Another Day with Blue Sky

The Anchorage Daily News may be focusing on days of rain, but I'm focusing on the times we can see blue sky.  Today was another such day.  Though I have to admit, not everyone sees it that way and when the sun shined briefly through the clouds this afternoon at a barbecue we were at, some people applauded.

Twenty Eight Days of Rain, But Who's Counting?

The Anchorage Daily News calls it "Anchorage's meteorological misery streak" which set a record of 28 days of measurable rain in a row.  But the moss and mushrooms are thriving. 

Identifying mushrooms, except for the few I know for sure, is always iffy.  Even with my Audubon Field Guide.  This appears to be a polypore, but that's as precise as I think I can get.  There's a penny in the lower right to give you a sense of scale.  Maybe we can call this the catcher's mitt mushroom.

This is a concrete step in our yard.  The little mushroom in the lower left is the one in the pictures below.

This is a blackish-red russula with a white stem as opposed to the rosy russula which has a pink stem.  Someone's been lunching on this one.

This mushroom is past its prime and naturally recycling. 

As our front yard raspberry patch goes through a period of serious decline, our backyard raspberries are making a resurgence. 

There is something called a cup mushroom, but I think this one is simply old and its cap has curved up as it decays. 

And here's a very fine spider web, low to the ground that seems to be capturing more moisture than mosquitoes. 

And all over Anchorage the amanitas are popping up and offering some color. 

Crazy French Camera Man Documents Grafitti Artists or ?

As a blogger who carries his digital camera/video in his pocket all the time, I couldn't help but relate to Thierry Guetta, the crazy Frenchman who films everything he sees.  He says he doesn't ask, he just films. He runs a clothing shop probably on Melrose in LA when the movie starts.  He buys in bulk - I got the impression from France, but I could be wrong - then hyped them and charged $400 for a cheap T shirt.  This should have been a clue to where this movie was going.  I don't usually go through the story line of the movie, but I don't think it matters in this case because it's how the story is told that makes this movie.  But if you don't want to know, skip the rest.

[Update, 10:50am - I forgot to mention the name of the movie:  Exit Through the Gift Shop.  It's not obvious and I'm not totally sure I'm interpreting it right, but it would seem to emphasize the commercialization of the art.]

On a trip to Paris, he finds out his cousin is making space invader inspired tiles and gluing them to buildings at night.   He follows him around Paris at night as he surreptitiously puts up his tiles.  His cousin introduces him to other graffiti artists (some call these street artists because they use media besides spray paint) and he starts filming them at work telling them he's making a documentary.  Much of the film is from these hand held films climbing up buildings at night posting all sorts of graffiti.  Back in LA he meets Shepherd Fairey whom everyone knows from his ubiquitous Obama Hope poster.  But in the film, he's going to Kinko's and making giant peel off illustrations that he puts up on buildings.

Soon Thierry is searching for Banksy  [The Banksy link is well worth it!], the most famous of graffiti artists, and eventually Banksy falls into his lap (is this a clue?) when he arrives in LA alone and contacts Thierry's cousin and Thierry gets to be his LA guide. 

Banksy in disguise for interview

Banksy lets Thierry film him but always in a black hoodey and his voice altered, or with his face pixeled out. Then asks when the documentary is going to be finished.  Thierry has never made a movie, he just films and sticks them in boxes.  But he tries. The film is bad.  Banksy tells Thierry to go back to LA and put on his own art show.

This is when Thierry's clothing store experience comes into play as he hires people to make hundreds, maybe thousands of 'works' which are basically copies of famous paintings with photoshop changes and in some cases paint dripped or sprayed on them.  It's marketed spectacularly and he sells a million dollars of art.

When we left, my wife said it was all a hoax and I scoffed.  But as I think about it five days later, maybe it is.  Check out the Wikipedia post on Mr. Brainwash, Thierry's artist name.  It seems Mr. Brainwash's show was real.  But is there really this stash of movies somewhere?

It doesn't matter.  If it is a hoax, then it is probably even more amazing than if it's true.  And which parts are hoax and which are true?  I would also say this is a film where the soundtrack plays a huge role in pulling these low res visuals into a coherent movie.    And given this film celebrates artists breaking the law for their art and Thierry shoots and doesn't even ask later,  I felt no compunction at all, taking some video of the movie in the theater, so you could get a sense of it.  Unfortunately, of the three clips I took, the one I'm posting is the best, and it's not that good.  In this clip, Thierry describes Banksy at Disneyland, hanging a blow up hostage/prisoner in an orange jumpsuit, black hood, and handcuffed, onto a fence where the old west train rides past in Frontierland.  When I first went to Denali National Park and rode the bus through the wilderness and people would point out a caribou way off in the distance, or a bear or moose, I dreamed of making plywood cutouts and putting up giraffes and zebras that would be barely visible from the bus.  So I can relate to this prank.  The security guards at Disneyland weren't amused.



This is not a typical Hollywood movie.  Good fun.


[Update Sept. 18, 2010:  NY Times article about another graffiti artist  MOMO's 8 mile paint drip in NYC.]

Martin Lindeke "Up Ship Creek Without a Dam"

I do understand the power of the soundbite.  When I downloaded the video to load it onto Viddler, that quote just stood out.  How could I resist?

I ran into Lindeke, the Democratic candidate for the House District 18 seat - the bases and Eagle River mostly.  This was the district represented by Nancy Dahlstrom before she switched over to a state job and then resigned that job because the timing looked like it violated the spirit of the law if not the letter of the law prohibiting legislators from take jobs created while they were in the legislature.

Lindeke served in the Navy on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower (nuclear powered aircraft carrier), he was a professional in-line skater, and a line cook/chef at Simon's and Sous Chef at the Brewhouse.  He now works for a private company in Eagle River as a Hazardous Material Specialist and Building Inspector. 



I had great intentions to try to cover a number of the Anchorage races.  As it is I'll be lucky if I'm able to get up some videos like this one to give you a sense of the candidates.  You can check out his website as well.

Here's the full list of the District 18 candidates from the Division of Elections website:

State Representative District 18

* Nancy A. Dahlstrom (Republican) - Withdrew
PO Box 771094
Eagle River, AK 99577
Phone: (907) 694-4929

* Bill Cook (Republican)
19328 Monastery Dr. #A
Eagle River, AK 99577
Phone: (907) 694-1010

* Dan Kendall (Republican)
PO Box 770616
Eagle River, AK 99577
Phone: (907) 696-7066

* Martin J. Lindeke (Democrat)
16111 Cline Street
Eagle River, AK 99577
Phone: (907) 622-4216

* Dan Saddler (Republican)
PO Box 771811
Eagle River, AK 99577
Phone: (907) 696-5492

ACPRTF Just Rolls Off the Tongue

I had been invited today, as a Healing Racism in Anchorage Steering Committee member, to come to the ACPRTF meeting to discuss Tim Wise's September  Anchorage visit.  (When I mentioned this to my mother just now by phone, she said, "I saw Tim Wise on television last night.  He wrote Colorblind. I'd come to see him."  Except she's in LA.)

In addition to two Anchorage Police Department representatives - including Chief Mark Mew - there were two FBI agents and people from a variety of Anchorage communities.


Here's a little background on the Anchorage Community Police Relations Task Force from the Equal Rights Commission webpages:

Background
The creation of the ACPRTF arose from an unfortunate incident involving a young black male named Cassel Williams on January 14, 1981.  Mr. Williams had fired several shots from his apartment window and the APD was called to intervene.  The responding officers believed it was necessary to use deadly force and Mr. Williams was shot and killed. Considerable concern was raised at the time that other crisis intervention alternatives to deadly force were either not used or not available.  Following extensive discussions, an agreement was reached to establish a ACPRTF. Since its establishment in 1981, the Task Force has operated successfully in its role as a liaison between the ethnic minority community and the APD.  It continues to provide a forum for input and constructive dialog between the ethnic minority community and the APD.  This reinstatement of the original commitment is intended to ensure the continued relevance of the ACPRTF, and further, to ensure that the APD’s philosophical objectives are achieved.
To file an Incident Report, please fill out the form and fax to 343-4395 or email to aerc@muni.org.

 Laura (making a presentation in the picture), from Anchorage United for Youth,  a coalition of organizations that help youth,  talked about their program first and asked for assistance making contact with youth and parents who ought to take advantage of the many programs available in Anchorage.  Often, she said, there are great programs available, but lack of transportation keeps kids out.

Then I got to talk about Tim Wise. (From his Facebook page:

Tim Wise will be on CNN with Don Lemon tomorrow night [Sat Aug 14], about 7:10 EST to discuss "Dr." Laura's public n-word meltdown and all-around racist rant, and to place it in the context of white racism more broadly...check it out, it should be a good one.)

Then there were some reports on complaints received.  Someone whose son had been murdered felt he wasn't kept in the loop by the police and felt the story he heard from witnesses contradicted the outcome.  Another complaint was from a woman who was sitting in her car when the police swooped down and searched her car for drugs.  All she had in her car, she was reported saying, was her bible.  These had been looked into outside the meeting and there wasn't a lot of discussion.

Another issue that came up was racial profiling.  In addition to the previous story, one of the task force members said he'd been stopped twice recently.  In both cases he hadn't done anything wrong.  In one case the police officer demanded to see proof of citizenship.  In the  other case, the reason for the stop was strange - that he had turned left into the wrong lane from Seward Highway into Northern Lights which is a one way street.  In both cases, when he finally mentioned that he was on this task force, the officers gave him his license/registration/insurance back and simply left.  The police chief asked that they meet to discuss this further after the meeting.

The chief said people need to call in and complain right away so it can be investigated when it's fresh.  He also said racial profiling is prohibited.  People are only to be stopped if they have violated the law or if they match descriptions of suspects.  There is no policy saying officers should or shouldn't ask for proof of legal status in the US, but in practice this doesn't come up unless someone is arrested and basically this has happened recently, to his knowledge, in prostitution busts and that's been mostly Asians.

One member said that her mother and her mother's friends would never call in a complaint.  It just wasn't something they would do culturally.  One suggestion was to contact others in their community - such as task force members - who could help them do this.

It was a low key meeting.  I was impressed with the group as a whole and it was good to see the chief listening respectfully and showing what appeared to me to be genuine concern. Though it also appeared that incidents are happening which either aren't being reported or aren't being resolved as well as they could be.

Barbara Jones, the Equal Rights Rights Commission Director, reported that the US Justice Department which helped to create the ACPRTF (do you remember what that stands for with looking above?), will be coming to Anchorage in September to hold community meetings and do a check on things.  As I write this, I'm thinking the Justice Department isn't mentioned in the background info on the web that I posted above.

Testing the Soil

I thought that by going organic and supplementing the soil in the garden with my compost, I would get the right balance of nutrients.  Other organic gardeners have told me they've stopped testing.  But I have spots where some things look pretty anemic.  So I recently bought a soil testing kit and today I finally did the first sample.

The green top is the PH test.  That was the easiest match.  Clearly a 7.  The red was nitrogen and that seems to be low.  The phosphorus is a little harder to tell, probably between medium and low.  And the potassium appears to be medium. (You have to look through the water with the black square on the other side.)  Obviously, testing this way is NOT an exact science. 

An ADN story two years ago says that home soil test kits are inaccurate.

The home test kits for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium didn't work either. In some cases it was impossible to match the color of the sample to a color on the chart of the soil test package. In others, the readings didn't coincide with the results from the lab and tested high when the lab indicated nutrients to be low.

But I can do 12 tests for about $12.  If you send it for a test, it's about $40 for one.  

They want you to mix soil from all over the yard into one sample. 

To collect a representative sample for an average-size garden, I suggest taking at least five sub-samples. For vegetables and flowers, dig a hole 8 inches deep and, from the side of the hole, take a sliver of soil and put it into a bag. Do this in five locations and shake up the soil to mix it thoroughly.

I know that the soil varies from place to place in our yard.  So I can take soil from different beds and get readings for that bed.  We have some young friends I'm going to enlist to help do some of the other readings.  I think we'll have a good time.  

Even if they turn out to be inaccurate, I'm not a competitive gardener (as any of my neighbors will attest) so I can't do any real damage by adding too much nitrogen.  And putting the water, the tablets, and the soil into the water and waiting for the colors to show up is fun. 

Link Clickers Beware - But You Can Opt Out

[Update, August 12]:  An anonymous comment provided a link to the FTC guidelines covering endorsements and testimonials. You can see the relevant section for bloggers in the third comment at the end of this post. It sure looks to me that this totally violates those guidelines.]

BloggerBuzz had a post recently announcing a new way to 'monetize' one's blog:

. . . Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.

VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn. [emphasis added].

There's also a two minute video.




What's wrong here?    Most might say, nothing at all.  This is the American way of life.  Nothing has value unless it has a price.  Unless we can make a buck off of it.  People who blog for free are losers.  Well, here are the problems I have:

1.  The reader doesn't know the blogger is being paid and thinks the endorsement is uninfluenced by a payoff.


When I was a cab driver in LA, a fare once wanted to go to a strip club.  When I dropped him off, the club guy came to my window and gave me $5 and told me it was always $5 per person I dropped off.  So if someone asked me if there were any good clubs around, you know where I'd take him.

This is the same sort of problem these unmarked links set up.  The reader thinks it's a genuine endorsement uninfluenced by the promise of a payoff. Currently, there are ads in some blogs, but they are labeled as such.   Readers suspect or know that the blogger gets a commission on these. 

In their FAQ's, the company writes this about reader awareness:

Will my users notice?

Likely not. VigLink does not change the user experience one bit. No links are inserted or removed on the page, there are no double-underlines or pop-ups, and mousing over a link looks "clean."

But, it's really dirty is what they seem to be saying.

This is like tv shows and movies that pay film makers to embed their products in their shows.  So buying Full Circle Farm produce no longer is an integral aspect of the character, but rather they wrote that in because FCF has paid them for this stealth ad.

I've gotten emails offering me payments if I plug a product on my blog and they will pay more if I don't say that I'm getting paid.  The advertisers believe that if the readers don't know the bloggers are getting paid, they are more likely to believe.

In the FAQ's, they even tell merchants:

Additionally, VigLink increases confidence, click-through rates and conversions by making the links to your site appear to be "natural" links instead of obviously embedded affiliate codes. [Emphasis added]

They are selling the fact to merchants that they are deceiving viewers into thinking these are natural links.

As a viewer, YOU CAN OPT out.  There's a page where if you click on the button, it says

If you'd like to disable VigLink on sites that you visit, click the button below.

I'm not sure what that means.  I have no idea how the average viewer would ever find the page, or even know there is something to opt out of.  Does it mean they won't collect data on you?  Does it mean that the blogger doesn't get his payoff if you purchase something through his link?  There's a link there to a long privacy policy which includes statements like:

We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under the age of 13. If you are under 13, please do not give us any personally identifiable information.  [Emphasis added]

How many kids read privacy policies?  How many adults read privacy policies?  How many people even know this company exists? 


2.  The blogger starts pushing products, not because he really likes them, but because they will make him money.

Behavioralism is a school of psychology that tells us, among other things, that people repeat behaviors that are rewarded.  So, if bloggers get paid for writing posts that get people to click on links and buy products, they will start writing more such posts.  And eventually, some bloggers will recommend products they don't really believe in because they know they will get rewarded.  


3.   Trust in Blogs Will Turn to Suspicion

Before this new company arrived, readers knew that if they clicked on an ad, the blogger would get some small amount of reimbursement, but if they clicked on a link in the post, there was no compensation.  They could reasonably assume that the blogger put in the link because he believed it was in the reader's interest to click on the link.

Now though, as surfers begin to understand this new system, they will become suspicious of all blogs and bloggers (and probably the websites of newspapers and everyone else will do this as well.  Maybe they already do.)

Even if bloggers, like me, post announcements saying that we do not have paid links, there's nothing to stop people who DO have paid links from putting up the same announcements. 

Note:  People should be skeptical about what they read on blogs.  But there has been a sense of innocence in many blogs that are written by people who just enjoy sharing their ideas and without the corrupting influence of money. 

4.   Bloggers are probably also being ripped off

So, if VigLinks is willing to hide from the viewer the fact that the blogger is getting paid, why should we be surprised that they are also snookering the blogger?

• Blogger pay is probably pretty tiny.  One reason putting up ads is not even a temptation is that I know I would get so little revenue from the ads anyway.  If I'm going to sell out it's going to be for a lot more than $50.   I looked into google-ads  when I first started blogging and learned that only blogs with at least thousands of daily hits are likely to make any real money.  The ads for this company don't talk about how much a blogger would actually get.  I looked through more of the links on the website.  You get vague things like:

How does payment work?

VigLink will pay by check in the United States and PayPal anywhere it is available. We are expanding our payment options over time. VigLink will ask for payment information and pay publishers as soon as their balance reaches $25. VigLink typically takes 25% on commission earned by publishers. Often publishers still receive higher payouts due to collective bargaining and high volume commission levels. We will issue an IRS Form 1099 to any publisher who makes more than $400 in a fiscal year.

What percent of bloggers will even earn that $25?  If they don't, what happens to the money?  So, we don't really know how much you get per click.   Actually, another FAQ says you get paid if someone makes purchase only.  It doesn't say how much.  Instead it says,

How does VigLink make money?

You earn a commission for every sale made on a linked site. VigLink takes a small fee from that commission and then passes on the rest to you.

Small fee?  It's true it will be a small fee in absolute cents.  But it is 25% of what the blogger earns.  Gryphen at Immoral Minority said that Tank Jones and Rex Butler's commission from Levi Johnstons' earnings is only 20%.  I don't know if that's true, but Gryph seemed to think that was a significant chunk.  This company takes 25%.

But if the blogger doesn't make much money at all, what's 25% of nothing?  Well, there's something called the salami technique:

Employee embezzles large amount of money by stealing small sums from many different accounts.

This linking scheme isn't stealing because they tell the blogger and the blogger agrees to it. Though they intentionally do not want the viewer to know what is happening.   But, the vast majority of bloggers who might sign up for this probably wouldn't make much money.  It's possible a lot won't even reach the $25 threshold necessary for them to write the first check.  And as I asked earlier, what happens to this below threshold accumulation?  Why don't I think they'll donate it to decrease our national budget? 

I'm guessing, based on talking to people who have google ads, most people won't make more than, say, $50 a year, and that's probably high.  A few of the very big blogs with  thousands of hits a day, might do well.  But if this company got a million blogs to sign up - and it's really easy to add the code - and they get 25%, and if that amounted to about $10 per blog, that would be $10 million per year. (Hatrickassociates claims there are 400 million active English-language blogs in 2010, so my estimate is probably way low.)

So a scheme like this would

• pollute general trust in blogs with 
• minor benefit to most bloggers who sign up, 
• cause deception for readers, and 
• cause companies to pay a salami slice commission for links that they had in the past for free. 

The main beneficiary would appear to be this new company, and, probably Blogspot, WordPress, and TypePad also get a cut.  I couldn't find any mention of that.  


It seems to me that blogs with stealth links like this should post a notice at the top of the blog:

"This blog may receive kickbacks from merchants if you click from here and our reviews of products may be biased because of that."

Share the Road

Mushroom Run

After I finally put up a post about all the rain on Saturday, the sun was out Sunday.  So I really had no more excuses for not doing a run.  Besides, I figured there'd be lots of mushrooms. 

There were.   This one looked like a golf ball on the moss. 

They were all over the place but I was supposed to be running so I limited my stops to take pictures to within ten feet of the trail.

This one was just emerging.

This one is clearly a young amanita before it opens and looks like a pizza.






















I'm not sure what made these markings, but they rubbed off, so they weren't part of the mushroom itself. 

Here you can see these mushrooms all over the place.  Those white spots in the back left is a long line of mushrooms too.

And while most attention is on road construction during the summer, at least one of the bike trails got new surfacing as well.  This is along Northern Lights just east of Goose Lake. 

Yamaya Seafood - Downtown Hidden Treasure

After the Energy Fair Saturday, our wives met us at Yamaya Seafood Restaurant. 

It's hidden behind the Holy Family Cathedral between Fifth and Sixth Avenues downtown.  The front door faces west onto the parking lot and it's easy to overlook from 6th. (It's 825 W between H and I.)

We try to stop in here when we're looking to eat downtown and we remember it's here. Saturday, when my clothes were wet from biking in the rain, the hot tea was great.




I had the broiled eel dinner.  That's a taste I acquired in Hong Kong.  I'd challenge anyone to order it when they're at a place that prepares it well.  The idea might stretch your boundaries, but I suspect most will appreciate its rich flavors. 

While it's not exactly like being in Japan, it isn't like being in Anchorage either. 

The owner told us how she came to Alaska 30 years ago and it took a year to fix up this building so they could open the restaurant.   One of her granddaughters served us and a grandson was working there too.