I try to remind people now and then that biking is a real alternative form of transportation, it's not just recreation. Our infrastructure and city planning make it hard to do without a bigger vehicle sometimes, but biking is possible for a lot of our travel, even in the winter.
So, I do want to recognize that there are a number of Alaska blogs that focus on biking and there's even an Alaskan biking film in the Anchorage International Film Festival.
Carl Battreall took a fantastic first step into film making with Fat Bike by being accepted to the Boston Bike Film Fest and the Anchorage International Film Fest. But the news gets even better. The Boston Bike Film Fest, which took place last Friday and Saturday has announced that Fat Bike has won First Place!
Congratulations goes out to Carl for making such a great film. This is exciting news for all riders and especially those who brave the elements all winter long. And perhaps it will serve as great inspiration to those considering winter riding.
BCA sends along a hearty congratulations to Carl and all those that helped with the making of Fat Bike.
BCA talks about biking everyday so I'm adding them to my Alaska Blog list. Another one is Bicycles and Icicles. It has a long list of Alaska bike related blogs. These blogs are serious crusaders working to change how decisions are made about transportation and planning by living their ideals and fighting to make bike commuting safer and easier.
Fat Bike U.S. (ALASKA) 26 minutes
Director: Carl Battreall
Fat Bike is part of the Snowdance 2 program showing Tuesday Dec. 8, 5:45pm at Alaska Experience Theater Saturday Dec. 12, 5:30 at Out North
It's also part of the Martini Matinee presentation Friday Dec. 11, at 2:30pm Bear Tooth
Someone had recommended Lena Pho Restaurant on Minnesota almost at the corner of Benson, and we were in the neighborhood the other day, so we stopped in. This used to be Chinese restaurant.
It was bright, clean, and the food was good. J had the pho with tofu. Our vegetarianism is based on a combination of concerns about health, about how food is raised and the impact on the planet, but we aren't absolutists. I tend to assume that vegie soups in Asian restaurants are the normal soup stock but no pieces of meat. Isn't vegetarian pho an oxymoron:
Pho noodle soup is a great comfort food and like most classics it has many recipe variations and history. Some say that "pho' is a Vietnamese corruption of the French feu (fire). The French have a classic boiled beef dinner pot-au-feu, and they did colonize Vietnam in the earlier part of the century .
A perfect candidate for the crock-pot this soup only benefits from slow simmering to infuse the broth with aromatic spices and let the flavors and gelatin from the bones seep into the consomme like broth. (Read more: http://asiancuisine.suite101.com/article.cfm/vietnamese_pho_noodle_soup#ixzz0XiQztRSw)
I'll order something other than the Spicy Lao Eggplant. I love eggplant, but the real flavors don't come out unless it's really cooked, even roasted. But the rest was great. We'll be back.
I haven't counted all the films entered in the festival, but with the shorts, particularly, there are a lot. I'm sure it will not be possible to see even half the films, even if you were attending an event from the first to last showing every day. So I'm trying to go through what's coming and figure out what looks best, what looks most interesting, and when films are going to be showing in hopes of seeing the best of what's up here in December. I'm also trying to share some of what I'm learning with people who read the blog.
As part of this, I've emailed some of the film makers. I feel a bit awkward since I don't really want to ask generic, boring questions. It's best, for me, to see the film first, and then I may have some burning questions, or I may not.
Since I had seen Dear Lemon Lima as a short when it was in the Festival two years ago, I did have some questions of director Suzi Yoonessi. Here's what I wrote then about the short (good, but not much) and the film maker's plans to film a movie, set in Fairbanks, in Seattle.
Dear Lemon Lima, was another snippet, it seemed, from a future feature length film. Beautifully shot with good acting, it had lots of potential. Though I think the mother was a bit exaggerated. (I'm sure the writer will say 'not at all, I know her well'.) The director - I think that was her role - was there after the film to talk. She also talked about a feature to be filmed next summer that is set in Fairbanks. To her credit, she's been to Fairbanks - after writing several chapters of the screen play - but it will be filmed in Seattle (did she really say Seattle? How can you do Fairbanks in Seattle?) because, you know, it's really expensive to do it in Fairbanks. You know, I think that people in Fairbanks and Anchorage would put the whole crew up in their houses to help you keep the costs down. If those other guys could walk their horses across Alaska, you can surely shoot your film that takes place in Fairbanks, in Alaska. Imagine a movie, "Crossing Alaska with Horses" filmed in the Alps, because, you know, going to Alaska would be so expensive.
A little snide I acknowledge, but we'd also seen a film by French film makers who had had the idea to ride horses across Alaska. When they got here, they began to realize how ridiculous that seemed to Alaskans. They leased the horses, but soon discovered they were going to have to walk with, not on, the horses. But they got up to the Arctic Ocean. And they were in Alaska and saw how great their misperceptions of Alaska were. As Alaskans we learned about ourselves by seeing Alaska through their eyes, but only because they were actually in Alaska.
What I didn't realize at the time was that Dear Lemon Lima was the film she had in mind.
To her credit, she emailed me after my snarky post and asked if I had suggestions for cutting costs and doing some of the filming in Fairbanks. If it had been Anchorage, I figured I could have found housing for everyone. I posted her request and emailed some of the Fairbanks bloggers for help.
So, not long ago, I emailed director Suzi Yoonessi:
"A key question I do have is how much if any of the film did you get to do in
Fairbanks? What little I saw on the website - pictures, trailers - I'm guessing
not much. There was one shot that might have been in a Fairbanks like setting.
In any case, I'm looking forward to seeing the movie - the colors and characters of the short that was here in 2007 still are vivid in my mind. Not an easy thing
after two years of festival films. But I'm a little leery about the Alaska setting
and the treatment of the Native Olympics. We'll see."
Suzi wrote back:
. . . Our lead actress is part Yup'ik and from Eagle River, so if you're interested in speaking with her further, I'd love to put you in touch!
As you know, the budget was incredibly low. I super appreciate your blog posting, but one person responded (which was also an incredibly kind gesture), but it takes a village to raise a child, and Lemon Lima is my first-born. We were very fortunate to find an amazing Alaskan Native presence in Seattle, so the film features an Aleut dance group and all of the events were supervised by a former WEIO athlete. We saved a small part of our budget to shoot B-roll in Fairbanks, but after the rough cut, I had to make the decision of filming in Alaska, or having a reshoot.
One of the film's final scenes is a Yup'ik Eskimo Igloo dance. We shot a dance that wasn't particularly dynamic, so when I learned that we could use our budget to reshoot the dance, it took precedence because the character's evolution and acceptance of her heritage is the most important subplot within the character-driven film. Phillip Blanchett of the Yup'ik pop band Pamyua choreographed the dance for the reshoot and worked with Savanah Wiltfong (our lead) in Anchorage to understand the significance of each movement in the dance. The dance is delightful and we were also able to include two of Pamyua's songs in the film.
It's incredibly important to me that you, the local audience and press know the measures that we took to keep the Alaskan Native elements authentic (including having WEIO ship two seal skin blankets to Seattle.) The story is an underrepresented voice and I think it's incredibly exciting that people in London, Brazil, Tunisia and Sweden have been exposed to Alaskan Native history & culture in a story that entertains and informs. The assumption that we didn't make every effort possible to maintain the integrity of the Alaskan Native elements is incredibly frustrating and untrue. Although I wasn't able to film in Alaska, the magical exterior filming locations inspire a sense of isolation, wonder and delight.
I've met Phillip Blanchett and seen Pamyua perform on various occasions. They are the real thing. I understand that getting funding to make a feature film is very difficult and that bringing a crew to Alaska is very expensive. I accept that Suzi believes that she did everything she could to be authentic.
I urge Alaskans to enjoy the game we usually play of picking out the parts that are wrong about films set, but not filmed, in Alaska, but to try not to let any discrepancies get in the way of seeing the film she made. But, Suzi, remember that you did choose to tell a story set in Alaska and that the way you portray Alaskans has been/will be seen "in London, Brazil, Tunisia and Sweden" as you say. And for most of those people, it will be as close as they ever get to Alaska. Any mistakes you've made about us is how they will perceive Alaska.
So, Alaskans, be polite. Don't ask questions about why she didn't shoot the film in Alaska. She would have if she had had more money. The Alaska Film Office hadn't reopened its doors when she was filming.
Suzi, recognize that not that many people read this blog, and even if everyone did, they wouldn't listen to me anyway.
I loved the concept of the ice fountain at Loussac Library when it was first proposed. It's a fountain designed to work all year - in the winter creating interesting ice formations depending on the water flow and weather. But for various reasons, it never quite worked out that way. ArtSceneAK wrote in 2002
FROZEN ASSET ICE-NOTCarl Nesjar's Ice Fountain has been neither fountain nor ice since shortly after its installation at the Anchorage Loussac Library in mid-town. The stainless steel tubing is intended to drip water during the winter to build sheets of ice in a spectacular way. Problems with plumbing and process in the underground connection between fountain and library have kept this world class sculpture from reaching its intended potential. A joint project of MOA % for Art and the Silver Anniverary Commission, this piece has a forlorn look about it. In other parts of the country, folks run hoses up a tall pole in their front yard and leave it on into winter, then shine yard lights at the result. Seems simple enough, and certainly Nesjar's international reputation is not dependent on the use Anchorage makes of his interesting creation. During the summer, flowers are planted. During the winter, shouldn't the sidewalk be shoveled? Nesjar collaborated with Picasso, can't our civic and public entities combine to make Ice Fountain the defiant salute to winter it is meant to be?
A private group, as I recall (google's not being its reliable retriever self on this one) raised about $50,000 and in the last couple of years sometime had the fountain renovated. Finally, it's doing what it should have been doing all these years. These are pictures from tonight when we dropped some books off.
Most people have no idea who the creator of the fountain was. His name is Carl Nesjar.
Carl Nesjar, who is one of Norway’s most famous artists, was commissioned by Pablo Picasso to build his monumental concrete sculpture in Kristinehamn’s archipelago in 1965. Nesjar is a versatile artist and is perhaps most famous internationally for the 15 year period in which he was responsible for erecting a number of Picasso’s works of art throughout the world, and for his own all-year round fountains made of steel and aluminium.
The building in the background on the left with the penthouse lights is the JL Tower. There's a closer picture below.
You can get more information on JL Towers from Anchoragejoop. Chugach Electric [whoops, Anon pointed out it was Chugach Alaska, not Electric] Alaska is one of the tenants of that building. Maybe someone can explain to me the energy message involved with all the lights. [The energy questions are still relevant, but not as directly.]
While working on the ANCHORAGE International Film Festival blog posts I came across another website that had me totally baffled for a bit. (I added the black circle) The picture was great, but just totally different in style and content from the Anchorage International Film Festival. Did they add some new graphics? I clicked around and I couldn't find any of the content that was on the AIFF website.
The awards page had great verbiage like,
"highlight Alaska's important role in the international film community."
What important role do we have in the film world? Most films about Alaska are done somewhere warmer and cheaper. And
"In addition, Best of Category awards will be presented in each main competitive category and Special Jury Awards are presented to filmmakers who make significant contributions to social change, environmental awareness, and humanitarian causes."
but then I got to this:
The Alaska International Film Festival is an awards-based film and screenplay competition. Films will not be screened for the public. Awards will be announced publicly by Internet and international press release.
"Will not be screened for the public." ?!! I thought a key part about entering a festival was to get an audience for your film. Winners announced by internet? Who is on the jury? And how come I couldn't find anybody's name on the website? Is the whole festival computer generated? And then I saw. It wasn't the ANCHORAGE International Film Festival. It was the ALASKA film festival. (No, I'm not offering a link to the site.)
Here's the website for the festival I've been blogging about.
But on the OTHER AIFF site,
the submission page lists the different categories and it costs $25 or $40 to submit a film depending on length and how early you submit your film.
And there's a contact address where you can also submit your films:
For general questions or filmmaker inquiries please contact us at:
Alaska International Film Festival
3705 Arctic Blvd, Suite 2329
Anchorage, AK 99503
So I checked out the address today when I was doing other errands.
Above is 3705 Arctic in Anchorage. The address is in white letters above the door under the red Mail Cache letters. If you double click the picture you can enlarge it to see.
If you wander past lots of mailboxes you get to this alcove (left) and "Suite 2329" is down on the end wall, lower right. It's a very small suite.
Right here in the picture on the right to be precise.
A whosis search of the url for this website got me to Godaddy and yielded a phone number with a 270 area code. That's in Kentucky. A long ways away from Alaska.
This is pretty suspicious. So when I finished all of the above, I googled "film festival scams" and on the third site I checked I found this article on film festival scams that identifies the Alaska International Film Festival as a likely scam:
It seems that every man and his dog wants to run a film festival these days, which is fantastic in many ways, not least because it provides an even greater number of outlets for filmmakers to get their work in front of an audience. Sadly the multitude of scammers who prowl the Internet also seem to have their dirty fingers in the film festival scene as well.
A timely reminder came this week when the "Alaska International Film Festival" was brought to our attention. Visit the site - www.alaskafilmfestival.com (not hyperlinked so as not to give undue Google link mojo to this site) - and on the surface you see a clean, professional looking site for what sounds like a prestigious event and is fact described as such by the site content. But before you dive into the submissions area, it's worth noting a few red flags...
Firstly, the site content reads like this event has been around for years, and indeed, the About Us page says as much. But on closer examination, there is nothing to indicate any previous years' activities, nor can you find any mention of it in Google. Indeed, when we contacted the 'festival' to ask for a list of last year's winners, the respondent told us that this was in fact their inaugural year, despite the About Us page saying, "Each year, awards are presented to independent filmmakers from around the globe..." Update 10-Oct-2009 - surprise surprise, the copy on the About Us page has been changed slightly after this article was published. . . [Emphasis added]
You can read the rest of this post and learn about more red flags at filmmaking.com.
"Let’s start by taking a look at some of these sites:
California Film Awards
Alaska International Film Awards
Oregon Film Awards
Colorado Film Festival
Mountain Film Awards
Honolulu Film Awards
Yosemite Film Festival ... [I've removed the links]
Doesn’t it strike you that there is more than a little family
resemblance between the sites of these different ‘festivals’? And you
wouldn’t be wrong: all these festivals and their ‘prestigious awards’
have more in common than a mere similarity of template design.
the jury that awards the ‘rewards’ is never identified, making it impossible to find out who its members are;
none of these ‘festivals’ ever organizes any public screenings;
while posing as established festivals (“Each year, the Yosemite Film Festival recognizes excellence in filmmaking”, “The Oregon Film Awards® are presented each year in several categories” ...), none of them has been running for longer than a year or two;
all
of them hand out a very large number of awards with grandiloquent
names: ‘Grand Jury Award’, ‘Northern Lights Emerging Talent Award’,
‘Sierra Nevada Awards’, ‘Silver Sierra Awards’, ‘Gold Kahuna Awards’,
‘Diamond’, ‘Platinum’, ‘Gold’, ‘Silver’ ... Awards;
the addresses associated with the domain names all seem to consist solely of Post Office boxes;
all these sites are hosted by Rackspace Hosting, either in San Antonio or Chicago ..."]
If you want to submit a film to a festival in Alaska, I recommend the Anchorage International Film Festival. I know it's real because I've been to a number of them and I blogged the last two.
I picked up a hard copy of the Festival Schedule today.
Later I noticed that Anchorage cartoonist and film maker, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, put up a new short animation on his blog Frozen Grin. I thought I'd put it up here because I liked it and because it can serve as an appetizer for his animated short in the Festival - Frozen Shorts.
But I also realized this would be a good opportunity to alert you to the difficulty of finding specific shorts in the printed schedule. Shorts (including short animations) are grouped together into programs. Frozen Shorts is actually in two programs - becaue it's in two different film categories: Snowdance ("films about Alaska and by Alaskans") and Animation.
So, in the Schedule on page 14 you can see the Snowdance listings, and Frozen Shorts is in Snowdance 2 which will show on
Tuesday, Dec. 8 at 5:45pm at the Alaska Experience Theater (in the Ship Creek Mall downtown) AND
Saturday, Dec. 12 at 5:30pm at Out North
But Frozen Shorts is also part of the collection of 18 animated shorts that are grouped into the program Animation 2, also known as "Should I Stay or Should I Go? And Other Confusing Questions.
That program is also playing twice
Sat. Dec 5 at 5:45 at Out North Tues. Dec 8 at 7:45pm at Out North
Now, there may be an easier way to find out exactly when a particular short film is playing. The online program lets you click and see what's there. But at the moment, at least for Snowdance 2 there there's an extra showing on Sunday Dec. 6 at 3pm at the Bear Tooth.
So maybe there's one more screening that wasn't listed in the Snowdance 2 listing on page-14. But when you click on
Snowdance 2 you get another page that doesn't have this Sunday showing listed. My guess is that the website will be the most reliable because they can still make changes there that they can't make on the printed programs.
It seems to me that last year I had a lot more trouble finding times on the website. I think this year's website will make it much easier to find exactly where and when each film is, even the shorts.
Meanwhile I'm checking if the Sunday showing is correct and I'll update this when I find out.
Here's Peter's new short animation, "Anchorage, First Snow":
One other things about the shorts. If last year's festival is any indication, some of the better shorts will show up before some of the features, like they used to do with cartoons in the old days.
[UPDATE Nov. 21 Noon: The Festival has confirmed Snowdance 1 is at the Bear Tooth at 3pm on Sunday Dec. 6, NOT Snowdance 2. But you still have four chances to see Peter's Frozen Shorts. Now I haven't seen it myself, but if you liked the First Snow, you probably will like his festival entry. And a lot of the other films in Snowdance 2 and Animation 1 should be worth it. Some of the most creative stuff shows up in the animation. And if you don't like a film, it'll be over in a few minutes anyway and you get to see the next one. ]
Should bloggers disclose the people coming to their sites? I've gotten used to all the information Sitemeter gives me for each person visiting the site. I've posted about it and on occasion posted a copy of an individual page. No, it doesn't tell your name or your email address, but it does tell your ISP address, your location, type of computer, browser, how you got to the page (if you linked from somewhere else) and what search terms you used on Google. It doesn't tell me all this for everyone. Some people have found ways to block a lot of the information. Proxy browsers do that for you and probably there are other ways to sanitize your tracks. But I know that when I show people all this information I get, they are surprised.
So, should a blogger share that information with the world?
I think it's important to remind readers of this once in a while so that they realize the tracks they are leaving at websites they visit.
I left my Sitemeter data available to all visitors on the grounds that transparency was a good thing, people should poke around and see how many (few) hits I get and where they come from. When I did that, I didn't think about people trying to track others down, and I think it would be a pretty tedious job. Plus coming to this blog - given the variety of topics covered - probably doesn't reveal much.
So, it's all there. But should I put individual pages up for people to see? I think I've done that a couple of times. If I recall, I did that with the 123,456th visitor to the blog post, just to show that he was really the winner of the 123,456th person to the blog contest. And I did it more recently when I discovered that someone from a State computer had spent a couple of hours on the site one day. But I smudged out the name of the agency and the ISP number.
So, what's all this a prologue to? Well, I do think it is good to remind you that you are leaving tracks. Here's a link to a Google search for "Surfing Privacy". You can get some ideas on how to leave less of you littered around the internet. Of course, telling people about this means that they might try scrubbing some of the data off their tracks which means I can't tell when agencies and companies visit when I post something about them, or when they are searching for something.
Which leads to why I got started on this post. I got a hit from someone using a World Bank internet connection. I had to smile when I saw the term they were searching. It really is what their mission is, even if it isn't how they state it in their annual reports. This person searched for "unfuck the world, the song." Maybe now the World Bank has a clearer focus. Ideally, they'll put it up as background music on their website.
Last night we went to a nearly full Marston Theater to hear Anchorage's Zen Buddhist Priest talk about compassion. The only other time I'd heard Koun Franz talk was at Cyrano's two years ago where he was on a panel of clergy from different denominations discussing Mark Twain's The War Prayer. He made quite an impression on me then both by how he handled himself and what he said. Last night he had the stage to himself - well, and a vase with two yellow flowers.
He was wise, funny, compassionate, human, and having a good time. My sense was that the audience too enjoyed the evening and went home with lots to think about.
On compassion, well, he said it is always there. It isn't something we give, one way, to another. But rather it is there, for us to be come aware of, to see the people around us a human beings who, like us, are trying to be happy. In some cases, the way that they go about it may be unsuccessful (alcohol, drugs, etc.) in the long run. When we have run-ins with others - he used the example of a tailgater - we should understand that they are human beings trying to be happy, and somehow, they see us as preventing their happiness by being in their way. That doesn't mean we condone what they are doing, but we understand it at least.
He had us imagine that we had a bubble around us where we were safe and comfortable. Then asked us to extend that bubble to include the person next to us. Including someone in your bubble - accepting their humanity as I understood it - was another way he described compassion.
Ethics in Buddhism, he said, wasn't so much about right and wrong, but rather about skillfulness - developing skills for living right.
He said that in the monastery in Japan he learned to cherish every moment, including the 'down' time between what we normally consider the events. An example was a note on the mirror where the monks brushed their teeth that conveyed the message
Whatever I'm doing right now
I'm not doing just for me
But for everyone
I only took a bit of video, and the best clip turned out to have a buzz all the way through, so here's just a snippet to give you a sense of the serenity of the talk.
It's not easy to convey what someone else has said, so assume what I've said is a very rough sketch. You can hear Koun Franz directly through podcasts on the Anchorage Zen Community website. You can find information about their other activities available there too.
The UC Board of Regents finance committee approved a proposal that will push student fees to over $10,000 next year.
The committee voted almost unanimously to recommend the 32 percent student fee increase to the full board at its meeting yesterday. If passed by the Regents today, California residents’ education and registration fees will be raised in two stages — from $7,788 to $8,373 by Winter Quarter and to $10,302 from summer 2010 through the following academic year. This fee hike will mark the ninth time in seven years that the UC Regents would have approved an increase in undergraduate tuition fees.
I entered UCLA as a freshman in the spring semester of 1963. As I recall, my tuition and fees that semester came to about $68 and change. Yes, I was a full time student. By being in the top 12% of California high school students based on test scores, I got automatic entry to a first class faculty and very good fellow students on a beautiful campus. As an extra bonus, we were going to have the national basketball dynasty starting the next year and we even had a Rose Bowl trip.
I was lucky. My parents were immigrants. They really had no idea how the US college system worked, and even if they had, the tuition at private universities was out of the question. But my local state university happened to be a half hour bike ride from our house and also a first rate school at a very affordable price.
The first year and a half I lived at home. Then I studied the next year in Germany as part of the UC education abroad program. The last year and a half I lived on campus. I was able to pay for my tuition, books, and room and board by working fifteen hours a week as an elementary school playground director.
It wasn't until later when Reagan started cutting the university budget that I began to realize what luxury California had afforded to its top students. One example was gym. All gym clothes - shorts, t-shirts, socks and jocks - along with towels were provided. After each class, you just tossed your dirties into the laundry bag and got a set of cleans. It was like a country club. I suspect this was so because originally the wealthy - at least the upper middle class and up - were the people mostly served by this public university. They expected the best for their children But once more and more students from other backgrounds became a larger proportion of the student body, and the more privileged began moving to the elite private universities, these perks began to fall by the wayside and the cost started going up faster and faster. Proposition 13 in 1978 made that decline even faster.
As I said, when I was getting into UCLA, all I needed to do was be in the top 12% of high school seniors. Today's admissions are much more complicated. I went through the online calculator and put in 4.00 GPA and 700's on all the SAT test scores. That made me eligible in general, but not for any specific campus. Here's what it said:
Keep in mind that meeting these minimum requirements is not the only way to become eligible for UC (students also may be designated eligible by being in the top 4 percent of their high school's graduating class or by achieving certain exam scores alone). Becoming eligible, however, does not guarantee admission to a particular campus. In selecting students, each UC campus considers a range of factors in a comprehensive review of applicant information. For an explanation of the admissions process, read ... [emphasis added]
From Mixx.com we see UCLA students' reaction to the tuition hike:
A little more perspective. My 1963 tuition was $68. The newly set 2010 tuition will hit $10,300. There were semesters when I went to UCLA (quarters started my last year) and quarters now. I think the $10,304 figure counts fees for the whole year. If that's correct then the 2010 tuition will be 75 times higher than the 1963 price.
My parents bought their house in 1957 for $17,000. Let's assume it went up to $25,000 by 1963. Its current price has fluctuated with the housing market, but a similar house up the street with a second floor added on was on the market for $850,000. That means the my mom's house, which hadn't begun to take off when I started college, went up about 32 times in the same time period.
I understand that the President of the University has to make his budget work. And I'm sure he feels he is being responsible by making this decision. But I suspect there are some people who, in that position, would resign and refuse to be part of this. Given California's budget woes, the President, would say, he has no choice. And if he doesn't make the cuts, he would be replaced by someone who would. But let's step back a bit and put this in context.
From what I can tell, the University of California received about $3 billion from the State of California in 2008. I take this from a statement by the UC President Mark G Yudoff:
"That budget proposal, which Regents approved on Nov. 20, asks the state to provide $694 million more than the roughly $3 billion in funding we received this year."
That's a half billion dollars more than what Californians spend a year on ice cream.*
And less than a fourth of what they spend on alcohol a year.*
I'm not saying Californians should stop eating ice cream or drinking margaritas, but if they look at all the other discretionary expenses they have, they might find ways to pay for their kids' education without really sacrificing too terribly much.
I graduated UCLA owing nothing. I didn't need student loans. And I could afford to pay my bills working 15 hours a week. (My mother reads my blog so I better acknowledge that my parents paid the tuition for the first 2 1/2 years, because it was very affordable and they believed strongly in my education.) It was not only possible for a good student from family without a lot of spare cash to afford UCLA, it was easy.
How many hours a week do you have to work to pay off $10,000? The California minimum wage appears to be $8/hour. Rounding it off to $10/hour to make it easy to figure, that comes to about 19 hours a week for 52 weeks. And that doesn't count any deductions. That is if you can find a job in California.
It seems to me Californians need to rethink their whole way of life. [Remember, it's 0˚F outside in Anchorage as I write; moving to Alaska is not an option, trust me. It's cold and miserable and dark and you'll spend all your tuition money on alcohol.]
*California has about 36 million people which is about 12% of the total US population of 304 million. (2008 Census estimate). Americans spend about $21 billion ice cream a year, so California's share of that would be about $2.5 billion.
Americans spend about $115.9 billion on alcohol, so California's share would be about $13.8 billion. That's probably a low estimate because these were 2003 statistics.
Last night at a talk, I took three video clips. The first one was fine (well, fine for a small digital camera in a room with a thin sound system.) The second clip had a strong buzz, like the camera had a motor, which blocked what I was trying to record. And the third clip was fine again. This has never happened before on this camera and I have no idea why this happened. I certainly didn't hear any difference in the room and I don't think I did anything different.
Then this morning I turned on the AM/FM receiver (yes I know I'm still in the dark ages) and got this:
I'm sure you're saying, "yeah, so what?" Well, the light in there has been off for at least six months or more. We've learned to find channels without seeing any sort of information. We were resigned to the slow deterioration of our sound source. We didn't know it was just on vacation. Again, we didn't move anything, didn't try anything new or different. It just turned on today after months of black.
the jury that awards the ‘rewards’ is never identified, making it impossible to find out who its members are;
