Life is Good - MacHaus Replaced the Mac Keyboard, Trackpad, and Top Case Free

It's almost like having a new computer.  The cursor isn't skipping around, and everything I can see and feel as I type is new except the screen.  As I mentioned earlier, Apple acknowledged the cracks along the edge of the top case [that's the part that surrounds the keyboard and is the top of the case that houses the hard drive] as a design flaw.  My computer is about four years old now, but it was still covered.  I brought it in about noon and they had the parts and called about 5pm to say it was ready for pick up. 

So, if you have a Macbook, and there's a crack in the plastic case along the edge, you might take it to a local Apple dealer and see if it is covered for repairs.  I really wasn't looking forward to dealing with the cursor problems, but I was very pleasantly surprised. 

Mr. Doob's Google Gravity

I have no idea what this is about, but someone got to this blog from here.

http://mrdoob.com/projects/chromeexperiments/google_gravity/


Go ahead, click on it.  It'll just take a few seconds.  Then, move your cursor.

[UPDATE:  Also check out posts on Weenie Google, Epic Google,  and the Revolving Internet. ]

[UPDATE 9/13:  Here's a post I've now done on "Who Is Mr. Doob?"  An amazing, creative guy.]

It Always Works When You Don't Want It To

I'm at the MacHaus, trying to show them what my keyboard is doing.  And, of course, it is working fine now.  Since it tends to need to be used a bit before the cursor starts jumping around, I'm typing here to see if I can get it so they can see what my problem is. 

But except for one or two errant jumps by the keyboard, all is well. 

But, it turns out, there's a crack on the top case.  There was one before and Apple replaced it and the keyboard free once already because it was a design flaw.  Apparently the edge on top (the casing around the screen) seems to cause that problem and so they will replace the top case, keyboard, trackpad, and the topcase for free.  That might solve my problems. 

And they have the parts available in town.  This is looking better than I expected.

There are some pictures of the crack the first time - January 2009 - here.  This time the crack is on the left side, not the right side.  But if you have a crack like that on your MacBook, and it's less than five years old, it seems like they'll replace it all for free.

The Help

Background:  In 2000, my wife and I found ourselves driving through Mississippi.   We'd driven to our daughter's graduation on the East Coast, and after a stop in Chicago, we were headed to visit relatives in New Orleans.  I realized, as we crossed the border, that I held deep feelings about Mississippi.  It felt like a place a forbidden place - sort of like Albania.  We were only there two days, but in that short time, there were two conversations that give a sense of how race was still an important issue.

We'd walked up the levee to look into a floating casino when a couple began talking to us.  Being in a car with Alaska license plates seemed to give us a neutrality.  We may be from the north, but not that North.  After only a few minutes, we were being told that one had to send one's children to private schools and a lot of nasty stuff about how impossible the Black population was.  (I'm not stupid, and I probably wouldn't have subjected my kids to being the only White kids in a Black school where racial tension was high.  But why have things gotten to that point?  And I actually don't even know that it would have been dangerous for my kids.  But I do know that Mississippi schools are pretty low in achievement and I probably wouldn't have wanted my kids in a White school in Mississippi either.)

The second conversation was pretty surreal.  We were looking into boat rides on the Mississippi when a local gentleman - all the Southern hospitality you see in the movies - began to offer us advice.  It was a delightful encounter until he morphed into something else.  He switched the topic to the movie Mississippi Burning and how it totally distorted what had happened in Mississippi in the 1960s.  All those degenerate Northern agitators, smoking dope and having sex, coming down to tell us how to live our lives.  We didn't have a race problem - everyone got along just fine.  He said he'd been a high school student at that time.  And then he morped back into the charming Southern gentleman who'd begun the conversation and gave us advice for where to have dinner that night.  And we had a very good meal there.

The Help


My wife told me it was a chick flick and I probably wouldn't want to go.  But then she said some other things that I interpreted as it being better for our relationship if I went.  I knew nothing about the movie before it started - a good way to see a movie.

At dinner afterward we talked about the movie.  She mentioned a critique she'd heard from a black reviewer who felt that a white woman shouldn't have been the central character in the movie.  (It's about a recent white college graduate, Skeeter, in Mississippi who wants to be a writer.  All her old high school friends seem to be more interested in finding husbands than finding jobs.)

The film starts in 1962 (Medgar Evers was shot in 1963 and I'm guessing it begins the summer before that) and one of the key topics at her friends' bridge parties is whetther they allow the 'colored' help to use the same bathrooms as the family uses.  Skeeter notices that these conversations take place in front of the help.  She gets the idea of writing a book from the perspective of the Black help.

I've criticized other movies - Blood Diamonds, The Constant Gardener, and particularly The Last King of Scotland - for using white main characters in what are essentially movies about Africa and Africans. So I had to think about whether the criticism was valid here.  The fact that I assumed the film was based on a true story probably affected my acceptance of Skeeter's central role.  When I learned it was fiction,  the criticism seemed more valid.   Was it any more plausible that a White woman would be able to conceive of such a book and get it published in 1963 than the Black women themselves?  I can think of reasons why it might be, but I'm not sure either way.

But that didn't distract from the power of the movie to charmngly bring home how insidious segregation was.  And it wasn't that long ago - not yet 50 years.  The young college grads in the movie would be in their late sixties or early seventies now.  And while some of them may have changed, others would still hold many of the racial beliefs they were raised with.

And from there we can understand the revulsion felt by some at the idea of a Black president.  I'm not suggesting everyone who lived in that time and place is still trapped in that mindset.  Nor am I suggesting that everyone opposed to Obama is motivated by race.   But as the incidents I told at the beginning show, those attitudes were still easy to find in Mississippi just eleven years ago.  And the extreme animosity shown toward the President by some - along with racially charged words like 'boy' and 'dark skinned' that some have used - convinces me that race is a factor in some people's reaction to Obama.

And right after we saw the movie,  we heard the story of White kids who killed a 49 year old Black man in the very town the movie took place - Jackson, Mississippi.

The biggest surprise I got at the movie, was when the White audience in the 3/4 full theater (one of the big ones at the Century) applauded at the end of the film.   Made me feel much better about folks in Anchorage.

By the way, one of the first things we did when we got back to Anchorage in 2000 was to rent the film Mississippi Burning and we had little trouble figuring out which characters might have been the man who'd suggested such a great place to eat.

“[under the law] just because something is in the public domain doesn’t mean it’s been officially released or declassified by the U.S. government.”

That's what a CIA spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood, is quoted as saying by the NY Times, in a story about the redactions made by the CIA to a book about 9/11 by written by a former FBI agent.

The agent, Ali H. Soufan, argues in the book that the C.I.A. missed a chance to derail the 2001 plot by withholding from the F.B.I. information about two future 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego, according to several people who have read the manuscript. And he gives a detailed, firsthand account of the C.I.A.’s move toward brutal treatment in its interrogations, saying the harsh methods used on the agency’s first important captive, Abu Zubaydah, were unnecessary and counterproductive.

The article suggests that the C.I.A.'s redactions are more about either avoiding embarrassment or trying to control how the history of 9/11 is told than national security.  The CIA spokeswoman, of course, denies this:

“The suggestion that the Central Intelligence Agency has requested redactions on this publication because it doesn’t like the content is ridiculous. The C.I.A.’s pre-publication review process looks solely at the issue of whether information is classified.”

We saw this issue earlier when it came out that federal employees, who are not allowed to read classified information they aren't cleared to read, were not allowed to read any of the wikileaks cables, even though the material was in the public domain.


As I often try to point out here, everything is related, and today, there was an article in the ADN by Judith Kleinfeld titled "Thought the Cure for Most Blunders."  In it she cites an example from psychologist Madeline Van Heckeof's book, Blind Spot, about going to the driveup ATM window and proudly pointing out to a young foreign visitor in the car, that the US is sensitive to the handicapped - they have Braille on the ATM machine.  The young guest laughs and asks,  "How many blind people drive?"


Van Heckeof, as related by Kleinfeld, goes on to explain that

Most of the time our minds work pretty well. But sometimes smart people do stupid things, she points out. We have a systematic set of "blind spots" in our minds like the blind spots in our cars.

I strongly believe that people have, what you could call, blind spots.  And we shouldn't have blind spots when looking at stories about blind spots.  Just like anti-tax zealots who ridicule scientific studies funded by the US government by taking things totally out of context, I shouldn't do the same thing here.

It does seem silly to have braille on a drive through ATM, until you think that when they make the machines, they probably don't distinguish between the keys on walk-up and drive-through machines.  So they just put the braille on all of them.  Should they make different keys for drive-through machines? Maybe not so ridiculous in the long run.  

But that doesn't mean we don't have blind spots.  Part of this blog's goal is to get people to see such blindspots.

So, what about hiding classified material?  I'm less tolerant about this, but I can think of reasons why the C.I.A.  would want to suppress material, even if it's already publicly available.

1. While it might be available in the public domain, it might not be available where someone was likely to find it.  A new book will make it more accessible to more people.  
2. A book could take a lot of different pieces of information available in different places in the public domain and put them all together - such as how to build a bomb.  Fewer people would be able to figure it all out if the book didn't come out.
3. All of us who have made mistakes, surely, would like to prevent others from explaining how stupid we were, if we could. 
4. As suggested in the article, there may be an attempt to control the information that is used to write history and information that contradicts one's beliefs.  In this case, the article suggests that Soufan's account contradicts, among other things, Cheney's assertions that torture was necessary to get information.

While there are times when points 1 and 2 might be legitimate, my bias tends to favor errors of openness over errors of secrecy.  It just seems openness, in the long run, is better for a democracy than secrecy.  If one uses the possibility of something bad happening, one could justify making everything secret. 

The 3rd reason, while a natural inclination for all humans, isn't justifiable for government officials in a democracy.  The information has to get out and then people can form their conclusions about performance and accountability.

The same logic fits for the 4th point.  Suppressing information is no way to find the truth.

So, check out your own blind spots.  And gently help others, including me, see theirs. 

"When I'm an Elder" (Where's Bethel?)

Good stuff here.  I get to the video slowly.  If you don't care about the other stuff, just slide on down to the video.  It's short and well worth watching.  Then you might want to go back and read. 

This project was first conceived by teens in a youth group (Teens Acting Against Violence -TAAV)  housed at the Tundra Women's Coalition in Bethel, Alaska in the Yukon-Koskokwim area.

For non-Alaskans, and for many Alaskans too, a little geography lesson would help.   The Yukon-Kuskowim Delta is where the two large rivers - Yukon and the Kuskokwim - drain into the Bering Sea.

Based on map from Enchanted Learning.com

Most people have heard of the Yukon River, but what about the  Kuskokwim?

Wikipedia says the Kuskokwim River is 702 miles long and

 is the ninth largest river in the United States by average discharge volume at its mouth and seventeenth largest by basin drainage area.^[6]
The river provides the principal drainage for an area of the remote Alaska Interior on the north and west side of the Alaska Range, flowing southwest into Kuskokwim Bay on the Bering Sea. Except for its headwaters in the mountains, the river is broad and flat for its entire course, making it a useful transportation route for many types of watercraft. It is the longest free flowing river* in the United States.

*What's a free flowing river?

A body of water existing or flowing under natural conditions without impoundments, diversions, straightening, riprapping, or other modification of the waterway (as defined in the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act - 16 USC 1286 [b]). Also see Riprap. (references)

According to Wikipedia, the Yukon is 1980 miles long and there's a dam at White Horse, Yukon Territories.

Adapted from a map at KYUKonAssignment in Kuwait

When I am an Elder: A World Without Violence includes youth from Bethel, Kipnuk, Kwethluk, and Napaskiak**  reflecting on what they would like to see in their communities when they are  Elders.  (*My source spelled the village with an 's'.  Maybe there are two similarly named villages, but I'm guessing it doesn't have an 's'.)
[UPDATE Jan. 31, 2013 - see comment #3 below that explains there are two - one with and one without the 's'.  Thanks!]






The video was made by the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault [I'm on the steering committee which is why I know about this], with funding from the Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence.


For non-Alaskans, I'd point out that Western Alaska (and most of Southeastern Alaska) is off the road system. An area larger than any other US state, (and possibly Texas and California combined) is not connected by any roads. Transportation to and from these communities is by boat in the summer and snow machine or dogsled in the winter, by air all year. The map below shows Alaska's road system.

map from travelalaska

(Those straight east-westish lines aren't roads.)

Leftover LA Post - Rawesome Raided (But Not Cargill)

We've been back in Anchorage almost a week now, but I still have some leftover LA material that seems worth sharing.  For example. . .

We were headed down Rose to the beach the one day, when we saw this sign:

There had to be an interesting story here.  I remembered something about them being closed once before when we were in LA.    Here's some background information from The Food Renegade:

On the heels of the recent news about raw milk’s safety comes an alarmingly disturbing coordinated multi-agency raid on Rawesome Foods — a raw food buying co-op in Los Angeles. This morning’s SWAT-style raid was coordinated at both Rawesome Foods and Healthy Family Farms and has led to three arrests so far, the confiscation of personal computer equipment and raw milk cheeses, and the dumping of more than $10,000 worth of raw milk down the drain.
According to early reports from people on the scene, James Stewart (owner of Rawesome Foods), Sharon Palmer (of Healthy Family Farms), and Victoria Bloch (local L.A. co-chapter leader for the Weston A. Price foundation) have all been arrested on charges of conspiracy to sell unpasteurized milk products.
The raid was carried out by gun carrying officers of the LA County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control.

They have a short video too.

I don't know enough about this.   I know people can get sick from unpasteurized milk, but there are also ways to handle the milk to prevent this.  This is one of those dilemmas - if a lot of people got sick from Rawesome products, the government would be blamed for not checking them carefully.  But then, how long has Rawesome been selling raw milk and how many people have gotten sick?  How sick? 

Here's a little more clarification from a New York Times article:

. . . And then, on Thursday, James Stewart, the proprietor, was arraigned on charges of illegally making, improperly labeling and illegally selling raw milk products, as well as other charges related to Rawesome’s operations. Two farmers who work with Rawesome were also named in the district attorney’s complaint.
Though it is legal to sell unpasteurized milk products in California, Rawesome, which has operated in Venice for more than six years, never obtained a license to do so — or, indeed, any type of business license.
Lela Buttery, a trustee at Rawesome, said it had no license because it was not a store. Instead, she called it a “club.” Club members paid an annual fee, which allowed them to peruse the produce, milk products and honey on Rawesome’s shelves, which they paid for — $7 for a pint of raw goat’s milk — to cover the cost of production. Members also signed waivers to signal they understood the risks of consuming raw food.
Rawesome is staffed by volunteers, who take home food for their efforts, and no one, Ms. Buttery said, is making money from his or her work there. . .

. . . Siobhan DeLancey, a spokeswoman for the federal Food and Drug Administration, which participated in the investigation of Rawesome, said the administration banned the interstate sale of raw milk products because they could be dangerous for those with compromised immune systems.
“Our biggest concern is really with children, because pathogens that can be in raw milk can be extremely dangerous for the classically at-risk,” she said. “We’ve seen people wind up as paraplegics.”
But raw food enthusiasts are convinced of raw milk’s healthfulness — and still have plenty of options around here.
“I drink it all the time,” said Laura Avery, who runs a farmers’ market in Santa Monica where raw milk products are sold. “I believe it’s a safer product.” 

The Washington Post Communities section posted a long piece as well.  So, we have the left and the right on this one.  

The Atlantic has an article that points out that while Rawesome was raided and its owner and two others taken to jail with an initial bail set at $121,000, food conglomerate Cargill was deciding how to voluntarily recall turkey contaminated with salmonella.

Despite a lack of victims, Rawesome stands accused. And while Cargill has no shortage of victims, nobody at the company has been charged with a crime over the turkey recall. The government has fewer options against multinational corporations than it does against neighborhood food co-ops. USDA oversees the safety of meat products but can only encourage "voluntary recalls" of products that have been infected with antibiotic-resistant pathogens, reports Tom Philpott of Mother Jones. The final decision to recall was left to the company, which inevitably considered the bottom line as well as public safety when making its decision.

While Cargill self-polices, the Rawesome club has been under more intense scrutiny than members even realized. "Since the raid it's come out that we've been under investigation since June 30 of last year," Buttery says. "They've been monitoring us from unmarked vehicles; they have agents who have become members."

That moves us from the protecting the public narrative to the large food conglomerates vs. small natural food supporters.   This seemed to have been a theme of the natural food folks in the debate over what was called the Food Safety Modernization Act. 

Strange, Weird, Wonderful, and Cool Buildings

Someone came to my blog today through a link at Strange, Weird, Wonderful, and Cool Buildings. SWWCB posted this picture I took in January of the Frank Gehry house at Venice Beach.

Let me tell you, this is probably the least weird of the buildings on that page.  They are definitely worth looking at.  Click here to see them. 

Gehry's Disney Concert Hall

In a separate  blog post at Strange, Weird . . . for today, "the grumpy old limey" gives some background on the Gehry beach house, more pictures, and cites it as an example that Gehry does more than "flowing curves and metal claddings. . ."  (You can see those curves and claddings in this post of mine and yet another one of Gehry's spectacular Disney Concert Hall which is a photographer's dream building.)




The Strange, Weird, Wonderful, and Cool Buildings page of images includes, among other oddities, the Kunsthaus in Graz, Austria which looks something like a cross between an amphibian and a UFO; the Flying Saucer House in Tennessee;  the UFO house which is listed in both Texas and Florida;   the Sheep House and the Dog House in New Zealand (no problem figuring out which ones those are);  and there's the Crooked House in Poland.

These all stretch one's conception of what a building can be.  Go look and rearrange your brain cells a bit. 

The Writing Prior To The Posting

It's been over 24 hours since my last post. It's not like I've run out of things to say. I have a stack of backed up posts on a variety of topics - thoughts on the Redistricting Board's submission to the Department of Justice, the Municipality's approach to Boards and Commissions, the movie "The Help", a bear we saw near Child's Glacier, the mayor's justification for being able to veto amendments to ordinances before the ordinance has passed, a story about housing problems in Kosovo, Moira Kalman and book covers, and on and on.  Some of these are already lengthy drafts. Some just  ideas.  Or photos.  I have a video of the bear.  But they just aren't ready.

While it may not always seem like it, I try to write these posts in a way that pinpoints the most important parts of the issue and follows Strunk and White's Elementary Principles of Composition.  (The link goes to Strunk's 1918 edition online.  The countless newer editions have more modern examples, but the basic advice is the same pithy insight into clearer writing.)

So, I write.  Maybe I'll put up some photos or a video.  As I write, new questions arise.  Or I see connections to other seemingly unrelated issues.  I'll google and check out background information.  Sometimes, but rarely, I'll make phone calls.   I revise.  Move stuff. Delete stuff.  Maybe it's repetitious or doesn't directly add to the story.  Though I do keep in a number of digressions that add context.  (I'm a big fan of Tristram Shandy (read paragraph 2 and the quote in the link) and I even did a post on Dickens' thoughts on meandering.  Clifford Geertz's thick description is another influence.)

When it seems close to complete, I'll push the preview button and read it there.  That leads to a long series of backs-and-forths between the post and the preview as I correct typos, cut out unnecessary verbiage, or have an entirely new thought about how to clarify a point. 

I could keep editing forever, because it's always improvable. But each change carries the possibility of new errors.  While I do this, to some extent, with every post, the more sensitive the topic, the more I work at it.  Eventually, there comes a point where I say, "OK, this is it.  I'll look at the preview one more time, but no more changes unless it's flat out wrong."  And even then I might see something I missed before which would be so much better if . . . and I revise it despite my 'last time' resolve.  [I know, some of you are thinking, "He does all that?  It must be really bad to start with."  It is.]


I don't have an editor to correct my overlooked typos or give me deadlines or assignments.  One of the best ADN reporters once told me the benefits (of no editor) far outweigh the drawbacks.  So this one is not a complaint.  Well, none are complaints, just explanations of what happens before something gets posted.

Some of these posts have been held up because I've tried to get a little more information. (Does anyone out there know if the Greater Anchorage Area Borough (GAAB) had a charter? And if it did, do you know where I can get a copy? I've talked to the Archives at UAA, the Alaskana Room at Loussac,  the State Archives in Juneau,  the Mayor of the GAAB, and the Municipal Clerk's office. They either said they didn't know or it would cost to do more research. Did I mention the Boundary Commission?)

Sometimes I just have to do something else for a while so my brain can sort things out without me disturbing it.  When I get back to it, a day or three later, it's all much clearer.  But it may also mean I have to start all over with a totally new structure. 

Sometimes other things present themselves to be blogged. They look like quick, easy posts (like this one did),  but usually turn out to have some twist that takes much longer than I intended.

And while I got 2 more gigabytes memory for my MacBook (another post to be written) my cursor has begun to skip to seemingly random places, to select what I've just typed, and then to delete it with the next stroke. If I type realllllllll slooooooooowly it doesn't happen as much.  And sometimes I get five minutes with no quirks. (This feral cursor would make an amusing video.)

And this is supposed to be fun, so sometimes I have to just leave a post awhile, until it's fun again, and not work.

And my wife offered a massage, which is always better than blogging.

Wait, Ear, You Missed The Best Part . . .

The Alaska Ear is the Sunday political gossip column in the Anchorage Daily News.  It covers the more personal aspects of local politicians and other local celebrities.  Personally, I think the behind the scenes relationships - who went to school with whom, who regularly fish together, who are business partners, etc. - helps us understand the surface news.  The point shouldn't be to embarrass folks as much as to let people know things like  Politician X and Lobbyist Y were college roommates.  That sort of stuff makes it easier to understand why some bills move through the legislature and others don't.

Anyway, the Ear  today had a short piece on former Assembly member Dan Coffey's walking out miffed after he made a presentation at the Huffman-O'Malley Community Council meeting.  Coffey's had lucrative contracts* over the past year  to suggest revisions to the Mayor on the last draft of the Title 21 revisions.  This is the code for implementing the Anchorage 2020 plan that was the product of 8 or so years of massive public meetings on the future of Anchorage.  The new Code was approved by the Assembly - including Coffey - and sent to the Planning Department for minor technical changes for consistency and such things.

But then Mayor Sullivan got elected and he's given Coffey a couple of sole-source contracts to look into making the code, apparently, more builder friendly.  A coalition of groups that had been involved with the public process that created the Code has gotten organized.  (I got invited, as a blogger, to a couple of their meetings.) They argue that Title 21 has already been through lots of compromises with the building interests and now Coffey has spent a year talking with people at BOMA** (Building Owners and Managers Association) about how they'd like the Code to be changed after it was basically approved.   Not in open meetings where others could hear and challengel inaccuracies. Like you negotiate  to buy a house and after you're done, the realtor goes back to the seller and makes more changes behind your back.

The Coalition - loosely grouped around the call to "Free Title 21" - has been asking to see Coffey's new draft, but has been regularly told it wasn't going to be available until October when it is heard at Planning and Zoning.  They're upset they'll only have two weeks to go through hundreds of pages trying to figure out where Coffey made changes.

So, Ear writes:

During the Q&A session that followed, according to people who were there, local resident and former Planning and Zoning Commissioner John Weddleton*** told the group that Coffey's presentation was "one extreme view" with "many inaccuracies." Earwigs report a clearly irritated Coffey replied that if people wanted to know what was in the plan, they could get a copy and read it themselves, then stalked out. [2nd emphasis added.]

Hmmm. Dan, who was often the smartest man in the room on Assembly night, could always dish it out but can't always take it.

Wait Ear, you missed the best part.  The real issue is that so far, the public has not been able to get or see a copy of the report.  Coffey and Sullivan have refused to share it. Does this mean it's now available for public view?  Or has Ear taken liberties with the facts herself?


 
*  What I understand is the second contract (the work wasn't completed in the first contract period) for Feb - June 2011 was for $30,000.

**The Mayor gave his State of the City Address at a BOMA meeting this year.

***Weddleton has been part of the Free Title 21 efforts.