Why I Live Here - The Coastal Trail

The impetus for today's bike ride was a post, Have I Nagged You To Exercise Lately?,  on Peter Dunlap-Shohl's blog about a week ago.  He'd written about the importance of exercise for Parkinson's patients.  I'd asked about his exercise routine and he said he does a lot cycling so I suggested we go for a ride. 

I didn't say seeing them was easy, that's Mt. Susitna in the background

We finally got around to it today.  Since the Redistricting Board's meetings are unpredictable - you know when they will start, but not when they'll finish - I decided being outside on a bike would do me much more good anyway.  So after posting with the wifi help of the Westmark, I met Peter at Westchester Lagoon for a ride along the Coastal Trail.  On my way from downtown, I passed a couple of Sandhill Cranes working over the mudflat dining hall.  They're really big and were a ways out there. 

View North

We rode to the bottom of the hill from Kincaid, then locked the bikes and walked the path to a decent place to descend to the beach.  I'd never seen so many people down there. The closest car parking is about a mile away, so you have to want to come here.

And here's a view to the south.  That's a dog in the water.

But we also saw moose.  Actually, other people saw moose and pointed them out to us after we'd passed them.  I think we saw four or five altogether. 

I'm constantly amazed at how animals this big can manage to disappear in the background.

And here's Peter on a break on the way back.  I took the picture because even though I read his blog, I wasn't sure until he mentioned it, whether he could still ride a bike.  Or drive a car.  He said as long as the medication is controlling symptoms, he can. 

I'm normally more vague on the blog about friends I do things with, but Peter has a blog to help educate people - both with and without PD - about Parkinson's Disease.  His comment when I told him why I took the picture was, that he forgets what people know and don't know about what he's able to do.  We rode about 16 miles round trip from Westchester Lagoon


Peter's was interviewed as a cartoonist with Parkinson's Disease in the Washington Post recently.  There are extremely talented and amazing people all around us in Anchorage.  I hope the Board got a lot done this afternoon.  It was a great day to be in Anchorage.

Computer Crash, Board Recesses Quickly Until 2pm, Open Meeting Thoughts

Board member PeggyAnn McConnochie came in at 6 to work on maps, but the computers the board uses to work its mapping software was down and she couldn't tweak her maps. 

This shows some of the problems with public meetings laws for this kind of organization.  This is a temporary board - 90 days - which has a lot of work to do.  By state law, not more than two members can talk about board issues together outside of a meeting.  The intent is to keep them from doing the public's business in private.  And with a board whose job has significant politically impacts, this is important.  But not easy.

They can't meet unless they've put up a public notice - the amount of notice before the meeting isn't totally spelled out, but 24 hours has been their minimum interpretation. 

To meet the law, they've just decided to post that they will meet everyday at 10am.  They convene at 10 and then they meet a while and then can recess and announce when they'll reconvene.  This way they can work in pairs or with staff and then reconvene as necessary. 

Board Comments Notebook Vol. 1

It's a bit of a crimp on their style, and for the most part, I don't think they would be doing anything they shouldn't.  But having the meetings open and available live online, it means that if they make errors or miss something, there's a chance that a member of the public can catch it.   At this point, they were working through things rather than making decisions.  The key is that when they do things that make an impact, they are open about it and the public can see why they made the decisions they've made.  A lot of the board's proceedings have been like that.  A few parts haven't that clear - like what all went into mapping Fairbanks and Anchorage.

After the meeting yesterday, Board attorney Michael White said this redistricting process has been the most open in Alaska history.  I'm sure that's true.  The hallways of the board offices are open to anyone to walk through and meet with members during breaks.  And most board members are available for questions and discussion during the breaks.  Even though public testimony has been cut off, anyone at a meeting can make suggestions during the breaks and the board is still getting emails and letters from the public. 

This is page 1 (of 7) in the contents for this first volume.  There's been more mail trickling in since this volume was put together last week. 

If you double click the image, it should enlarge enough to read the entries.  There are seven more pages.  If anyone wants to see more, let me know.

It's beautiful today and I'm going to bike the Coastal Trail with a friend in an hour.  Probably will miss the 2pm session.  Unpaid has its compensations.

Taking a Break

Image from Make Technology on your own time

I love this picture for so many reasons.  This is supposed to be by Banksy, the British graffiti artist featured in Exit Through The Gift Shop.   First, the idea of 'improving' a classic piece of art forces us to reconsider what we think of as classic and what it depicts.  In this case the hardworking slaves.  Wow!  Why didn't I ever think about this woman sitting down and taking a break before?


And simply taking her outside of the frame into the real world is something we rarely do in art galleries.

And with a bunch of redistricting board notes and video which I haven't posted, I'm feeling a bit like the woman with the cigarette.  Though my labors are all self-imposed.  But I'll try to get something up soon.  It's just that they keep having meetings.  Yesterday they went through Voting Rights Act expert, Lisa Handley's, initial thoughts on the private plans' statistics and then more board member attempts to get the nine rural districts needed to be in compliance with the VRA. 

The image is from a post on Altered Thrift Store Art and there are other examples, but that one was by far my favorite.

US Attorney Threatens to Shut Down Flights Out of Texas

The Texas Senate was set today to pass a bill criminalizing invasive TSA pat downs without probable cause.

The relevant parts of HB 1937 seem to be this addition to the existing Texas Penal Code TITLE 5. OFFENSES AGAINST THE PERSON CHAPTER 22. ASSAULTIVE OFFENSES

(3) as part of a search performed to grant access to a
publicly accessible building or form of transportation,
intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly:
(A) searches another person without probable
cause to believe the person committed an offense; and
(B) touches the anus, sexual organ, or breasts of
the other person, including touching through clothing, or touches
the other person in a manner that would be offensive to a reasonable
person.

 
According to John Dalton in Rep. David P. Simpson's office, the bill was passed unanimously by the House (the journal shows no opposition but a couple excused or absent) and had the support of all 31 Texas Senators until the leaders of the House and Senate received a letter yesterday (May 24) from the US Department of Justice threatening to stop flights out of Texas if the law was passed.

Representative Simpson's press release today says, in part:

Yesterday, Tuesday the 24th, the Texas legislature was visited by federal agents from the TSA and the Dept. of Justice to lobby against HB 1937, my bill to stop the TSA from groping travelers without probable cause.

They delivered a letter from a US District Attorney that threatened to shut down Texas flights, if we didn't submit to the invasive pat-downs for which they have become so famous.

Naturally, Texans didn't take to well to being threatened in that manner.

The US attorney's letter was a little more subtle than that, but essentially does threaten to shut down flights out of Texas.

Click on image to link to pdf of complete letter

This sounds like some flights might be canceled and there would surely be disruption, but the scurrilous practice of automatically patting down grandmothers whose only 'probable cause' is a metal hip or knee, would certainly get a lot more attention. I realize that people who have not been patted down invasively, tend to think this is the price one has to pay for airline security. However, having read the emails Alaska Rep. Cissna received when she refused a patdown, I'm convinced that too many TSA agents are significantly abusing their power.

So, the Texas Legislative website says that the bill was withdrawn today after the letter was received. According to Simpson aide Dalton, today is the last day to pass the bill. He said they are working on getting the Senators back in to pass the bill.

Lisa Handley at Alaska Redistricting Board Video

I'm afraid the video is way too jerky and the sound on the low side, but if you wanted to get a sense of Lisa Handley, here's about three minutes of her analysis of Alaska voting patterns.  This is from Tuesday, May 24, 2011 at the Redistricting Board meeting.




As mentioned in the previous post, you can see Dr. Handley's powerpoint notes on her Alaska Analysis at the Redistricting Board's website. The first part of the power point is here. It covers the Voting Rights Act in general.

Packed Room for Lisa Handley at Redistricting Board

The 10am session went to 1:30. The room had the most people I've ever seen here.  By the time things started, all the chairs were full.

I'll do a quick overview and then try to fill in more in follow up posts.

1. Voting Rights Act Consultant Lisa Handley gave a two part presentation.

• general overview of the Voting Rights Act's Sections 2 and 5 that is applicable nationwide.
• her analysis of Alaska's voting record and VRA  
  [Links to her Power Point presentation on the Redistricting Board Website]

Board Member McConnochie (l) talking to Dr. Handley at break

2.  Presentation of Modified plans by

• The Rights Coalition  (The Democratic and others plan)
• AFFER (Alaskans for Fair and Equitable Redistricting - the Republican Party and others - such as Calista - plan)
• Calista Plan
• AFFR (Alaskans for Fair Redistricting - Unions and Native Corporations)

The Rights and AFFR both presented plans which they claimed met the benchmark requirements for nine effective or influence districts.  (Actually, Handley changed the terminology from what has been used and now calls 'influence' 'equal opportunity.')

I frankly had a hard time tracking the actual plan presented by AFFER.   The most interesting - because it offered a perspective not heard by the board in public before - came from attorney Marcia Davis who presented the Calista plan.  She argued that the board need not focus so closely on pleasing the Department of Justice because in some cases the DOJ has told people (she specifically talked about Georgia) to make changes in their plans and then the Supreme Court shot down the DOJ supported plan. 

The meeting will readjourn at 3pm.  The Native Caucus presentation is yet to be made.  You can listen online here.   Even if a lot of it doesn't make sense, Alaskans should at least try five minutes to get a sense of the issues they are wrestling. 

This Picture's Been Haunting Me for Three Days Now

I've had this picture on my computer a few days now.

image from My Modern Met

I like things that make us question what we know, that turn things around from the way they're supposed to be so that we have to go, "Wow, it never occurred to me to do it that way."  Sometimes it doesn't work well.  Sometimes it's not particularly insightful.  And sometimes it's amazing.  Like the work that Alexa Meade does.

This is not a painting.  Well, it is a painting and it's not.  This is a real man painted to look like he's a painting - his face, his clothing, everything.  Instead of copying something real in a painting, this artist makes the real thing look like a painting.  If I understand this right, the other people are real, and this almost cartoon human is among them.

There are more pictures and discussion of this artist at My Modern Met.


The Alaska Redistricting Board is trying to imagine new ways to map the state's legislative districts.  Today they came up with a map that violated a premise they've had from day one - to leave the North Slope Borough in tact.  It's taken them 60+ of their ninety days to do this.  It's not the same as painting humans to look like paintings, but it is a step beyond the  boundaries they had set for themselves.

Humans grow when they go beyond their self imposed limits and do things they always thought they couldn't or shouldn't do.  Or never even thought of doing.  It doesn't always work.  Sometimes the consequences are bad.  But thinking past our limits has to be a good thing.

Overview of the Problems Redistricting Board is Facing Before Voting Rights Act Consultant Arrives Tomorrow

This morning's session was spent looking at more experiments trying to get nine Native districts with sufficient population and Native percentages to be in compliance with the Voting Rights Act and to get pre-clearance from the Department of Justice.  Rather than recount the details of the short meeting (under 1 hour)  I should just give an overview of what they are grappling with.


Meanwhile they've  begun the afternoon session and you can listen in here. 
[Update 3:25pm - They just ended this afternoon's meeting, but you can use this link to hear the voting rights expert, Lisa Handley, tomorrow at 10am.  This should be one of the more interesting meetings.]

I decided I'd try the online version for the afternoon, so I could get some things done at home and enjoy the beautiful weather.


The key requirement that has dominated the board so far has been RETROGRESSION.  The Voting Rights Act allows no RETROGRESSION. That means, in Alaska's case, that Native Alaskans can not lose the degree of representation they have in the legislature. In translation, that means they must keep the same ability to elect the candidates of their choice.

In the last redistricting there were 9 "Native" districts. However, the population has moved. Southeast lost enough people to lose a whole district. In some cases Natives have moved to urban areas and it's almost impossible to carve the urban areas up in a way that counts those Natives for a Native district.

So, they've been doing a lot of mapping experiments to try to create 9 Native districts given the population shifts. It's been hard. They've run against other requirements - like Senate districts have to be made up of two contiguous House districts.

Double Click to Enlarge Considerably

When I got there this morning, Taylor Bickford was working on a map. This one looks like he’s broken some of the early taboos the board has used from the beginning - like keeping the North Slope Borough pretty much the same.  It hadn’t lost any population after the new census data came out, so it looked like an easy district to leave whole, but there have been two big problems trying to prevent retrogression.  (You can see that here the old North Slope Borough is redrawn to go down along the Canadian border to Valdez, taking on much of the old District 6.  But it looks like it might be smaller than the old District 6.)

HD = House District
VAP = Voting Age Population

The Voting Rights Expert, Lisa Handley, who will be at the board meeting tomorrow (Tuesday), has given percentages needed to have acceptable Native districts.  So they are creating these maps and looking at the numbers.  You can see:

HD 40  has 51.24% Native VAP (voting age population)
HD 39 has 38.43% Native VAP - that is probably enough for a Native 'influence' area while HD 40 should qualify as a Native 'effective' area.  The three below are Senate Districts (SD).  SD A, for instance has 46.55% Native VAP and combines House Districts 36 and 7.  (Not sure why 36 isn't listed as a Native district.  One of these must have enough Native population to make the combined Senate district qualify.)

If you are REALLY paying attention, you'll have noticed this is only eight, not nine Native districts.  They have already created a district in Southeast that they think will count as the ninth. Or maybe they are counting 36.  I don't think 7 - which has Kodiak - has enough Native percentage to qualify. 

This is the computer game they are playing - trying to get these numbers right.  And they also have to get the total population for each district within a few percent of 17,755 people.

The problems they've been having are these:

1. The Native population is essentially ‘packed’ in a few districts with very high native population (one up in the 80 percent range.)  
2. The group of Northwest Native districts don't have enough population to get to the 17,750 population needed for a district, thus they need some of the excess population from Fairbanks (@8000 or half a district) or Matsu.
3. But Fairbanks and Matsu both say they don't want their population spread out beyond their borough.  Matsu might be able to get five districts almost completely in the borough, but Fairbanks, as I mentioned, has 8000 excess people that will have to go in non-Fairbanks district(s).

Additionally,

• Native groups want to keep ethnic groups - Yupik, Inupiat, etc. - together in their own groups because they have more closely related interests and this is assumed to help preserve cultural heritage.  Though some testified that mixing ethnic groups might be necessary to prevent retrogression.
• At the various public hearings, different areas have argued that certain neighborhoods or villages or towns should or should not be in the same district and the board is trying to take these into consideration.

All these issues make the board's task even harder.   And there's more. . .

Left Over Problems

• This still leaves some problems like putting 8000 excess suburban Fairbanks people into a district that is basically roadless villages.   Clearly that would not create socio-economically cohesive (a state requirement) districts. 
• And, of course, the Democrats are concerned that the 4-1 Republican board will try to pad the Republican majority in the state House and break the 10-10 tie in the Senate.  While all the board members deny any intention of this, and some seem genuinely neutral in their mapping, this is redistricting.  The assumption is (nationally) that whoever is in charge of redistricting is going to draw lines that advantage their own party's chances of gaining in the next election.  To be fair, Republicans were paired in the Southeast maps we've seen so far.  But there are only two Democrats in the seven house and senate districts there. 
  Most Democrats are in Anchorage and Fairbanks where the population is denser and it's easier to move lines around - because there is enough population to draw all sorts of configurations.  So, if the board spends enough time on the rural districts - as they did for the draft plan they put out April 14 - then they'll have to rush Anchorage and Fairbanks privately, and what they do in public will be hard to follow.  My sense is that the board is divided on this.  Bob Brody proposed doing the urban areas now at the same time they do the Native districts, but was voted down 4-1.  I think the staff would also like to get Anchorage and Fairbanks drafts with details out before the board adopts them.  We'll see.   

The board recessed at 10:47am and scheduled a 2pm meeting which you can listen to here. (They should be meeting until about 4 or 5 pm Anchorage time today.)
[Update 3:25pm - They just ended this afternoon's meeting, but you can use this link to hear the voting rights expert, Lisa Handley, tomorrow at 10am.  This should be one of the more interesting meetings.]

Meanwhile it's the first almost warm sunny day in Anchorage as you can see as I rode home after this morning's session.

Tuesday  (tomorrow) is a big day for the board.  Voting Rights Act consultant Lisa Handley will be in town to give her sense of how close the board has come to the nine Native districts needed to avoid retrogression.  She'll also give her view on whether any of the privately submitted plans met the goal.  (She's already said she thought so, but board attorney wondered if they had used the right data to calculate their Native VAP - voting age population.)

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian

This came in an email from faraway friend whose first language is not English. He sent it to me because of the Alaskan reference. As a practicing punster (I try to suppress it here,) I'm impressed by the elegance of the puns on this list. They aren't groaners where one has to twist one's ears to make the sounds match, and one's face contracts around the nose at the flatness of the humor.  Well, you may not agree.  And some (maybe all) are not new.  These match words with unexpectedly similar sounds or double meanings with some cleverness. Here are some of the ones he sent:

1. A will is a dead giveaway.
2. Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a mango.
3. A backward poet writes inverse.
4. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
5. You are stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
6. A calendar's days are numbered.
7. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.
8. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
9. If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.
10. When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she'd dye.
11. A rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
12. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.
13. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
14. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
15. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
16. A small boy swallowed some coins and was taken to a hospital. When his grandmother telephoned to ask how he was, a nurse said, 'No change yet.'

I tried to whittle the list to ten, but figured different ones would tickle different people, so I'm hoping some of you will tell me know your favorites (or least favorites) in the comments. 

You could even use the judging scale used at the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championship  held this past weekend in Austin, Texas.

You will be given a set of cards numbered one through ten.  A "ONE" should be used only for a complete flop (or an obvious non-pun) and a "TEN" should be reserved for a performance better than you ever expected.  (The audience response is helpful here too!)  The most important thing here is that your judging style remains consistant throughout the event. By expanding our panel to 6 judges we are attempting to level the field some. The highest and lowest score from each vote is discounted which leaves each contestant with a possible high score of only 40.  

There were different contests including punniest of show. Some of the rules for that included:

2. PUNNIEST OF SHOW: Each entered contestant will be allowed to present a pun on stage. Puns may be presented in any format (e.g., visual, musical, stand-up routine, etc.), and will be scored on a scale of one (1) to ten (10) by a panel of judges. A contestant's score will be determined by adding the judges' scores together. If a judge displays a score higher than 10 or lower than 1, that score will be lowered or raised to the nearest allowable score (i.e., an 11 becomes a 10, a 0 becomes a 1, etc.). Contestants will be judged on content, originality, and general effect of the presentation, including judges' interpretation of audience response. Contestants may use notes or scripts, but should keep in mind that the judges may take this into consideration when determining their score.  (if you want to know the rest of the rules and the other puntests click here.)

The 1995 winner, John Pollack, on NPR last week talking about his new book, Just for Pun said:

"The power of a pun comes from two things," he says. "One is its ambiguity, and second is: that it enables you to pack more meaning, or more layers of meaning, into fewer words. And so if you're trying to convey complex ideas, puns can be really powerful tools to do that."

I agree.  I don't think they are the lowest form of humor as some say.  It's just that there are some really bad punsters who bring puns down so low.  I also think that good punsters are just wired to hear literally - thus hearing the two or meanings of a single (or very similar) sound(s). 

"Solpa adjust maadi"

In Thailand it was "Jai yen yen" (ใจเย็นๆ) - keep a cool heart.  In Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Eagle River resident and Ohio Wesleyan student, Becky Smith, is being told to "please adjust a little." 

She writes in her new blog, Hindustan Hamara (begun May 3, 2011 with three posts now):

Part of Bangalore from the air Nov. 2006

Everything in India takes a few extra steps. After a few days at my service apartment, I finally was informed that I had no hot water because there was a boiler that also needed to be turned on. While I'm used to generally just finding a hotel within my price range, here finding a place to stay involved several days of phone calls (thank God for my friend and his dad who took care of that for me) and negotiations to agree on the rate for a two month stay. And that was all before we decided that air conditioning really was necessary for an Alaskan to live in Bangalore. Which brings us to the first lesson of India: "Solpa adjust maadi." In Kannada, the language predominately spoken in Karnataka, this roughly translates to "Please adjust a little, sir."

Becky's just begun as an intern  

at Sanghamitra Rural Financial Services (SRFS), a non-profit microfinance institute aiming to raise clients out of poverty by offering microloans and other financial services. I will also be conducting independent research on the profit structures of microfinance firms and its effect on the social and income impacts it has on its clients.

You can follow Becky's summer internship at her blog.  I would note that her proud father is Anchorage's Deputy Police Chief, Steve Smith. 

Do you know where Bangalore is in India?  How many seconds will it take you to find on the map?

Adapted from worldsecurity.org map

I'm assuming that most of you know where India is on the world map. Hint: Bangalore is in Southern India.