Sun and Snow - And Great Alaskan Light

As nice as the warmth and sun of LA was, Anchorage welcomed us with spectacular snow and light.

Although it had snowed while we were traveling home, by mid day the clouds were dissipating and the mountains came into view.

But first I had a driveway to shovel.  Two different neighbors came by with their snowblowers and helped out a bit in front. 




After I shoveled and the March sun did it's thing, the driveway was looking much better, though it still had a lot of packed down snow that I'll be chipping at for a few more days.

And we saw evidence of all the snow that puts this year into the top 3 or 4 in total snowfall (with March and April still to go.)


At the post office, there was a pile of snow behind a fence.

And here's the snow that Costco's been clearing from its parking lot.

Earlier in the day I'd biked over to the Thai Kitchen and here's one of the empty side streets I rode home on.  A real contrast from the crowded LA streets I'd been negotiating.

We've never had this much snow at our house before.  The mailbox is almost buried in the snow.  People are beginning to worry about breakup with all this snow.  Good years give us dry, sunny, windy weather that evaporates the water from the snow.  We'll see.

4% of Voting Eligible Tennesseans Vote for Santorum - Some Context of a Primary

From the State of Tennessee's website tonight: 

President - Republican
Michele Bachmann - R	1,790
Newt Gingrich - R	126,251
Jon Huntsman - R	1,143
Gary Johnson - R	542
Ron Paul - R	47,794
Rick Perry - R	1,829
Charles "Buddy" Roemer - R	830
Mitt Romney - R	144,237
Rick Santorum - R	192,765

President - Democratic
Barack Obama - D	68,221

Adding those all up we come up with 585,402 voters in both the Republican and Democratic primaries.


From the United States Election Project website at George Mason University, we learn that Tennessee's voting eligible population  4,621,705.

That means that about 12.6% of Tennessee's voting eligible population voted in Tuesday's primary.

That means about 4.1% of Tennessee's voting eligible population voted for Santorum.  



Tennessee's voter id law took effect January this year requiring voters to have photo id.  Here's the state of Tennessee's website list of acceptable voter id:

Any of the following IDs may be used, even if expired:

• Tennessee drivers license with your photo
• United States Passport
• Photo ID issued by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
• Photo ID issued by the federal or any state government
• United States Military photo ID
• State-issued handgun carry permit with your photo

And what id is NOT acceptable?

College student IDs and photo IDs not issued by the federal or a state government are NOT acceptable.

And who is exempt from the photo id requirement?

• Voters who vote absentee by mail (view requirements here)
• Voters who are residents of a licensed nursing home or assisted living center and who vote at the facility         
• Voters who are hospitalized
• Voters with a religious objection to being photographed*
• Voters who are indigent and unable to obtain a photo ID without paying a fee

 You might want to go through that list and ask yourself which of the id's that are acceptable are more likely to vote conservative or liberal (say, people with military id's or student id's;  older folks - nursing homes, hospitalized - or younger folks?)

And consider how someone might prove they are indigent.  Or even how an indigent person might.

By the way, the two PSA announcements - first  and second -  don't tell you much more than you need a photo id.  There's nothing about the exceptions.  Or that student ids aren't acceptable. 

Bradblog has a story about a former US Marine who is challenging the law by showing his Tennessee voter registration card, but refusing to show a photo id.  I'm assuming this is an action intended to lead to a court challenge of the law.  I think the challenge is important, but I'm not too impressed with this particular person's video taped protest in his polling place. 

I'm not sure what this all means, but I'm wondering why the media have been making such a big deal out of the primaries and giving them so much coverage without pointing out the pitifully low voter turnout and questioning people's claims about the importance of democracy. 

*I'm not doing well looking on Google  for religions that ban photography.  I found a story about an Amish Canadian claiming his religion forbids personal photos and an Islamic woman claiming her religion forbids a photo (for a drivers license) without her veil. 

80s to Teens - LA to Anchorage

Sunday was in the 80s, even at Venice beach.  In this picture it was almost 5pm and was still warm with a lot of people on the beach - some even going into the chilly (55˚F -14˚C) ocean.

People were paying $9 to park their cars at 5pm to see the sunset.  The traffic was backed up for blocks.  The sort of situation when those of us on bikes feel a little smug.  The picture is from the Venice Beach parking lot at the end of Rose right at the Venice Boardwalk.  You can see the shadows are getting long as the sun is getting low.

In addition to the traffic, the gas prices were high.  (We saw $4.09 as we drove home from the airport in Anchorage.) I took this picture from the bus stop Monday (still warm but with clouds) as we waited for the afternoon bus to the airport.  (Yes, you can take the bus, but apparently you can't walk into the LA airport.)

And while there is free wifi in the Anchorage, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco airports, I couldn't find it in LAX.

Lincoln and Rose

When we got to the airport, the good news was that we had been bumped up into first class.  I mentioned when we went down to LA that we had flown so much last year that we got MVP cards.  This MVP card has more benefits than I realized.  I didn't do anything, they just changed our seats. It also gets us on the plane earlier and gets us into a shorter security line. I'm not a hierarchical person - I don't like it when people are given status that suggests some people are better than others - because most such divisions tend to be superficial or even bogus.  And I don't see why people who have more money or fly more should get to cut in the security line.  Security is required by the US government and money shouldn't give you privilege for required government functions.  But that's a post of its own one day, maybe. 

On the connecting flight to Anchorage they put us in the exit row so we had lots of leg room.  And we checked in some baggage which we don't normally do.   But our 10:20 pm flight left about 40 minutes late and when you're due in at 1am, that gets to be a long day.  Then when we arrived we had to wait for a plane to be de-iced before we could get to the terminal.  Here we are sitting, waiting for 10 minutes, with a bit of snow still coming down. 

One reason we've checked in baggage - other than we were gone 5 weeks and had 2 bags each free check in with the MVP (and as others mentioned last time with the Alaska Club that any Alaskan can join free), is Alaska's 20 minute baggage guarantee. In the past we've waited for an hour for our luggage. Well, it was clearly more than 20 minutes this morning - and it was now 2:30am Anchorage time, 3:30am Pacific time - so I asked the baggage folks and they gave me the coupon for $20 off our next flight (or 2000 miles) that they offer if your baggage is over 20 minutes in coming.  While they apologized over the loudspeakers about the slow luggage, they didn't tell people to come get their coupons.  It does pay to read. 

Then there were no taxis outside.  Another 10 minutes until enough showed up to handle everyone.  And we were home at 3am or so. 

I've got a lunch meeting today, the garage door wasn't working when we got home, and the internet wasn't either. (The Internet I've obviously solved.)  So we have lots of catch up to do after our long absence.  Now I've got to shovel the driveway.  But yes, it's good to be home.

I Didn't Connect to Ruskin's Lonesome West

I couldn't relate to any of the characters in Lonesome West.  It was well acted, the set was great, the tiny theater puts everyone almost on the stage, and I could hear it all well, though the Irish accents were so thick, I had trouble understanding at times, mainly the priest's words got lost.

That was my reaction as we left the Ruskin Group Theater Saturday night and I pretty much decided not even to post about it.  It just wasn't my world at all.

But it seems my brain has been working on this without my knowing and this morning my reaction was clearer.  We like some art because it reflects what we feel.  But really good art should help us understand things and people we don't know.  That's what was missing.

Lonesome West takes place in Ireland - I think they mentioned Galway in the play, and Wikipedia confirms that.   There's lots of alcohol and two adult brothers who do their best to piss the other off.  (It's a lot grimmer than that, but that's enough.)

I couldn't relate to these characters and nothing happened in the play to bridge the gap.  They were strangers at the beginning and not much more at the end.  There was some allusion to past wrongs that could justify the brothers' hostility to each other, but I never felt I got into any of the character's hearts.  I was watching these dysfunctional siblings and their equally troubled friends, and I always was an outsider.  I never saw the world from their view.  I never felt their pain.  Mostly I was irritated at their constant fighting.  For me, a really good play would have made me understand - emotionally as well as rationally - why they had so much trouble breaking the cycle.   We never got a glimpse of their humanity, only their self-destructive behaviors.

It's a pity.  This could be a universal play.  Certainly many rural Alaskan villages (not to mention some urban Alaskan settings) see the same kinds of alcoholism and violence that's portrayed in this production.  Is there a commonality that we could learn from?  I didn't get it watching this play.

I do like this little theater in the Santa Monica Airport which holds maybe 70 spectators (the photo of the set was from my seat before the play began) and is easy walking distance from my mom's.  And we'll see what they're doing next time we're here.  And I am still thinking about what I saw. 

Transistions - California's Evolving Marijuana Law

The beauty and craziness of decentralized government means that experiments can happen in some places, but this can make for contradictions.  Right now California is experimenting with medical marijuana dispensaries, trying to figure out how to make it work. 
 While people have advocated for legal marijuana for decades, the big breaktrhough was a voter approved initiative:

Proposition 215, or the Compassionate Use Act of 1996,^[1] is a California law concerning the use of medical cannabis. It was enacted, on November 5, 1996, by means of the initiative process, and passed with 5,382,915 (55.6%) votes in favor and 4,301,960 (44.4%) against.  [Wikipedia]

Now there are medical dispensaries all over the state.  But some local governments have used zoning laws to ban the dispensaries.

And this past week, the LA Times reports on a court case making local bans illegal:

The Santa Ana-based state Court of Appeal, citing the language of a state medical marijuana law, ruled unanimously Wednesday that a zoning law in Lake Forest amounted to an illegal ban on dispensaries. More than 100 local governments in California currently ban medical marijuana operations.

 There are four other appeal court cases that are expected to go to the state Supreme Court to eliminate some of the contradictions. 

Here's what a state health department website says:

The Medical Marijuana Program (MMP) was established to provide a voluntary medical marijuana identification card issuance and registry program for qualified patients and their caregivers.  The web-based registry system allows law enforcement and the public to verify the validity of qualified patient or caregiver's card as authorization to possess, grow, transport and/or use Medical Marijuana in California.  To facilitate the verification of authorized cardholders, the verification database is available on the internet at www.calmmp.ca.gov.
In 2003, Senate Bill (SB) 420 (Chapter 875, Statutes of 2003) was passed as an extension and clarification of Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.  The Medical Marijuana Program, within CDPH, is administered through a patient's county of residence.  Upon obtaining a recommendation from their physician for use of medicinal marijuana, patients and their primary caregivers may apply for and be issued, a Medical Marijuana Identification Card.  Senate Bill 420 also required that the MMP be fully supported through the card application processing fees.  Both the state and the counties have authority to cover their costs for the program through these application fees.

The top picture is very clearly a medical marijuana dispensary that operates on the Venice Boardwalk.

When I went by Dr. Schultz's botantical pharmacy I assumed it was a fancier version of a medical marijuana dispensary.  But after checking the website, I don't think that is the case.  
Dr. Schulze's pharmacy was established in 1979 according to its website and I had to look hard to find any mention of marijuana and it is NOT listed among the products.  The only place I could find it mentioned is on a pdf file I can no longer find, titled "Dr. Richard Schultz's Natural Healing Crusade."  There's a long list of herbal medicines and marijuana is mentioned on page 29.   


Meanwhile,  tomorrow we head back for Anchorage.  It's been a long time.  We've had great weather and it's been good to be with my mom all this time and to see our kids and friends.  Our heads are already transitioning.  As much as I've traveled in my life, it is still hard to reconcile the warm sunny weather we're having in LA with the cold and snow that is in Anchorage.  But it is March and the solstice [equinox] is coming soon and after that Anchorage will have more light than every place to the south.  (most places)

The good news is that it will be cooling down in LA the next few days and warming up in Anchorage.  And I'm looking forward to getting on my cross country skis and gliding through the white woods.

Some Acacia Seeds Germinate Only After Passing Through A Giraffe's Digestive System

So said the sign at "The Living Desert" in Palm Desert.   I'm a reluctant zoo visitor.  I love seeing the animals, I'm not happy about seeing them in cages.  We went to the Living Desert because an old friend who lives in the area is a member an invited us.

(I could put up my giraffe picture, but it would be an example of what not to do when taking a picture.  The light was bright and I couldn't see the screen and got a plant right in front of the giraffe.)

It turns out to be a new form of zoo.  Their history page says:

Badger

The Living Desert was established in 1970 by several trustees of the Palm Springs Desert Museum who foresaw the impact that resort development would have on their local desert ecosystem. This foresight led to an interpretive nature trail and preserve in Palm Desert. Among the trustees was Philip L. Boyd who also founded the Riverside campus of the University of California and the Deep Canyon Research Station in Palm Desert. Among his first tasks was to hire a resident naturalist. This person turned out to be a young woman with energy, intelligence and ambition, as well as experience as a zoo keeper and park ranger, plus graduate work in wildlife biology. Karen Sausman was President and CEO of The Living Desert for forty years and has recently retired. The vision that built The Living Desert and the love of the desert shared by Phillip Boyd, Karen Sausman, our members, volunteers, staff, trustees, and friends, will be carried forward by our new President and CEO, Stacey Johnson.

For almost four decades The Living Desert has been engaged in the important work of preserving, conserving and interpreting the desert and all its varied plant and animal life.

They have 1800 acres, they say, of which 1000 are in their natural state.  They have a tram and what I'd call adult strollers which made it easy for my mom to get around with us.

Cougar

Most of their animals are local - including Endangered species like the Mexican wolf and Peninsula Bighorn sheep, which we saw, but I didn't take pictures of.  But I did get pictures of a cougar and a badger.








And then they have the non-local animals like the giraffes and the cheetah.

The Mexican Wolf display had this useful sign for people who have trouble reading the body language of wolves (and dogs.)

Click to enlarge

Thanks Tim for a great time.

MisoFishy and TVs in Restaurants

We were having dinner with my mom at MisoFishy on Lincoln. 

It's unpretentious, but more than a hole in the wall.  It felt like a neighborhood restaurant with a larger appeal.


But it had three big video screens.  One, appropriately, was an animated fish tank, but the other two had on a basketball game.  

A young couple (anyone under 40 fits that) was sitting near us.  I apologize for this picture, but I felt uncomfortable intruding on the privacy of the couple with my camera.  I didn't realize until I got home that I had the woman's face in it.  I've smudged her face in Photoshop.  She was attractive and so was the man sitting across the table from her.  They both had wedding rings on and I assumed they were married.  They talked a lot.  But every few minutes or so, while she was looking at him and talking to him, his head angled up and his eyes locked onto the screen for five to fifteen seconds.  He was so clearly NOT paying complete attention to his companion. 

My eyes wandered up to the screen now and then too.  And I've noticed the seductiveness of tv monitors in other restaurants.  How is this affecting relationships?  This couple was having real conversation that kept being interrupted by the screen.  I could see him break eye contact to check the television from behind him.  Surely she must have been irked when his eyes left hers for the ballgame.

Perhaps I paid more attention this time after the Chris Hedges video I posted last week in which he talked about his book Empire of Illusion and how we're moving from literacy to images and how we are being distracted by all the moving images.  We're being distracted from what we're doing, just by the movement, as in this case at the restaurant.  And we're being distracted by the content, distracted both from our real lives by this artificial life and from the realities of power in society. 

But I don't think individual restaurant owners are part of a conspiracy to distract us  paying more attention to lobbyists and who pays them.  They must think that customers want televisions.  But do we?


Do restaurants without tv monitors do less well than those with?  [As soon as I wrote that I had to start googling, below is a sampling of what I found on televisions in restaurants.]

Most online comments are negative with exceptions for sports bars, possibly lobbies where people are waiting, and airports.  (I'm ok with sports bars having tvs.)

Back in October 2008, when he was about to turn 33, James Norton reflected my concerns above:

Now insert a television, even with the volume turned down. It catches your attention, and your brain does what brains do: It tries to understand the image, the context, and the story, deciphering the action and suddenly and illogically becoming invested in it. Doesn't matter if it's a presidential debate with subtitles or a newly rebroadcast rerun of ALF. We're hooked. And we're disengaged from the people with whom we're supposed to be connecting.

A similar sentiment from Riverfront Times:

​Gut Check has begrudgingly accepted the sad fact that there will often be an illuminated screen of one type or another shoved in our faces when we eat. Sometimes it's a date that won't put his damn iPhone away, and sometimes there's a blaring flatscreen in every nook and cranny of a restaurant. No, we don't simply dine at sports bars and wing joints, either. We're talking about decent places with nice decor that really should not have a television, much less eight of them.
But, what can you do? It's an ugly, tacky sign of the times.
So, we deal with it when we, mid-sentence, catch our friends staring past us and at a Jersey Shore rerun. Because, rude as it may seem, it's nearly impossible to ignore the screaming flash of the screen (and orange tans), especially when the set is situated just behind/right next to your dining partner's face.

She does draw the line though on content:

And for the love of God, don't let Dr. Oz come on while people are trying to eat.

And I saw other posts complaining about inappropriate surgery and police shows showing while they were eating.


Isolda also realized in a restaurant that had a tv playing a Downton Abbey rerun that it wasn't tv she objected to, but what they had on:

So it occurred to me that what I really hate isn't the TVs so much as sports on TV. If more bars/restaurants were willing to dedicate one of their TVs to chick-friendly fare (with closed captioning), I might not object!

There's also a legal aspect to all this.  From restaurant.org:

Exemption
Restaurants under 3,750 gross square feet (not counting the parking lot) will be exempt from paying royalties on radio and television music only.
Restaurants over 3,750 gross square feet (not counting the parking lot) may also be exempt: 1. if they play no more than four televisions, each measuring up to 55” diagonally (no more than one per room), with no more than six speakers total, and with no more than four speakers per room, or 2. if they play radios that have no more than six speakers total, with no more than four speakers per room.
For restaurants to be eligible for the exemption, they must not charge a cover fee to see the television or listen to the radio.

The Washington Post had an article last September on Best Bars Without Televisions.

Restaurant Management has an article "TVs or No TVs?" which has one restaurant with tv and one without and asks them why. (Each owner likes his policy and says it helps business. But there's no data to prove one is better than the other.)


I started this internet search because I wanted to know if revenue goes up in restaurants with televisions.  So far, I haven't found any studies answering that question.  Probably they are important in sports bars, but what about decent restaurants?

There's a site for waiters and waitresses (make better tips) which says the televisions are not good for revenue:

Also try to avoid restaurants that have television sets in the dining areas. TVs distract diners and can cause people to sit at tables too long. Slow turnover cuts into your profit potential.

Really, that's all I can find on the relationship between televisions in restaurants and revenue.  It's quite possible that everyone just assumes they have to add a tv because their competitors have one (more like five.)  Or tv salespeople are pushing them.

But here's one option from a blogger on Shareable in San Francisco with a long post on this topic:

 “When I go in a bar or restaurant with a TV,” says Josh Mulholland, another friend and a Bay Area writer and teacher. “I only stay long enough to tell them why they aren’t getting my money.”

I think that's the way to go. 


My key objection is expressed well by this Vancouver blogger:

What if I don't want to watch TV? Even if you are not technically watching, it's still intrusive; trying not to watch becomes as irritating as watching. Requests to shut the box off have taught me that the best I can hope for is a channel change or a dip in the volume, with a change of seats sometimes reluctantly granted if the screen is looming over your head like an interrogation lamp.  

Urine, MVP, Science, Protocol, Testosterone and How We Know Truth - Part 2 (Or "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt")

We can read the newspapers (watch tv) and take each new story as an isolated story and then go on to the next.  Or we can take each story and try to figure out how this story adds to everything else we already know and whether it tends to confirm or raise doubts for our beliefs.  But we have to be careful that those beliefs don't cause us to accept the facts that support what we believe and to reject those that don't.  Extricating 'the truth' is rarely easy.  That reality helps liars greatly.

This story about Ryan Braun's positive drug test and subsequent overturning of the results on appeal offers us potential lessons for a lot more than just other stories about drugs.

It also offers us lessons for evaluating politicians and car salespeople.  And friends.

And it also provides lessons for the whole endeavor of figuring out 'the truth' in general, or even pondering what 'the truth' even means.

I offered six basic points that don't seem to be in dispute in the previous post.

The drug test said his testosterone level was higher than any other baseball player tested, ever.

He denies taking drugs, claiming something went wrong with the testing.  And the appeal board agreed that the delay in sending in the sample for testing violated protocol and his 50 game suspension was overturned.

The New York Times had a long article which goes into details about the testing process.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Laurenzi [the tester] denied tampering with Braun’s urine sample and said that he acted professionally when he took the sample home for the weekend instead of sending it immediately to a laboratory.

“I followed the same procedure in collecting Mr. Braun’s sample as I did in the hundreds of other samples I collected under the program,” Laurenzi said. “At no point did I tamper in any way with the samples.”

Laurenzi also said that in taking Braun’s sample, along with those of two other players, to his home for safekeeping, he was again following standard procedure. That procedure was in place because it had been determined that it was better to keep the samples in a secure location rather than leave them in a FedEx office where they could have been tampered with or not properly stored.

“The protocol has been in place since 2005 when I started with CDT and there have been other occasions when I have had to store samples in my home for at least one day, all without incident,” Laurenzi said.

Many collections are done at night because that is when most games are played, although when Laurenzi collected Braun’s sample on Oct. 1, a playoff game between the Brewers and the Diamondbacks began just after 1 p.m. Laurenzi said he completed his collections at Miller Park in Milwaukee at about 5 p.m., which is also the deadline for giving FedEx shipments to stores in the Milwaukee area that could be flown out that night.

  Laurenzi said that after arriving home, he put the samples in a Rubbermaid container in his basement office that, he said, “is sufficiently cool to store urine samples.” No one other than his wife had access to the samples during that time. All three samples were kept in the same sealed, tamper-proof package.

Braun has never asserted, either in his case before the arbitrator or in his news conference last Friday, that the samples tested in a lab in Montreal bore any evidence of having been compromised. One person with knowledge of the Braun case said a union representative on Braun’s behalf was present in Montreal for a critical moment in the testing process, and never raised any concerns about the sample.

Kent Covington at Braveswire - what appears to be an Atlanta Braves website - lists pros and cons for believing Braun and adds information I haven't seen elsewhere:

Beyond the sincere tone, Braun made a compelling case for his innocence. Here are the key points of that case:
1)  He was 27 years old, entering the prime years of his career with a long-term guaranteed contract, and even if he were inclined to use PED’s, he would not have had sufficient motivation to take such a risk.
2) Braun had passed 24 prior drug tests, including multiple tests during the 2011 season.
3) The fact that MLB said his testosterone levels were three times greater than any other test result since testing began made those results far less believable.
I must say, this is a persuasive point. Of all the juicers MLB has tested in recent years, with hundreds of positive results… Ryan Braun’s testosterone levels were THREE TIMES higher than anyone they had ever tested? That is a bit hard to believe. Especially given the following point.
4)  He did not gain muscle mass, a single pound of weight or so much as a tenth of a second on his run time on the basepaths (which is routinely measured and documented by team officials) between his last negative test and the test in question.
Another compelling point.
5) There was an improper 44 hour delay in the delivery of the sample to a FedEx drop-off location. Braun suggested this was a window of time in which someone could have tampered with the sample.
From a legal standpoint, this is likely the argument that resulted in the dismissal of MLB’s case against him. This part of Braun’s argument will be less compelling to fans, however, most of whom remember OJ Simpson getting away with murder (figuratively speaking, of course) based on a technicality.
Overall, Braun was convincing and believable in his self defense.

Then again… a compelling case can be made on MLB’s behalf as well:
1) The league certainly has zero motivation to falsely accuse one of its MVP superstars–with a squeaky clean image–of being a juicer.
2) The sample in question was triple-sealed and its packaging showed no signs of tampering.
3) Perhaps the reason why Braun had not gained any weight or apparent performance advantage was that he had just started using PED’s when the test was administered. This is also the simple counterpoint to all of Braun’s prior clean tests.
When all is said and done, I believe we all have an ethical responsibility to assume Braun’s innocence. The 44-hour delay in the delivery of the sample is more than a small technicality. It is unlikely that anyone would have had both motive and opportunity to fabricate Braun’s positive results or that an egregious error could have been responsible for a false positive. But “unlikely” is a long way from impossible.

Covington adds several interesting pieces of information

• 24 previous tests with no positive results,
• three times higher than any other test
• no noticeable muscle mass or weight gain 

So, if he had 24 other negative tests, does that mean that this is the first time he's taken something, or just that he took things now and then and was lucky he wasn't tested.  Can a random fix give you power for a day? 

Nowhere have I seen the actual testosterone levels.

A report at medicinenet says  the average testosterone level for men is in the range of 270 to 1,070 nanograms per deciliter. (This report also talks about the effects - both positive and negative of heightened testosterone levels in men.)

USDoctor has a long post on the many ways to enhance testosterone and benefits and problems of each and how long they last, though it doesn't get into detection of drugs.

So while many, myself included, tend to lean toward assuming Braun probably feels that he can just deny in the face of it being difficult to prove he took something, there are some other possibilities that I haven't found discussed that could be out there.

1.  Someone put something into his food.  According to the USdoctor site,

"Oral testosterone may dramatically raise the testosterone level, only to have it drop a few hours later."

This would be consistent with the very high level and subsequent negative test. But then again, he could have done this himself.  It would have made it easier to evade detection in the earlier tests. 

2.  There also could be problems with the testing equipment or the person reading the test.  There is no evidence provided for this and usually such equipment is calibrated regularly.  I don't know what procedures there are to document all this and how reliable they are. 


What truths even exist and how can they be known?

Facts are things that potentially can be proven true or false.  Here are some key ones from this story:

• Braun either did or didn't have higher testosterone levels
• Braun did something or not to cause this
• Someone else did something or not to cause this
• There was tampering or not of the sample
• The sample was unintentionally or not contaminated
• The testing equipment was or was not functioning properly

Is Braun telling the truth?

• He could be knowingly lying
• He could be deluding himself into believing
• he did something but it was ok to do it
• what he took was legal
• since everyone else does it, it's ok
• he really has lost connection with reality on this and  believes he did nothing

There are a lot of ways one could push this story along.  Why do we even care if sports figures take drugs?  Why are records important?  Why are we spending time on this story (and others like it) instead of reading more about Iranian and US relations and whether Iran is truly a threat or whether this is another push by war profiteers to get us into another war? 

Or we could pursue the whole idea of truth and how we prove it and why it's important.  But this is only a blog post and I have other things to do today.  I only have enough time to raise questions, not answer them.

What is it about humans that we find ambiguity and uncertainty so troubling?  Brainy Quotes credits Bertrand Russell with this thought:

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

And they also credit Russell with this:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

Experience is a good thing.  But it's better if one learns from experience.  This is just a story about a ball player whose drug test came out positive.  For some, it's just another interesting story to be pulled out and laughed over.  For others, it's one more piece of the giant puzzle that helps us understand life. 

Urine, MVP, Science, Protocol, Testosterone, and How We Know Truth - Part 1

Here's the basic story:

1.  Ryan Braun was voted Most Valuable Player in the National League last year
2.  "Braun's positive test for testosterone showed a level that was extremely elevated, and likely the highest that has been recorded in Major League Baseball"[Sports Illustrated]

3.  Braun denies he did anything wrong and alleges that something happened to the sample.

4.  "Under baseball's drug policy, Braun was to be suspended for the first 50 games of this season." [LA Times]

5.  "A three-person appeals panel overturned the findings — a first in baseball."[LA Times]

6.  The basis for the appeals ruling was that the urine sample spent the weekend at the home of the tester instead of being shipped immediately by Fed Express to be tested.

After checking various accounts online, I'm pretty sure that the above six points are not disputed among the parties.

Somewhere in the literature of brainstorming there's a discussion of the kinds of ideas people come up with.  Some folks go into great depth around one or two options.  Other people have much more breadth - they come up with a wide variety of possible explanations.

The original article I read (the LA Times opinion piece) seemed to see this as either/or - either Braun is lying or the sample was tainted, and the writer didn't put much stock in the tainted option.

This blog's underlying theme is 'how do we know what we know?' 

What's your first reaction?  Is Braun guilty or a victim?  Or is this even the right question?

Then, before going deeper into this case, I'd like to ask readers to do some brainstorming and to come up with as many different stories as you can that plausibly incorporate the six 'facts' outlined above.  I'm interested in breadth here - the variety of different possibilities.  Are there stories that exonerate both Braun and the testers?  What further information would you need to know to test your stories?

I know you have lots to do today and some of you don't want to embarrass yourselves.  But you can be anonymous - but sign the comment with some identifier just to keep the Anons identifiable.  

Stoltz Versus Hungry Kids

On January 20 of this year, I posted a video I made of Kokayi Nosakhere talking about his intent to go to Juneau and fast until SB 3 got out of the House Finance Committee.  SB 3 is a bill that would add $1.9 million to the program for free school meals.

The person holding the bill up is Chugiak/Matsu legislator Bill Stoltz.  Kokayi began his hunger strike Feb. 7 in Juneau.  I've known Kokayi for a while and he's a very passionate guy.  He's been outraged that in the United States there are hungry kids.  Unlike most of us, he's not willing to just let this go on without doing something serious about this problem.

You have to be serious to go on a hunger strike for three weeks (now).

I've been out of the state since before he started the strike.  But I understand there has been a lot of press coverage.  Here's a tv example.  And here's one from the Mudflats blog.

I don't know that Stoltz is reachable by logical argument.  Kokayi told me last night that Stoltz has refused to speak to Kokayi.  If I were Stoltz, I'd invite Kokayi to meet me in my office and serve him the most delicious smelling meal I could find and sit there talking to Kokayi while the fragrance drifted into Kokayi's nostrils.  But that doesn't seem to be Stoltz's way.  I  heard him tell the Legislative Council in 2010, when they were discussing whether they should lift the block on Facebook for legislative computers (Yes, legislators can't be trusted with Facebook from their offices):

I’m confessing a total lack of knowledge on this. I don’t know enough to vote other than negatively. [This was as close to verbatim as I could get at the meeting.]

He then spoke for about ten minutes on why it would be bad to pass the motion.  Even though he admitted he had a total lack of knowledge. 

I'm not sure constituent contacts would make a difference, but it is the one thing that tends to get legislators' attention.  So I'm posting these maps of Stoltz's district 16.  If you live there call or email to ask him to pass SB3 out of committee.  Or if you know people in it, ask them if they know what their rep is doing and urge them to contact him.

Here's the current district:

You can click to enlarge it.  Basically, it's from Chugiak up into the Matsu and much of it is unpopulated mountains.  Here are some enlargements so you can see where it is.

NW District 16 click to enlarge

NE District 16 - click to enlarge

South District 16 - click to enlarge

It's District 11 in the new redistricting plan which you can see here.

Do let Rep. Stoltz know how you feel about this.  (The Senate has passed this bill at least twice already and now it's being held by the House Finance Committee as it was the last time.).