Fungibility

I've been getting links to the YouTube of Sarah Palin talking about fungibility and it's already up on various blogs. It's shown as an example of Palin's not being very clear. I've listened to it and I have one possible explanation of what she was trying to say. It's not easy to transcribe what she says with absolute certainty. Here's my transcript:

Oil of coal, course, is is a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, ya know, the molecules where, where it’s going to where it’s not but and in the, in the sense of the Congress today they know they are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So I believe that what Congress is going to do also is not to allow the export ban to such a degree that it’s Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here, it’s gotta flow into our domestic markets first.

The YouTube description transcribes the opening as: ""Oil and coal? Of course, it's a fungible commodity..."

I think she meant to say, "Oil, of course,..." but accidentally said, "Oil of coal..." and then corrected herself with " course".


Now, what is that fungibility stuff? Wikipedia says:

Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution.

And then there's the phrase

they don’t flag, ya know, the molecules where it’s going to where it’s not...

Here's my guess at what she was trying to say, based on attending the AGIA conference in Anchorage this summer. Critics how, with [of] AGIA [wanted to know how] we would be sure that Alaska's natural gas actually got to the Lower 48. It would go through Canada and then it would all be mixed with Canadian gas. So, the gas that actually went to the US, wouldn't necessarily be Alaska gas. But that would be ok, we were told, since we'd know how many cubic feet of Alaska gas went into the larger pool and how much went on to the US.

My guess is that this is what she was thinking, even though she didn't articulate it very clearly. Maybe she thought if people couldn't understand her jargon they'd think she was really smart. Some academics do that. Also, I'm not sure if the same is true for oil. We know that there are different grades of oil and they sell for different prices, so they wouldn't be fungible. But there are different qualities of natural gas as well, so I'm not sure on this. Next.

"...what Congress is going to do also is not to allow the export ban to such a degree that it’s Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source..."

Grammatically, let's see if we can make this work:

"Congress is not going to allow the export ban to such a degree that Americans get stuck without oil."

It seems to me that if she meant oil wouldn't be diverted from the Lower 48 and exported to other countries, then Congress SHOULD allow the export ban.


If you haven't seen the video, you can below.

It Goes Without Saying - Mime Bill Bowers at Out North

Out North is a small theater. It holds, maybe, 100 people and we were sitting in the front row. So, I put away my camera before the show started. This is the stage. A flip chart with the names of the stories he's telling. And the stool. The rest of the space a blank slate for Bowers to paint with mime.

The title - It Goes Without Saying - is a little misleading - the mime actually talks. He tells stories of his life and why he mimes for a living starting with growing up in Missoula through gigs at trade shows, through studying with Marcel Marceau, through caring for his dying partner.

I got drawn into the stories and the mimed illustrations. A key theme was silence. His family, his community, as he tells it, didn't talk about the important aspects of life around them. This theme seemed to climax when he told us about meeting a mime in Romania, who he said was the most famous man in Romania, dubbed "The Voice of Romania." (I'm not sure I've got the title right and the "Voice of Romania" hits I got on google didn't give me any mimes, but the image of a mime being the voice of a country where repression ruled for so long is a delicious conceit.)

This was an interesting evening, delving into places I've never been. Yet I went home with a feeling of incompleteness. A one person, autobiographical show, only works if I feel I'm hearing directly from the performer's heart. After a night's sleep, I have the feeling that Bower's voice wasn't completely authentic. Maybe because he's really a mime, not a talker. Maybe he's done the show too often. My sense is that perhaps he hasn't yet found his own true voice and he's still trying too hard to get our approval instead of just his own.

Work Accommodations for Palin in the VP Debate

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that employers should make reasonable work accommodations for employees with disabilities. But there has been a lot of debate on the meaning of 'disability' and 'reasonable accommodation."


Findlaw reports that:

"U.S. Supreme Court Narrows ADA Protection--Inability to Perform Work Tasks Alone is Not a Disability Under the Americans With Disabilities Act"

The Court stated that the central inquiry in identifying an ADA-protected disability is whether the claimant is unable to perform tasks central to most people's daily lives. Some tasks of "central importance to daily life" include tending to personal hygiene, household chores, bathing, and brushing one's teeth.

The McCain campaign hasn't notified the world of any physical disabilities that Palin has. But the law also covers cognitive disabilities, if I understand it correctly. They haven't announced any of these for the candidate either. Furthermore, Republicans have generally taken very conservative stands on these accommodations, siding with employers who are concerned with the expense of making accommodations.

So it heartwarming that the McCain-Palin Campaign is setting a totally new precedent by arguing for accommodations because of, not disability, but lack of experience. Usually, lack of experience disqualifies an applicant from the job completely. But we hear, via the New York Times, in relation to the upcoming vice presidential debate:

McCain advisers said they had been concerned that a loose format could leave Ms. Palin, a relatively inexperienced debater, at a disadvantage and largely on the defensive. [emphasis added]

I thought they had been touting how experienced Gov. Palin is. Must be my hearing. Anyway, I'd like to challenge readers to come up with ways to make accommodations should she should become Vice President. Well, strictly speaking, that job isn't too difficult. But should she be called on to step in for the President, what sorts of accommodations need to be made for her lack of experience?

How about "All major emergencies must be announced at least seven days in advance so that Palin can get tutoring on how to respond" for the first one? I'll leave it your imaginations to craft additional accommodations to help Gov. Palin succeed should she become our president.

Somehow though, I have the feeling that if Biden asks for similar accommodations in the televised moose skinning contest between the vice presidential candidates, the McCain operatives will cry "FOUL."

Laughing til it hurt - Aasif Mandvi in Anchorage

Friends suggested we join them at UAA* last night to hear the Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi. As a cable-less household member, I only get to see the Daily Show when at friends' homes or on YouTube. So I wasn't prepared for this guy.


The first time he approached politics, he mentioned that (paraphrasing) 'you guys are getting a lot of attention these days .... well, I think Gravel is great too."

Later he mentioned that he's here and he's looked really hard, but "you just can't see Russia from here."

At the end, some of the people asking questions seemed either like shils or like they were auditioning. The combination of their questions and his responses had me laughing so hard it hurt, literally.



*University of Alaska Anchorage

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.