from the same problems. While we might relate to some of the issues emotionally, the explanations and options require serious intellectual work. We don't want to take the time or don't know how to understand the policies the candidates propose. It takes time. It takes work. It takes intellectual training and rigor. And at the end, we still don't know for certain which options will be best.

But we rarely know for sure if we are making the optimal decision - even in more tangible situations like ordering dinner in a restaurant, buying a car, or getting married. How many of you have gone to the candidates' websites and actually looked at what Obama and McCain have to offer as solutions? (Probably those who get this far have looked at those links already.) It takes a certain level of intellectual ability [and curiosity.] These ideas are difficult to visualize. It is easier to simplify complex situations into emotional slogans like "Vote for Change" and "Country First: Reform, Prosperity, and Peace." (If you went to those links, you'd recognize these.)

The key here is how we know things. We seem to be wired to immediately get emotional messages - be they accurate or not - about whether we are in danger. In danger because we believe we are losing constitutional guarantees or because we believe we are under threat of a terrorist attack. To actually understand whether we are in danger or not (in situations less obvious than someone with a gun demanding our money) requires a lot of hard work gathering and analyzing facts that most people are unable or unwilling to do.

So, is the financial crisis an economic equivalent to 9/11 that we aren't registering because there are no easy to understand emotional symbols (like planes fying into buildings) and the facts and are too difficult to analyze intellectually? What do I know?

Troopergate Investigation Announcment

I went to the Legislative Information Office to hear Senator Hollis French's announcement about the progress and lack of progress in the Troopergate investigation. Here's the whole 6 minute presentation. I'll post this now (it's taken forever to upload the video) and then add some photos and comments.




So what's the context? The Rovian Men in Black from the McCain campaign have arrived in Alaska to take charge of damage control. One national reporter - they seemed to
outnumber the Alaskans - said it was similar to Florida after the 2000 Election.

Speculation abounds about people being paid off for various acts that will improve the odds of McCain winning. Don Mitchell writes about how he would have negotiated on behalf of Levi Johnston's family for him to play the boyfriend, fiance until after the election, while everyone is hearing stories from the Wasilla kids that Bristol and Levi are history. A reporter's wife is called and asked what the hell her husband is doing asking her those questions. A politician is threatened with revelations about his sex life. No I don't have hard proof of this, people are still figuring out how to respond to the new consequences of doing one's job. Is there a pro bono law group to help targets of the Rovian MIB?

And here we have this bi-partisan (Republican majority) created investigation that everyone agreed to cooperate with now reneging. The ADN reports today that Todd Palin's attorney has explained that Todd won't respond to the subpoena:

"...because his spouse is her party's nominee for Vice President of the United States, his scheduling obligations over the next two months [translation: until after the election] will make it virtually impossible for him to prepare for and present the testimony called for in the Subpoena at the specified location during that time period."

Excuse me? My wife's job duties mean I won't be able to respond to the subpoena? Do you think that would get me out of court? But Bush has made a habit of being above the law, even Karl Rove has stiffed the US Congress and refused to appear when subpoenaed.

The media is scolded for taking sides in its reporting of event, but sometimes there aren't two valid sides. Sometimes one party is right and the other is wrong. There is no shame when people claim Sarah Palin has foreign policy experience because Alaska is next to Russia. It shows complete disdain for the American public. And stonewalling the law as they are doing does too.

I'm hoping that enough people will start to say, NO WAY! THAT IS TOTAL BS! IF YOU TREAT US LIKE THAT, WE VOTE AGAINST YOU. If that isn't the case - and this isn't about McCain vs. Obama, this is about Rule of Lies or Rule of Law and Rationality - the US is toast.

After the announcement, Sen. Gene Therriault and Fred Dyson strolled out and talked to reporters. I'll try to edit and upload some of that later.

I know Phil, you're going to be laughing about Steve letting his passion show again, but I just want people to know that there's some heavy duty stuff going on to snuff out any threats to the Palin image. And the change in how this investigation is going is one very clear example.

Alaskans, wake up. After loudly and proudly proclaiming that she was protecting our state sovereignty from the oil companies, our Governor has now turned over control of her office and family to the RNC.

One thing leads to another

So I went for a run, but with a destination - Lowe's to get some washers for the leaky faucets downstairs. And to enjoy the rare blue sky and sunshine. I took my camera along - I'm getting the hang of the new one. Here's a new building planned for east of the northeast corner of Tudor and Old Seward Highway.


And gas prices are going down, but still over $4 here.

I got to Lowes. Clearly this is a sign of approaching winter.

I went to the part of Lowes that used to have drawers of screws and washers and things and you could buy one or two for two or three cents apiece. I asked for help and the sales person showed me those above - two for $1.09!!!!
I was at a rubber factory in Pune, Maharashtra State, India where they make things like this. They cost something like 10 for a penny. I decided these weren't the right kind of washer anyway and went over to the plumbing department where I found these.
They look cheap only in comparison to the ones for $1.09. [But the faucets aren't leaking any more.]

Outside, headed home, I could see the mountains sparkling in their fall glory with a bit of termination dust. But there were too many poles and buildings in the way. So I headed toward Cuddy Park to see if I could get a better view.

The park looked good, but still not high enough for a good view. On to Loussac.

In this picture the library looks pretty forbidding, but I like to think of it as a fortress of learning and freedom. Anchorage, back when the state was flush with oil money in the 1980s, built this huge library. We're flush again, but hardly building libraries. And the parking lot here is always full - people really use the library. Even on Thursday midday.


This fountain was supposed to be an ice sculpture originally. The water was supposed to drip in the winter causing interesting ice formations. We were excited. The sculptor was Finnish I think so he should know about ice. But it had problems from the beginning. A year or two ago a group of folks raised money to rehabilitate the fountain. And it is nice to see the water spraying skyward, but to me it looks like they just stuck some water spouts in the middle of the sculpture. They really don't mesh with what was there. Anyway, I got the last picture with the flowers. The crew was there taking them out for winter as I shot this.

[Update 9/21/08 - email from Catherine - "I wanted to tell you about the fountain at the Loussac. The artist's name is Carl Nesjar, he's from Norway. He's still alive! Born in 1920. We met him when he was here, working on the fountain, he worked with my studio partner Bob Pfitzenmeier. Carl is also a painter and printmaker, I have 2 (wonderful) lithographs he did in Paris. He has also worked with Picasso. There are only a few of his ice fountains in the world... they are very tricky (obviously) to keep functional. The project at the library came in over budget, of course, no one made any money from it. I was really glad when they tried to get it going again."]

I went up on the grassy hill that rises up to the door of the library to get a view of the mountains. It's not great, but you can get an idea. But I thought, I could go upstairs and get even higher.

Here's the children's part of the library. Yes, there are Alaskans who believe in libraries and teach their kids to love books. It's a wonderful child friendly library with great kid lounge chairs and nooks with big pillows and a little theater even.



But I'm headed for the good windows of the Alaska room. That takes me through the Ann Stevens room. This is like the an old fashioned library in huge mansion that anyone can come and sit in. The room was named for Senator Ted Stevens' wife who died in a plane crash that the Senator survived. Some have said our airport should have been named after her instead of Ted, but she's not the only one to have died at the airport. I have to think about that more.

And here's the Alaska room, one of the round silos. A great place to study and while I tried not to invade people's privacy, there were people in here. Actually, the views through the windows weren't that much better, but given I was here, I decided to look in the catalog to see what they had on Wasilla. Thirty two items showed up for the Loussac Library. There were a lot of phonebooks and land studies for various projects. But this one looked really interesting.

This is a book on the creation of the Wasilla library. I'll try to give some excerpts in another post. An interesting story about early Wasilla life. The book ends in 1959 when the author had to leave Alaska - before Sarah Heath was born and moved to Alaska. Olson sold her house to the "husband of Katie Hurley."

Thinking Outside the Palin - Complexity in Indigenous Knowledge

Need a break from Palinmania? Need some serious brain nourishment?

UAA's Complexity Group is offering some talks that promise to rehabilitate parts of the brain that politics are destroying.

Tonight - Thursday September 19 -

"Complexity in Indigenous Knowledge"

Wendy Williamson Auditorium, 7:00 PM
(free parking in lot behind auditorium after 6pm)

Dr. Ron Eglash, Rensselaer Polytechnic University, holds a B.S. in Cybernetics, an M.S. in Systems Engineering, and PhD in History of Consciousness, all from the University of California. A Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship enabled his field research on African ethnomathematics, which was published by Rutgers University Press in 1999 as African Fractals: modern computing and indigenous design. He is now an associate professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he teaches a studio class on the design of educational technologies as well as graduate seminars in social studies of science and technology. Recent essay titles include ""Culturally Situated Design Tools: Ethnocomputing from Field Site to Classroom" (American Anthropologist), and "Race, Sex and Nerds: from Black Geeks to Asian-American Hipsters" (Social Text).


Dr. Eglash will give two talks this week, and the information follows. I've also included a link to a presentation he gave at TED--Ideas Worth Spreading, which I think you'll find of interest.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ron_eglash_on_african_fractals.html

September 18, 2008
"Complexity in Indigenous Knowledge"
Wendy Williamson Auditorium, 7:00 PM
Abstract: Indigenous knowledge is often associated with simple tasks-counting to 100 or making a box-but such stereotypes ignore the rich conceptual and material structures that have resulted from the co-evolution of native cultures and their environment. African fractals, Native American cybernetics, and indigenous nanotechnology are just some of the complex hybrids that emerge when we open up the space for more sophisticated models.


Tomorrow - Friday September 20, 2008:

September 19, 2008 12 Noon
"Self Organization in Science and Society"
UAA/APU Consortium Library Room 307

Abstract: Self-organization has become an increasingly important phenomenon in both the natural sciences and engineering. Self-assembly of carbon "bucky balls" are critical to nanotechnology; self-organizing swarms of insects are modeled in biology and robotics, and so on. But recursive loops in which things govern themselves are also foundational to society: democracy is the people governing the people; social networks in both physical life and internet domains arise by self-assembly, and some decentralized indigenous societies build self-similar architecture. Can self-organization lead us to a more just and sustainable future?

Two additional opportunities exist for you next week. Although neither event is sponsored directly by UAA's Complex Systems Group, I think you may find them to be of interest.

Sept 24-26: Agent-based modeling workshops at UAA taught by visiting faculty from Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and Arizona State University. Registration is required; participants may register for one or multiple days of the workshop. Sponsored by Alaska EPSCoR and UAA's Resilience and Adaptive Management Group. Please contact Melia Knecht (907.786.7765 or anmmk@uaa.alaska.edu) for general workshop questions or Mark Altaweel (907.786.1676 or maltaweel@anl.gov) for technical workshop questions.

Sept 24-27: 5th Open Assembly of the Northern Research Forum, an international gathering of researchers, policy makers, and interested members of the public representing the northern tier countries. Registration is required; participants may register for one or multiple days of the Forum. Please review the program of events and website at www.uaa.alaska.edu/nrf. Sponsored by UAA, the University of Alaska Statewide Offices, U.S. Arctic Research Commission, North Pacific Research Board, Iceland America Energy, First Alaskans Institute, and the Alaska SeaLife Center. Please let me know if you would like additional information about this opportunity as I am also assisting with this endeavor.

Wasilla Alaska in 2 Minutes and 31 Seconds

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

Namaste Shangri-la - Anchorage Nepali, Indian, Burmese, Tibetan Restaurant

After class today, I biked over to Scott's office to return his camera. The glorious morning sunshine was gone, the trail around University Lake was muddy, but it was still good to be on the bike after yesterday's gloomy rain. Taped on Scott's wall was a flyer for Namaste Shangri-la Restaurant - serving Burmese, Nepali, Indian, and Tibetan food. Where I asked? 2442 E. Tudor. Calculating from my own address, I figured it was just east of Lake Otis.



So, with my wife in class, JL came over (his wife's in New York) and we went searching for Namaste Shangri-la. Turns out it's in the strip mall with Ichiban, UPS, and a number of other diverse shops. In fact, it's taken over the spot where Mumbo Jumbo was not that long ago.


While we waited for our meal, we watched this truck come toward us, go up on the curb a bit, then back up into this parking space. The fact that the right tires were up on the curb didn't seem to bother him. We're not sure where he went, but there was a one in three chance it was the liquor store on that side.
Our hosts were great. She is a Tibetan born in India. He's Nepali. And the food was delicious. I won't use my time in Thailand as credentials for saying this, because there was no Thai food. But J and I did spend a month in India in 2006 so I do have an idea of good Indian food. We also had Burmese food in Chiangmai. We were regulars at the Tibetan Kitchen in Portland during our six months there. And I've eaten in Nepal.

The food was really, really good. A significant portion of the menu is Veg. That was something we liked in India. I'm not a restaurant reviewer and won't get into the game of trying to come up with original ways to describe the food. It was good. Interesting flavors and textures. Light. They prepared each dish carefully - and dishes in that region of the world aren't simple to prepare.

You can see the three dishes we ate. I took the descriptions from the menu. The Thali plate is a combination of three vegetarian dishes that are special for that day. (I felt a little stupid because that was something I'd learned in India - that Thali is a combination plate and I'd forgotten. They have a non-Veg Thali plate too.)

The Thali plate is good for them because they can prepare the dishes fresh, but in large batches each day. Since a lot of the dishes take time, they're going to have to figure out how to get things out to the tables fairly quickly when people discover them and it gets crowded. The Thali will help with that. Even if they have customers who like to sit and eat slowly, they'll need a certain amount of table turnover to be profitable.

All three dishes tasted even better than they looked.

Does this sound like a commercial? Well, I have a vested interest in their staying open. It's a place with a good veg selection (she said mostly vegan). It's easy walking distance from our house. The food is delicious. The hosts charming. And the prices more than reasonable for what you get. The restaurant business is hard. Just cooking great meals isn't enough. There's the whole business of running a restaurant that trips up many great cooks.

So, Scott, thanks for alerting me to this place. And the rest of you, keep them open by eating there.



Driving on Tudor from the Seward Highway, go past Lake Otis to the second block on your right. It's the little strip mall. They are next to the UPS store and this tattoo parlor.



They set up a blog - Namaste Shangri-la - yesterday that has their menu.

Maureen Dowd's Trip to Alaska

Maureen Dowd of the NY Times was in town last week taking notes. Here's a brief excerpt:

I wandered through the Wal-Mart, which seemed almost as large as Wasilla, a town that is a soulless strip mall without sidewalks set beside a soulful mountain and lake.

Wal-Mart has all the doodads that Sarah must need in her career as a sportsman — Remingtons and “torture tested” riflescopes, game bags for caribou, machines that imitate rabbits and young deer and coyotes to draw your quarry in so you can shoot it, and machines to squish cows into beef jerky.

I talked to a Wal-Mart mom, Betty Necas, 39, wearing sweatpants and tattoos on her wrists.

She said she’s never voted, and was a teenage mom “like Bristol.” She likes Sarah because she’s “down home” but said Obama “gives me the creeps. Nothing to do with the fact that he’s black. He just seems snotty, and he looks weaselly.”

She also went to the James Dobson's focus on the family gay curing session and the women against Palin demonstration at Loussac Library.

Here's a link to the whole Dowd column.

Two Degrees of Separation

Alaska is a small place. There's two degrees of separation. People who want to know can easily find out what everyone else is doing. Because of that, many people tend to look the other way. And we're relatively tolerant of politicians' personal peccadilloes. This is one of the reasons that people weren't looking under rocks for problems with Palin the way they are now. It wasn't an issue. Palin didn't use her children as campaign props when she ran for governor. How she raised them was not related to how she governed.

The state's population density is one person per square mile. Ok, there are lots of square miles with no one at all that balance off Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, and the other population centers. But to get a sense of this, I'll use another NYE (New York Equivalency). If New York State - state, not city - had the population density of Alaska, it would have a population of 47,213 people.

With so few people, with two degrees of separation, when things happen here, people know.

And we've seen a radical change since August 29. Before that date, for example, the the bi-partisan Legislative Council (which tends to business when the legislators aren't in session)

...voted 12-0 to spend up to $100,000 "to investigate the circumstances and events surrounding the termination of former Public Safety Commissioner Monegan, and potential abuses of power and/or improper actions by members of the executive branch."

(Anchorage Daily News, July 27, 2008) The Governor said she and all her staff would voluntarily cooperate.

Supporters as well as detractors of the Republican governor generally agreed the legislative investigation is needed into the circumstances leading up to Monegan's dismissal.

"There's a big question about what happened. The public wants to know what happened," said Fairbanks Democratic Rep. David Guttenberg, a Legislative Council member. "There's something that doesn't quite smell right. The governor's not going to appoint a special prosecutor to look at whether she's abused power."

Guttenberg said Palin didn't help matters with her long, rambling press release a week ago in which she and some of her top aides tried to refute Monegan. The press release was titled "Palin Responds to Latest Falsehoods."

Sen. Gene Therriault of North Pole, leader of the small Republican Senate minority that generally has backed Palin's policies, said he expects the governor will cooperate, and if she's cleared, the investigation could strengthen her.

"Unfortunately, with partisan politics and talk shows and bloggers, there's probably just as much noise as substance," he said. "Hopefully, what the investigator can do is sift through it and see if there's any legitimacy."

Senate President Lyda Green, a Wasilla Republican [and not a Palin fan] and member of the Legislative Council, said the investigation is "absolutely" needed.

All that was one month before Palin was the surprise pick of John McCain. At the time I questioned the need to investigate the firing since Monegan served at the Governor's pleasure, but it might be worthwhile to look into the charges of going around regular channels to get Trooper Wooten fired. At most, the Governor would be reminded that there are laws and procedures and that she isn't above the law.

But now? CBS (among many others) reports:

A lawyer for Palin had said earlier this week that the governor would not speak to investigators, preferring to have the investigation transferred to a state personnel board (whose three members are appointed by the governor) for review. Palin had previously said she would cooperate with the probe.

Post Palin selection, it seems like the Rove shock troops have invaded Alaska. The same sorts of tactics that the White House used with Congressional investigations are being used now - refusal to recognize jurisdiction, refusal to appear, attacks on the integrity of the Council, and blatant lies.

State Representative Les Gara said

It's sad. It's presidential politics turning this small community, this small state, unfortunately, into a battleground. And I don't like it at all. I don't like what's going on.

Anchorage attorney and author of two highly regarded books on the Politics of Alaska Native Land, Don Mitchell, and who worked closely with Senator Stevens over the years, writes on the Alaska Dispatch [Thanks for the heads-up, Gryphen] of watching Bristol and Levi sitting together at Palin's Saturday morning's pep rally in Anchorage.

Bristol and Levi sat shoulder-to-shoulder. But not once did they look at each other, speak to each other, or in any way acknowledge each other’s physical presence.

He goes on to describe the deal he, as an attorney, would have gone after for the Johnston family:

Pader Johnston has disconnected the Johnston family's land line. So I can’t call him to ask what kind of deal he cut. But if Levi was my kid, the deal I would have cut would, at an absolute minimum, have been: $500,000 for from now to the November election. If McCain-Palin win, a $ 1 million signing bonus to take the trip down the aisle. Then, for the duration of the McCain-Palin administration, $100,000 a month for every month Mr. and Mrs. Johnston live under the same roof, and $50,000 a month for every month that they remain married but do not.

That’s chump change for the RNC. And if, in the best case for the nation, it turns out to be only a $500,000 payday for sixty days of work, that’s a life changing grubstake for an eighteen-year-old kid and more than enough to enable Levi to make his child support payments.

Mitchell is not a lightweight in Alaska. If his suspicion that Levi's family has been paid off for Levi to be good until after the election proves true, then is another example of that we are playing big league hard ball in Alaska now.

A Woman from Alaska Speaks Out: People of America Don’t Let it be Said

[This is a guest post from a friend who feels strongly about the upcoming election.]

People of America,

Don’t let it be said in the annals of history that the downhill spiral - given momentous spin by eight long years of an administration rooted in greed, arrogance, and indifference - was given its final thrust into the chasm we all see today, by its citizens.

Don’t let it be said that the American people succumbed to shortsightedness, shallowness, and prejudice by electing an administration just like the other one, or even more dangerously extreme, that furthered the erosion of what was once considered a solid foundation of declared rights that forged America in 1776.
Don’t let it be said that the beacon of eternal light that graces the hand of our Statue of Liberty glows in vain; that that quality of America that once beckoned to the hard pressed people of the world - our ancestors - was snuffed out by ignorance and self-serving apathy.

People of America, most of us would agree that we stand on an environmental threshold and can still alter the direction of our teetering from into the abyss to out, into a healthy world and vibrant existence, a legacy we can hand down to our children, and our children’s children.

Don’t let it be said that we willingly and mindlessly adorned blinders to the Karl Rovian tactics in evidence right now by the design of the McCain/Palin ticket and campaign, that we fell for a pretty face and the polarizing issues of women, gays, and guns to deflect attention away from the real needs of the people: healthcare, a green environment, real solutions to secure our sustainable energy independence, ending the war rooted in greed, rescuing and strengthening our tumbling economy, and nurturing our civil rights.

People of America, is this the best we can do - more of the same? Elect those who will see to it that we lose our reproductive freedom? Who will continue the chipping away of our civil rights? Who will push more and more of us into desperate situations - with no access to quality medical coverage for its children and families? Who would fall on its knees to individuals who drive Big Business who get fat while slashing our jobs and handing them to people abroad?

People of America, do you see anything wrong with this picture? The time is NOW to take off the blinders and dig deep. Dig into our history to see what ground we stand to lose. The time is NOW to stem the downward slide.
Elect Obama/Biden for a chance to pivot out of the brink of our fall into the chasm.

Stephanie Levine
Anchorage, AK
September 11, 2008

Unlocking My New Canon SD790

While waiting in the Carr's Muldoon parking lot Sunday night to carpool to Wasilla, I fiddled around with my camera as I tried to figure out how to get to the features I was used to on the old camera. Then suddenly, I got one. But how did I get there. Fiddled some more until I finally opened it. It was like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes.

OK, this picture isn't too good. How do you take a picture of the back of your camera? Luckily, I still have Scott's camera. But I didn't know how to do closeups with it and I'm not about to learn either. This pic will do for my purposes. The arrow is pointing at the mystery ring. Eventually, I figured out I could turn the ring - clockwise or counter clockwise - and when the right icon showed up on the screen, I had to push the button in the middle of the ring. Now that I've figured it out, it's pretty cool. But the instructions just said "go to the X icon" without telling me how to use the ring. (Well, maybe if I'd started the manual at the beginning it would have told me.)

And then, voila, all the features are reachable. You can teach an old dog new tricks. So all I needed was something to take pictures of. There really is a picture anywhere you look. You just have to find it. Here are some parking lot shots as I tried out different color features while I waited.