View from Lake Otis and Providence Friday Afternoon

La Nostalgia Re-Mix: Best Hits and Out takes for an imaginary bar Guillermo Gomez-Peňa & James Luna

Out North had one of its culturally challenging nights. By that I mean, I had to stretch a bit, I had to think about where I was on the continuum between insider and outsider, between supporter of the status quo and challenger. Between comfortable and on the edge.

The bleacher seats were facing each other with a small stage on either end. We ended up sitting right in front of James Luna's bar as often violent black and white video splashed on a screen to our left to a varying playlist. On the other end of the field - it felt more like a field than a stage, I thought of ball court at Chichen Itza - was Guillermo Gomez-Peňa, in a feather headress. I snapped the picture quickly before the performance officially began.

And we watched the ball bounce from one side of the field to the other as the artists alternated short vignettes from their side of the stage. Luna took us, on his turns, into his life as an artist and Indian challenging the world's stereotypes. His first piece was about an early performance piece at a museum where he, in the Indian exhibit, with a lot of his own memorabilia, lay flat on his back in a loin cloth, on a bed of sand in an open display case as the unsuspecting museum goers came into his hall. We saw photos of the event as he lay flat on his back in a loin cloth at Out North telling us about the experience.


Then, we shifted our attention to stage left, where Peňa read his outsider artist manifesto. The most startling piece was when audience members were brought up to him and given a machine gun and asked to pose with him, dressed as a terrorist, and they holding the gun on him - to his head first, to his chest, genitals, mouth,etc. They held the pose for - I really don't know how long, I didn't time it, but it was a long pose. Maybe a minute, maybe two. These were the stereotypical television images of the terrorist being menaced with a gun touching his body by a soldier. Seeing the image, held for a long time, right there in front of us, was very powerful. It also forced me to think about whether I would agree to participate in that event if asked. (No.)

This was a thought provoking evening with people whose authentic voice most of us never hear. There will be a performance Saturday night November 15 and Sunday afternoon November 16. Getting performances like this in the tiny Out North theater means you are right there, almost on stage. No need to bring your opera glasses. There were no empty seats that I saw tonight. You can save $2 a ticket buying them online.

Why I Think the Prop 8 Arguments are Wrong

[Brief Overview:

• I haven't commented on Prop 8 so far, the issues are complicated, and I don't want to be simplistic.
• There's an anti-Prop 8 and pro equality rally scheduled for Saturday in Anchorage at noon at the Atwood Building, so now is the time to comment.
• I found an article from a pro Prop 8 website that 'debunks' arguments for same-sex marriage.
• I took that article and give my reactions to the debunking.
  
  • Despite all the logical facade, the basic anti same-sex argument boils down to:

  • Same-sex marriage is not about civil rights. It’s about validation and social respect. It is a radical attempt at civil [I think he meant social] engineering using government muscle to strong-arm the people into accommodating a lifestyle many find deeply offensive, contrary to nature, socially destructive, and morally repugnant.

  • A second key factor is claiming that male-female marriage is the natural order of things and that marriage cannot be socially constructed. That argument seems to be contradictory. If marriage between men and women was not and cannot be socially constructed, then socially constructing same-sex marriage simply will not work anyway. Nature will win out. No need to spend $37 million to fight it.
    
• There's more, but I think those are the highlights.]
  
  Post Starts Here:
  
  Last week Jay noted that while I took pleasure in the historical event of Obama's election, I had not mentioned that the one civil rights landmark was marred by the passage of Propostion 8 in California and similar anti-gay marriage in a couple of other states.
  
  Since then, there have been anti-Prop 8 demonstrations in California and demonstrations are being planned for Saturday in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Anchorage's is at
  
  noon November 15 at the Atwood Bldg on 7th between E and F.
  
  And I still have not commented on this. In part, because it is probably the most divisive issue this election and such issues require particular care and tact if I'm to discuss it in a way that tries to present opposing views objectively. And since I find the anti-gay marriage argument ultimately lacking in merit, I'm hard pressed to do this well. Besides, what more can be said about this?
  
  Well, I started a long detailed look at the arguments I thought were being made. After several pages on biblical commandments, I realized I was writing a tract that no one was going to read. Then I switched tactics and started looking at some pro Prop 8 websites to see what they were arguing. One, essentially had no serious arguments for opposing gay marriage. It was as though it were so obvious they didn't need to say anything. But a second one did spell out ways to deal with arguments opposed to Prop 8. There was one particularly well written piece that went through argument after argument. I realized, wearily, that I was going to end up doing a long post after all. But so be it.
  
  Gregory Koukl's piece, "Same-sex marriage - challenges and responses" stands out because it doesn't mention religion and uses a logical argument that, with just a couple of exceptions, is free of blatant emotional appeal.
  
  I've taught enough graduate students to know that critical thinking is not a skill one necessarily acquires in the US school system, even after four years of college. And if you don't trust my judgment, just consider all the people who bought houses using sub-prime loans. So, I can't just link to this post and assume that even an educated reader will automatically see the problems in Koukl's discussions. So, hang on. I've given up trying to do this in just a brief synopsis. It's too complicated. Well, ultimately it comes down to some basic issues, but to really address the arguments I need to go into detail.
  
  I'll give brief quotes from his article and paraphrase the rest. You can go to the article itself to see whether I'm doing him justice.
  
  His overview of the problem has two points:
  

  First, changing the definition of marriage implies that marriage is just a matter of cultural definition.

  This would mean, he says, that all the rules about marriage would be overthrown - “It’s privileges, protections, responsibilities, and moral obligations are all up for grabs.” He says that polygamy will also be on the table.
  
  In a sense he is right - this is an ontological debate. Ontology is the field of philosophy that deals with the question of what is real. The basic responses are
  a. Realist Position: The truths of the social world are ‘out there’ in nature for us to discover
  and
  b. Nominalist Position: The social world is socially constructed. Humans shape and constantly reshape the concepts and the institutions they live in.
  
  Both these responses have generated adherents and detractors, are complicated, have situations where they obviously apply and situations where they don’t. One difficulty I see is the impossibility of separating out the physical reality from the social reality. For instance, motherhood and fatherhood are physical realities that are ‘out there’ in the sense that a child is the physical consequence of a sexual act of its parents.
  
  But is an adoptive mother not a mother? What is a family? Is it the American ideal of mother, father, and two point three kids? Is it the extended family of many cultures including several generations and aunts and uncles? Is it a blood relationship or a spiritual bond among people living together?
  
  Our formal upbringing and culture tend to favor the realist position. It is the ideology of mainstream natural science. But many critics of social conditions, such as the role of women in society, monarchy, slavery, the caste system in India, would argue that these institutions are socially constructed and institutionalize and justify a system that gives some people power and others little or none.
  
  By declaring unilaterally that marriage is a natural phenomenon rather than culturally defined, Koukl attempts to cut off the social construction option altogether. But, from my perspective, this is like declaring (but not proving) that his opponents’ basic assumption is wrong.
  

  Second, a marriage license for same-sex couples would be a governmental declaration that homosexual unions are no different than heterosexual unions in the eyes of the law.
  
  If so, then “marriage” is nothing in particular and can be restructured at the whim of the people. Even as I write, there are cases wending their way through courts in Utah challenging prohibitions on polygamy. Why not, if “marriage” is just a social construction?

  
  As you can see where he says “marriage is nothing in particular and can be restructured at the whim of the people” he is merely repeating his ‘realist’ argument from the first point. He then goes on to complain that:
  

  It will then be impossible to deny homosexuals full adoption rights. For the first time in the history of civilization a culture will declare that neither mothers nor fathers are essential components of parenthood; neither makes a uniquely valuable contribution. Same-sex marriage will deny children a right to a mother and a father.
  

  Ah, so his real gripe is that homosexuals would be able to adopt kids. He argues this later on - that kids need both a mother and father. I don’t disagree that having both genders as role models is good for kids. That may, under ideal conditions, be considered the best possible situation. But it doesn't mean that kids can't also have a great upbringing with two same gender parents. After all, there are also lots of single parent families without that. There are orphans who have neither. (So it would be better to leave them in foster care than to have gays or single people adopt them according to Koukle's arugment.) And other people - aunts, uncles, grandparents, good friends - can, and do, play those roles for kids. It isn’t a deal breaker.
  
  He then goes on to say, quite rightly, this is all very complicated. So he’s going to respond to common arguments for gay marriage and show their problems. What I’m going to do is look at his responses and show the problems with those.
  
  

  1. “We’re being denied the same rights as heterosexuals. This is unconstitutional discrimination.”
  There are two complaints here. First, homosexuals don’t have the same legal liberties heterosexuals have. Second, homosexual couples don’t have the same legal benefits as married couples.

  He argues that gays have the same rights everyone else has - to marry someone of the opposite sex. No one else has the right to marry someone of the same sex, so gays aren't discriminated against. He creates this bizarre analogy:
  

  Smith and Jones both qualify to vote in America where they are citizens. Neither is allowed to vote in France. Jones, however, has no interest in U.S. politics; he’s partial to European concerns. Would Jones have a case if he complained, “Smith gets to vote [in California], but I don‚t get to vote [in France]. That‚s unequal protection under the law. He has a right I don’t have.” No, both have the same rights and the same restrictions. There is no legal inequality, only an inequality of desire, but that is not the state’s concern.
  
  

  There are several problems with the analogy. Logically it fails because Jones could move to France and apply for French citizenship, but gays don't have an analogous option. Probably more important is the implication that homosexuality is a choice. My sense of this issue is that Kinsey's continuum of sexuality from totally straight on one end to totally gay on the other end is probably the most accurate reflection of people's sexual tendencies. So for people on the gay end, an 'interest' in French politics, isn't a whim or quirk, it is who they are.
  

  2. “They said the same thing about interracial marriage.”
  
  

  The difference here, he says, is that interracial marriage is about males and females. It was a mistake that has been corrected because skin color is irrelevant. He uses a clever analogy here.
  

  Consider two men, one rich and one poor, seeking to withdraw money from their bank. The rich man is denied because his account is empty. However, on closer inspection, a clerk discovers an error, corrects it, and releases the cash. Next in line, the poor man is denied for the same reason: insufficient funds. “That’s the same thing you said about the last guy,” he snaps. “Yes,” the clerk replies. “We made a mistake with his account, but not with yours. You’re broke.”

  I say this is a clever analogy because the logic in the example is clear. It had me stumped for a while. But then I remembered that when you have an analogy, there has to be correspondence between the example and the actual situation. That's the problem. This story is NOT analagous to the gay marriage situation. Why? Let's try to match the two.
  
  Who is the rich man and who is the poor man in the interracial situation and what is 'the money?" It's hard to say because they don't match. Let's set up the analogous interracial situation.
  
  A white (rich) man with a dark suntan comes into the county clerk's office to get a marriage license. At first the clerk says, "I'm sorry, but black men can't marry white women." Then he checks and finds out he's really a white man with a suntan. "Oh, my mistake, here's your license." Then the black (poor) man, next in line, is told the same thing. "But you gave the last guy his license." "Ah, because we checked and found out he was really white."
  
  He didn't get asked if he was a man. He got asked if he was black. The correction ultimately, when interracial marriage was approved, was not a simple, "Oh we made a mistake and you turn out to be qualified by our rules." No, it was, "We have decided to change our rules and now if you are black, you can get married to a white."
  
  The ban against interracial marriage was, like the ban on same sex marriage, based on tradition, it was said to be the natural order of things, and it was done within a power structure where whites had the power to exclude blacks, all supported by passages lifted from the bible to justify this power structure. It seems to me that this argument by the pro-gay marriage folks - banning gay marriage is analogous to banning interractial marriage - is, after all, a good one. Koukl tries, cleverly I admit, to distract us and say it still preserved the male-female part. That may be true, but it's irrelevant. The ban against interracial marriage was socially constructed and then socially deconstructed. Basically Koukl's argument that gay marriage is against the natural order of things is no different from what those opposed to interracial marriage said.
  
  Therefore, he argues that gays are not discriminated against, have no legal rights denied, because they have the same rights as everyone else - to marry someone of the other gender. They just choose not to. But this ignores the Kinsey continuum and assumes that you are either male or female, black or white, with no shades of gray. Kinsey's research, plus more recent studies clearly show that gender - with the ultimate example being hermaphrodites - is not a neat dichotomous issue.
  
  In the second part, he says that it may be true that gays are denied some entitlements, but says that's ok because entitlements are not guaranteed to everyone the way rights are, and with good reason, marriage is favored because it is the base of civilization. More on that below.
  
  3. “We shouldn’t be denied the freedom to love who we want.”
  
  Read this passage carefully. It's critical. Basically he says, gays won't gain any new freedoms with the right to get married. They can do all things married people do. There's only one thing they won't get - respect, societal approval.
  
  

  This [gaining new rights through marriage] will not happen because no personal liberty is being denied them. Gay couples can already do everything married people do – express love, set up housekeeping, share home ownership, have sex, raise children, commingle property, receive inheritance, and spend the rest of their lives together. It’s not criminal to do any of these things. ..
  

  Gay marriage grants no new freedom, and denying marriage licenses to homosexuals does not restrict any liberty. Nothing stops anyone – of any age, race, gender, class, or sexual preference – from making lifelong loving commitments to each other, pledging their troth until death do them part. They may lack certain entitlements, but not freedoms.

  Denying marriage doesn't restrict anyone. It merely withholds social approval from a lifestyle and set of behaviors that homosexuals have complete freedom to pursue without it. A marriage license doesn’t give liberty; it gives respect...

  Same-sex marriage is not about civil rights. It’s about validation and social respect. It is a radical attempt at civil [I think he meant social] engineering using government muscle to strong-arm the people into accommodating a lifestyle many find deeply offensive, contrary to nature, socially destructive, and morally repugnant.

  To me, this is the most revealing passage of the whole article for two reasons:
  A. Koukle essential reveals his underlying beliefs - he thinks gay marriage is deeply offensive, contrary to nature, socially destructive, and morally repugnant. This is a theological and emotional reaction to the idea of gay marriage. All the rest of this essay, I think, is an attempt to use non-religious, non-emotional methods to try to convince people who do not share his religious and emotional objections to marriage. They aren't his fundamental objection. They are just window dressing. This is the gut issue driving everything else: "I think gay marriage is disgusting." These are the same arguments that were made for banning interracial marriage. According to Wikipedia,
  
  

  The trial judge in the [Loving case - the one in which the US Supreme Court finally overturned the interracial marriage ban -] case, Leon Bazile, echoing Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 18th-century interpretation of race, proclaimed that

  “	Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that He separated the races shows that He did not intend for the races to mix.

  
  All the elements are there - contrary to nature (God's will), socially destructive (interference with His arrangement), and morally repugnant (God sets the standards for what is morally right and He did not intend for the races to mix.)
  
  B. The second significant aspect of this one is that this strong opponent of homosexuality has basically said, "look, they've gotten everything they want - they can have sex, they can live together, they can play married, etc. He's basically ceded that homosexuality is legal and that in practical terms, gays have everything, relating to marriage type relationships, that non-gays have. Except societal approval of the arrangement. While the exception is a big one, to focus only on that and not see how far society's acceptance of gays has progressed would be myopic. Gays' progress toward total equality has moved much faster than did African-Americans. OK, I know the ultimate (at least in today's vision) legal prize still eludes, but a lot has been achieved.
  
  
  4. “Marriage is about love.”
  He rejects this altogether and says marriage is about children.
  
  

  On reflection, though, it's clear that love and marriage don’t always go together.

  In fact, they seldom do.

  If marriage were about love, then billions of people in the history of the world who thought they were married were not. Most marriages have been arranged. Love may percolate later, but only as a result of marriage, not the reason for it.

  Further, if love were the sine qua non of marriage, no for better or for worse promises would be needed at the altar. Vows aren’t meant to sustain love; they are meant to sustain the union when love wanes. A pledge keeps a family intact not for love, but for the sake of children.

  The state doesn’t care if the bride and groom love each other. There are no questions about a couple's affections when granting a license. No proof of passion is required. Why? Because marriage isn’t about love.

  
  
  5. “Marriage is constantly being redefined.”
  
  Well, it might appear that way, but however marriage has changed over time, there is still the basic pairing between a man and a woman. The reason? See 6.
  
  6. “Not all marriages have children.”
  
  No, he acknowledges, but that is the purpose of them.
  

  Clearly, not all families have children. Some marriages are barren, by choice or by design.

  This proves nothing, though. Books are written by authors to be read, even if large ones are used as doorstops or discarded ones help ignite campfires. The fact that many lie unread and covered with dust, or piled atop coffee tables for decorative effect doesn’t mean they were not destined for higher purpose.

  So, if you don't have children, your marriage serves a lower purpose. Unread books? Nice try, but some people get married with no intention of having children. And some people who have children, had no such intention.
  
  Clearly, there are examples, of marriages without love (#4), but not all marriages were intended to have children. Marriages were also intended to unite families and clans. The royalty of Europe betrothed children to create alliances. Sure, having children would probably strengthen those alliances, but producing competing heirs might also endanger the alliances.
  
  If marriage is not about love, but about keeping the loveless couple together to raise their children, then it would seem that not forcing gay men to marry women might increase the likelihood that marriages would stay together. Allowing gays to get out of the hetero marriage
  market - by allowing them to get a legally sanctioned same sex marriage - I suspect the divorce rate among male-female marriage would go down. Fewer children would be born into to families destined for divorce. In fact, while we're at it, the next logical extension here would be to ban all divorce.
  
  
  7. “Marriage is a social construction we can redefine as we please.”
  
  I've discussed this above. Kukle takes the realist position that marriage is a natural phenomenon that cannot be redefined by society. I think that if he really believed that, he wouldn't fear people making changes, since the natural human affinity for male-female marriage, the purpose to have children, etc. would 'naturally' guarantee the long term health and survival of marriage. Only if marriage truly were a social construction, could humans significantly change it. And he says this himself:
  

  If the definition of marriage is established by nature, then we have no liberty to redefine it. In fact, marriage itself wouldn’t change at all even if we did.

  So, it doesn't matter if we allow same-sex marriages.
  
  Well, maybe he doesn't believe what he says. The very fact that he is concerned about the future of marriage suggests to me, that deep down, he understands that it is socially constructed and that he wants to make sure that the present construction stays that way he wants it.
  

  Same-sex marriage is radically revisionist. It severs family from its roots, eviscerates marriage of any normative content, and robs children of a mother and a father. This must not happen.

  If male-female marriage is the natural state and humans cannot socially construct marriage, then how would same-sex marriage eviscerate marriage? But if he admits that marriage is socially constructed, then male-female marriage would no longer be 'natural,' but just a human construction. You just can't have it both ways. Sorry Mr. Koukle.
  
  OK, that's how I see it. I've felt a little rushed here to get this out today. If there are flaws in my reasoning please point them out.

British Petroleum's New Moose Not Kept in the Dark

From BP's website:

We work hard to minimize the environmental impact of our operations.

This shot was taken about 10pm on Wednesday night. Either British Petroleum's employees are all working late, or they have trouble turning off the lights when they go home.

Attention to little things that adds up. If they can't turn off the lights at night in Anchorage, what little things are they forgetting on the North Slope?

Partial Redemption for Alaskans?

The ADN says yesterday's vote counting has erased Ted Stevens' 3000+ lead and now Begich is 814 votes ahead. That was after 60,000 absentee and questioned ballots were counted. There are still 40,000 ballots to go.

When I was poll watching there were about 40 questioned ballots while I was there (7am-4:30pm) out of about 800 votes. They fell into the following categories:

• People not on the list because they were voting outside their regular polling place.
• People not on the list who thought they were in their regular polling place (and some of these had spouses with them who were on the list, and some were on my list of people supporting Democrats in that polling place.)
• People who were on the list, but said they had moved. Even though they were on the list, and in most cases still living in the same area, they had to vote a questioned ballot and to fill out a new registration with their new address. If they hadn't said anything they could have voted regular.

Anyway, does it reflect differently on Alaskans if one more person votes for Begich than Stevens or vice versa? It still means half the people who voted marked a convicted felon.

But, Democrats. What would you have done if your candidate had been convicted and there was a Democratic governor who would get to appoint the next senator and maybe keep the office Democratic? Especially if the governor had suddenly burst onto the national scene and been a big hit with the 'real' Democrats and could appoint himself and thus move back to the national scene?

While I agree that voting for a convicted felon doesn't play well for the rest of the world, I do understand it as a tactic to further one's cause. And I'm not sure given a roughly similar situation, Democrats wouldn't have done the same. A number of people in both parties (yeah, I know there are more than just two) are more than willing to abandon their professed principles if it means they 'win.' I personally believe that our behavior reflects our values more than what we say. So these people really do, in my book, value 'winning' over their other professed values.

The real key is to convince enough voters to vote for the candidate who isn't a felon so the issue becomes moot. If we stop electing candidates with dark clouds hanging over them (you mean there is no one else well qualified?) then parties will stop nominating indicted candidates.

I don't know if the remaining 40,000 votes (if that's an accurate number) are going to split like the 60,000 counted so far. If they do, then it is moot. And Alaska will be in a new era as is the US.

By the way, the NY Times reports today on the 'unnamed McCain campaign figure' who 'leaked' that Palin said Africa was a country. He's a hoax. So, maybe we gain a bit more credibility on that count too. But my question is, did Palin know that Africa was a continent, not a country? Her comments in a press conference later didn't really inspire confidence. She didn't flatly deny she'd said that, rather she made like it really didn't matter.

"If there are allegations based on questions or comments I made in debate prep about NAFTA, about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context..."

In any case, our governor needs to be more careful about her facts - maybe that's why most of her public discussion avoids them - see this latest press conference video. The Anchorage Daily News cover story in Monday's paper quotes her saying:

And banning books. That was a ridiculous thing also that could have so easily been corrected just by a reporter taking an extra step and not basing a report on gossip or speculation. But just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn't even been written when I was the mayor.

Well, ok, so I'm just trying to check the record. When was the first Harry Potter book published? Wikipedia says:

Since the 1997 release of the first novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which was retitled Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States, the books have gained immense popularity, critical acclaim and commercial success worldwide.

And when was Palin mayor of Wasilla?

The official bio at the Governor's office site leaves out dates:

Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council and two terms as the mayor/manager of Wasilla.

The McCain campaign site doesn't have the dates either.
So, back to Wikipedia:

Palin was a member of the Wasilla, Alaska, city council from 1992 to 1996 and the city's mayor from 1996 to 2002.

But I better double check with other sources to be absolutely certain. Time magazine mentions "the 1996 campaign for mayor of her hometown, Wasilla..." The Anchorage Daily News had a long feature in 2006 which included this:

Previous offices: Wasilla City Council, 1992-1996; Wasilla mayor, 1996-2002; Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, 2003-2004.

OK, then,

• Palin was mayor starting in 1996 until 2002.
  
• The first Harry Potter book came out in 1997.
• The second book in the series was published in 1998.
  
• The third one in 1999. when Palin had three more years to serve as mayor.
  
• The fourth one, The Goblet of Fire, came out in 2000.

The way I read things, not only had Harry Potter been written by the time she was mayor, but it had been published. Maybe she meant, "in 1996, when I became mayor, Harry Potter hadn't even been published." But Governor, you have to say what you mean. If you say " it hadn't even been written when I was the mayor" then we're going to assume that is what you mean. Part of being a politician is being able to get your facts right and say what you mean. (Now, if the ADN has falsely quoted you, I apologize profusely on this point.)

When I first saw the bogus list of Palin's books to ban, I immediately knew it was a hoax. It had too many well known and loved books. We certainly would have heard about that - all the way in Anchorage - had she tried to ban that long list of books.

But it wasn't Harry Potter that people were concerned about. People did check their facts - better than the governor seems to check hers - and there was a librarian who told us that she'd been asked about removing books. And I personally had a chance to hear Howard Bess discuss how his book, Pastor, I'm Gay kept disappearing from the library, no matter how often he donated new copies. And that Palin's church was campaigning to get books out of the library.

So, first, people did check facts. Yes, there were scurrilous stories, but also a number that were solid. That goes with the territory. The governor, for example, is still talking about Obama 'palling around' with terrorists.

Second, I understand how someone can forget or misspeak details now and then. It happens to me all too often. I understand being more concerned with the big picture than the details. There is, however, a big BUT that goes here. If you don't have any of the details right, then your big picture is built on falsehoods. If we disregard the hard facts, then every model of the world is equal. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but the rest of us don't have to buy them.

We need politicians who have a broad picture of how the world works that is grounded on a solid base of proven facts. Palin did a pretty good job of this with the AGIA proposal. She had outstanding public administrators backing her up on that. But since the first hints of Troopergate and then the nod from McCain, it's been very heavy on questionable theory and little proven fact.

Dr. Dolittle had Polynesia, Dr. Pepperberg had Alex

One of my absolutely favorite set of books when I was a kid was Dr. Dolittle. This was well before the movies. The stories were wonderful for a little boy who loved all things animal. Of course my favorite character, after Dr. Dolittle, was Polynesia the Parrot. (Well, probably it was Timothy Stubbins, the nine and a half year old boy who 'discovers' the good doctor.) Dr. Dolittle's important gift was his ability to talk to all the animals.


I'm sure Dr. Dolittle was the reason that I was always skeptical when I heard people - even scientists - say that humans were the only animal that could talk. I think Dr. Dolittle must have set my mind to be receptive to seeing evidence that they could. And eventually, even scientists were saying that 'higher' animals, like whales and dolphins and chimps, could, in fact, communicate. People who worked closely with animals always knew that.

So as Terry Gross woke me up this morning interviewing Irene Pepperberg, I was drawn right in. This was a lady who taught her parrot to talk. Not just "Polly wants a Cracker." She did demonstrations that showed the that Alex could distinguish words and concepts:

Fresh Air from WHYY, November 12, 2008 · Although his brain was no bigger than a walnut, Alex the African gray parrot could do more than speak and understand — he could also count, identify colors and, according to his owner Irene Pepperberg, develop an emotional relationship. When Alex died in September 2007, his last words to Pepperberg were "You be good. I love you."

You can listen to the interview at the link above. A couple points stuck in my mind.

• First, was how she was treated when she applied for her first grant to work with Alex. She says that one applicant reviewer questioned what she was smoking. A great example of Thomas Kuhn's discussions on how holders of a paradigm (in this case operant conditioning) reject ideas that contradict the premises of their paradigm.

• Second, was the idea that Hugh Lofting, Dolittle's creator wrote in the passage above (originally copyrighted in 1922, my edition says it's the 24th impression) that animals have their own languages, but we only notice their linguistic abilities when they learn a human language. Which led me to wonder, if people are so smart, how come we can only talk to animals when they learn our language? Well, of course that isn't quite true since horse and dog-whisperers are examples of people who have learned to understand animal languages.

There's more, but I'm heading out to the Alaska Apple Users Group meeting and I need to be going. But I would also mention that when I taught 6th grade in LA the year between Peace Corps and graduate school, I brought in my Dr. Dolittle book to read after lunch to the class. One day, as I was reading to my African-American students, I realized that Dr. Dolittle was about to use a racist phrase. I stopped in mid-sentence. When the students asked about Dr. Dolittle the next day I made up something like the book was due back at the library. If it happened today, I would have used that situation to give a lesson on how we had evolved in terms of racism, but I wasn't that evolved at the time.


The picture of Irene and Alex is from the Fresh Air site. The one of Dr. Dolittle and Polynesia is from the book cover at the top.

Encaustics Poster

It was sunny when I went to my digital art class yesterday at 1. But it was drizzling slightly when I got out. There was a big hole in the sky. And now, it's snowing.




We're moving on from our 'fantasy' pictures where we take four photos and merge them into one picture. Mine is taking longer than I thought, partly because I'm using way more than four different photos. Getting the light to match in each of the merged pictures may be beyond my ability before it's due.

But yesterday we started and finished a new project - focusing on text. Prof. Gonzales' assignment was to go downstairs to the bulletin board in the Art building and find a poster. Then we were supposed to redo the poster so the text and graphics were better. I chose the white one with all the text and one picture on the lower left before the lighter panel.

It's for an Encaustics workshop. I never heard of Encaustics either. So I turned to the web. There were a couple of great descriptions of how to create the encaustics materials on a site called wet canvas (and wet canvas2) but I had to look further for a definition which I got on jocelynaudette:

Encaustic paintings are painted with beeswax, resin, and pigment. It is an ancient process that was used by the Egyptians and Greeks, and examples have been found in Egyptian tombs. Generally, the painting process involves using a hot palette to melt and mix the colored wax, painting it onto the panel using a brush, and fusing the layers with a heat gun. All paintings are on wood panels which provide a rigid and supportive surface. (Like always you can double click to enlarge the pictures.)

So, here's the original poster. It has a lot of details about the class, about cost, discounts, times, places, etc. but it isn't very eye catching. It seemed to me that a poster for an art workshop ought to be somewhat artistic itself. So I googled encaustics images and there were plenty. The workshop poster talks about collage too, so I figured I should have a collage like poster. And as much should be visual as possible. So I got the seven people - all from different encaustics work on line - that was the maximum class size. I found an encaustics picture I could use as the base of the poster - one that had a fair amount of white space I could fill in. The flag is a Jasper Johns encaustic. And the beeswax had to go somewhere since it is the basis of encaustics as I understand it.

I had to leave out a lot of the text, so I put the contact information in a prominent place. We were supposed to then take our printed posters and pin them up next to the old ones. But yellow wasn't working on the printer, so it should get done Wednesday. Fortunately we were supposed to get this done in the 45 minutes left of class so it was 'done' when the time limit was up and I don't have to agonize over it to make it perfect.

These workshops were over in September, but I guess if you're interested you could still go to the website and see if new ones are planned.

Independent, Self Reliant Alaskans and other myths

Sometimes I just can't help myself, and my wife is gone so she can't restrain me.

My apologies to JC because her letter isn't different from a lot of others. This is from today's letters to the Anchorage Daily News.

Alaska has long been the last bastion of individual self-reliance and independent thought in the entire United States. The Daily News endorsement of the man who is the very antithesis of those concepts is exceedingly disappointing. President-elect Obama wants the general populace to become more dependent on government for their livelihood, housing, education and health care. All of which, naturally, will give the government more control over what they do, where they live, how they are educated and what quality of care they will receive.

I look forward to the next election, when this trend toward becoming a nation of grown-up-infants can be turned back and we can continue to become a nation of mature, independent, innovative, motivated and free adults.

-- JC

Homer

The opening sentence really got to me:

Alaska has long been the last bastion of individual self-reliance and independent thought in the entire United States.

The last time Alaska was truly a bastion of individual self-reliance was when Alaskan Natives were living off the land - whether Tlingits in Southeast, Yup'ik and Inupiaq, Athabaskans, Alutiiqs, and all the other Alaskan Native peoples - before the Russians came.

Since the time Russians, and then non-Native Americans, arrived, Alaska has basically been a colony of outside interests. The Russians enslaved Aleuts and others to kill seals and otters to send the furs back to Russia.

The missionaries came to Christianize the Alaska Natives, exploiting the devastation caused by the diseases they brought to the indigenous peoples to 'prove' that the old ways were evil and that the Christian ways were good. Most did their best to ban the local languages and the practice of local traditions. They lived off of contributions from churchgoers throughout the US and the hunting and fishing skills of their congregants.

Then there was the gold. The lifeline was the supplies coming up from Seattle.

Copper, same thing.

Fish. Same thing.

Military - the most successful cooperative living experiment in US history, where everyone sacrifices, income, personal freedoms and choices - location, health care, housing, education, even sacrificing life - for the good of the whole.

Oil, back to resource exploitation by Outsiders (we've all heard repeatedly what kinds of profits the oil companies have made the last few years) and many of the people working up here have come up from Outside, often to leave after making (or not) their fortune.

Federal spending is the largest single source of Alaskans jobs.
[As I understand it, these are the five largest sectors in the Alaska economy and the jobs from oil include jobs paid for by the spending of the PFD checks. Slide from ISER Powerpoint.]

Our self-reliance and independent living comes from receiving (in 2004) the second largest amount of federal expenditures in ratio to tax burden of any state (New Mexico beat us) and from our collective ownership of the oil in the North Slope.

[Map from the Tax Foundation. Double click to enlarge it]

This is a long way from the Alaskan Natives who really lived off the land without supply ships, or even our romantic image of non-Native trappers living in little cabins in the middle of nowhere surviving by their wilderness skills and often their shipped in liquor. Instead we get our Permanent Fund checks, drive our gas guzzling cars and recreational vehicles of all kinds paid for by jobs funded either by the federal government or through using up Alaska's natural resources - more responsibly than in the past only because environmentalists have gotten in a few laws that regulate some of the industries.

President-elect Obama wants the general populace to become more dependent on government for their livelihood, housing, education and health care.

Excuse me. I believe that when Democrat Clinton left office in 2001 our economy was doing well and we had a huge surplus erasing the deficit left by Republican President George Bush I. And as the Bush 2 administration leaves office our economy is in its worst shape since the Depression in the 1930's and we are reeling in debt.

JC, the emperor has no clothes. I'm not sure which world you are living in or who's been telling you what to believe. From my perspective you've bought into the Orwellian Newspeak of conservative attack talk radio - Black is White, War is Peace, Republicans are fiscally responsible, Democrats are not. The words are good, but they are totally disconnected from facts. Is that what you meant by "independent thought"? That it was independent from facts?

What the Bush administration teaches us is that the market is NOT the answer to all our problems. Government may well have grown fat by the 1970's when the tax revolt began, but people had jobs, were living better than their parents, the physical infrastructure of the US (roads, bridges, rail lines, water systems, etc.) was kept in reasonable repair, kids graduated from high school with a reasonable education in most places. Government is NOT the answer to all our problems, but without a strong government, private companies grow larger and more powerful and offer a threat even greater than government.

It's conservative Republicans who have concluded that the market is going to collapse without the help of massive government spending. Or, an even more sinister interpretation, as the Bush administration winds down, they see this as their last chance, for a while, to raid the government coffers.

We need both the government and the market to perform what they each perform best. And in an informed democracy, people can keep their government accountable. But in a brainwashed population that believes myths like "the self-reliant and independent Alaskan" and the "Obama who is about to enslave Americans with big government," we'll do things like elect convicted felons to represent us in the false hope that the money spigot from Washington will continue and we won't have to actually be self-reliant and independent.


Sorry, my wife is out of town and not here to keep me from hyper-ventilating when I read letters like this. Fortunately, enough people in the US have seen through the hype of the last eight years.

JC, I know that the ADN doesn't give you too many words to make your points with, but how about a few references to actual facts that cause you to make the generalizations you make.

Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Dinner

There are quite a few Returned Peace Corps Volunteers in Anchorage, but you wouldn't know it unless it somehow came up in conversation. We don't generally wear Peace Corps pins or have a secret handshake. But we do tend to be a little more cross-culturally sensitive than the average American. There's a relatively small group of RPCV's who meet for dinner when they can - either at a restaurant or at someone's home - and on a low key way they sponsor a number of projects - including helping in the recruiting and giving information to new volunteers. Saturday night we had dinner - the food is always great as people get out recipes from the countries where they served - and then elected new officers for this year.

Anyway, the dinners are always interesting - besides the good food, I love to meet with this group and see what they are doing now that they are back in the US. We also had a couple with us who are headed for Albania as volunteers next spring. BTW the dinners are open to anyone - there's usually a blurb in the newspaper, but you have to look carefully.

This post is going to stay minimalist since I just don't have the time or energy to pick up any of the possible threads this could lead into - the role of the Peace Corps internationally, changes in how the PC is run, why Peace Corps volunteers get significantly more and better language and cultural training than do teachers going to rural Alaska, the role of volunteers once they are back in the US, and on and on. This is just the tip. If you want to dip into some of this you can check on WorldView, the magazine of the National Peace Corps Association - a group made up mainly of returned volunteers and not a government organization.

If you want to see what Peace Corps Volunteers are doing around the world, here's a website with links to Peace Corps journals. Well, that's what it's called. I'm not exactly sure how blogs get up there - since mine is linked too in the Thailand section, which is how I know about this resource. But I think most are actual volunteers and not old volunteers who might write about visiting their countries of service or Peace Corps in general.

And while I'm on this topic, I've added a link to Bangkok Pundit on the right side. You can also get news of Thailand at the Bangkok Post or the Nation. But this is a blogger who tries to go behind the headlines. I'm sufficiently out of the loop on Thai politics these days that I don't know how accurate Pundit is, but it's at least a way to be aware that things are going on - such as the months of demonstrations in Bangkok in protest to the current government, that occasionally come into confrontations with the police or military.

To give you a sense of the blog - below, from tomorrow's post (they are a day ahead of us) he's quoting a BBC report and making comments (where it says BP:) on it:

The article continues:

"The problem of Thai political crisis is a class struggle", says Attajak Satayanutak, an academic from Thaksin's home town Chiang Mai.

"We have a wide gap between rich and poor. The poor did not receive anything from the state for a long time. Then, for the first time, Thaksin gave this opportunity for them."

The affection for Thaksin Shinawatra has held up remarkably well in the north-east, a poor and arid region known as Isaan.

Local people say his populist policies, like universal healthcare and the village loan scheme, brought big improvements to the quality of their lives.


BP: As a percentage of the government budget, both items are rather small - the village loan scheme was initially are a one-off payment (since expanded) and it is has low debts. Actually, the amount of government money spent and the non-perfomring loans is much smaller than all the forms of corporate welfare which is regularly given out.

Good Bye Studs Terkel

I've been pondering how to acknowledge the life of Studs Terkel, who died last week at age 96. I first remember becoming explicitly aware of him when I read the book, Working. As I think about it, he has to be one of the influences on me and some of what I do on this blog - particularly documenting the 'ordinary,' especially 'ordinary' people who I find interesting, but wouldn't normally be featured in the news.

KWMD has played a number of recordings of Terkel interviews all week. NPR has done a few pieces, and "This American Life" today also had some great interviews. So, I'll defer to "On the Media" which did what was, for me, the best succinct overview, and which also has embedable audio. "On the Media's" website says this and then goes to the audio:

The Recording of America
November 07, 2008

Studs Terkel, who died recently at the age of 96, spent the majority of his life documenting the lives of others – very often everyday, working-class people he believed were “uncelebrated and unsung.” From coal miners and sharecroppers to gangsters and prostitutes, every American had a story to tell and Terkel wanted to hear it. Publisher Andre Schiffrin talks about Terkel's singular gift for oral history.

[There's about 45 seconds of intro on the audio, then about 10 minutes of show.]



The episode of This American Life should be available Monday on their site. The Terkel piece is one of several in the show - with some fascinating interviews of people who lived through the depression.
[I've corrected the spelling from Turkel to Terkel. Grrrr. Spelling. Editors do serve a purpose.]