So many books, so little time

I had a meeting Monday morning at the UAA library and as I was walking out, a book in the staff picks section caught my eye.
It was the Dan Dailey book, but then the old copy of Jane Eyre was cool too.


Then there was the book of the year shelf. These two books will be used in classes across the curriculum. I know. I mentioned to the persona at the front desk that probably it should be labeled "Books" of the Year. Both are by Alaska authors. Milkweed Press which publishes Shopping for Porcupine writes

Shopping for Porcupine by Seth Kantner was recently selected as one of two Books of the Year by the University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. Shopping for Porcupine will be paired with the other Book of the Year, The Whale and the Supercomputer by Charles Wohlforth, during the 2009-2010 academic year at both universities. Together, these books will be used to facilitate dialogue related to the theme "responding to climage [sic] change in Alaska." More specifically, the UAA/APU announcement notes that these texts "reveal many of the changes that have occurred [in rural Alaska] over the past half century and demonstrate what's at stake for rural communities facing the effects of climate change. . . . They call upon both Native wisdom and Western science to address the problems associated with climate change, and they illustrate how profoundly climate and cultural change can affect both people and entire ecosystems."

Of course, Palin fans know that this is part of the liberal conspiracy to end progress and destroy Alaska's economy.

Just before I got to the front desk and the exit, I passed what I thought was the new books shelves. But as I started checking on these books, some are relatively old. Still the variety of different books reminds me how much I have to learn. Here's a sampling of some of the books I saw. Click on the book covers for more info on the book and/or author.


In the case of the fish book, it turns out it was first published in 1987. Maybe this is a new edition. And you can see the ones that had plastic covers didn't come out to well. Sorry.


If you missed it above - click on book images for more info on book/author.



From the London Times review of this book (click on the book cover to link to the whole review):

Though it was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago, as the editors say in their introduction, “hardly any other food plant is as modern as the soybean”. They might have added, “or as controversial”. For, as press coverage has revealed, the clearing both of the rainforests and cerrados (savannas) of Brazil to grow soy, and the building of dams that are supposedly designed to help in its cultivation, are having dramatic effects on the survival of indigenous peoples and on climate change and biodiversity.

In the early twenty-first century, when surgery can be done microscopically and human achievement seems limitless, 2.6 billion people lack the most basic thing that human dignity requires. Four in ten people in the world have no toilet. They must do their business instead on roadsides, in the bushes, wherever they can. Yet human feces in water supplies contribute to one in ten of the world’s communicable diseases. A child dies from diarrhoea – usually brought on by fecal-contaminated food or water – every 15 seconds. . . [for more click on Big Necessity image above]

In her review of Stop High-Stakes Testing: An Appeal to America's Conscience by Dale D. Johnson et al., Luanna Meyer questions the premise that anyone can achieve "the American dream" through education. Specifically, she argues that the United States’ system of public schools and universities does not equal the playing field among the rich and the poor, and, in fact, public schools are just another place that allows poor children to fail. The book authors and reviewer alike sharply criticize the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), arguing that holding schools accountable via student test scores, without addressing fundamental issues of poverty, disparities in health care access, racism, funding inequities, etc., will only reflect what is already known—that children from middle-class and wealthy families will outperform poor children on standardized tests.. . [for more click on the cover above.]

With a title like this, I love to imagine what I would write if I were writing this book. Only then do I open it to see what was actually written. This was published in 1987.

Appadurai’s introductory article, “Commodities and the Politics of Value,” outlines a socialized view of commodities. He argues that commodities may be said to have social lives because they embody value, as created by a society. Moreover, Appadurai stresses that “commodity” is only one possible phase in the social life of an object; as it travels within different regimes of value, it may exit and reenter the commodity sphere. Commodities therefore communicate complex, context-dependent messages operating within a culturally constructed framework. . .

From what I think is the introduction of this book (click cover for link):

Distribution of scarce resources permeates almost all spheres and levels of social life. Scarce resources are not only distributed in the family, but also in the contexts of work, sports, friendship relations, the political arena, public organizations, legal settings, and more. Distribution of scarce resources is a problem affecting society at the micro, meso and macro levels. The micro level includes the family, friendship relationships, school, sport and work teams; the meso level includes work organization, the court, while the macro level includes political bodies, national economy, and others. In the family, for instance, problems with regard to the distribution of household tasks are common. In school, teachers have to decide how much attention to give to each student. On the meso level, public administrators are faced with the problem to determine whether or not to construct a new bus lane (see the chapter by Markus Müller and Elisabeth Kals in this volume) or how to tax different categories of citizens in the municipality for costs for water cleaning. The distribution and redistribution of income via taxation is an example of a distribution issue on the macro level.

You know the drill, click on the picture for more.

Bueker finds that naturalizing and voting are distinct processes. Level of education, income, and length of eligibility, predict both processes, but an immigrant?s country of origin frequently overrides these other characteristics and works differently in each. Immigrants from countries with the highest likelihood of naturalizing tend to have the lowest odds of voter turnout, while those immigrants from countries with the lowest odds of citizenship acquisition are the most likely to vote, once naturalized. Further, country of origin matters as much for how it interacts with other key characteristics, such as education and income, as for the independent influence it exerts on these two political processes.

From the book's website:

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

From his NYU homepage:

My research and writing on revolutions, social movements, and terrorism have been motivated by both "real world" events and by debates among scholars. These often pull in different directions: Like many social scientists, I have been attracted to a sociology that tackles the most urgent personal and public issues of our age, but I have also felt compelled to leap into more academic debates about how this might best be done. I first became interested in revolutions in 1979, during the summer before my senior year in college. 1979 was a year of revolution – in Iran, Nicaragua, Grenada – and it was a year that saw the publication of Theda Skocpol’s classic study, States and Social Revolutions, which I quickly devoured.

The link for this is a pdf file. From the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:

To coincide with its 30th anniversary, the Video Data Bank is publishing
FEEDBACK: The Video Data Bank Catalog of Video Art and Artist Interviews (TempleUniversity Press). Founded at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976, theVideo Data Bank is a pioneering institution in the media arts movement, and houses anddistributes one of the world’s largest collections of videotapes by and aboutcontemporary artists.
Edited by Kate Horsfield and Lucas Hilderbrand, FEEDBACK is both a catalog of theVDB’s extraordinary collection and an invaluable historical survey of over 40 years ofvideo art. The 360-page volume includes annotated listings of 1,500 titles by over 500artists, from Vito Acconci to Julie Zando, as well as essays by Gregg Bordowitz,Vanalyne Green, Kate Horsfield, and Peggy Phelan that explore the aesthetic,technological, and cultural histories and methodologies of video making as an artpractice and political tool.

This one was published in 1994 and I couldn't find any decent links for it - just people trying to sell copies.


This is becoming a much bigger task than I intended. But I'm getting close.

It’s Okay Mom is the true Alaskan story of Linda Thompson, a parent of three children all with challenges. It begins with life in the wilderness of Lake Clark region before her first son is born. Once baby Erik is in her arms, people want her to institutionalize him. When her twins are born, she faces life/death realities as they present themselves. Her husband’s job slowly draws him away from home when they move to the capital, Juneau, and he becomes the Director of Subsistence under Governor Sheffield. The marriage is slowly crushed. Linda returns to the wilderness of Alaska to be a Bush teacher, raising her surviving boys alone, standing by them, no matter what.

It's getting later and I couldn't find something good specifically about the book. This is about one of the editors, Jefferson Cowie, from Inside Higher Ed:

Everyone knows that rock and roll is all about kicking out the jams: ditching uptight squares, taking long rides in the dark of night, and being a street fightin' man -- or woman. As The Who put it, it's about hoping to die before you get old.
But what does rock mean to a new generation of uptight (if updated and wired) squares, afraid of the open road, who have little fight in them? What does rock mean for a generation that has never been allowed to be young -- let alone hope to die before they get old?


For my students, the answer is simple. Rock and roll is about family happiness.
I discovered this disturbing undercurrent of rock-as-the-soundtrack-of-familial-bliss when I began teaching a college writing class this semester. The undergraduates' first assignment was to assess the personal meaning of any song of any genre. . . [get the rest by clicking the picture]

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Maybe it was because I thought these were all new books, I didn't realize that I had read this one until I got home. Here's a snippet from a review on booksiloved.com.

The highlight of Daisy's life is when she becomes a garden columnist for a newspaper, and has many fans who write to her, asking about remedies for blights on flowers and other such topics. When she loses her job to a man for no good reason, she never completely recovers from the shame of not having a public identity.

Why would we want to read about the rest of Daisy's existence, which is, for the most part, conventional and predictable, based on filling others' expectations and fighting despair? We read the rest of this fictionalized autobiography because Shields has a way of addressing her character's inner realities with lyrical affection and quiet irony. Because the story is told from many points of view over time, we are offered a complex, historical understanding of Daisy's life. . . [get the whole review by clicking on the book cover photo.]

From the UC Irvine Drama Department website:

Annie Loui works as a director/choreographer and creator of inter-media theater works. She trained with dancer Carolyn Carlson (at the Paris Opera), and studied with Etienne Decroux, Ella Jarosivitcz and Jerzy Grotowski. Original dance/theater pieces have been seen in France, Monaco, West Germany, and in the United States at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, among other venues. She has choreographed for the American Repertory Theater, Trinity Repertory Theater, and off-Broadway for the Signature Theater. Longtime member of the Brandeis Theater Arts Department; she also taught extensively for the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard before coming to the University of California, Irvine, where she runs the Movement Program for the MFA Actor Training...

From booknews:

This text/reference offers a visual approach to moving target indication (MTI), moving target detection (MTD), and Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon systems, illustrating concepts, relationships, and processes with b&w illustrations, photos, and images, including illustrations of oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer displays, on every page. Early chapters cover radar's history, the role of the professional radar engineer/technician, and the science behind radar. Later chapters cover circuitry and hardware, secondary radar systems, microwave transmission, radar transmitters and receivers, the Doppler effect, and radar displays. Mathematical explanations rely only on basic trigonometric concepts, keeping the information accessible to those new to the field. . .

From a New York Times book review:

More Americans were executed in 1999 than any year since 1952, and the execution rate has gone up 800 percent in just a decade. Over 3,500 prisoners, an all-time record, now await their fate on death row. Strange, then, that Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell should state in the preface to ''Who Owns Death?'' that even as executions soar, the days of the death penalty in America are numbered. They reach this conclusion by a careful study of the psychology of capital punishment among governors, judges, prosecutors, jurors, victims' families, wardens and witnesses. They analyze our society to see if we indeed are obsessed with a ''culture of death,'' as Pope John Paul II has put it. It is a remarkable testimony to the authors' skills and the clarity of their writing that whether one is for or against capital punishment -- and few issues are as polarizing in modern society -- by the end of this book the reader will agree that, for better or worse, inexorable social forces are carrying us to the eventual abolition of the death penalty. . . [Click the photo to get the whole the review.]

Bonsai Jay Gets Prize

Bonsai Jay was visitor number 123,456 according to sitemeter (that counts the visitors who got here once I found and put up sitemeter). So he was the What Do I Know? contest winner. We had a bit of an email exchange to figure out an appropriate prize in which he mentioned a knife collection that didn't have an Ulu. And since he is a bonsai master I threw in some tamarind seeds to see what he can do with those. Here's the picture he sent of his prize. And a very nice thank you email came with the picture. There's also a card with a photo from What Do I Know? (it's the one below the boardwalk) which didn't quite translate in the photo.

Thanks to Jay and all the rest of you.

Epiphanous panoply of flavor in liquid-jewel form. Salesfolk Walking The Extra Mile

I got an email the other day that was a step above the normal spam emails. This one had some originality and a touch of honesty that was . . . can't quite find the word. I'll let you judge for yourself. I thought about posting it with a comment on how he was selling his product. But came to my senses.

But then someone gave us some coffee that was also a remarkable example of the creative (in this case I'm not saying creative is a good thing) marketing. I'm still thinking about both. So I'll let you come to your own conclusions.

First the email pitch:

This e-mail is from salve at xxxxx@gmail.com about a cool website they've found. You can see it at www.xxxxxxx.com. This is the message salve sent. Hi Friend, My name is salve, and I'm an IN YOUR FACE MONEY-LOVIN' LUNATIC. You wanna get rich buddy? Listen up ... Good guys finish last. Dead last. Nobody gets rich being nice. You got that? This is a KILL OR BE KILLED world. Got morals? Join a friggin church. I'm happy on the road to hell if I got a backpack full o' cash! I'm about to show you the dirtiest and deadliest ways to make HUGE MONEY online in no time at all, even if you know jack sh!t about computers. Look, this stuff ain't ethical .. it's definitely not nice ... and some of it is just barely legal. But it works. It works fast. And it makes mad money. Who cares about anything else! You're gonna make HUGE MONEY even if you're a complete newbie to selling online. Whether you're an advanced marketer or your kid just showed you how to fire up a computer last week, absolutely anyone can get filthy rich following my STEP-BY-STEP instructions. That's right .. I'm going to hold your hand like a baby learning to walk and show you STEP-BY-STEP how to put these money-making ideas into practice. So how much money am I talking about? I will personally strip naked and EAT MY SHOE and put the video on youtube if you make less than $2900 your first week. I'm dead serious!! Get started IMMEDIATELY before these techniques get spread all over the internet and lose their power! Time really is short on this one! Click here for more info: http://xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Regards, salve

I like a guy who uses punctuation marks to hide profanity. And then goes on to sell you something unethical and barely legal. Like wearing a suit and tie and speaking polite while he fleeces you. In this down economy I'm sure he has plenty of takers. I didn't even want to try going to the site and didn't want to promote a scheme where I'm sure the only one who might come out ahead is Salve himself. But check youtube for "eat shoe naked."


The Coffee - Someone had a good time here. I guess I'm thinking about the folks who fork over good money for this. A positive spin is that they are rewarding people for going beyond the everyday hype.






OK, this has to be a spoof on snooty wine and coffee connoisseurs. Doesn't it?



Notice that I have ignored the potential Google hit benefits of actually writing the name of the coffee in this post, though as I write this I realize it's on one of the photos.

More Mushrooms, Some Flowers, and the Garden Workers

I didn't count them, but there must be 100 mushrooms at least in the back yard, maybe 15 - 20 varieties. Can you tell we had some rain? But today was almost balmy by late August standards in Anchorage. T shirt weather. So, enjoy the pictures.

And these are my loyal garden workers
transforming our old leaves and kitchen
wastes (no meat, just raw vegies) into rich compost.
They just show up in the summer and start working.

Sketching Out My Personal Political Blogger Guidelines

First, a disclaimer. I'm not claiming any moral high ground. I'm not saying anyone besides myself should follow these guidelines. I'm not saying this is complete or that there shouldn't be exceptions now and then.

Second, a WARNING: I am NOT an attorney and this is NOT a list of what is legal or illegal. Rather these are my guidelines for myself. With blogging and the easy availability of digital images and cutting and pasting, the law itself is evolving. It's being reinvented. But just like downloading audio, you may be breaking the law and you may find yourself in trouble. I'm going on the assumption that if I'm not doing this for profit, my intent is educational and informational, I'm reasonably fair and decent about how I treat people, and if I immediately respect requests to take down photos and videos that someone else owns, that my risk is pretty low. That said, it's also true that people have died doing low risk activities.

Third, I want to identify some of the common reasons why people have political blogs.

1. To change people's ideas by
   a. offering facts about issues, candidates, etc.
   b. discussing logic of various political positions, philosophies, ideologies
   c. raising people's awareness of the underlying stories or narratives (or theories or whatever you want to call them) that shape the interpretation of events, to help people 1) begin to articulate their own stories 2) recognize others' 3) recognize how politicians and pundits attempt to sell stories that help their cause
   
   
2. Inform, encourage, rouse those who share their perspective by
   a. giving them information about what is happening - news they might not get in the mainstream media (msm) about what politicians are doing, about investigations, about protests and other gatherings of interest
   b. showing them that there are others out there who share their views and that they can have an impact if they work together
   c. stirring up their anger and joy at events to get them more politically active
   d. supporting policies and politicians of their persuasion and attacking those they see as threatening the world as they know it or want it
   
   
3. To Vent by
   using their blogs to release their emotions, to express those things that societal norms generally cause them to suppress

Most political bloggers do all three, though some spend more time on some than on others. And we could even get into what a 'political' blogger is. I think most people who talk about political blogs, really mean partisan blogs - blogs that support particular candidates, parties, or points of view, rather than blogs that deal with the distribution of power in society. But that's another post or two.

These guidelines are aimed at those bloggers who want to change people's ideas basically through logic and information; who recognize that democracy works because there is a free and honest attempt at solving differences through discussion. But I also recognize that emotions tend to trump logic when things get close to home, and that logic without emotion can be empty. (Sorry Data.) The public must also be able to distinguish between honest, well intended and dishonest, deceptive bloggers and all the flavors in between.

So here are some guidelines - incomplete for sure - that I try to follow when writing this blog.

1. Labeling/Name calling - Name calling tends to turn off the intellect and turn on the emotional defense team. Sometimes it is useful to name or label someone or some action as a way identifying it. Don Mitchell's calling Palin "a celebrity" rather than a politician is an example of trying to clarify the role she plays. But calling people nasty derogatory names, while causing the partisans to giggle, makes the open exchange of ideas that much harder. Extreme partisans on either side aren't likely to change their views, but there are lots of 'independents' who may shift when they see reasonable people consistently presenting useful information and ideas.

The Labeling - - Insulting continuum

Bloggers should be aware of the verbal tools they use. I'd propose a continuum of types of labeling. At the left end, the tool is useful to public discourse. As you move to the right they become less useful. Individual instances have to be evaluated in context.

Helpful-A---------------------------------------------D-Destructive

A. Using names or labels to try to identify what someone is doing. This is like trying to figure out what class of plant some wild flower you just found belongs to. You look at the characteristics of the species in the field guide and then you see if the plant you found fits those characteristics. The more explanation for why the blogger thinks the label fits, the more useful the discussion.

B. Categorizing someone as this or that - often with mildly positive or negative connotations.

C. Using snarky labels that readers generally understand are tongue-in-cheek jabs at the target. If the target and shooter have a general respect for each other (minimally they acknowledge the other as having the best interests of the state/country at heart), the target is likely to take this as intended and to lob a barb back in the same vein. But if there isn't respect, such barbs are seen as partisan attacks based on irrational hatred. These can range from playful puns to mean spirited nasty terms lacking any wit at all.

A and B could be all over the continuum depending on things like

• amount of evidence provided if any
• level of wit and originality
  
• tone and groundedness of the rest of the discussion (by groundedness I mean how well it seems to match the world people know. Facts help ground things for example.)
  

D. Using carefully thought-out Newspeak terms to intentionally poison the debate and demonize the target. While the left has done its share of finding terms with which to spin issues in their favor, the right has mastered the art of toxic framing - terms like 'feminazi' and campaigns like the swiftboat attack on John Kerry. This can amount to political assassination and set the mood for attempts at physical assassination. We're seeing this happen in the health care debate.



2. Corrections

• It's ok to go back and correct typos that don't change the meaning.
• If I make a factual error, I should strikeout the part I am replacing and put [brackets around the new part.]
• Dating updates and corrections is most helpful.

3. Time Stamp

• It's ok to change the automatic time stamp on posts to
  a. reflect more accurately when you really are posting [blogspot sets it to when you started writing, even if you don't post it for a week.] [Update 2/14/11 - Blogspot changed this a while back to date posts when you hit the publish post button.]
  b. to set the post to go up at a certain time when you think it is most appropriate
• It's not ok to change the time to make people think you posted something earlier than you did - like a prediction of what is going to happen which you write after it happened, but time stamp so it appears as though you posted it before it happened.

4. Photos

Your own original photos - The main issue for me now is photos of people

1. Photos taken in private should not be posted without the permission of the subject of the photo. Minimally this means that the people know you have a blog and know you post pictures and know that you might post this photo you are taking of them, and they don't object. Preferably - so you don't incorrectly assume one of the above conditions - you would ask, "Is it ok if I post any of these pictures?" This also helps to maintain good relations with friends and family.

2. Photos taken in public.
People taking part in political or other demonstrations - These people are exercising their first amendment rights to free speech. They are trying to influence public policy. There should be no problem taking their pictures. There are some caveats:

• Outing someone. If someone might face retribution if their action is publicized one has to weight the subject's responsibility and your own. I met someone across the street from an anti- prop. 8 demonstration. He said he was a teacher and it would do him serious harm if he were seen demonstrating. But he had already made the choice not to demonstrate. Not to publicly take part. Putting up his photo would have been a clear violation. However, when I took a picture of someone demonstrating - a close up of one person - his comments caused me to ask this person for her permission before posting it. The crowd shots, well, people decided to demonstrate in public. They should know there's a possibility of their pictures showing up somewhere.
  
• Children. Basically, the same rules should apply, but with reason. The parents have allowed (presumably) the children to demonstrate publicly. If it is just one child in the picture, I'd probably not post it without at least verbal permission from the kid's parent. Under ten is touchier. I'm still not sure and I haven't found any guidelines that address this clearly. "Do no harm" should be the motto, and if you aren't sure your published photo will not cause harm, don't use it.
• People just out in public doing their normal business. Crowd shots not a problem. If you've got someone clearly identifiable alone or with just one other person, it's nice to ask permission if you can. Photos of cars running red lights is fair game in my book.
• Public officials or newsworthy folks - no problem. But personally, I'd feel uncomfortable shoving my camera into someone's face who doesn't want to be photographed. One day Judge Sedwick walked into the Federal Building lobby. I don't recall seeing any pictures of him anywhere. When I lifted up my camera, he clearly indicated his preference not to be photographed and I put down my camera. It didn't feel right. Nor did I take pictures of defendants in similar situations. I had no problem taking pictures of the photographers. I figure if they take other people's pictures, they have no basis for complaint if the tables are turned.

Some Fledgling Photo Principles:

1. Pictures should help tell the story. If Rev. Prevo buses lots of kids to demonstrate against gay rights, that's part of the story. If the picture is unrelated to telling the story no need to use it.

2. Pictures shouldn't cause people unfair harm. I know what it means, but I don't know how to give normal examples. Extreme examples are the fear that any picture of a child automatically exposes that child to potential kidnapping or other harm. Well, kidnappers can walk down the street and snatch kids without having to use your pictures to track them down. But if the kidnapper is caught with a picture from my blog. . . Someone who is at an event with a person who isn't the spouse, and the spouse sees the picture on your blog, well, sorry Charlie, you were out in public, how was I to know? If someone has just had some terrible thing happen to them, well, let them deal with it privately and don't post it if you think it will make things worse.

Balancing is not always easy. Pictures of auto crash victims or of war casualties may be painful to the next of kin of the individual, but they also tell a bigger story (community traffic fatalities, war) in a way that words almost never can. [Update: September 4: Here's a New York Times article that is precisely this dilemma.] Sometimes an important story [that informs the public] takes precedence. (And I'm sure there are times when the next of kin appreciate the attention.)

Just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should. Someone who has to post a picture against someone's will just to prove their power to do it, well, that person has personal issues to resolve.

Other People's Photos

If it says permission required to use the photo, don't post it if you can't get the permission. Period. It's stealing. I can think of some great photos I didn't post because of this. (That sounds more certain than I actually feel. But I'm trying to live by that. And I expect others to respect my photos. See how we get more sensitive when it affects us too? The Golden Rule works.)

If it doesn't say anything about needing permission, or if it gives permission to anyone, use it, but identify the source and link back to the source. Sometimes it isn't so easy. What about a picture that some other blog took without permission. How do you know?

Back to no permission. If the picture itself is the story (was a picture of Palin holding Trig, but with Eddie Burke's face photoshopped over Trig's sacrilegious?) what should you do? I didn't show the picture, but linked to it. In other cases, I've taken my own picture of the picture, but I've used a bigger frame of reference to change the circumstances of the picture - on a poster on a wall or in a newspaper with print around it.

Or if you are going to make a political statement by spoofing the picture, you can doctor it so you are not simply using the picture but you have significantly changed it. But you should be doing this because you are making an important point, not because the picture will jazz up your post.

5. Movies 

Using bits of video to illustrate movie reviews. The posting of the video - short snippets as part of a review - seems to me to be no different from a book reviewer quoting from the book she's reviewing to make her points. Just as the reviewer can choose any citation for the review, a movie reviewer shouldn't be limited to the shots the film producer wants the reviewer to use. How one gets the video is another story. Theaters have the right to ban people from taking video in their theaters. Their biggest concern is not reviewers, but pirates trying to get video of first run movies to sell. I understand that in places like LA, technology that disables video cameras is being used in some theaters.

Another issue is that many film festivals prohibit any the film if even a part of it is online, so your video could disqualify the film maker, though I think this will become increasingly difficult to enforce fairly. [Update Nov. 28, 2009: I've learned that Festivals are lightening up on this because so much is now online.] Too much is up somewhere. This is a long topic that I can't do justice to here, but I did want to raise it.

YouTube and other posted video that has an embed code (code that when placed on a blog or website, essentially posts the video) is fair game. Credit and links should be included.

6. Other Issues - There are plenty of other issues such as not knowingly writing falsehoods, not 'unknowingly' writing falsehoods because you didn't check the truth of reports, etc. I take those things as so obvious, and fairly well debated, that I haven't included them here. There's also probably a good discussion to be had about how long the snippets are that you repost from another blog or website. And again, credit and links are mandatory in my book. And I haven't even gotten to the subject of commenters and how to handle them. Though I have talked about that extensively here and here.

Concluding Comments

All this said, blogging is an experiment that shouldn't be hampered by rules. (OK, Steve, what if someone is copying your photos and selling them? Now that's pretty hypothetical, but yeah, there should be a rule against that. So no, I'm not 100% on any of this. And as new situations surface, I'll probably have to adjust my positions to accommodate them.)

My underlying issue is the impact on the open public discourse necessary for a democracy to work. Blogs are available to everyone with a computer and internet and, because of Google, easy to find by readers. Unlike traditional print media, radio, and television, everyone can play. Thus my no-rules preference. Let's see, for a while whether the openness of blogging means that 'bad' blogs will be exposed by other bloggers better than externally imposed rules. Except for stealing photos. :)

So these are my personal guidelines. They've emerged through my blogging and reflect situations I've come up against and my values and intent. I'm writing them down so readers here can understand how I try to make these decisions. And maybe people can help me think through these things.

Ultimately it is a constant tension for me among

• striving for a version of the truth that is as grounded as possible
  
• doing as much good and as little harm as possible
  
• making time for my non-blogging life.
  

Having a Television - Kennedy Funeral

Our television is a Sony we got so our son could watch Sesame Street when he was a year old. He turned 35 this year. It's tiny and we don't watch it much. We did get a converter box which has improved reception for the stations we can get.

But today it was useful to have to watch the funeral service of Ted Kennedy. I've been a bit surprised by the amount of coverage in the media on his death. Being the last of the Kennedy Dynasty of his generation certainly played a role. But there's more. He was born into privilege to an outsider family in some ways. His family fortune came through less than scrupulous means. And his family was Catholic among a Protestant aristocracy. There was a great family togetherness, and lots of family tragedy. As the youngest son it took him a while to gain his place. What he's done post Chappaquiddick should give us all pause about how we judge and punish people. We all do stupid things, sometimes those stupid things have serious consequences. Did Kennedy get special treatment after that? Probably. Would his family and the nation have been better off he was punished officially? Perhaps all those in similar situations should be given the same opportunity to make amends. Restitution, not retribution, is practiced in some cultures. I don't know. I do know life is complicated and often good comes from bad and vice versa. Anyway, here are some pictures from a 34 year old television.

The Effect of Flowers

Some things you know work, even if you don't understand why. Flowers work.

So after getting Snow Leopard at MacHaus and a book on Anchorage place names at Title Wave, I stopped by Evalyn's Flowers before coming home. It was rainy and I knew a little color in the house would go a long way.

Men, even if you don't know why, just bring home some flowers now and then. It's in your best interest. And try to support locally owned florists like Evalyn's. They'll notice that you were there, but Fred Meyer's won't.

Name the 8th Continent in the World

[Update Feb 17, 2017: A flurry of hits to this post today alerted me to the announcement of a new continent called Zealandia that was announced by scientists.  From India.com:

". . . if the reports are to be believed, scientists have discovered a new, eighth continent on earth and they are calling it Zealandia. Located to the east of Australia, a team of 11 geologists found 5 million square kilometre land mass which includes part of New Zealand and New Caledonia. At 4.9 million square kilometres, Zealandia is touted to be Earth’s smallest continent with Asia as the largest continent." 

There's also, apparently, a video game app called Eighth Continent.]

An editorial in the NY Times tells us:

Until recently, the earth had seven continents. To that number, humans have added an eighth — an amorphous, floating mass of waste plastic trapped in a gyre of currents in the north Pacific, between Hawaii and Japan. Researchers have estimated that this garbage patch may contain as much as 100 million tons of plastic debris and is perhaps twice the size of Texas, if not larger.

[Map from Mindfully.org via Buffalo Readings]

Well, first try to name the other seven continents (five are on the map if you need help.) Go ahead, write them down. 30 seconds should suffice. This seems pretty basic, but I suspect not everyone can do this. (Well, maybe What Do I Know? readers can :) ) When I double checked at Wikipedia, one had been rechristened since I looked last, but we'll count the old name if that's what you had.

Then, come up with a name for this new continent that the editorial says is

• trapping as many as a million seabirds every year
• trapping some 100,000 marine mammals
• breaking down faster than expected and apparently releasing contaminants, including potentially harmful styrene compounds not normally found in nature.

The trash island isn't a new story, it's the breaking down of the chemicals that brought it up again.

[Trash picture from Cheney's blog at thelaughingplanet. I'm not sure this is really the island.]

Think about this picture every time you're about to buy something packaged in plastic or even made of plastic. Do you need to buy it? If you must and have no non-plastic option, let the store manager and the manufacturer know you'd like an alternative.

Wild Alaska salmon anyone? This is all happening in the north Pacific. But there's enough for the rest of the world too, so don't worry. Bring on Pebble and we can have even more unique flavors in our fish.

So, what should this new continent be called? According to Buffalo Readings, it already had various names two years ago such as:

• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• North Pacific Gyre
• Eastern Garbage Patch
• Pacific Trash Vortex

But none of these seem to have the gravitas needed for a continent.

Record your nomination here so you can document that you thought of it first.

The Birds and the House

This afternoon a black capped chickadee flew into our bedroom through this window, flew around a bit, and then out. I didn't actually see it myself, but I heard my wife's "there's a big spider" gasp and when I got there it was already gone.


Last week, while I was sitting here blogging, a nuthatch flew in between the window and screen of our living room window. The window was just barely open and it was fluttering around. I was able to open the window further and it flew off. This window is just below the one that a Northern Hawk Owl smashed into last fall. He dropped onto the driveway and I thought he was dead. But he moved, I got my camera, and video taped him getting up and flying off. You can see it at the link. No time for the camera in these recent encounters.


These are rather special moments, but a little strange. A few weeks ago a guest and I were having lunch on the deck when three nuthatches flew up to us. One landed on the table next to the guest's plate and one hovered over his chest while the third landed on him briefly.

As I was writing this I heard a noise on the deck. A Steller (NOT StellAr) Jay was checking out the flower box, and then came within a couple feet of me.

I don't know what it means. As long as Alfred Hitchcock doesn't show up, I'm ok.



Video from KJEveryday:

Leadership Anchorage

The Alaska Humanities Forum has a program called Leadership Anchorage which takes about 15 or 20 people each year and runs them through a series of workshops designed to improve their leadership skills. The intent is to take people who could play an important role in the future of Anchorage and Alaska (and beyond, of course) and help them develop the skills they need.

Applications are on line.

Most of us tend to play to the skills we have and use them to compensate for areas that aren't so developed. Leadership Anchorage helps people work on those often underdeveloped skills that we'd rather not use as well as the obvious talents.

I've known people in the program since it started. The mix in each year's group is amazing. There's an ethnic mix, a talent mix, and an age and experience mix. There are usually people few people know about and there are a few people in fairly high positions already. Here are some of the people who have gone through the program over the years:

• Janie Leask, First Alaskans Institute
• Nils Andreassen, Institute of the North
• Liz Posey Urban League of Young Professionals
• Bill Wielechowski, Alaska State Senate
• Guadalupe Marroquin, (she worked in the Clerk's Office and spared no effort to overcome my fax problems so I could vote in the Muni election from Thailand.)
• Macon Roberts, Anchorage School Board
• Angelina Estrada Burney, State of Alaska
• Erick Cordero Giorgana, Matsu School Board

I'm not giving you a lot of notice here - the deadline for the application is tomorrow. But I bet you could send in a partial application and get the rest in by Monday. (I'm not making the rules, so you better ask first.) And if you can't get your stuff together for this year, you might want to tuck it into your brain as something to prepare for for next year.

This is the 2009-2010 Group

I've posted on this before. It's not free, but it is a great opportunity. And there are some scholarships. There's a fair amount of work you have to do, but it is designed with busy people in mind. Everyone is in the same boat. Here's the schedule for the coming year from the website:

Fall 2009 - Spring 2010 Training Schedule

Retreat: October 9 and 10, 2009 (Friday and Saturday, overnight)* Training 2: October 17, 2009 (Saturday) Group Project Selection Training 3 November 5, 2009 (Thursday) Mentor Training* Training 4: November 21, 2009 (Saturday) Training 5: December 10, 2009 (Thursday)* Training 6: January 23, 2010 (Saturday) Training 7: February 11, 2010 (Thursday)* Training 8: March 13, 2010 (Saturday) Training 9: April 10, 2010 (Saturday) Training 10: May 1, 2010 (Saturday)* Graduation: May 18, 2010 (Tuesday, 6:00-8:00 p.m.) * You are expected to make arrangements to be absent from work on these days. With the exception of the Retreat, the trainings will begin at 8:30 a.m. and conclude at 5 p.m. The retreat will involve an overnight Friday night.

You can see you'll spend some intense time with the group, which means you'll develop some important bonds with Anchorage's future leaders.

The Director, Jim MacKenzie, was a student of mine and is really smart and really well organized, not to mention totally obsessed about making this the best experience the participants have ever had. He lived in Japan for nine years and when he returned to Anchorage he worked as a translator for the Japanese Consul in Anchorage. He's got lots of good stories. He's the guy in the front, right in the picture with the red tie.