Rosy Fingered Dawn

Looking out the window about 9:30 this morning my thoughts went back to a college classroom where Professor Pasinetti* lectured us in Humanities at UCLA. He recited in whatever language was appropriate - Latin, Italian, Greek, English - and he recited it so beautifully, that I was transported, even when I couldn't understand a word.  (Most of the time he lectured in English)  It was in that class that I read some of the greatest books ever written, including the Odyssey.

And as I looked out at the fleecy pink clouds, the words "Rosy fingered dawn" immediately came to mind. So here's a bit of Homer - from Chapter IX - where he's plotting how to deal with Cyclops.

"When the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn, appeared, he again lit his fire, milked his goats and ewes, all quite rightly, and then let each have her own young one; as soon as he had got through with all his work, he clutched up two more of my men, and began eating them for his morning's meal. Presently, with the utmost ease, he rolled the stone away from the door and drove out his sheep, but he at once put it back again- as easily as though he were merely clapping the lid on to a quiver full of arrows. As soon as he had done so he shouted, and cried 'Shoo, shoo,' after his sheep to drive them on to the mountain; so I was left to scheme some way of taking my revenge and covering myself with glory.

"In the end I deemed it would be the best plan to do as follows. The Cyclops had a great club which was lying near one of the sheep pens; it was of green olive wood, and he had cut it intending to use it for a staff as soon as it should be dry. It was so huge that we could only compare it to the mast of a twenty-oared merchant vessel of large burden, and able to venture out into open sea. I went up to this club and cut off about six feet of it; I then gave this piece to the men and told them to fine it evenly off at one end, which they proceeded to do, and lastly I brought it to a point myself, charring the end in the fire to make it harder. When I had done this I hid it under dung, which was lying about all over the cave, and told the men to cast lots which of them should venture along with myself to lift it and bore it into the monster's eye while he was asleep. The lot fell upon the very four whom I should have chosen, and I myself made five. In the evening the wretch came back from shepherding, and drove his flocks into the cave- this time driving them all inside, and not leaving any in the yards; I suppose some fancy must have taken him, or a god must have prompted him to do so. As soon as he had put the stone back to its place against the door, he sat down, milked his ewes and his goats all quite rightly, and then let each have her own young one; when he had got through with all this work, he gripped up two more of my men, and made his supper off them. So I went up to him with an ivy-wood bowl of black wine in my hands:

"'Look here, Cyclops,' said I, you have been eating a great deal of man's flesh, so take this and drink some wine, that you may see what kind of liquor we had on board my ship. I was bringing it to you as a drink-offering, in the hope that you would take compassion upon me and further me on my way home, whereas all you do is to go on ramping and raving most intolerably. You ought to be ashamed yourself; how can you expect people to come see you any more if you treat them in this way?'

You can read it all at classics.mit.  I don't have any cyclops to battle today, but I do have some things to do. 

*This is for college students.  I googled Prof. Pasinetti to make sure I spelled his name right and found a whole Wikipedia page on him.  I really had no idea (until now) who he was when I was his student - I was a freshman.  I knew he was a fantastic lecturer, but I had no idea about who he was beyond that lecture hall.  So, check out your professors.  Know who they are.  And go talk to them about their lives and yours.  Get the most out of your education.

"Akbar was obsessed with exploring the issues of religious truth"

[I think I may have tried to put too much into one post.  This material is related, but may be pushing the patience of surfers looking for a quick hit.  So, if that fits you, read the material from Aslan this time and from Dalrymple in a second visit later.]

I'm getting a lot of education on Islam these days.  My book club discussed Reza Aslan's No god but God tonight.  And last week I heard Nihad Awad at APU.

Additionally, I have a Pakistani friend who regularly sends me interesting things to read.  I got a three year old article from The Times by William Dalyrimple yesterday.  An American friend of Indian descent has recommended Dalrymple as one of the best writers about India.  So he comes recommended from both a Pakistani and an Indian. 

What's become clear to me in all this recent dipping into Islam, is that like Christianity (and all other religions), Islam, the ideal, and Islam, as practiced, is not always the same.  Reza writes how problems began after Muhammad's death. When he was alive, questions not addressed in the Quran could be brought to him for clarification and after his death the followers of Islam relied on people who had known Muhammad. 

As the first generation of Muslims - the people who had walked and talked with the Prophet - the Companions had the authority to make legal and spiritual decisions by virtue of their direct knowledge of Muhammad's life and teachings.  They were the living repositories of the hadith:  oral anecdotes recalling the words and deeds of Muhammad. . .

. . . [I]n less than two centuries after Muhammad's death, there were already some seven hundred thousand hadith being circulated throughout the Muslim lands, the great majority of which were unquestionably fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs and practices by connecting them with the Prophet. . .

Thus, when the Quran warned believers not to "pass on your wealth and property to the feeble-minded (sufaha)," the early Quran commentators - all of them male - declared, despite the Quran's warnings on the subject, that "the sufaha are women and children . . and both of them must be excluded from inheritance" (emphasis added) [emphasis added in the original].

When a wealthy and notable merchant from Basra named Abu Bakra . . . claimed, twenty five years after Muhammad's death, that he once heard the Prophet say "Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity," his authority as a Companion was unquestioned. (from pp. 67-69)

The last one is particularly ironic because Muhammad's life was changed by his marrying a wealthy independent woman 15 years his senior, and he consulted her and his later wives about his business affairs constantly. 

I offer this because the original Quran, as it is portrayed in the book and in last week's talk, has ideals in it that many US citizens could readily identify with.  Yet, it is clear that people over the centuries have interpreted the Quran to suit their needs as Aslan writes.  (Of course, I always have to question whether Aslan isn't doing the same himself.) 

I also can't help but think of the many religious leaders in the US who interpret the Bible in ways that benefit their financial and political power.  Nothing new here. 

But I also mention it to put this piece (below) about Akbar into some context.  It's not hard to find examples of people who misuse Islam.   In fact that's mostly what we are exposed to because the US narrative on Islam seems to be that it is a barbaric, if not evil religion and the media write stories that project the image they expect to find and their audience will believe. 

So it is useful to have examples of enlightened Muslims as well who can just as easily be contrasted to bad examples from the West.  So here are a few excerpts from the Dalrymple piece this post begins with. 

About 100 miles south of Delhi, where I live, lie the ruins of the Mughal capital, Fateh-pur Sikri. This was built by the Emperor Akbar at the end of the 16th century. Here Akbar would listen carefully as philosophers, mystics and holy men of different faiths debated the merits of their different beliefs in what is the earliest known experiment in formal inter-religious dialogue.

Representatives of Muslims (Sunni and Shi’ite as well as Sufi), Hindus (followers of Shiva and Vishnu as well as Hindu atheists), Christians, Jains, Jews, Buddhists and Zoroastrians came together to discuss where they differed and how they could live together.

Muslim rulers are not usually thought of in the West as standard-bearers of freedom of thought; but Akbar was obsessed with exploring the issues of religious truth, and with as open a mind as possible, declaring: “No man should be interfered with on account of religion, and anyone is to be allowed to go over to any religion that pleases him.” He also argued for what he called “the pursuit of reason” rather than “reliance on the marshy land of tradition”.

All this took place when in London, Jesuits were being hung, drawn and quartered outside Tyburn, in Spain and Portugal the Inquisition was torturing anyone who defied the dogmas of the Catholic church, and in Rome Giordano Bruno was being burnt at the stake in Campo de’Fiori.

 Dalrymple wrote his piece in response to

. . . Douglas Murray, a young neocon pup, who wrote in The Spectator last week that he “was not afraid to say the West’s values are better”, and in which he accused anyone who said to the contrary of moral confusion: “Decades of intense cultural relativism and designer tribalism have made us terrified of passing judgment,” he wrote.

Dalrymple's piece is intended to demonstrate that actually, most of the ideals of the West had precedents in the East.

Murray named western values as follows: the rule of law, parliamentary democracy, equality, and freedom of expression and conscience. He also argued that the Judeo-Christian tradition is the ethical source of these values.

Yet where do these ideas actually come from? Both Judaism and Christianity were not born in Washington or London, however much the Victorians liked to think of God as an Englishman. Instead they were born in Palestine, while Christianity received its intellectual superstructure in cities such as Antioch, Constantinople and Alexandria. At the Council of Nicea, where the words of the Creed were thrashed out in 325, there were more bishops from Persia and India than from western Europe.

Judaism and Christianity are every bit as much eastern religions as Islam or Buddhism. So much that we today value – universities, paper, the book, printing – were transmitted from East to West via the Islamic world, in most cases entering western Europe in the Middle Ages via Islamic Spain.

And where was the first law code drawn up? In Athens or London? Actually, no – it was the invention of Hammurabi, in ancient Iraq. Who was the first ruler to emphasise the importance of the equality of his subjects? The Buddhist Indian Emperor Ashoka in the third century BC, set down in stone basic freedoms for all his people, and did not exclude women and slaves, as Aristotle had done.

I recommend both Aslan's book and Dalrymple's short article.  If you are already a defender of different religions, but don't really know all that much about Islam, (I'd put myself in that category and thus can't guarantee the accuracy of these authors) reading up on this important world religion - and boogey man of US politics - will help make you a better spokesperson when you do encounter ignorance.

If you think Islam is a backward evil religion, then I merely ask you to consider whether your knowledge of Islam comes from people who love or hate Islam.  Then consider whether you would recommend Muslims around the world read books about Christianity and the West written by lovers or haters of Christianity and the West. 

I don't see it as about us or them, about winning or losing.  The religions are even besides the point.  History shows us (as in the examples quoted above about early Islam) that people who want to dominate others, use what they can to get that power - whether it is physical might, economic might, or ideological might, such as using a religion to get people to comply. 

The challenge for humankind is to keep those among us who lean towards competition and physical battle from dragging the rest of us into their wars. 

Bill Clinton to Liberal Politicians: It Gets Better

Former President Bill Clinton announced yesterday the establishment of a new website for liberal politicians.

Pointing to the rallies of angry people that are attacking liberal politicians for being educated, for being deliberate, for using data; to blatantly false ads by anonymous third party groups; and to television and radio talk-thugs who smear liberals with ridiculous lies in an attempt to destroy their careers, Clinton said he felt it was necessary to make this video to let liberal politicians know,

"It gets better.  The bullying begins with those first signs of liberalism.  Maybe you decide to become a vegetarian or you start a recycling program or bike to work.  It starts in earnest if you run for office.  Even if you call yourself a moderate instead of a progressive instead of a liberal, they can detect your liberalism.  For example,  if you oppose abortion but not for rape victims. It ratchets up if you get elected. If you run for reelection, it can become debilitating.  But you shouldn't give up.  I want you to know, that after you've been out of office a couple of years, things change.  You will be seen as a sage who had it right all along.  Trust me, I know, it gets better."

Dan Savage, when asked to comment on this, speculated that as bullies grow up the gays they picked on in high school move away and get a whole life.  So as adults, those bullies look for new victims. In the post-rational world, liberal politicians have proven easy targets.

Watch for additional videos from Jimmy Carter and Al Gore soon.

:)

Understanding, communicating, and managing risks across stakeholders and cultures

That was the title of a lecture in the email I got last week.  How could I resist?  It has all sorts of issues I'm interested in all tied together.  The 'trailer' was this:

Dr. Weber works at the intersection of psychology and economics. She is an expert on behavioral models of judgment and decision making u . [It was like that in the email] Recently she has been investigating psychologically appropriate ways to measure and model individual and cultural differences in risk taking, specifically in risky financial situations and environmental decision making and policy. Weber is past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, coeditor of Risk Decision & Policy and associate editor of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. She serves on the editorial boards of two other journals, on the executive councils of INFORMS's Decision Analysis Society and the Society for Mathematical Psychology and on an advisory committee of the National Academy of Sciences on Human Dimensions in Global Change.

So I went over to UAA this past Friday to hear Dr. Elke Weber of the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University.

How do I even write a post about this?  I have to say, though, that I found it all very exciting.  These are all topics I've studied and taught and had, informally, pulled together into my own sort of model which turned out to be very consistent to what Dr. Weber has come up with using more formal research.  So it was gratifying to have these loose understandings confirmed.  But I certainly don't have enough notes - I did start taking photos of the slides though - to be sure I understood it as she intended, though it did all make sense, except for some of the statistical calculations.  She did talk very fast and following the slides and listening to her at the same time was tricky.  But she had a lot to cover. 

Anyway, the talk was totally related to the main theme of this blog - What Do I Know and How Do I Know It?



I'll try to pull together a few of the points. 

1. how to understand how different people faced with/dealing with the same situation 'know' the situation - that is, 
1. what narratives do they have to explain the situation 
2. how do they perceive where the situation is should be placed on a continuum from
   Terrible Danger____________________________________Great Opportunity;
   
    
2. Then, how can local knowledge and scientific knowledge be combined to communicate back and forth to find mutually satisfactory strategies for policies?   

A lot of the talk was about measuring people's risk taking comfort.  She and colleagues have developed a tool to measure something called  Domain Specific Risk Taking (DoSpeRT).  They've decided that there are five key domains in a person's life (and they believe this works cross-culturally) and people's comfort with risk is not necessarily consistent from domain to domain:

1. Social
2. Ethical
3. Recreational
4. Health/safety
5. Financial

The slide to the right shows, I think, some of the questions people answer, which helps determine where they fit on the scale. 


Interesting findings were that people were not very consistent in the risk aversion from domain to domain. 

Then she went into explanations of the differences of risk taking between people.  For instance: 

Greater familiarity leads to reduced perceptions of riskiness. (So the first day you work at a nuclear power plant, your sense of risk is relatively high.  But after working there for 20 years - without experiencing an accident or other hazard - your sense of risk is much lower.)


Emotional and psychological reactions play an important role.  And Weber had on one slide:  "Technical experts and public differ in degree they rely on cognitive vs. emotional assessment of risk."

Citing Douglas and Wildavsky, Weber listed other culturally related factors that influence people's perception of risk:

• structures of social organization as source of perceptions that reinforce those structures in competition against alternative ones
• technologies or events that threaten desired social order and ways of life are seen as risky
• Egalitarian/collectivists perceive different risks than do hierarchical/individualists

And she cited Leiserowitz et al. (2009) on Segmentation analysis of Global Warming's Six Americas.  You can go to the link and find out which segment you are in. 

Another interesting part of the discussion was about human limits.  She started with Human Cognition and Motivation.  People have a limited attention and processing capability - so if they are focused on one task, they may miss completely other things that are going on.  You can test yourself on this watching this YouTube experiment.  I think I even linked to this on here once before, but maybe I just saw it but didn't link to it.  Go ahead, try it.


Then there was limited emotional capacity, and automatic versus analytic ways of knowing about probabilities.  

I won't go on and on.  Must readers will have disappeared long ago.  Those of you who are still here might understand my interest in all this. 

Really, this is the kind of thing this blog is about as I try to understand why some people are going to vote for Miller, others for Murkowski, and others for McAdams.  And why some Democrats are going to vote for McAdams and why some who profer McAdams are going to vote for Murkowski.  It goes back to the level or risk taking they are comfortable with.  Whether they will vote for their values or against their fears. 

Eventually, this talk may be up as a podcast.  They are only up to the end of September so far.  But you can go look at what else is available, including Chancellor Fran Ulmer on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill.

Do You Think You're Being Pissed On?

Perception makes all the difference. 

Some people think the Obama administration is pissing on them. 

Others think Obama is spraying them with cool water on a hot day. 

We jump to conclusions based on our past experiences and expectations as this video so humorously demonstrates. 




Thanks to Archi's blog where I found this after he commented here. We all need a good laugh every day.

A Break For Something Amazing

This is not my stuff.  See what Cal Lane does with this (LINK) tank.

Constitutional Amendment to Enlarge Alaska Legislature - Ballot Measure #1

[UPDATE: January 2014:  Here's the link to the July 2013 Proclamation Plan that was approved by the courts.  It has maps and other information.  This plan will be in effect until the 2020 census data and the new plan then.  For coverage of the Redistricting Board go to the Redistricting Board tab under the Blog Heading above or click here.]

 [UPDATE January 2013:  Although the current districts (here and linked in the Aug 2012 update) have been rejected by the Alaska Supreme Court, the 2012/2013 districts are in effect now.  There will be new districts for the 2014 election.]


 [UPDATE August 2012:  GO HERE FOR CURRENT - 2012/2013 - DISTRICT MAPS]

[UPDATE JULY 2011:  I blogged the Alaska Redistricting Board's process spring 2011 and an overview of all those posts is available at this redistricting page (or click the Alaska Redistricting Board tab just above this post) and you can find information on the process and the final new maps they created.  And yes, Southeast Alaska lost a seat as predicted.]

In addition to candidates, Alaskan voters will have two bond measures (A and B) and one Ballot Measure.  I sat through some of the committee meetings in Juneau during the legislative session where this proposed constitutional amendment was debated, and while I don't claim to totally understand it, I'll try and convey what I did get.  And I'll try to make it as easy and clear as I can. 

Basically, the change would be from 40 representatives and 20 senators to 44 and 22. 


WHY ENLARGE?

Primary Reasons:

• The 2010 Census will show an increase in population in Anchorage, Matsu, Kenai Peninsula and probably Fairbanks.
  
  
• This will necessitate redistricting to adjust for the increased population in part of the state.
  
  
• With the current number of districts, rural Alaska districts will lose seats to the urban areas.  That may not sound like a problem, however it will mean
  
  
• In rural districts, some of which are already enormous but sparsely populated and often without road access,  representatives and senators will not be physically able travel to many areas in their districts without enormous expenses and time allotments.  This is already a problem and will get worse.   In comparison, many Anchorage legislators can walk across their districts in a several hours. 

To get a sense of this, you can see on the map below how big some of the districts are.

Senate districts have letters (A, B, C, etc.) and two House districts (numbered 1-40) make up each Senate district.    So, House districts 5 and 6 are in Senate District C.  Senate District C is geographically the largest state Senate district in the United States.  To make it easier to see that on the map, I've added more red 6-C (Senate Seat C, House Seat 6) and 5-C symbols so you can see how huge Senate District C is.  You can double click the map to make it bigger or get your own, much larger, pdf of the map from the State Division of Elections.    I'd guess Senate District C is larger than most states.

Just for some perspective I've circled the Anchorage bowl which has 7 Senate districts.

Rep. Peggy Wilson of Sitka (House District 2) who introduced the House version of the bill, said there's one village in her district that costs her $1000 to fly to so she doesn't get there too often.  You get the point.  In some of the rural areas, people are scattered in small, isolated communities.  They are off the road system.  You can't easily get 300 people into a school auditorium like you can in Anchorage.  Or walk door-to-door and hit 200 households in a day.  So, legislators from these areas argue that if their districts get even larger, the quality of representation, of communication with their constituents, will get even harder.

I realize for people outside of Alaska who have never talked to one of their state reps, let alone their US Senators, this might not sound like a big deal.  But in Alaska, we all have access to these folks if we want. 

Primary reasons continued:


Federal Voting Rights Act. Besides the difficulty meeting constituents, visiting and knowing every part of their districts, there are some legal issues as well.  Alaska is one of 16 states monitored under this act.

Section 5 is a special provision of the statute (42 U.S.C. 1973c) that requires state and local governments in certain parts of the country to get federal approval (known as"preclearance") before implementing any changes they want to make in their voting procedures: anything from moving a polling place to changing district lines in the county. [emphasis added]

In Alaska's case, we are in this category because of violations of voting rights for Alaska Natives.  And the districts that would lose votes are in the rural areas with larger Alaska Native populations.  So, any changes in those districts will get special federal scrutiny to be sure that Alaska Native voting rights are not diminished.

Another reason, mentioned, mainly by urban legislators and generally not publicly, is that enlarging the legislature will keep some current legislators from losing their seats.  I can't imagine any legislator would put personal needs over public needs, so let's assume that their personal needs and the public needs overlap.

Redistricting Constraints

Voting Rights Act  - That was already discussed.


Alaska Constitution

The Alaska Constitution, Article 6, spells out requirements for house and senate districts.

[NOTE:  I like these boxes because they highlight key points for people, but they aren't accessible to the blind because they are images but the technology they have can only read text.  For any blind readers, the text of this box and the next are from Article 6, Section 6 of the Alaska Constitution.]

Alaska has, according to a Wikipedia chart based on 2005 population estimates of incorporated cities:

• 26 communities with populations of 1000 or more. 
• 123 communities with populations under 1000 including
• 89 below 500
• 15 with 100 or fewer people.

A lot of these are scattered about far from other populations and off the road system.

What does 'integrated socio-economic area" mean?  The Brennan Center lists the language above from the Alaska Constitution along with language from 23 other states and says they are versions of the idea of "community of interest."

Several redistricting criteria — like following county or municipal lines, or drawing districts that are compact — are in some ways proxies for finding communities of common interest. These are groups of individuals who are likely to have similar legislative concerns, and who might therefore benefit from cohesive representation in the legislature.

 I'm not sure how this criterion can even be met in Anchorage where many different types of communities - ethnically, politically, economically, etc. - live side by side.   Maybe they are united in their urban view of the world.


Other Issues



Cost

The original bills in the legislature called for increases of 8 representatives and 4 senators.  One of the questions that came up was whether there was enough room in each Chamber to house all the new legislators, plus whether additions to the capitol would need to be made to give everyone offices.  Cutting back to only six new legislators seemed to take care of most of the construction questions.  Below is a view of the House chambers.  There's room to squeeze in four more seats.  There's already an empty seat for the speaker who sits up front anyway. 

And the Senate should have no problem moving things slightly to fit in two more desks.

From the Legislative Website's Publication page

After HJR 38 passed the House State Affairs committee, with the change from 12 new legislators to six. I wrote following based on what was said in the committee.

This basically cuts the fiscal note in half. The estimated costs of the original resolution was about $4,470,000 million plus for each year and with the cut, it reduces the annual extra cost to $2,342,000. Also, wouldn't have to do any reconstruction changes.

If there have to be any new buildings, that will be more.  At one session Rep. Carl Gatto offered to build a new Capitol building in Wasilla.  Others suggested evicting the Governor and taking over the 3rd floor of the Capitol



A few more  points (which I haven't verified) made in the bill's Sponsor's Statement include:

• Alaska has the smallest bicameral legislature in the nation. 
  
  
• Since 1960 (Statehood was 1959) to 2006, 29 states have increased the size of their legislatures. 
   
• Of the nine smaller states (509,000 - 1,429,000) the average size of the legislature is 134 (compared to our 60). 
   
• The state budget has gone from $104 million in FY '61 to $7 billion today. 
   
• All redistricting plans, after 1960,  have been successfully challenged in the courts and any reduction in rural districts is likely to make such a challenge a certainty again. 

So, should you vote to enlarge the the legislature?

Urban legislators don't seem to care too much unless they are interested in rural Alaska.

This is an important item for rural Alaska.

No matter what happens, given Gov. Parnell's appointments  to the redistricting board [the only report I could find after ten minutes of googling about the make up of the board - not simply the appointments - is the Alaska Ear], my guess is that the plan will be challenged no matter what.

I believe that the voice of rural Alaska is not well heard in Juneau as most of the legislators are from urban areas.  The ratio will be worse, even with the extra seats.  The size of the rural districts and the expense of traveling to all the towns and villages in those huge, roadless expanses make representing one's district far more difficult than in urban areas.

But if we could allocate the extra $2 plus million a year that the additional seats will cost to rural Alaska projects instead, that might be a better deal all around.  But that would never happen.

According to Article 13 of the Alaska Constitution, it will take a majority vote to pass. (It needed 2/3 vote in both houses of the legislature.)

New Spamming Trick (for me anyway)

There were two new comments on the post about Miller's admiration of East Germany's ability to protect its borders from its own citizens in my email box today.  Blogspot sends me emails of the comments as well as posting them.  This is especially helpful for comments on older posts that I wouldn't see otherwise.  While I can have the comments held until I review them, I don't need to do that.  (There was a month or two in the past where I did to monitor an interesting but sometimes abusive commenter.)  Blogspot's new spam filter does block some comments on its own that it suspects are spam which the blogger can then either delete or post.

Spammers try many different techniques.  The most common has been to say nice, but generic things about the blog, like "Gee, I really like your blog, it is very interesting."  The name and/or somewhere in the comment will be a link to their advertising site.

If they are good, they will even mention something from your post, "Your flowers are beautiful and I really like your blog."

But today there was a new twist, which got past the spam filters, even though the linked names of the commenters were Nail Fungus Cure and Impotence Pills.  When I saw the email the names instantly aroused my suspicions, but the comments were very relevant to the post.  And also familiar.  Familiar because they simply copied previous comments on that post. 

It's clear that humans are being hired to go to sites, figure out the captca codes and add some comment that is relevant.

But, according to Technologyreview, they are also sending solved captchas to be used automated spammers. 

But the inventors of CAPTCHAS probably didn't anticipate this: Hundreds, possibly thousands of laborers working for less than $50 a month to solve an endless stream of CAPTCHAS delivered to them by automated middlemen who sell the results to spammers in real time, so that their spam bots can use those solutions to post to forums and blogs as well as set up fraudulent email accounts, says a paper about to be delivered at the USENIX Security Symposium.

By the way, Wikipedia says captcha is an invented acronym for

"Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."


This isn't a completely trivial post.  Spam costs time, money, and bandwidth.  But it's a a relatively easy post while I try to write something substantive on a talk at UAA Friday, a Senate race on the Hillside, and Ballot Measure 1 - the Constitutional amendment to enlarge the Alaska legislature.

Tony Hopfinger and Handcuffs on Moore Up North

My eyelids are drooping.  I've just erased what I was writing because it was . . . sooo boring.

(double click the photo to enlarge it)

We went to the old Fly-by-Night Club tonight, now reborn as Taproot, where Shannyn Moore has moved her weekly KYES talk show.  Taping was tonight and it should air Saturday on KYES, Channel 5, and on Shannyn's blog soon.  (The link is to the show two weeks ago with Tom Begich and Scott McAdams.  But you should be able to find tonight's show there too in a few days.)

See, it's still boring.  The show wasn't.  Tony Hopfinger, Joe Miller's first notch on his handcuffs, was on, and then there was a panel of journalists - Tom Brennen of the old Anchorage Times and now the The Anchorage Daily Planet on line; Craig Medred of the Alaska Dispatch now, and formerly an outdoor writer for the ADN;  and attorney and former legislator Eric Croft. 

I found the evening depressing.  Gallows humor was the standard as people discussed the man who handcuffed a reporter trying to ask him serious questions that he seriously doesn't want to answer.  Miller's in a dead heat in the polls with the US Senator he beat in the primaries, while Scott McAdams, the Democrat seems to be trailing badly.  Democrats used to win Alaska elections by having the right split the vote.  Murkowski seems to be trying to fight that history by selling the story that McAdams can't win, and if he did, he's not qualified, and that to save Alaska from Miller, they have to vote Murkowski.  Or not vote at all.

l-r Moore, Brennan, Medred, Croft

Then Medred proudly announces that he never votes because he thinks it's a conflict of interest for journalists to vote.  This is the guy who covered bears and backpacking most of the time he wrote for the Anchorage Daily News.  For crying out loud, this is the United States where everyone has the right and duty to vote.  Even judges.

To be fair to Craig, there are people who take his position as seen in these essays on whether journalists should vote at  Politico.  But I come down with Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review.   Even if you don't vote, your objectivity is a myth.  Even the emotion free Data would be partisan because he'd rationally tally up the pluses and minuses of each candidate and figure out who would be best. Not voting is like academics using 'we' instead of 'I' to make their articles sound less subjective.  It doesn't really change anything except their myth of objectivity.  Better to simply tell readers your bias, write balanced articles, and let the readers judge for themselves. 

I look at everything that comes out as potentially tainted.  It seems like every webpage I opened today had an ad for Lisa Murkowski.  The narrative that a vote for McAdams is a vote for Miller may or may not be true, but it is also the political message the Murkowski camp is using to get Democrats to vote for her.

I wouldn't take anything for granted.  While corporate Native Alaska has ponied up nearly $1 million to support Murkowski, village Native Alaska may not be as ready to buy into this.  And some Alaskan Native youth see McAdams as their candidate and are speaking out about it.   With people hanging up on robocalls and with cell phones not being called by most pollsters, it seems to me people should vote for the person who best matches their values rather than playing voter roulette in an attempt to outsmart themselves. And if Joe Miller wins?  He's one person out of 100 in the Senate.  The world won't end.  (But it will probably be meaner and harsher.)

But I did meet an interesting couple from Homer who sailed the world for 15 years before picking Kachemak Bay as their home.

Do You Know the Five Pillars of Islam?

Nihad Awad, according to a flier handed out at the talk at Alaska Pacific University (APU) last Friday night, is "the national executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest non-profit Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States."  The rest, from my notes, is an abbreviated version of what I heard him say. [Translation:  my rough notes should not be taken as authoritative word on Islam, but the spur for you to find out more. Like at the website of the Islamic Community Center of Anchorage  which broke ground for their masjid last week.]

He began briefly talking about growing up in a refugee camp in Aman, Jordan and learning about the US by watching television - one of two sets in the camp.  Hollywood doesn't send out a good image of the United States he said.  Nevertheless, it was a place that he wanted to see for himself one day, but never dreamed he would be able to.

Schooling in the camp wasn't very good.  It was in a tent and he didn't learn much.  But something must have worked because he got a chance to go to college in Italy, where he learned Italian and got a degree in engineering.  And eventually he made it to the United States.  He is now proud to be a United States citizen.  The talk then turned to his understanding of Islam.


Muslims, he said, believe in the same God as do Christians and Jews.  He was surprised when he learned that in the west they talk about Allah as though this were a different Muslim god.  Allah is simply the Arabic word for god.  He cited a survey that found that 10% of Americans believed that Muslims believe in a moon god.

You're not a Muslim, he said, if you don't believe in Jesus and the miracles of Jesus, in Moses, and in Abraham.  A difference is in the nature of Jesus.  For Muslims, I think he said, Jesus is a prophet, not God.


Mohammad did not write the Koran, he said.  He couldn't have because he was illiterate.  It was revealed to him over 23 years by the angel Gabriel.   He pointed out that millions of people today have memorized the whole Koran in Arabic.  (This reminded me how remarkable the human brain is and how we are all capable of far more than we realize.  Before radio and television many Americans also memorized the bible.  Now we can't even memorize our passwords.)


He said there are five pillars of Islam:

1. Declare there is only one god.  (Sounds like the first of the ten commandments)
2. Daily prayer, five times a day - He said that talking to God five times a day was a great source of peace.
3. Giving charity - to the poor, orphans, the stranded, etc.  "You're not a good Muslim if you go to bed full, but your neighbor is hungry."
4. Fasting - the sick, travelers, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempted.  
5. Pilgrimage - The Hajj

[These match the five pillars of Sunni Muslims according to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia says Shia's five pillars are different.]

He also talked about Reason and Human Rights.


Reason

• God asked us to use our heads
• Education - obligation for men and women
• Independence of Women - equal responsibility to build and protect the family, women keep their own names

Human Rights

• Dignity is important
• In charge of the environment - shouldn't waste the earth
• Sanctity of human life - "Killing of one innocent life is equal to killing all mankind."  Conversely, "Saving one innocent life is equal to saving all mankind."

Not your image of Islam?  That was the point of the talk.  Just as Awad got his first (false) image of the US through television, he said Americans get their view of Islam through the news media.  It's like outsiders basing their opinion of  Christianity on people like Hitler and Timothy McVeigh.

Here's the end of his talk:





One of the questioners was about the book I'm reading for this month's book club meeting - No god but God. Reza Islan argues that the battles we see in Islam today are not about the West and Islam, but rather they are a modern reformation among Islams, a struggle for who will define Islam. Will it look to the past or will it adjust to the modern world. He suggests that Islam in the US can and should play a major role in this debate. Did Awad agree, asked the questioner.

He did. He believes that real Islam is very consistent with American ideas of equality and justice and thus US Muslims have a critical role to play in the world of Islam.

[Again, this is my take on what happened - leaving a lot out.  If something doesn't look right, contact Nihad Awad to get clarification.  And then leave a comment to correct my errors.]

Let me add another note.  I was reminded of a conference I attended in India several years ago.  In one panel on Islamic justice in Pakistani villages, the panelists all said that Islam in the villages was still mixed with local tribal traditions that were not based on Islam.  It is often these non-Islamic tribal customs that result in the abuses of women and others that lead to outraged Western headlines pointing at how primitive Islam is.