Kabala Shish Kebab - Anchorage Folk Festival Surprises

 This is one of those events that prove what many people believe isn't true.  People can work for love and altruism.  They can put on a big two weekend long festival without charging admission. People will voluntarily make enough donations to make sure that those things they do have to pay for - airfare for the special guest performers, etc.   And the music is great. 

We didn't get there until about 9 pm on Saturday as Galpals was playing. 

Then Delaney Scott sang - powerfully - with her father as backup. 
















This group was introduced as 'kids' from high school who had grown up with the festival.  When they sang they didn't sound like kids. 

Eric Rodgers was one of my favorites.  He started with a mandolin and then switched to the fiddle.  One of the fiddle songs (it's on the video) reminded me of some of the neat Burmese singing we heard.  (The Burmese (Karen) singing is the second song on the video here.)  By the way, there is only one Eric, I just played a bit with my photos. 

Wendy Withrow played with Ray Booker.

So what about Kabala Shish Kebob you're asking?  Or did you forget about that already?

This is Reverend Poor Child from Homer.  He's got a low voice and some very unique lyrics.  The song on the video began with shish kebob and then went on to mention problems with a bunch of different religions.  He gets to Kabala Shish Kebob at the end of the song - where his clip starts on the video below. 


The video gives a sense of the evening - but just a sense.  You need to be there.  I'll try to redo the opening picture of the video. I'm not sure what happened, but I'm putting it up for now and will fix it when I can. Sorry. But it doesn't spoil the music, just makes the opening a bit off. All the above groups except Galpals are on the video.


There's more music tonight (Sunday) and all week and next weekend. Check out the Anchorage Folk Festival website. The main events are in the Wendy Williamson auditorium at UAA. Free parking.











This is 2011, but they have some old posters up too.

"Made In Dagenham" Puts Political "Jobs" Threats In Context

I've been thinking about a post about the current political reason for everything:  JOBS.

Yesterday when I saw the movie Made in Dagenham, I decided it was time to do the post. 

"Jobs" has replaced 'terror' as the ultimate political reason for or against anything.  Today politicians use the word "jobs"  to justify almost any proposal. But it's important to demand of politicians:

• "Excuse me, but could you tell me the specific number of jobs in question?"
• "Could you please outline the evidence that shows how many jobs will be gained (or lost)"?

Here are a few examples starting with probably the most bizarre -  US House Bill 2 that just passed the House:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

This Act may be cited as the ``Repealing the Job-Killing Health 
Care Law Act''. 

Obama mentions jobs every time he can:

"We will be increasing U.S. exports to China by more than $45 billion, and China's investments in America by several billion dollars. Most important, these deals will support some 235,000 American jobs," said Obama. [VOA]

Alaska Governor Sean Parnell made jobs the key reason the state should cut oil taxes:

Gov. Sean Parnell said Thursday that the issue of whether to cut oil taxes comes down to a simple question: How important are new jobs to legislators?
Parnell has proposed changing the way Alaska calculates its oil production tax as a way to boost industry investment, create jobs and get more oil flowing through the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline.

And a couple days later, Parnell used the word "jobs" 17 times in his State of the State address.  To put this in context, here are the frequencies of some other words (and close variants such as economy, economics, economically, etc.) in the speech:

Alaska	52
economy	23
jobs	17
resources	14
develop	8
education	8
mining	7
growth	5
safety	5
domestic violence	5
children	5
oil	4
harvest (timber, fish, salmon)	3
natural gas	2
timber	2
fish	1
military	1
Hollywood films	1
health	0

Note:  These are just some of the key 
words that seemed  to be used frequently.

Parnell has submitted legislation to change how we tax oil companies to stimulate the economy and increase the number of jobs.

"We can, quote, 'lose' $5 billion in state revenue with tax changes and create more jobs for Alaskans, and Alaska's savings account could still grow, depending upon the assumptions used," Parnell said. (The News Tribune)

From the fiscal notes to the Governor's bill (SB 49)

Using the Fall 2010 forecast assumptions, this provision is expected to result in revenue impacts as follows:

• FY 2013: -$   382 million 

• FY 2014: -$   961 million 

• FY 2015: -$1,126 million  

• FY 2016: -$1,341 million  

• FY 2017: -$1,423 million

Note the minus signs before the dollar signs.  He's saying, "Let's cut their taxes (our revenue) by $5 billion in five years and see how many jobs they'll add to the economy."

"Excuse me Governor, could you tell me the specific number of jobs that will be gained?"

Because if it isn't 30,000 jobs a year, I'm not too interested.

Because that average of $1 billion a year could create 30,000 jobs at $33,000 a pop.  Why gamble on what the oil companies might do?  That would give jobs to each of the

"estimated 29,300 Alaskan workers [who] were without jobs but looking." (ADN)

The last time an oil company added significant jobs to Alaska was when the Exxon Valdez hit the reef.  

It's better we use the $5 billion.  We could even offer private companies an incentive to hire workers by paying 25% of their salary for the first year.  We'd still have lots of money left over for working on one of Parnell's pet projects - like preventing domestic violence.  There are lots of possibilities that would give us more certainty than just cutting the oil taxes and hoping the companies will follow through with investments and jobs in Alaska.  

Made in Dagenham

Now, all of this became a lot more compelling after watching Made in Dagenham yesterday.  In that movie, women machinists in a Ford factory in UK went on strike in 1968  to be get equal pay as men.  Ford sent an American executive to UK who said Ford couldn't afford to pay women the same as men and such an increase would cause Ford to have to pull out of England and cost England 40,000 jobs.  

The strike went on until they were invited to meet the employment secretary Barbara Castle.   She struck a deal with them for 92% of the men's wages and a future equal pay law, which passed two years later. (Who knows when the US Equal Pay Act was passed?) 

Now, this was a movie - based on real events - so one has to allow for dramatic license.  However, there was a clear threat by the Ford representative to pull jobs out of England if the women got their way.  The women got their way and proved that the Ford threat was a bluff. 

Today corporations continue to make those threats.  I say $5 billion in the hand is worth a lot of jobs in the Bush.  I'd like to see the oil companies tell us how many jobs we get for that $5 billion tax cut over five years.  If it's not a bluff, well, with the price of oil predicted to continue rising (I picked just one link here, but you can google and find others on your own), at some point as the price goes up, if there is retrievable oil in the ground, the oil companies will come back and we'll make more for each barrel then anyway. (I know there are issues of shutting down the pipeline etc. but that could happen as the flow is reduced anyway.)

And, as the governor said in his speech, we have $8 billion in reserves.  And we have $33 billion in the Alaska Permanent Fund.  We can take this risk.  Most of the other states are in the red.   If we started to tap 5% of the Permanent Fund for the state budget - that was the original intent of the fund - say in 2018, that would go a long way to paying our bills. Or we could reduce the tax sometime in the future if someone can demonstrate with more certainty than the Governor has offered it would stimulate the economy more than we'd lose in revenue. 

My feeling is that like the Ford threat to pull out of England, the job promise the Governor offers in exchange for the oil tax revenue is an empty promise that will simply benefit the oil companies and do Alaska token benefit at best.

Would you give away large amounts of your income on the vague promise of better times to come in the future, with no backup evidence, let alone a signed contract?  Of course not.  Neither should we. 


One last note.  Labor unions missed a great opportunity to educate their members and the public by not promoting Made in Dagenham.  It shows what united workers can do, but it also shows the tensions that arise when there's a strike.   And it shows the important contributions unions have made to equal rights, though the union itself doesn't come off unscathed either.  It's playing at the Totem for $3.

Student Tracking Indicates Limited Learning in College

That was the headline.    The story in the ADN said that in this study they tested college kids and found that they had only increased their knowledge by 7% in two years.

As a retired professor, I have lots of thoughts on this.  It's true, lots of students don't really know how to write or think critically.  Those aren't easy-to-teach skills and university systems are making it harder and harder for faculty to teach them.  But how did they test for that?   There's lots to write about, but let's just look at the test in this post.

From the AP story at Valleynewslive.com (which has more of this AP story than the ADN).

The research found an average-scoring student in fall 2005 scored seven percentage points higher in spring of 2007 on the assessment. In other words, those who entered college in the 50th percentile would rise to the equivalent of the 57th after their sophomore years.

Among the findings outlined in the book and report, which tracked students through four years of college:

-Overall, the picture doesn't brighten much over four years. After four years, 36 percent of students did not demonstrate significant improvement, compared to 45 percent after two.

-Students who studied alone, read and wrote more, attended more selective schools and majored in traditional arts and sciences majors posted greater learning gains.

My first questions was:  how do you test such a thing?  So I looked up the test.

It's written up in a new book called Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, but I don't have the book.  But the test they used is called the College Learning Assessment (CLA), and I found information on it.

From the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development:

Unlike standardized tests such as the GRE or GMAT, the CLA is not a multiple choice test. Instead, the multi-part test is a holistic assessment based on open-ended prompts. “Performance Task” section prompts students with an imagined “real world” scenario, and provides contextual documents that provide evidence and data. The students are asked to assess and synthesize the data and to construct an argument based on their analysis.

So one would find out not just how much trivia a student has memorized for the test, but whether they understand its relevance in context and can write about it.  Grading this sort of test isn't easy, but with a rubric and training for the graders you can get reasonably reliable scores.  The Performance Task is graded using four factors (see boxes below) and you can see the grading benchmarks for each here.

The Lumina Longitudinal Study: Summary of Procedures and Findings  by Dr. Stephen Klein ("the principal investigator of the Lumina-funded CLA Longitudinal Study (2005-2009)") describes the kinds of test questions:

The Analytic Writing Task consists of two sections. First, students are allotted 45 minutes for the Make-an-Argument task in which they present their perspective on an issue like “Government funding would be better spent on preventing crime than dealing with criminals after the fact.” Next, the Critique-an-Argument task gives students 30 minutes to identify and describe logical flaws in an argument.

Here is one example:

Butter has now been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. Only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who still ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers cannot distinguish margarine from butter, or they use the term “butter” to refer to either butter or margarine. Thus, to avoid the expense of purchasing butter, the Happy Pancake House should extend this cost-saving change to its restaurants in the southeast and northeast as well.

How many logical flaws did you find in the argument?  Even if you can't name them, can you describe them?

Wait!  Don't just move on.  Stop and try to find at least one or two flaws in that passage.  After all, critical thinking ability is what this is all about.  If you're having trouble, at least go look at this list of logical fallacies.




I'm of two minds here.  First I think we should be teaching people how to think critically.  After all, this blog is called "What Do I Know?" and the underlying theme - even if it isn't always obvious - is how do people know what they know?  So I'm all for students learning more about rationality, non-rational ways of knowing, logic, etc. 

But not scoring higher on this particular assessment only means that the students didn't increase their ability in the skills this test was testing.  Perhaps the students greatly increased their knowledge of human anatomy or accounting or their ability to read French.  And it would seem the test wouldn't catch that. 

A test like this is only fair if the colleges' goal is teaching the skills this test assesses.

But apparently there are other problems.   Dr. Klein's team had trouble keeping schools and students in the test pool from year to year.

A total of 9,167 Lumina freshmen completed the fall 2005 testing, but only 1,330 of them (14 percent) eventually completed all three phases of testing. Most of the attrition was due to schools rather than individual students dropping out of the study (although some schools may have dropped out because of difficulty recruiting students to participate). Only 26 (52 percent) of the initial 50 schools tested at least 25 students in both Phases 1 and 3; just 20 schools (40 percent) met the minimum sample size requirements in all three phases. These 20 schools tested 4,748 freshmen in the fall of 2005, 2,327 rising juniors in the spring of 2007, and 1,675 seniors in the spring of 2009.

On the average, a school that stayed in the study for all three phases lost about one-third of its students that participated as freshmen. Thus, although this is a substantial loss, it is far less than the overall attrition rate. We found that dropouts were more likely to be Black or Hispanic, non-native English speakers, and students with total SAT scores about 80 points lower than their classmates. However, even when taken together, these student-level characteristics explained only five percent of the variance in students’ decisions to drop out of the study (but perhaps not from the school). We looked for but did not find any school characteristics associated with dropping out of the study.

I'll have to let others with better statistical skills judge whether they were still within the parameters needed for legitimate sample size.  


What Does it Mean?

If the research is saying, "US college students are not learning basic thinking skills" they are probably right.  The next question is whether US colleges are teaching them.  (If they aren't trying to teach them and are teaching something else, then so what?)  My experience, and I'll try to do another post on this, is that there are serious institutional barriers to teaching thinking skills, even for those who want to.  As someone who taught graduate students in relatively small classes, I had the luxury of being able to assign (and comment on in detail) many writing assignments over a semester.  But this is for another post. 

But if the purpose of the test is to raise awareness that these skills  - often bandied about as important - aren't being taught, then that's something else.  And should people think this is important, well, they just happen to have a test to use to measure it. 

I have no reason to be suspicious here, but we should talk about the cost of the test, because  anyone who develops such a test,  has an incentive for people to use it.  From the Council for Aid to Education:

How much does it cost? The cost is $6,500 for a one-year cross-sectional design with an additional $25 charge for each student tested over the 100 each fall and spring. If you are interested in a more specialized design model, please contact CAE staff to discuss pricing.

One hundred schools would be $650,000 per year.  That doesn't mean there is anything wrong with them making money off of this.  After all that's the incentive built into capitalism.  And these tests will be costly to grade because you need real people doing it. But one gets into the murky area between objective assessment and promoting self interest.  I have no idea where the money goes (it's a non-profit and may well go into laudatory activities), but it's a question to keep in mind.  After all, some say that No Child Left Behind was a big money maker for the test makers who lobbied hard to set up the program. 



It's also not clear to me exactly what the relationship is between Dr. Klein and the book authors Richard Arum and Josipa Roska.  The Council for Aid to Education (CAE) website says  

Dr. Stephen Klein, the principal investigator of the Lumina-funded CLA Longitudinal Study (2005-2009)

But an NYU page says:

Richard Arum, professor of sociology and education at New York University with joint appointments at FAS and NYU Steinhardt, and Josipa Roska, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, embarked on a multi-year, longitudinal study of more than 2300 undergraduate students at 24 universities across the country. Using a newly developed, state-of-the-art measurement tool, the College Learning Assessment (CLA), the research pair measured the extent to which students improved on these higher order skills. The CLA is a tool developed by the Council for Aid to Education, a national nonprofit based in New York.

Are these different studies?

Another CAE page says this.

The Council for Aid to Education (CAE) heralds the publication of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). This study was made possible by CAE’s policy to make its Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) database of over 200,000 student results across hundreds of colleges available to scholars and scholarly organizations. We were pleased to assist the authors in this major Social Science Research Council sponsored project.

But if they were only using existing data, why would they say that "the research pair measured the extent. . ."?  I guess if you know they were just using existing data collected by someone else, and that they used the data to 'measure the extent . . "  but to me it sounds like they conducted the assessment itself.  I don't know which is right.

I don't think there is anything fishy here, just confusing. Maybe a webmaster put up the wrong stuff. 

The NYU Site site says:

Funding for their research was provided by the Ford, Lumina, Carnegie, and Teagle Foundations.

It used to be that studies from non-profits could be trusted.  But we've had a proliferation of "think tanks" set up to produce research that further a political or economic agenda, so we always need to look at where the money was coming from and going to.

Swans, Kings, and Networks - Three Movies

We saw Black Swan in LA and then The King's Speech and The Social Network when we got back. Two very good films and one ugly duckling. 

Black Swan

The people in front of us giggled during the serious parts. And I couldn't fault them. We should have listened to a friend who didn't like it. The ballet was uninspired and while all the ballet stories about controlling parents, rivalries for parts, sleeping with the director, etc. may be true, this film's attempt to put everything into one ballerina with special effects didn't work for me. It all fell into place when someone said they'd heard it was like a horror ballet flick. Of course. It was Friday the 13th in tutus. (Or maybe a ballet movie with a touch of horror movie.)  But horror movies don't do much for me.  I'm truly baffled at the people who think this is a great movie or that Natalie Portman was great in this part. We walked out feeling we'd been conned by the movie marketers. 

If you want to see a good ballet movie - with many of the same cliche subplots - get Mao's Last Dancer. A much better movie. Proof once more that marketing determines the success of a movie.


The King's Speech

On the other hand, people will still be admiring The King's Speech in 30 years. Who would have thought a movie about a speech therapist could be so gripping. It just proves that it's all about how you tell the story. Just a terrific movie.


The Social Network

And I think this one was even better. How did I conclude that? Because the film was so densely packed that I want to see it again. The movie, for me at least, was done well enough that I concluded they were all right. Zuckerman was just so far ahead of everyone - his vision, his understanding of the concept, of the technology, and mostly of the new reality - that even if he stole the basic idea, where he took it no one else could have taken it. And the only person in the movie who was at his level was Sean Parker, the creator of Napster, who got it immediately, and shared what he had learned with Zuckerman. The others weren't wrong either - they weren't treated right, but they were still in a previous century frame of mind.  And they got paid off in the settlement. 

Democracy - Montana Senate Head of DUI Rules, Stopped for ... Guess!

Not a DUI, but close.

From the Missoulian today:

State Sen. Jim Shockley of Victor, who heads the panel hearing bills to crack down on drunken driving, was cited Friday for an open container after an off-duty sheriff's deputy saw him drinking a beer on Interstate 90, Missoula police said.

"He pulled off on the Orange Street exit and city officers were able to locate the vehicle and pulled him over," Missoula Police Detective Sgt. Bob Bouchee said Wednesday.

Shockley - a 2012 Republican candidate for attorney general, the state's chief law enforcement and legal officer - said he was drinking a beer and tomato juice*  concoction when he was stopped.

So, do we celebrate that the person heading this committee to crack down on drunk driving has a personal understanding of the issue?  Or do we cry?  At least the Missoulian did its homework a bit and gave this background:

Montana outlawed open containers in vehicles in 2005 in legislation sponsored by Sen. Gary Perry, R-Belgrade. The Senate approved the bill on second reading on Jan. 29, 2005, by a 46-4 vote, and on third reading two days later on a 45-5 vote. In both instances, Shockley voted "no."

I guess he's still voting 'no.'

"It's just another reason for police to pull you over and check for something illegal in your car," Shockley told the Associated Press at the time. "This is what we consider our freedom and this is our right: If you're not drunk, you shouldn't be pulled over."

What if you are working on getting drunk?

I'm constantly amazed at how important alcohol is to so many people.  I wonder how many people reading this have a drink in their hand or just had one.  I'm not judging, just observing. 


*That's the spirit  says this is real drink:

Beer Bloody Mary:
Mix beer and tomato juice, half and half. Add a dash of Tabasco and a dash of Worcestershire.

Leftover LA Shots - Villa Brasil, Eucalyptus, Levi Store, DC-3, Cactus Flower

Hotel Villa Brasil on West Washington is delightful refuge in the city and there's a Brazilian restuarant with it.  And Leaf Organic is down the block.

Eucalyptus bark.

A used jeans shop on Pico near Gateway.

A gathering of clouds watch the sun set.

DC-3 memorial at Santa Monica airport.

Cactus Flowers

Legislature Starts and I'm in Anchorage

Last year I was in Juneau when the legislature was in session.  It isn't happening this year, but that's no reason not to keep informed.  BASIS lets you find out a lot of what is going on and much of the legislature is available live (and replay) through your cable. And on line.

You can also track the bills submitted. Bills  .    As of today, 165 bills have been submitted - 110 by House members (there are 40 of them) and 55 by Senate members (there are 20 of them). Did they plan that perfect 2:1 ratio? I doubt it.

 

Having trouble keeping up with the jargon?  No problem.  On the publications page, in addition to many other documents, there is a glossary.(pdf)

In the glossary you'd find out that a resolution is:

Expression of the will, wish, or direction of the Legislature. A resolution generally does not have the effect of law (see Uni- form Rule 49).

There were four introduced and passed already in the house.  Five introduced and four passed from the Senate.  (I'm assuming that the four that passed were introduced as identical resolutions in both houses, but we can check on that too, below.)

A concurrent resolution is:

Similar to the simple resolution, but reflects the will, wish, view, or decision of both houses speaking concurrently.

And a joint resolution is:

The most formal type of resolution, adopted by both houses, and signed by the Governor as a ministerial formality. It is accorded many of the formalities of a bill but is not subject to veto.   Mainly used to express the view or wish of the Legislature to the President, Congress, or agencies of the U.S. government or the governments of other states. It is required for proposing or ratifying amendments to the U.S. or Alaska Constitution.

Either BASIS is not up-to-date yet or I can't figure out how to find what I need.  I couldn't find any legislation introduced on the House side.  There is a list of Senate bills and resolutions.  I looked up Senate resolutions passed and got only one - SR1 (Senate Resolution 1). (Jrn refers to the journal which records all actions)

Jrn-Date	Jrn-Page		Action
01/18/11	0011	(S)	READ THE FIRST TIME
01/18/11	0011	(S)	FN1: ZERO(S.RLS)
01/18/11	0011	(S)	TAKEN UP ON FINAL PASSAGE
01/18/11	0012	(S)	PASSED Y20 N-
01/18/11	0015	(S)	MEMBERS: STEVENS (CHAIR), ELLIS,
01/18/11	0015	(S)	HOFFMAN, MCGUIRE, MENARD, MEYER, WAGONER

If you click on any of the Jrn-Page links above you'll find out that SR1

1-18-2011 Senate Journal 0012


The question being: "Shall SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 1

Establishing a Senate Special Committee on World Trade, pass the

Senate?" The roll was taken with the following result:

SR 1
Final Passage

YEAS:  20   NAYS:  0   EXCUSED:  0   ABSENT:  0 

Yeas:  Coghill, Davis, Dyson, Egan, Ellis, French, Giessel, Hoffman,
Huggins, Kookesh, McGuire, Menard, Meyer, Olson, Paskvan,
Stedman, Stevens, Thomas, Wagoner, Wielechowski

and so, SENATE RESOLUTION NO. 1 passed the Senate and was
referred to the Secretary for engrossment and enrollment.

Despite all I've said about this being available online, it's a lot easier if one is there hanging around the committee meetings. I think the easiest, if you aren't there, is to have cable on in the background and check now and then. If there is something interesting, you can go to BASIS and look up the exact wording of the bill or resolution.

Also, there are other blogs that cover bits and pieces.

Shana Crondahl - who I met through her comments here, but never in person - set up Alaska Education Update last session and it's up again this year.  It's a teaser for a more in-depth reports on education issues in the legislature that you have to pay for.   (Nothing wrong with that.)  Right now it seems you can see the pay-site for two weeks for free.

There have been other subscription sites as well, but I need to track them down. 

Below are some legislators' blogs I could find.  It's not clear whether they will keep these up-to-date or not.  And there may well be more than this.  I tried to find which legislators blogged last year and Bob Lynn and Mike Doogan seemed to be the only ones who had independently set up their own blogs.  But the one I found for Doogan didn't seem to be current.  While a legislative blog is more likely to be a PR forum, some legislators - Lynn and Coghill below - actually write like bloggers.  Munoz's is more lists and short bulletins rather than personal observation and discussion. 

Rep. Lynn's Blog (Last post Nov. 2010)

Rep. Munoz Blog  (Last post Jan 2010)

Sen. Coghill Blog (last post July 2010)

"Each Day I Compliment Someone"

I don't make New Years resolutions, but it's interesting to see what other people want to change.  Yesterday, in Amy Dickinson's column I saw one of the best resolutions ever:

Dear Amy: I made this resolution last year and am doing it again this year.
Each day I compliment someone. The lady in front of me in line with a pretty scarf, the family in a restaurant with well-behaved children, the person who holds a door for me, the person who assists me on the phone, etc.
It forces me to look for the good in people and makes someone's day pleasant. — Cecelia Lovas

It's so simple.  So easy to do.  And so powerful.  Imagine, someone is tired, feeling unappreciated, and there you are saying, "Wow, you really helped me.  I truly appreciate the extra effort you made."  And suddenly some sort of chemical reaction happens and the person lights up.  As long as it's genuine.   This is such an painless way to make the world a better place by raising the feel good quotient of someone each day.  And once you get used to looking someone in the eye and giving a sincere thank you for some small favor or service, you can do more than one a day.   I'm sure the drug companies don't want us to know how easily we can replace their happy pills just by being nice to each other.  And no bad side effects either.  And it's free.  And each of us has this power if we only use it. 

It doesn't have to be a New Year's resolution.  You can just put "Compliment someone" on your todo list each day. 

Cecelia Lovas - you have a great idea there.  Thanks!

What's Going to Happen When the Post Office Dies?

When I got back to Anchorage I went to the post office to pick up our held mail.  It was about 4pm.  There were about 14 people in line ahead of me.  There was one clerk, who kept going into the back so there was no one behind the counter for minutes at a time.  The crowd was getting longer. 

I understand that for most government agencies that face private competition (like schools) the private companies can skim the most lucrative and easy to handle business and leave the government with the more expensive and difficult business.  Private schools don't have to take every student, and you know that parents who pay for their kids' education are going to take more interest in their kids' schooling.  Fedex and UPS have taken the high end quick delivery business and left the post office with expensive daily to your door delivery for everyone.  So the post office can't use its express mail profits to help cover home delivery, because the others are taking much of that profit.  And we end up with post offices with nobody behind the counter.  But they really have to take care of customers and can't leave them waiting in line like this.

I thought about just shouting out so the people in the back could hear, "DOES ANYBODY WORK HERE?"  Everyone else looked so accepting of this pitiful service.  But when someone else came to the front (the only clerk was gone again) to talk to the person at the counter, I got out of line and went up to him, and more politely said, "Is there anyone back there who could help out?  There are all these people in line (more had piled in behind me) and NO ONE is out front here.  I just need to pick up mail and so do others."  He said he was a carrier and on his way home, but he'd get the manager.  Shortly thereafter a man came out, looked concerned, and asked for the people picking up mail.  About five of us came over and I got out much faster.

But they shouldn't need customers telling them.  They should have a way of sending someone up front when the line gets too long.  Queueing theory is an old science and all the  retail companies larger than 5 employees use it.  It has formulas for when you need to send more people out to keep customer from waiting more than a predetermined 'acceptable' wait time.

We used to have good post office service in Alaska.  But this was really pitiful.  (OK, I know you Chicago readers wonder what I'm complaining about since they didn't throw out my mail, but we're used to better.)

Oh yeah.  When the post office dies, UPS and Fedex will be able to raise their prices and speciality businesses may be willing to deliver regular envelopes, birthday cards, grandkids' paintings, love letters, etc.   But the price will be like express mail. And people who live far away (Alaskans, are you listening?  Ted is gone) might not get any kind of service.  And Benjamin Franklin will roll over in his grave.

[UPDATE Feb. 3, 2011 - Here's a piece from NPR's Talk of the Nation on the joys of snail mail.]

Digital mail already does much of what the post office did and we will survive.  And the gap between the haves and have nots will grow.  I'm not sure what this will do to US businesses in competition with foreign businesses that still have government postal service.  And we'll be a step closer to virtual and further from natural.

Queueing is also a great word to know if you play scrabble.

Can You Freeze Eggs? An Inadvertant Eggsperiment

I'd loaded up at Costco, came home, parked in the heated garage, and took the purchases out of the car.  Except I forget the egg carton which I'd stuck inside of a cardboard box and thus didn't see.

The next day I had a couple of events which required the car to be out in close to 0˚F (-18˚C) for about five hours.  I brought the eggs into the house and let them thaw on the counter.  Then I took one out and cracked it.  


It was just fine.

But I thought I'd check the internet to see what others said.


The US Government's Food Safety Inspection Service: 

Frozen Eggs
Shell eggs should not be frozen. If an egg accidentally freezes and the shell cracked during freezing, discard the egg. Keep any uncracked eggs frozen until needed; then thaw in the refrigerator. These can be hard cooked successfully but other uses may be limited. That's because freezing causes the yolk to become thick and syrupy so it will not flow like an unfrozen yolk or blend very well with the egg white or other ingredients.

OChef:

 Can fresh eggs be frozen for later use (out of the shell, of course)? The best buys in eggs are in a package of 18. For two people, it’s a long time to keep them in the refrigerator.

 You can, but we’re not sure it’s worth it. Yolks don’t take to freezing very well. They become very gelatinous and you usually mix separated yolks with a bit or salt or sugar before you freeze them to keep them from turning to rubber (and you label them well so you don’t have to guess if you mixed them with salt or with sugar). Raw egg whites do not suffer from freezing (cooked egg whites are very rubbery after freezing).

If you’re going to freeze whole eggs, remove them from the shells, and mix them well before freezing. They can be kept frozen for a year, and should be thawed in the refrigerator the day before you intend to use them. You might try freezing a few eggs and see if the results are acceptable to you.

"out of the shell, of course."  But my eggs had been in the shell.  Well, I should have taken a picture of a frozen shell, so I put one outside overnight.  It was below 0˚ F.   And here's what it looked like when I brought it back in.

It was frozen solid, and it had cracked.  Perhaps the original carton of eggs had been insulated enough, inside the car, inside the egg carton, inside a box.  Probably they hadn't frozen completely solid, enough to crack the egg. 

So I let this one thaw.

And the albumin oozed out a little - on the bottom it stuck to the bowl.  But when I cracked it open, it looked just like the top picture.  The yolk looked perhaps a little more solid, but not as bad as described above.  And when I beat the egg white, it got stiff, but it didn't have peaks, but rather was flat and heavy.  I wonder if there are some interesting new recipe possibilities using the beaten egg white of a formerly frozen egg. 

Where you live affects what you know about the world.  When we first moved to Alaska from California so long ago, I learned the hard way that I couldn't leave a glass bottle of juice in the car in winter, but I could leave ice cream.