Here's part of a PR email I got this morning.  It's for a new Alaska Science site and I'm sure there might be some readers who will be interested in this.

Fairbanks, Alaska (April 26, 2011) – A University of Alaska Fairbanks scientist has launched a National Science Foundation-supported website, Frontier Scientists, to connect Alaska field scientists with those curious about Arctic discoveries.

Frontier Scientists shares first-person accounts and real time insights from leading archeologists, grizzly bear biologists, volcanologists, climate change specialists and other scientists.

The site features fascinating footage of current scientific discoveries in some of the Arctic’s most remote and dramatic landscapes, chronicled in short vodcasts, Twitter feeds, blogs and web reports. The research is organized into six categories:
• Grizzlies
• Petroglyphs
• Paleo-Eskimo
• Cook Inlet Volcanoes
• Alutiiq Weavers
• Climate Change Watch

I believe scientists share blame for the decline in thinking abilities in the US.  They have often been so preoccupied with getting and spending their research money, that, with a few exceptions, they haven't taken responsibility for making sure our schools teach our children to be competent to think like scientists think when appropriate, or even just to understand what scientists do.  Things like:

• basic thinking  skills that people of a democracy need to make good election choices, 
• ability to understand what science and theories are and can and cannot do, 
• understanding the complexity of the world and seeking 'truth' 
• understanding the differences between scientific and emotional truths, and 
• how to spot rhetorical fallacies.  

In short, I think many scientists, caught up in their own career and research pressures,  have abandoned the American tax-payers, who pay many scientists' salaries,  allowing them to fall victim to religious hucksters, political manipulators, business marketers, and media  moguls.  And now a sizable chunk of Americans have slipped into a modern mental dark age in which superstition trumps science. 

So, it's good to see even little efforts such as this new website and hope that it makes a small contribution to recovering some of those lost to simplistic black and white, good and evil narratives of the world.

Delta Junction and Tok, Nome and Kotzebue, Unalaska and Cold Bay - Your Turn with Redistricting Board Today, Tuesday

The Board members are headed out in pairs Tuesday, April 26 and altogether they'll visit 6 locations.  They've completed two options for the draft plan.  Now they have until June 14 to submit a final plan.  So now is your chance to tell them what's good and bad about what they've done with your districts.

The board will have statewide maps to hand out at the meetings and lots of maps on the wall, but if you want the detailed maps of your own districts go to their website where you can download pdf files and print them out.  Click for the option 1 maps and the option 2 maps. 
You  can get maps of the current districts here.

According to staff, board chair, John Torgerson, former legislator from Fairbanks, and board member Bob Brody, a Kodiak Realtor, will be in Delta Junction and Tok.

Delta Junction folks - Your meeting is 10 - 12 noon at the Delta Junction City Council Chambers.   In Option 1 you are in District 2 and in Option 2 you are in District 12.

The proposed districts go from almost Fairbanks along the mainly on the east of the Richardson Highway to Valdez and most of Prince William Sound except for Whittier. 

BrdOp1Dist2

The only difference I can tell is that Option 2 includes a lot of land with few if any people - much of it around the Denali Highway almost to Cantwell. You can get a pdf of District 12 here.


Tok folks - Your meeting is from 3pm - 5pm at the Tok Legislative Information Office.  Your district 6 is the super district.  It goes from Southwest Alaska (Holy Cross, Anvik) up north (Wiseman, Venetie) over and around Fairbanks (Nenana, Manley Hot Springs, Ester) and then down along the Canadian Border (Eagle) south Chitina and McCarthy.)

AK Redistricting Board Op1Dist6


Board members Marie Greene, CEO of Nana Regional Corporation from Kotzebue, and PeggyAnn McConnochie, a realtor from Juneau, will be visiting Nome and Kotzebue.

Nome Folks - 10am - 12 noon at the Nome City Council Chambers.   Nome is in District 39 in both options and in both looks to be pretty much the same.  The district is the far West including Shishmaref, Wales, Diomede, Nome, down to Hooper Bay and Russian Mission.

AK Redistricting Board Option 1 - Dist39



Kotzebue folks - You're scheduled for 3pm to 5pm at the NW Arctic Borough Assembly Chambers.  You're in District 40 which looks pretty much like your old district.  It includes the far North from Buckland and Kotzebue, Point Hope, to Kaktovik.

 AK Redistricting Brd Op1Dist40



The last team consists of Board Member Jim Holms, former legislator from Fairbanks and  Board executive direction Ron Miller.  They're scheduled for Unalaska and Cold  Bay.


Unalaska folks - You're on from 1pm to 3pm at the Unalaska City Council Chambers.  You are in District 37 which looks the same in both options.  You're gaining a chunk of the old District 38 which includes Quinhagak, Goodnews Bay, and Platinum from the 2001 Districts and part of the old 36 on the west which includes: Port Alsworth, Nondalton, Newhalen,  Iliamna,  Igiugig, and Pedro Bay.

Cold Bay folks - Your meeting is 7pm - 9pm at the City of Cold Bay Community Center.  You are in the same district as Unalaska - 37 - so the map above applies to you too.

So, what should you do at these meetings?  The Board hasn't given out a lot of information, but you can check out the criteria they are using on their website and see if the maps meet the redistricting guidelines.  These are things like:  socio-economic cohesion, compactness, and equal sizes for all districts with minimum deviation. 

The Alaska Redistricting Board tab above lists all the other posts I've done on the board with short descriptions.

Why Missing Bridgman/Packer This Weekend Would Be a BIG Mistake

Here's part of what I wrote after seeing Bridgman/Packer the first time in 2008:

You should go if you like at least three of the following:

Watching water ripples in a stream.
Magicians doing really amazing tricks.
Shadow leaves dancing on your sunlit white walls.
MC Escher.
A cello dancing with a human voice.
Surprises.
Precision.
Optical Illusions.
Hand drumming.

Wait. There is no rippling stream in the show. I'm just trying to give you a sense of this show without giving anything away.

If you took this list literally, maybe you shouldn't go see it. Or, if you can't stand stuff that is NOT:

Linear.
Predictable.
Melodic.
Clear and straightforward.

I didn't want to spoil it by giving more details.  What they do is AMAZING!!  Going in without knowing anything about them, other than you should go, is the best way to do it.

Out North just keeps selecting stuff they think is good even if it is on the edge or financially iffy. 

I got this comment from Australia this morning on a 2009 post about Out North's production of Man in the Attic:

"This play won the Patrick White Award, one of Australia's major playwriting awards. Good on you for staging it when not one company in Australia bothered to do so! Congrats"

We have this tiny little theater that does cutting edge local productions and also brings the most interesting and challenging Outside artists to Anchorage where you can get intimate with them.  The theater is so small all the seats are in what would be the $100 and up section in bigger venues Outside.  Not everything works perfectly, but still, you are there with the artists as they push the limits of art.  You can talk to them afterward and ask questions and answer their questions. 

But this Friday and Saturday, they've got an act that doesn't fit in that tiny space.  In fact, last time Bridgman & Packer were here, they performed at the Alaska Dance Theater, where I got to see them and become a fanatic fan. 

This year (this Friday and Saturday to be specific) they will be in the Discovery Theater.  So there will be room for a lot of folks. 

Do you live in or near Anchorage?  Then you should be there too. And bring the kids.  Unless you are bedridden or out of town, you have no excuse for not going to see Bridgman & Packer.  You don't like dance?  Trust me, this is way more than dance.  This is magic. 

Do I sound enthusiastic?  Are you suspicious of my motives?  Am I getting paid to write this?  Actually, after I did a short breathless plug attached to a post on another Out North performance, Scott Schofield, Out North's Executive Director asked me to invite all my friends and offered me a free ticket even.  But that would compromise my blogger ethics so I won't take it.  But, I'm thinking I should offer that ticket to one of my readers.  OK, I'll think about  some sort of contest here - and you can give suggestions.  I'll check with Scott and see if the offer is still open. 

So what are my motives?  This is two humans (plus their helpers) showing what incredible things humans can do if they stretch their minds, train their bodies, and break the rules. I just want everyone to know this is happening in town so they don't miss it.  I also want Out North to make some money on this so they'll keep doing this sort of thing. 

When I first saw Bridgman/Packer I wondered whether I was just an Anchorage hick who just didn't get out much, but it turns out people who know about dance think they are pretty amazing too.  Mike Dunham's ADN story lists some of their glowing comments.


So, if you don't trust me or you don't like surprises, check out the ADN story on Bridgman/Packer.  When Dunham and I are both equally breathless, you know something has to be special. 

To get tickets or just to learn more about Bridgman/Packer and see a video, click here.

And here's a link to Bridgman/Packer's website.

Rosa Parks' Bus, Kennedy Dallas Limo, Lincoln's Ford Theater Seat and More at Henry Ford Museum

Here are some pictures from the Henry Ford Museum in Detroit from this past Monday.  Eclectic is all I can say.  The Rosa Parks bus  (at the end) was the most inspiring exhibit  for me.

As we came to the entrance I had this strange feeling about the entrance.  It's only now as I'm posting that I realized its similarity to the entrance to Auschwitz.  This is the only hint of Ford's anti-Semitism at the museum that I noticed.

The first thing you see when you get into the museum is this:

This massive painting was a bit further along.

 From the Ford Museum site:

Light’s Golden Jubilee Honors Thomas Edison and Dedicates a Museum

On October 21, 1929, Henry Ford hosted an elaborate celebration in Dearborn, Michigan, in honor of his friend Thomas A. Edison. Known as Light’s Golden Jubilee, the date marked the 50 th anniversary of Edison’s invention of the electric light. Ford also planned his event as a dedication of his own lasting tribute to Thomas Edison and to American innovation, the Edison Institute of Technology (later renamed Henry Ford Museum) and Greenfield Village. Here, Henry Ford had moved the Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory where the inventor made his discovery so many years before.

Click image to enlarge

The RSVPs for Light's Golden Jubilee began pouring in to Ford Motor Company by early October 1929. Prominent businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and J.P. Morgan, scientist Marie Curie, inventor Orville Wright, and humorist Will Rogers were among those who enthusiastically accepted Ford’s invitation to be part of the landmark event .
A t 10 o’clock that morning, President Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison arrived at Smiths Creek depot at Greenfield Village on a steam- powered locomotive, much like the one on which Edison had sold papers as a youth. They were met by invited guests that numbered more than 500. The crowd roared their approval and congratulations as Edison , Hoover and Ford stepped from the train to begin the day’s festivities.
More...

[5. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.;  6. Mrs. Herbert C. Hoover; 7. George Eastman; 9. Marie Curie;  11.  Mrs. Thomas A. Edison;  12.  Edsel B. Ford;  13.  Charles Edison;  15.  Herbert C. Hoover;  17.  Henry Ford;  18.  Mrs. Henry Ford;  19.  Thomas A. Edison; ]  My understanding is that the dinner was in this building we were in.







A DC 3.

This is - I have to believe that they verified this - the chair Lincoln sat in at the Ford Theater when he was assassinated.

 


The Ford tri-motor that Admiral Byrd  flew in over the South Pole.

The Kennedy limo when he was assassinated in Dallas.  (Is there a pattern here?)  I was told the roof was added later.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's inaugural limo.

The apex of American auto making - the 1955 Chevy.

Again, from the Ford Site:

Allegheny Locomotive
Built in 1941 and weighing in at 600 tons, this was one of the largest steam-powered locomotives ever built. Designed for pulling huge coal trains over the Allegheny mountains of West Virginia, this locomotive could reach speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. This powerful behemoth is the centerpiece of our trains collection and a visitor landmark in Henry Ford Museum. The cab of the Allegheny locomotive is now open for public viewing.

C & O Allegheny #1601
Lima Locomotive 2-6-6-6

It's nice that the museum has all this information posted:

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American woman who worked as a seamstress, boarded this Montgomery City bus to go home from work. On this bus on that day, Rosa Parks initiated a new era in the American quest for freedom and equality.
She sat near the middle of the bus, just behind the 10 seats reserved for whites. Soon all of the seats in the bus were filled. When a white man entered the bus, the driver (following the standard practice of segregation) insisted that all four blacks sitting just behind the white section give up their seats so that the man could sit there. Mrs. Parks, who was an active member of the local NAACP, quietly refused to give up her seat.

Her action was spontaneous and not pre-meditated, although her previous civil rights involvement and strong sense of justice were obvious influences. "When I made that decision," she said later, “I knew that I had the strength of my ancestors with me.”
She was arrested and convicted of violating the laws of segregation, known as “Jim Crow laws.” Mrs. Parks appealed her conviction and thus formally challenged the legality of segregation.
At the same time, local civil rights activists initiated a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. In cities across the South, segregated bus companies were daily reminders of the inequities of American society. Since African Americans made up about 75 percent of the riders in Montgomery, the boycott posed a serious economic threat to the company and a social threat to white rule in the city.
A group named the Montgomery Improvement Association, composed of local activists and ministers, organized the boycott. As their leader, they chose a young Baptist minister who was new to Montgomery: Martin Luther King, Jr. Sparked by Mrs. Parks’ action, the boycott lasted 381 days, into December 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation law was unconstitutional and the Montgomery buses were integrated. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was the beginning of a revolutionary era of non-violent mass protests in support of civil rights in the United States.

As I said, this is an eclectic museum.  I'll try to post some more from the museum later.

Biker Trash Parking

Walking home this evening, we went through a parking lot of a small professional building and passed this sign in the parking lot. 



Here's my guess about this sign.  I think one of the professional staff got a motorcycle and the others in the office chipped in to buy this sign to razz him. 

But you're all invited to come up with other explanations.  Maybe even someone from building who actually knows can tell us. 

Learning About St. Louis Airport Tornado From Mom

My mom called after we got home from seeing Becky Learns to Drive at Cyrano's.  Our son was supposed to fly back to LA from DC tonight, she said, but there was a tornado at the airport where they were supposed to stop on the way.  So they landed somewhere else and he'll fly back to LA tomorrow.

So I googled airport tornado and discovered it was St. Louis.  This is not the kind of thing I normally post, but the news means a lot more when you have a personal connection to it.  The video just shows the damaged airport and has an ad. 




Last time I wrote about tornadoes that I can remember was a post that still gets hits on the difference between cyclones, and hurricanes, and tornadoes.

Old Posts Reflecting on Blogging in General and Blogging Ethics - A Draft Post

I was going to search my blog for posts on blogging ethics, but the blogspot search feature doesn't work all that well.  So I just looked for posts labeled 'blogging'.  I'm going through some 288 posts.  Since I'm doing this for the blogging class that meets for the last time this afternoon, I'll post what I've got so far, but clearly this needs some reflection and better organizing on my part, which I hope to do before too long.  But this does reflect some key issues:

• Obligations to people you post about:
• Blogger use of photos 
• Disclosures
  
• Blogger Bias
• How knowing your subjects affects how you write
• How trying to increase traffic affects what you write about
• People who will pay you to write good things about them
  
• Can Bloggers get into legal trouble for what they write? - Blogger Law

 And this is just from ten posts - I've still got a lot more to sift through. 

Bloggers, Ethics, and Photos of Children -(June 22, 2009)  Thoughts after another local blogger was criticized for a photo of a youngster at a political demonstration against protecting gays from discrimination.


Festival Blogger Ethics and Objectivity - (December 22, 2010) Thoughts on how getting to meet film makers at a film festival affects how I write about them and their films.

Blogging is Like Fishing - (August 26, 2007)  Reflections on blogging after a year of blogging.

Blogging is Like Fishing 2 - (August 28, 2007) A few more reflections on blogging's impact on me.


Blogging Thoughts:  Does Traffic Matter? - (June 19, 2007)  Overview of advice on getting more traffic to your blog and questioning why we want that.


Blog Ethics:  Sex Sells and So Does Victor Lebow - (February 5,  2008) A look at what posts get hits and reflections on how that could affect what one writes.

"typically you receive $4 for every story" - (January 23, 2008) A look at an offer I had to secretly push someone's products.

Blogger Law 101 - (Dec. 13, 2007) I discover that there is law that I should know about concerning bloggers.  Fortunately, it seems my blogging instincts are keeping me ok. But that didn't prevent me from getting a threatening letter from a lawyer who said I'd libeled his client.

Journalism, Blogging, and Perspective - (November 2007)  More thoughts on how your relationships with your sources affects what you write.


Disclosures (November 23, 2007)  I disclose my relationships with people I'm writing about.

Some Blogger Basics For New Bloggers

I'm basically posting this for the Blogs and Blogging class I've been teaching through Ole! at the University of Alaska Anchorage. 

Most (all?) of you have created at least a practice blog to try things out with.  This post is just a reminder of things we've covered (or should have covered) so you can go back, find, and experiment on your own after the class is over.

The basic page is the New Post page.

 

The Posting tab on the left is lighter than the others to indicate that is the tab we're on.  So is the New Post tab under the Posting tab.  

Try the other two tabs.  Edit Posts  gives you a list of all your posts.  You can see drafts, scheduled posts, and posted posts, plus whether there are comments.  And you can edit them and add or change labels. 

I've never used Add Enclosures - from what I can tell, it's for adding pod-casts. Check this how-to post for more info.

Then play with all the buttons above the post window - there's 

• undo and redo
• change fonts*
• change text size*
• Bold*
• Italic*
• Underline*
• Strikeout*
• Change text color*
• Change background of text (like highlighting)*
• Link*
• Add image
• Add video
• Make a page break (gives an abbreviated post and allows readers to go to the rest of it if they want to read the whole thing - I've had problems making this work)
• Line justification (left, center, right, justify)
• Numbered list
• Bullet list (like this one)
• Quote* (indents the highlighted text)
• Unformats items you paste in (gets rid of links or italics, etc.)
• Spell Check

*For these tasks, the text has to be selected (highlighted). On my screen the text turns blue.

Also, on the bottom bar [not shown in the screen shot above] of the New Post page is a post options link.  This has a place where you can schedule posts for specific days and times.

 

You should try out the other tabs (to the right of Posting).  

• Comments gives you a list of comments made to your posts.  You can delete them there if you like.  There is also a list of comments that were put into spam.
• Settings takes you to basic settings for your blog - including your header, letting search engines find your blog, and letting people email your posts to friends (or enemies.)
• The page on the image above is on the design tab where you can add boxes and widgets to your blog.   But you can also do other neat things if you push the template designer.

That would get you to the following page:

 

Play around with the options on the left to find out what they do.  Here I've gone to the last option - Advanced - where you can make subtle changes to the look of your blog.

With this one you can change the color of the font for the different parts of your blog.  

We'll also look at how to notify Google that you have a blog.    (You can more generally tell the world your site is up in the Settings, too.)

Here's a link to Google's Webmasters Central.  This has Google Basics on the topic of "My site and Google."  But there is a lot of other information too. 

And whenever you have a problem, I find it easiest to just Google:  "How to [whatever you need to do.]"  Somebody has already written instructions or even made a video. 

Cordova: Your Turn at 1:30pm - Here are the redistricting maps

Scheduled for 1:30-3:30 at the Cordova Public Library

The key thing that Cordova folks said at the public hearings was that they didn't want to be with Valdez and the pipeline communities.  They said they were much more connected with Southeast Alaska.

But it developing a plan that had no retrogression for Alaska Natives (as required by the US Voting Rights Act), the Board has put Cordova with Valdez and the pipeline communities in both their options.   But they are linked to Southeast districts for the Senate seat in both plans. 

The Board has two draft plans.  In Option 1, Cordova is in District 2, Senate District A.   Click here for a pdf of Option 1, District 2.   [Double click the first two maps to enlarge]

In Option 2, Cordova is in District 12, Senate seat F.   Click here for a more detailed Option 2, District 12  pdf map.

Below are Options 1 and 2 Statewide draft plans.  [Click the + to enlarge the two maps below]

Whole State: Alaska Redistricting Board Option 1



BoardOption2_wallmap


You can get maps for all the districts in Option 1 here.

You can get maps for all the districts in Option 2 here.

The board takes a three day weekend break after Cordova, then heads for Healy and Palmer on Monday. (They are going in small groups, not the whole board to the smaller communities.) 

The Board's calender is here.
Their public hearing schedule, in pdf (I can't cut and paste) is here.

Detroit Sightseeing along Woodward: GM, Tigers, DIA, Fox

I already posted about the Fisher Building.  This first picture, of the old General Motors Building (on the left), was taken from the Fisher Building.  On the horizon to the right of center you can see the new General Motors Building at the Renaissance Center.  It looks like:  ▟▖.  You'll see it close up at the bottom - but it will look completely different.



Then we drove a short distance to Woodward Avenue.

"I guess if I had to take somebody who had never seen Detroit, I'd start at the river and drive straight up Woodward. I can't think of a more expedient way to show the city," said Jerry Herron, historian and director of the honors program at Wayne State University.

Woodward offers work, play, most of our cultural institutions. It's the dividing line that distinguishes "east siders" from their west side counterparts and offers motorists a comforting geographical context. "Where are we? Oh, right, there's Woodward."    [From The Detroit News]

Our guide said, at one point, that he wanted to show us the parts of Detroit that would counter our stereotypes.  This section of Woodward was, he said, a gap that was rapidly filling back in.  And from the freeway we could see boarded up houses.  But on this tour, had I not heard anything about Detroit's housing woes, I would not have known anything was amiss. 





Our first stop on Woodward (5200) was at the DIA (Detroit Art Institute).  I posted on the DIA's Rivera courtyard murals in a previous post.  But there was much more.  I feel dumb because I didn't get the information on this Native American bead work.  I think it was from Kansas.  I got distracted because there were three cultures listed - Okvik culture, Punuk Culture, and Thule culture - in Alaska that I'd never heard of.  It turns out the most recent of them is listed as ending in 1200. 

Modigliana's long necked people have always intrigued me.





                              A Mastisse Poppy.














This is part of Fumio Yoshimura's wooden motorcycle.

Another piece whose description I didn't get.  It was in the Middle East section.

DIA underground parking

Then to the home of the Detroit Tigers (2100 Woodward)

Comerica Park 
Home of the Detroit Tigers

In October 1997, ground was broken on a brand new $300 million project to be known as Comerica Park. 

This amazing, and very modern, facility features a carousel, a Ferris Wheel and a mammoth water feature in center field. Liquid Fireworks, as the water feature is known, is a giant spectacular that synchronizes music to spraying water fountains. Over 60 percent of the projects funding came from private financing while the remaining funds were donated from public sources. Mitch Ilitch, owner of the Detroit Tigers, had a big hand in the design of Comerica Park. And why not? After all, this is the home turf of Major League Baseball's Detroit Tigers.

Fox Theater is at 2211 Woodward, just across the street from Comerica Field.

The Theater, an awe-inspiring combination of Far Eastern, Indian and Egyptian styles, was the second largest Theater in the world. But it surpassed all others in grandeur.

The lobby of this mammoth 10-story structure, which was six stories high and half a block long, was surrounded by blood-red marble columns. Each column held its own jeweled figure representing various Asiatic Gods.
The decorative scheme used subdued tones of gold to contrast a riot of color. Hangings in the lobby were in golden damask and stage draperies combined regal-red velour and damask which were set off by a festooned drapery with a wide silken fringe.
Guests were greeted by notes from a small Moller organ situated over the entrance. . .

Detroit's Fox theater changed hands several times before Mike and Marion Ilitch of Little Caesar's Pizza closed a deal in 1987 for the purchase of the theater and connecting office building. A multi-million dollar restoration project, which included a new 10-story marquee, culminated in a grand reopening Nov. 19, 1988, when the curtain once again rose at the theater known as the "Temple of Amusement." [Detroit News]

We passed some  buildings - fortunately there was a sun roof on the car.





And finally, at the end of Woodward  on the river, we were shown new General Motors home away from home.

Rising 73 stories above the Detroit River, the GM Renaissance Center dominates the glittering downtown Detroit skyline.  The Ren Cen is five and a half million square feet in size, has seven towers, dozens of stores and services, four movie theaters, a financial center, two foreign consulates, a fitness center, a 1,300 room Marriott hotel, four of the city’s hottest restaurants and an 1,100 seat food court.

The Ren Cen is about business too. It’s General Motors’ global headquarters with 5,000 GM employees, as well as over 4,000 additional people who work in the Ren Cen for tenant companies, retailers, restaurants and professional service organizations.  [From the RenCen website]

I learned a lot in the tour.  Thanks, MC.