Lesson of the day: Do not pick up the peppercorn container by the top. (This is the after-the-fall pic)
Sunday night before dinner from the Thai Kitchen parking lot.
And again after dinner.
Monday afternoon after class - the UAA library.
Looking down the street to the west.
It does bother me how urban features like street lights interfere with my views, but since they are part of my life, I've decided to not crop them out.
Saturday's ADN article by Kenai Peninsula College Professor Alan Boraas' article on Sarah Palin outlines ties between Palin and Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham, the hiring of Chuck Kopp (to replace the fired Walt Monegan, only to be withdrawn when old sexual harassment issues arose), and Jerry Prevo (Alaska's version of Jerry Fallwell), and others. It's worth reading:
There are three Sullivans connected with the Ted Stevens trial - the Judge, and one attorney for the defense and one for the prosecutor.
The Judge: Emmet Sullivan
The photo and information are from the excerpted from the D.C. District US Courts website where the photo is credited to Beverly Rezneck.
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan was born in Washington, D.C. and attended public schools in the District of Columbia until his graduation from McKinley High School in 1964. In 1968, he received a from Howard University and, in 1971, a from the .
Howard University, Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science,1968
Howard University School of Law, Juris Doctor Degree, 1971
In 1973, Judge Sullivan joined the law firm of Houston & Gardner. He subsequently became a partner and was actively engaged in the general practice of law with that firm until August 1980, when his partner, William C. Gardner, was appointed as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Thereafter, Judge Sullivan was a partner in the successor firm of Houston, Sullivan & Gardner.
appointment by President Ronald Reagan to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on October 3, 1984
On November 25, 1991, Judge Sullivan was appointed by President George Bush to serve as an Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
On June 16, 1994, Judge Sullivan was appointed by President William Clinton to serve as United States District Judge for the District of Columbia.
Brendan Sullivan is a senior partner at the firm with nearly forty years of litigation experience in federal and state courts throughout the country. Mr. Sullivan is recognized nationally as one of the best known and most able trial lawyers in America, with an extraordinary record of successes. His principal areas of practice include all types of complex commercial litigation, including securities, antitrust, banking, RICO, and license disputes; the defense of major law firms in malpractice cases and the defense of accounting firms; products liability and mass tort; will contests; as well as high-profile criminal litigation. Typical clients include Fortune 500 companies involved in criminal investigations, litigation, or government regulatory matters.
Edward P. Sullivan, Trial Lawyer, Public Integrity Section, US Department of Justice
The photo is courtesy of Dennis Zaki at AlaskaReport.com. I found out in the previous trials that it is hard to get information on the Anchorage based and Public Integrity Section (PIN) Department of Justice attorneys. The websites have nothing. Edward Sullivan is a very common name and Googling doesn't seem to yield much. There is a law review citation, but I couldn't find the actual article in the Syracuse Law Review and there is no guarantee that this is the same Edward P. Sullivan, but the timing is reasonably close. Edward P. Sullivan, Reshuffling the Deck: Proposed Amendments to the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, 45 Syracuse L. Rev. 1107, 1126 (1995).
The Public Integrity Section oversees the federal effort to combat corruption through the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government. The Section has exclusive jurisdiction over allegations of criminal misconduct on the part of federal judges and also monitors the investigation and prosecution of election and conflict of interest crimes. Section attorneys prosecute selected cases against federal, state, and local officials, and are available as a source of advice and expertise to other prosecutors and investigators. Since 1978, the Section has supervised the administration of the Independent Counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act.
Last week at the Loussac Library Alaska Room I found the book The Library and I by Edith Olson. It tells the history of the Wasilla library from 1938 until she left Alaska in 1959. I did try to contact the publisher, but it appears to no longer exist. I also tried calling an Edith Olson I found in Washington State.
While I was initially interested in this because of the discussions of Sarah Palin, when she was Mayor of Wasilla, firing the Wasilla librarian, the book seems to have nothing that is relevant to that issue at all. However, these two chapters are an interesting look at early Wasilla and the way the library came into existence.
[This was an email from Catherine and I asked if I could post it and did she have any pictures.]
I was up in the mountains picking blueberries... finally found some! oh joy. Picked with four other women... haven't laughed that much in ages. It was terribly fun. Now I'm cleaning, freezing, making pies and crisps... the freezer is getting stuffed with berries and I am in heaven.
Oddly enough, we had a beautiful day while it was raining here! I was surprised. I picked more than I've ever picked in one outing...
almost 3 gallons... then a friend who went with gave me almost 2 more gallons as a thank you for sharing this most amazing spot...(years ago) although she's the one who found this spot due to a hurting knee and not being able to climb as high up as we usually pick.
Oh I tell you it's heaven.
Now I have to decide if I want to start one of the pies I made last night this morning for breakfast... or not... heehee.
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.
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.
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."
"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."
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.
Lesson of the day: Do not pick up the peppercorn container by the top.
Sunday night before dinner from the Thai Kitchen parking lot.
And again after dinner.
Monday afternoon after class - the UAA library.
Looking down the street to the west.
There are three Sullivans connected with the Ted Stevens trial - the Judge, and one attorney for the defense and one for the prosecutor.
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.
