Blog Spammers

'Kevin' sends spam comments from Taiwan in Chinese regularly - they are filled with links to commercial sites. As soon as I get them - I get comments by email - I go to the post and delete them. Most of Kevin's comments are on old posts, that most readers won't ever see, and if I weren't getting email copies, I wouldn't notice either.

I guess that people are paid to go to blogs and post comments. I'm assuming they haven't found a way to by-pass the captcha coding, so they have to do it by hand. It's like a bee that regularly flies into your house and you have to shoo it away.

This week I got some new spammers. 'Britney' sent about six comments all with links to payday loan sites. 'Suzi' showed up yesterday with a similar modus operandi. There's a short and vaguely relevant comment that is applicable to most any blog post

Blogs are so interactive where we get lots of informative on any topics...... nice job keep it up !!

and then below her signature there's a link to some commercial site. Just now it was to "buy term papers."

I've checked blogger forums and it appears you can't block individual ip addresses. You either block everyone or take them down after the fact.

If anyone reading this knows how I can block these, let me know.

Hatchery Salmon, Farmed Salmon, and Wild Salmon

I was taken aback today when I read this in a letter from a JC in the Autumn 2009 edition of USC Trojan Family Magazine (As I write this, the link still has the Summer 2009 edition as the latest one):

Thank you for explaining that "wild caught" Alaska salmon are really farmed! I was "tricked" by advertising!

I hadn't read the original article in the Summer edition so I went to see what had been written that elicited this response. In an article called "Consider the Oyster" I found the passage that sparked the comment above:

He also retains mixed feelings about hatcheries, which are far more common than people realize. About half of Alaska’s “wild” salmon come from hatcheries, he says.

Fish from hatcheries do not breed with wild fish. But they do compete with them for food. And hatcheries can produce lots and lots of hungry salmon.

Ironically, the very fish that were supposed to save wild salmon runs may be contributing to their demise.

“They could be constantly facing this competition against these hatchery fish,” Hedgecock says. “Maybe they’d have a better chance of surviving if they didn’t have to compete.”

He would prefer to see more emphasis on the harder approach to conservation: fixing and protecting the salmon’s native habitat.

To use a drinking-water analogy, hatcheries are like an extra shot of chlorine: easy, fast and cheaper for a city than making sure it has great water to start with.

“By the time you get to a hatchery, you’re desperate,” Hedgecock says.

Is it true that half the Alaska salmon are hatchery salmon? The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) website has a link to a PDF file of the Alaska Salmon Enhancement Program 2008 Annual Report.

In the abstract is says:

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game oversees and regulates all state and private sector salmon enhancement and rehabilitation projects. Protection of Alaska’s natural salmon stocks requires stringent permitting processes. Geneticists, pathologists, and biologists review all projects prior to the issuance of a permit to operate a salmon ranching facility, transfer eggs or fish, or release any fish into Alaska waters. Pathology, genetic, coded wire tag, and otolith processing laboratories are maintained to provide both diagnostic information to Alaska Department of Fish and Game fishery managers, and inseason and technical expertise to the private sector.

Hatchery operators collected over 1.6 billion salmon eggs and released over 1.4 billion juvenile fish. An estimated 60 million adult salmon of hatchery origin returned. The preliminary total statewide commercial salmon harvest was 146 million fish. There were approximately 133 million salmon harvested in the common property commercial fishery, and an estimated 45 million, or 34%, were produced by the Alaska salmon enhancement program. Enhanced salmon provided an estimated $110 million or 29% of the exvessel value of the statewide common property commercial harvest. The ocean ranching program employs hundreds of Alaskans in seasonal and fulltime jobs. It is considered the largest agricultural industry in Alaska. [emphasis added]

34% is not quite "almost half" but it is a big chunk.

I thought I knew the difference between hatchery fish and farmed fish, but I decided to check on that too.

From Long Live the Kings:

Declines in wild populations gave rise to hatcheries in the Northwest beginning more than 100 years ago. Built primarily to produce fish for harvest, hatcheries compensate for freshwater habitat loss by increasing the survival of salmon through the early stages of their life cycle, and by receiving returning adults. Hatcheries now provide 70 percent of the salmon caught in Puget Sound—but they have also been identified as a contributor to the decline of wild populations. Comprehensive hatchery reform, however, aims to revolutionize how hatcheries are managed so they can help recover threatened and endangered wild populations and support sustainable fisheries. [emphasis added]

Farmed salmon are the livestock of the salmon world. Like hatchery fish, they are born and spend the early stages of their life cycle in human hands. While hatchery fish are then released to spend the majority of their life in the wild, farmed salmon are fed and matured into adults in large saltwater enclosures, usually along marine shorelines, before being harvested as food. The rapid growth in the farmed salmon industry in the last two decades has raised new questions about the environmental, social, and economic effects of salmon farms.

So, JC is wrong when she says 'wild caught' salmon are farmed. Alaska salmon are not farm salmon as we all knew.

But 34% of the (presumably 2007) Alaska salmon harvest were hatchery fish. The State website adds the term "ocean ranching." The USC article says that hatchery salmon don't breed with wild salmon - which suggests to me hatchery salmon are not truly wild salmon, even if they have a wild experience for part of their lives. And they compete with wild salmon for food. And the USC article further suggests that the survival odds of wild salmon would be greater if there were not hatchery salmon. But what about the survival rate of Alaska fisherman? And big fishing companies? Is it ok to cause the extinction of wild salmon species so humans can eat? My initial reaction would be - perhaps if that was the only thing that prevented humans from starving. But humans have other options. The salmon don't.

I have a different sense of the meaning of the words 'wild Alaskan Salmon" now. There's a 1/3 chance they are hatchery fish. And those hatchery fish may be endangering wild salmon in the competition for the food.

50th Anniversary of Muddling Through by Lindblom

I've been putting up pictures instead of writing about things like Mayor Sullivan's veto of the ordinance to add gays and lesbians et al to the Anchorage anti-discrimination ordinance or about health care. It's not because I haven't been thinking about both, but I have been waiting to say something that adds to the discussion.

We got up at 5 am today to get DZ to the airport, so my head isn't totally clear (well, that implies that it would be otherwise and I don't want to give any false impressions), so let me offer one short perspective on the health care issue.

Back in 1959 - I guess that makes this the 50th Anniversary - Professor Charles Lindblom of Yale published an article that is still in the reading lists of public administration, public policy, and political science students. It was titled, "The Science of Muddling Through". (The link will only get you the first page at JStor. If you have access to a university library system, you ought to be able to get it all free. If not, check with your local library to see if they can get it for you. Alaskans should be able to get it through SLED.)

In this article, Lindblom argued that the traditional way of thinking about policy - rationally setting up a goal and then a plan to reach that goal - was nice theoretically, but that Congress didn't work that way.

Instead, changes were made incrementally, because Congress was made up of a 100 Senators and 400 and something Congress members who all had a vote, didn't agree on much, and had local constituents to please. Therefore, if you wanted people to agree on the goal, nothing would ever be accomplished.

But, he said, they could and do agree on the means through which each committee member can fulfill their individual goals.

He called the first method - the one in the academic journals - The Rational Comprehensive method, or Root method. Root, because you started all the way from the roots to build something completely new.

He called his model,

"I propose in this paper to clarfiy and formalize the second method, much neglected in the literature. This might be described as the method of successive limited comparisons." (p. 199*)

He also called this the Branch method, because you aren't going all the way back to the roots. You work from the existing system and just do some work with the branches.

[Double click to enlarge]

So, basically, he's saying that (and I'm reducing his points to fewer ones, so the numbers don't match the ones in the chart.)

1. The root method assumes that first you agree on goals, then design the means to meet those goals. But the branch method says that the means (policies to achieve goals) and ends (the goals) are intertwined and can't be easily separated and articulated that way. (1 and 2 in the chart)

2. The test of a good policy isn't whether it meets the objectives (since they were never agreed on) but whether there is agreement on the policy. (3 on his chart) One of his 1959 examples was that the agreement in Congress to extend old age insurance

. . .stems from liberal desires to strengthen the welfare programs of the Federal Government and from conservative desires to reduce union demands for private pension plans. (p. 202)

A different example of agreeing on the means (but not goals) might be a Senate committee agreeing to support a new ship for the Navy. One senator wants to have parts for the ship built in his state. Another will vote for it if it includes the Navy giving wetlands it owns for conservation. Another wants minority businesses to get at least 10% of the contracts. A couple actually think the ship is needed for national defense. And perhaps another will vote for it if the son of a particular constituent gets into the Naval Academy. They all have different goals, but they agree on the means (the ship) to their separate goals.

3. While the Root ideal is for comprehensive examination of the new policy, the Branch reality is acceptance of the basic existing system and just reviewing the additional incremental changes. This is the "successive limited comparisons" notion.
Complete analysis is not humanly possible and so simplification needs to be achieved.

First, it is achieved through limitation of policy comparisons to those policies that differ in relatively small degree from policies presently in effect. . .(p. 203)
The second method of simplification of analysis is the practice of ignoring important possible consequences of possible polices, as well as the values attached to the neglected consequences. (p. 204)

Lindblom recognized that ignoring the consequences may sound shocking but argues that in fact it may lead to better policy than "through futile attempts to achieve a comprehensiveness beyond human capacity." (p 204)

4. The root model relies on theory while the branch method reduces the reliance on theory through successive comparisons. Lindblom argues that our knowledge in the social sciences is, at best, limited. We can make practical comparisons of the consequences of incremental policy changes - we can look at how some past programs worked or didn't, for example - without necessarily having a strong theory.


A lot has happened in 50 years, including increasingly sophisticated policy analysis techniques. Furthermore, there are some assumptions in Lindblom's model here that I have problems with. As a descriptive model - describing what is actually happening - I think he did a good job. Adopting it prescriptively - saying this was a good way to go - was probably under[over]-ambitious. And Lindblom himself got tired of people not getting past this early piece of his and seeing that he'd done more than that in later years.

I'd note that as a doctoral student I took an intensive -week class on the policy making process with Professor Lindblom. He did acknowledge that individual policy makers may use a more rational comprehensive model in their individual strategies to achieve their own goals. But when power is dispersed, the agreement on goals becomes very difficult.

He, at that time, tended to believe that while it wasn't perfect, it was as good as we can get. I agree that having representatives of a cross section of the US population making decisions is definitely better than trusting a single decision maker to make the best decisions for us all. But I also think there are better ways than we have for funding and communicating with our elected officials. One of the problems I had then and have now, is that a major goal of members of Congress is to get re-elected. This means they are always in search of money and thus they are always in debt to large donors and key supporters.


I started this intending to use it to comment on Obama's health care proposals. I'm not sure it tells us a lot beyond the fact that Obama's health care program is hardly a minor incremental change and that makes it much harder to get through. People can legitimately question whether it will work. They won't be making minor moves toward some new program. It will be big time. On the other hand, incremental changes on something that works so poorly for so many and costs so much isn't good policy either.

People who are getting good health care now, fear changes will hurt them. So they don't agree with Obama's goals. People who don't like Obama may oppose anything he proposes to make him look bad. And if Obama moves toward normal incremental changes, he'll lose his base which expects him to go for the gold.

But politics today are not what they were 50 years ago when Lindblom wrote the piece. We'll just have to see if Obama writes a new page in the policy making literature.

[Yeah, I know, this is a lame ending. I got up early and I can't pull it together. So if you've read this far, you'll will have to mull on it yourself - is Lindblom still relevant? If so, what can Obama do at this point? If not, what's different now?]

* I had trouble getting the article through JStor. While it shows the first page on Google, trying to get it through the library didn't work. Probably the librarian can make it work, but I have a copy of Shafritz and Hyde's Classics of Public Administration and the article is in there. So the page numbers come from there, not the original.

Harding Icefield Trail at Exit Glacier

DZ returns to Beijing today. It's hard to believe it's a month already. He's been such a pleasure to have around. He's smart, funny, never complained, always polite, willing to go along to anything and meet anyone. He's also shown me parts of Anchorage I've never tried - like the drive thru window at McDonalds. I have to say it sure is efficient and easy and the people are invariably nice.

So it's been hard keeping up with the blog. [I did add an interesting link at the end of the post on Scalia from the other day.] So here's another one mainly of pictures. This continues Monday's adventures. After the kayaking, we had lunch then went to Exit Glacier where we climbed the trail to the Harding Icefield overlook.


I know this isn't a great picture, but I saved it big and if you double click, you can see the trail, mileage, etc. I wish I'd taken the picture of the map before we started the hike. It did seem to go on and on. It's 3.9 miles up. A gain of nearly 3000 feet. But the view on top on a good day is worth it. And you get great views at 2.3 miles too.


The trail is different even from last year. Stretches that used to be mud have been replaced by what seems to be new routes with new, easier trail. Other parts just have a lot more rock steps on the same basic trail. But the rocky area with lots of marmots - I'm not sure the trail still goes that way. (We did see one marmot). Does this map reflect the improvements? I'm not sure. And there is much less snow and ice than in past years. So that's a bit disorienting too.

Here's another example of trail improvement. A lot of this was in last year. It looks natural enough and it helps prevent muddy erosion which causes hikers to make new trails to avoid the mud. This is a National Park and I believe a lot of this trail work was done by volunteers. In contrast, the Reed Lakes Trail, on State land in Hatcher Pass, is a growing disaster and the steep muddy trails eat up more and more of the vegetation each year.

Here's DZ at the point where we stopped last year. Mile 2.3.

The mountain gentian were blooming exquisitely in one short part of the hike. This one is worth enlarging for flower fans. The color and delicacy of this plant high up in really difficult conditions is amazing.

Almost at the end of the trail.

DZ said, "If there was a rainbow, it would be perfect."
Twenty minutes later it was perfect.

Finally at a point high enough to see over the top of the Harding Icefield. It goes on for 30 miles and you can see the other end from Homer.

On the way back down.

Driving home near Summit Lake. It's going on 10pm here.

After last week's ADN map of all the traffic fatalities on the Seward Highway between Anchorage and Girdwood you'd think people would start to drive better. This truck without a load passed at a reasonably safe place, but it must have been going 80 mph. Another black SUV passed us going what seemed even faster. About twenty miles later it was parked in front of flashing red and blue lights. I admit, I took pleasure in the fact that I was going to get home before he did.

About 10:30 pm. Almost home.

Resurrection Bay Kayaking

Monday we got up early and left Primrose to get to our kayaking spot. As much as I love being in a kayak, it's just so much easier, especially with guests who have never kayaked, to go to one of the kayak tour places and let them do all the prep work. I just have to show up, put on their boots, spray skirt, and life vest, climb into their kayak and paddle.


Here's DZ in his first kayak trip.



The kayak guide said this was a marbled murrelet and SEI says they are endangered:

The marbled murrelet, a small seabird which nests in the coastal, old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, is listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. In North America, the birds' range stretches along the Pacific coast from the Bering Sea to central California, with the largest populations occurring in southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia.

Their white heads make bald eagles pretty easy to spot.

We took a short break at the mouth of this creek
where the chum salmon were spawning.

If you look really closely in the lower middle to right you can see the spawning chum salmon. Or you can double click to enlarge the picture and see it better.

Unless you have binoculars, the sea otter is a brown lump
bobbing in the water and suddenly disappearing below the surface.

Scalia Puts Form Over Substance - Innocence isn't a Defense

An apparently innocent man is about to be executed. But even if he can prove his innocence, Scalia says that innocence isn't a defense (from Time):

In his dissent, Scalia wrote, "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."

Basically, as I understand this, Scalia is saying that in the Supreme Court processes, innocence is not a defense against being executed.

Yes, the rules of law and the procedure, GENERALLY, need to be the way to go. This is true in all 'rational' organizations, that is, organizations based on the idea of the rule of law. The intent is to make sure that people are all treated fairly. People in the same circumstances should get the same treatment. Officials shouldn't arbitrarily decide who gets benefits and who doesn't.

But systems are just systems. When it is clear that the system has failed - a student's application was turned down because the system wasn't designed to account for her atypical situation - it's time for humans to step in, use their judgment to show that the intent of the rules is being subverted by the rules.

And when it comes to executing an innocent man, it would seem more than obvious, except to people who are so wrapped up in the process that they miss the whole purpose of the process.

Here's one overview of the whole story from Time.

[This is a post I normally would spend a lot more time on to make sure I have my facts right. But my image of Scalia is such that I believe this outrageousness and I've checked several sources (albeit briefly) that I'm just going to post.]

Update, August 20: I put the bracketed note above because I know that Scalia, however much I might disagree with him, is very smart, and that there must be more to the case. My son sent me a link to a commentary on this at Obsidian Wings by an attorney who gives more background. While he seems to support my conclusion, there is some legal precedence involved that does make it a little more complicated. Partly he's saying Scalia's view follows someone named Bator who argues that guilt and innocence are ultimately unknowable and so our proxy for the truth here is the jury's verdict. But this argument was made before DNA offered us another test of truth. There's a lot more. You can read the whole analysis at the link. Here are a few quotes:

The Court’s “original habeas” jurisdiction is one such exotic source of authority. To give you an idea of just how obscure it is, the Supreme Court had not exercised its original habeas jurisdiction since 1925. You have probably heard about Supreme Court “habeas” cases, but those are all cases that were decided by a lower court and that the Supreme Court has adjudicated pursuant to its certiorari jurisdiction.

The explosion of Warren-era habeas litigation provoked several conservative critiques, including a particularly influential article by Professor Paul Bator. Bator’s position remains the modern “conservative” (or “federalist”) paradigm for habeas adjudication. Bator argued that “ultimate truth” is unknowable. What we mean by “guilty,” Bator argued, is that some quantum of reliable procedure has produced a legal determination that someone has committed a crime. Bator’s point really an epistemic one [Ah yes, the post the other day on the need to study philosophy talked about epistemology which studies 'truth' and how we know it] involving the limits of human inquiry – that the criminal justice system ensures correctness by proxy of reliable procedure.

Here’s the rub. Under that paradigm, the question of whether someone is “actually innocent” is incoherent, because it presumes a god’s-eye view of guilt that is not tethered to the judicial processes that produce that verdict. Those subscribing to Bator’s paradigm (including Scalia) argue that the freestanding innocence question is not “whether a state may constitutionally execute an offender known to be innocent,” but “whether an offender, whose guilt has been determined beyond some threshold of certainty, has a constitutional right to a federal forum to retest his conviction when guilt seems less probable.”. . .

Bator's argument has several problems. First, Bator’s critique is persuasive only within a certain band of uncertainty, and we don’t always operate in that band anymore. When the only thing that a freestanding innocence claim demanded was consideration of new (often stale) witness testimony, then one could persuasively argue that federal habeas review created incremental procedure without a corresponding incremental benefit.

That argument is dated in the era of DNA evidence. DNA evidence, while not that panacea many seem to think it is, brings us as close to “ultimate knowability” as we can come. . .

Second, one of the central but implicit conceits of the Scalia/Bator argument is that state and federal process produce equally accurate results. State postconviction review and clemency – so the argument goes – render concerns about executing innocent offenders moot. That position is virtually indefensible, especially in capital cases. We know that innocent people are convicted of crimes, both as a matter of statistical certainty and with respect to specific defendants (Timothy Cole). State judges are elected, often running with “tough on crime” platforms. Allowing a murder to go unpunished is a cardinal sin in many jurisdictions. For a murder conviction to be set aside on state postconviction review, an elected judge would have to let a convicted murderer go free. In many states, the postconviction judge reviewing the conviction is the same judge that presided over the convicting court. State court systems sometimes include separate civil and criminal supreme courts. A state criminal supreme court faces even more intense political pressure to be “tough on crime,” because criminal matters are its docket’s exclusive subject matter.

The whole discussion is at Obsidian Wings.

We just got jolted - Stronger than usual Anchorage earthquake, but no damage here

We just had two jolts. We have lots of earthquakes, but mostly we don't feel them or sort of look at each other and say, "Was that an earthquake?"

But there was not question just now. The house shook for a few seconds, then there was a second jolt.

My favorite Anchorage earthquake experience was years ago. I was in my office, on the phone to someone in Eagle River. Suddenly the caller said, "There's an earthquake." I said, "Not here." Then about 15 seconds later I felt it.

It's hard to judge the magnitude because it depends on how close, how deep, and other factors, but I'll go out on a limb and say this was over 5 on the Richter Scale.

Update 10:39: KSKA just said it was preliminarily reported as 5.15, about 30 miles from Anchorage.

Update 11:30: Here's the map and details from USGS

Details

Magnitude	5.0
Date-Time	Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 18:19:27 UTC Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 10:19:27 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	61.227°N, 150.827°W
Depth	60.9 km (37.8 miles) set by location program
Region	SOUTHERN ALASKA
Distances	21 km (13 miles) ENE (60°) from Beluga, AK 28 km (18 miles) NE (49°) from Tyonek, AK 39 km (24 miles) SSW (200°) from Susitna, AK 57 km (36 miles) W (274°) from Anchorage, AK
Location Uncertainty	Error estimate not available
Parameters	NST=068, Nph=073, Dmin=26.8 km, Rmss=0 sec, Gp= 40°, M-type=local magnitude (ML), Version=2
Source	Alaska Earthquake Information Center Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Event ID	ak10005518

Primrose Campground Wet Mushroom Walk

I'm using "A picture is worth a thousands words" here. DZ and I went to Seward Sunday afternoon. Actually we stopped about 17 miles shy of Seward and camped at Primrose Campground. It was grey, but we took the trail head for about an hour before dinner. There's a reason these places are called rain forests. So here are some views, mostly of mushrooms. Then yesterday we went kayaking for three hours in the morning in Seward, had lunch with a former student who lives in Seward, then hiked to the edge of the Harding Icefield in the afternoon. This post is basically Primrose.

But, before you get there... In April, the Seward Highway was closed just below Moose Pass for a weekend + while they built a new bridge.

So, here's the new bridge.

But what wasn't clear, is that just before that bridge (if you're headed to Seward) is another bridge that is down to one lane with stoplights on both sides. It would seem that this is a basic infrastructure issue that should have been taken care of too. Will it be like this all winter?

Anyway, we got to Primrose and found a nice campsite along the river and took off on the Lost Lake trail. It was already 6pm, threatening to rain, and the trail was pretty muddy, so this was just a before-dinner stroll. And I'll let the pictures tell most of the story. At least what I saw.

Here's DZ on the trail.

Watermelon berries.

Most of these mushrooms I just can't identify
(and so we didn't add any to dinner),so you'll just have to
enjoy their beauty or weirdness without labels.

The blueberry I can id.

And I know this is a shelf mushroom, but not what kind.

After dinner, we walked over to the lake - this is the southern tip of Kenai Lake. The clouds were low, to say the least. And it started to rain finally.

The next morning - yesterday - the clouds had lifted

quite a bit as we headed to Seward.

Does Idaho Exist? Why Everyone Should Study Philosophy

This blog is called "What Do I know?" because I think this is one of the fundamental questions that people should be constantly asking themselves. And occasionally I address the topic head on. This is one of those times.

I'm not a trained philosopher, but I found that I had to teach philosophy to my graduate students because the vast majority had never seriously considered the basic questions that still keep philosophers busy:

• What is real?
  
• What is true?
  
• What is good?

(As you'll quickly see in the examples below, the three questions are often intertwined.)

If we look at what the citizens of the United States are debating, we see that all the really contentious fights are related to these questions. Let's look at three examples:

What is real? Debate over marriage.

Opponents of gay marriage say things like (this is from biblestudies.suite101) :

God declared them to be "one flesh" (Genesis 2) and established the pattern of marriage to be a man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife (Genesis 2).
From this model, it can be inferred that:

• Marriage was instituted by God;
• Marriage involved one man and one woman;
• The marital union is intended to bring children into the world, and;
• Children are raised to enter into their own marriage unions -- and repeat the cycle.

One of the key questions in the field of ontology (What is real?) is whether social reality exists external to humans or whether it is socially constructed. Don't give up here. Force yourself to keep reading. This is understandable. And critical.

Let's assume here, for this discussion, that the so called 'natural' world of rocks and trees and water does exist independently of human beings. If we fall head first into a rock from a ways up, there will be damage. We can't legislate or will that away. What we're talking about here is NOT that physical world, but the social world - the world of human meaning. (There are philosophers who will take on the physical world too, but that's for another day.)

So, a mountain exists independent of whether humans are there or not. The socially constructed part is its name. Should it be called Mt. McKinley after an Ohio born US President or should it be called by the traditional Athabaskan name, Denali? That's where the social construction comes in. Is a hill an obstacle to be bulldozed for more rational roads or is it a sacred mountain? Is the Mona Lisa just a piece of canvas with paint on it or a great work of art?

Is marriage then a 'natural phenomenon' that exists independent of human construction or is it something that humans have created? We certainly have evidence that it is socially constructed (from the Washington Post):

Vermont Legislature Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage
By Keith B. Richburg Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 7, 2009; 2:23 PM

NEW YORK, April 7 -- Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to recognize gay marriage, and the D.C. Council voted to recognize same-sex unions performed in other states. The two actions give same-sex marriage proponents new momentum, following a similar victory last week in Iowa's Supreme Court.

This is a clear example of social construction. The body of people designated by law to represent the people of Vermont has decided that two men or two women can, in the State of Vermont, be legally married.

The opponents of gay marriage might say, "Exactly, this is socially constructed, it isn't 'natural' law." Clearly, no matter how creative they are, two men cannot have a child together. I would accept, in terms of 'what is real' that to have a child, you need a man and a woman. (I'm excluding all sorts of fertility interventions here.)

But I doubt that the people who claim that marriage is between a man and a woman only, would accept then, that any man and woman living together and having sex, even a child, are "married."

This is because marriage is more than simply a man and woman living together. It is a recognition, by the community in which they live, that they are married. It is, in fact, a socially constructed situation. In some cultures, simply living together and having a child might be recognized as a marriage. In others, a marriage may include one man and more than one woman. It is all socially constructed.

What is true? Where was Obama born and death panels.

Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury yesterday illustrates the problem of determining what is true.

(Double click to enlarge)

Is there any way that people who claim that Obama wasn't born in the US could be convinced that he was? What sort of proof would they have to have? If the birth certificate were sent to all 50 states in a glass case, they would just claim it was a fake.

Epistemology is the area of philosophy that examines how we determine what is true.

• Western natural science demands an exacting set of experiments that can be repeated by independent scientists. (Social scientists have different requirements.)
  
• Our legal system requires that a jury listen to the opposing sides and come to a determination whether the defendant violated the law.
  
• Some Christians use the bible as their source of truth, though different Christians interpret the bible differently which causes even more problems.

If everyone studied epistemology - what is true? (a very simplified characterization to be sure) - in school, at least we would all be able to recognize that underlying the 'debate' over Obama's birthplace, is a disagreement over how we prove what is true.

We see the same issue in this current silliness covered by Yahoo on the facts over death panels:

FACT CHECK: No 'death panel' in health care bill. Palin stands by 'death panel' claim on health bill
AP
By MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writer Matthew Daly, Associated Press Writer – Thu Aug 13, 5:56 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to retreat from her debunked claim that a proposed health care overhaul would create "death panels," as the growing furor over end-of-life consultations forced a key group of senators to abandon the idea in their bill. . .

In a Facebook posting titled "Concerning Death Panels," Palin argued Wednesday night that the elderly and ailing would be coerced into accepting minimal end-of-life care to reduce health care costs based on the Democratic bill in the House.

But there will be no "death panels" under the legislation being considered. In fact, the provision in the bill would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.

This article is all about 'what is true?' The writer tells us what Palin said, then tells us his version of what is true.

Does Matthew Daly think that Sarah Palin disciples will be convinced by " her debunked claim" or "But there will be no "death panels" under the legislation being considered. In fact,. . ." and "there will be no "death panels" under the legislation..."?
I doubt it.

I'll leave the discussion of 'What is Good?" for another day. These two concepts are more than enough for one post. And this is barely an appetizer for these topics.

Personally, I believe that some people do truly believe that Obama was born in Africa and there is nothing anyone could do to change their minds. Some people also believe that Elvis is still alive. But I suspect that some of the birthers and many who claim that Elvis is alive know the truth, but they just prefer to believe their versions.

But this issue is NOT trivial. In a democracy, if enough people are hoodwinked by purveyors of falsehoods, we are all in trouble.

I realize that some people argue against referencing the Holocaust because it turns people off. But it is a major reference point in my life. I never met any of my grandparents because of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany holds many lessons we shouldn't forget. Making comparisons to a particular aspect of the Holocaust does NOT mean that I am saying that someone is a Nazi who wants to murder everyone.

But if there are useful comparisons, we should use them. The German people after WW I went through a period of great hardship. (Again, this is a something I know from my parents telling me about their childhoods.) The Treaty of Versailles

required Germany to accept sole responsibility for causing the war and, under the terms of articles 231-248 (later known as the War Guilt clauses), to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions and pay reparations to certain countries that had formed the Entente powers.

This was seen as humiliation by many Germans and contributed to their being ripe to the exhortations of a leader who promised to restore Germany's former greatness for 1000 years. I think that the current economic conditions in the US, plus social change that challenges many people's views of the world, cause many Americans to feel, if not humiliated, certainly less than they were individually and less than we were as a nation.

This makes us ripe for demagogues who have no regard for truth. Thus, it is particularly important that we spend time learning about the nature of 'truth' and how to test it. And how to challenge blatant untruths.

An example of one attempt to fight untruths - the claims of Holocaust deniers - resulted in (among many other things) a tract that questions the existence of the the State of Idaho.

People at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum [UPDATE 8/9/13 Alan Lustiger (see comments 8/8/13] developed this fact sheet which 'proved' that the State of Idaho does not exist. They did this to demonstrate the ridiculous logic that Holocaust deniers use. Here's how that discussion starts. (From KUOI)

The "State" Of Idaho: The Case For Open Debate

If you would ask any schoolchild how many states there are in the United States, you will get the same answer: 50. Fifty states in the Union. It is simply an accepted "fact." If you would disagree with this supposed "fact," you would be branded insane or worse.

However, mounting evidence shows that there are in fact only 49 states in the US, and the "state" of Idaho is a baseless myth.

We have been trying to distribute and publish this information for over *two years*, but our scholarship has not been given any respect. We have been censored, vilified, ridiculed and spat upon by the "traditional" geographers and historians, but WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED!

All we ask is that the existence of the state of Idaho be debated, as every other historical and geographic "fact" can be debated. Time after time, our opponents have refused to debate us on the FACTS. This alone should tell you something about the people who support the "existence" of this "43rd state."

Please read the following evidence VERY CAREFULLY, and you will be astonished at the veracity of our cause.

The Population Myth

Do you know anybody from Idaho? Do you know anybody who knows anybody from Idaho? According to the 1990 "census," there are over one million (1,000,000, or 1 x 10^6) people living in Idaho. But if there are so many Idahoers, where are they?

Some people have come forward and claimed that they were born and raised in "Idaho." But every single person who made this claim have been shown to be frauds and charlatans. These "Idahoan wannabes" are invariably inconsistent with each other about the size (in square miles or square kilometers) of "Idaho," about various town and village names, and even about the names of "Idaho's mighty rivers."

The Size Farce

According to traditional geographic sources (created entirely by people who believe in the existence of Idaho, and probably the Tooth Fairy, also) the "State" of Idaho is more than twice the size of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. Isn't it strange that a state with such vast land resources has so few people? And even of [sic] you look at a map (created by the Idaho-centric cartographers) the "State" of "Idaho" is dwarfed by its much larger neighbor, Montana.

Satellite Evidence

Recently declassified weather satellite information, showing the entire continental United States, shows absolutely *no evidence* that there is any state where "Idaho" is supposedly located. Noted experts in the field of interpreting these pictures unanimously agree that, from outer space, it is impossible to determine the borders of this elusive "state." Yet meteorologists and cartographers routinely overlay these satellite pictures with the outline of states that would seem to indicate Idaho's existence. . .

You can get the rest of this from KUOI. [Update July 30, 2010: It appears the Idaho story is no longer on KUOI's website.  For the time being you can find it here at Fantasymaps.] I couldn't find anything that linked the arguments with Wiesenthal, but I know (do I know anything for sure?) about that, because I was given copies of this by one of the people who developed it many years ago. The intent was to show how ridiculous the logic of Holocaust deniers was.

Perhaps one option for confronting the truth denying fantasizers is to use their words and logic, as in this example, to demonstrate things they believe simply do not in fact exist.

But in the long run, we need to get philosophers to stop spending as much time as they do on needle heads, and get into high schools and show the teachers there and the students the practical uses of philosophy.

[Disclaimer: Although my daughter is studying philosophy, this is not simply an attempt to increase the number of positions for philosophers so she can get a job when she graduates.]

Rain Garden

Current visitors in the back yard.