417

I recently had a contest here to see who could come closest to counting the number of dandelions I picked last week.  The underlying intent of the post was to also to poke a little fun at our recent municipal election.  People were more interested in the dandelions.  Nan Mundy guessed there were 390 dandelions in the bag.  That was the closest guess to the actual number I counted when I picked them: 417 - buds, blossoms, and spent blossoms.

Thanks to the others who participated. Nan is someone from Anchorage who has moved to Juneau.  Someone I 'know of' more than I know.  I've notified her and we're working out a dinner at Thai Kitchen when she's in Anchorage next.  No one claimed the bag of dandelions.

CREW Synopsis of DOJ Documents on Don Young

This posts builds from Cliff Groh's post at Alaska Political Corruption that cites Charlie Savage's New York Times' May 31 article about the Public Integrity Section's (PIN) checkered record of late. PIN's the Justice Department branch that prosecuted the Alaska corruption cases, including the Stevens case, and the John Edward's case, but dropped their case against Don Young. It also includes links to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's (CREW) report on the documents it got through Freedom of Information Act requests from DOJ regarding Don Young.

First, here are the excerpts from the Charlie Savage article that mention Young:

The two failed cases were the most nationally visible efforts in recent years by the public integrity section, which was criticized in 2010 after closing out, without bringing charges, a series of long-running investigations into current or former members of Congress including Senator John Ensign of Nevada and Representatives Tom DeLay of Texas, Jerry Lewis of California, Allan B. Mollohan of West Virginia and Don Young of Alaska. . .

“The cases that they are deciding to prosecute, and not prosecute, reflect an incoherent strategy,” she said. “At some points they are willing to be incredibly aggressive, like with John Edwards, and on the other hand they are overly cautious in refusing to prosecute people like John Ensign and Don Young.” 

. . . Mr. Smith, seeking a fresh start for the unit, urged prosecutors to file charges or close cases in which investigations had lingered. The wave of closed cases — including the decision in August 2010 not to charge Mr. Young, another Alaska Republican — led critics to accuse the section of being gun-shy. . . 

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington later sued the Justice Department to obtain documents related to the Young investigation. This spring, it obtained a draft indictment showing that investigators considered charging him with so-called honest services fraud for accepting and expecting a stream of trips, meals, golf outings and other items of value from lobbyists in exchange for official actions like meetings, letters and legislation. 

Savage goes on to say that  "honest services fraud" had been greatly limited by the Supreme Court in Enron's Jeff Skilling case and that Congress hadn't taken action to  restore its scope. 


Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has a synopsis (which Alaska Political Corruption links) of what the PIN investigation of Young produced.   Here are some excerpts of their findings. [I've left in the footnotes]

Over the course of three years, the FBI, with assistance from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, interviewed dozens of witnesses and amassed a wealth of evidence concerning not only Rep. Young’s role in the Coconut Road earmark, but his misuse of campaign funds to finance personal expenses of both himself and his wife Lu Young. The two used Rep. Young’s campaign account as a personal piggy bank they reached into to cover such things as personal travel home to Alaska,2 restaurants unrelated to campaign activities, and laundry and dry cleaning.3    According to at least one witness, Rep. Young treated any travel to Alaska as campaign related, regardless of its purpose.4    Both he and his wife routinely obtained $300 cash advances for their trips to Anchorage to cover tips and incidental expenses, a practice eventually stopped on the advice of counsel.5    One witness described cash left for Rep. Young either in his hotel room or his condominium.6    Lu Young also sought reimbursement from campaign funds
[1 Young Document 2 (references are to the bates numbers on the documents produced by the FBI).  2 See, e.g., Young Document 192. 3 Young Document 193. 4 Young Document 194. 5 Young Document 195.   6 Id. ]

for additional expenses incurred during trips to Alaska, such as lunches with friends.7    In addition, Rep. Young kept a sports utility vehicle parked in the congressional garage for which he sought monthly reimbursement from campaign funds for mileage, even though the vehicle apparently never left the garage.8
Witnesses interviewed by the FBI paint a fairly negative picture of Rep. Young’s wife Lu, who perceived herself to be “the elected official,” but also acted as a kind of office manager, screening people who came into Rep. Young’s office.9    Described as having “a sense of entitlement about most things,” she submitted many of her personal expenses for reimbursement from campaign funds, including meals with friends and family.10    This practice apparently stopped at some point after years of abuse on the advice of counsel.11    Another witness told the FBI Lu Young received “countless bracelets and ivory while in the DC office,” as well as diamond earrings during a Las Vegas trip,12 while another described Rep. Young and his wife as the recipients of lavish gifts.13

Travel to the Youngs’ two houses in Fort Yukon, Alaska, was covered in large part by campaign funds. The campaign typically paid half of the cost of a charter flight to Fort Yukon, with the congressional office picking up the rest of the cost, which it attributed to Lu Young.14    In some instances, however, the campaign paid for the entire cost of the chartered flight.15    The Youngs also used these flights to transport building supplies.16    Even though these trips were paid for with campaign funds, no campaign events ever took place in Fort Yukon.17
On multiple occasions, Rep. Young went on hunting trips to various hunting resorts in New
[7 Id. 8 See id. 9 Young Document 193. 10 Young Document 194. 11 Young Document 193. 12 Young Document 198. 13 Young Document 250. 14 Young Document 196. 15 Id. 16 Id. 17 Id.]

York, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Montana paid for with campaign funds.18    In some instances, these trips coincided with campaign trips, but the hunting trips themselves were not campaign events.19    In at least one instance, a planned fund raising event was never held, but the hunting trip still went forward.20
Rep. Young failed to disclose these hunting trips on his annual financial disclosure forms. On August 17, 2010, DOJ’s Public Integrity Section referred this matter to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct on August 17, 2010, for possible violations of the Ethics in Government Act.21    Apparently the House Ethics Committee already had commenced its own investigation, as the referral memo references the fact Rep. Young, through counsel, had previously provided the documentation regarding these trips to the committee.22

 The whole document is here.  

This four page synopsis appears to be based on the documents CREW received through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.  You can see the requests and Department of Justice (DOJ) responses here.  First are the requests.  The responses are at the bottom of page one and top of page two.

Blog Quality Standards, Blog Maintenance, and Blog Fatigue

This blog was begun as an experiment and has continued as a labor of love.  It's become an acceptable excuse to spend my time pursuing whatever tickles my brain.  For the most part, spending quality time with my brain and the blog, is stimulating and occasionally seems to add some value to the world at large.

But at times I find that my self imposed schedule (at least once a day) and content standards (see below) cause me tension. Thus, a little blog self reflection is a way to

• think through what is important here  
• share thoughts with other bloggers facing similar issues
• let readers see behind the scenes,  and 
• stall for time.

What do I think my content standards are these days?  (As I write that I'm thinking there are earlier posts where I tried to do this.  And that's one of the problems with blogging today - I have higher standards for myself.  I'm tempted to go back and compare my current standards with the old ones.  No, stop.  That's overkill.  Do this one now, then maybe later, compare them.)  I have these battles with myself constantly.  Less work doesn't usually win like it did just now.  Let me try to articulate my present content standards:

Types of Content

• Mostly self-generated material  -  I should be posting my own original work in most posts.  It would be interesting to go back and see what percent of my posts are mainly original.
• Enhanced borrowed material  - This leads to the question of where do I draw the line between borrowed and original?  
• A movie or book review is original if it focuses on the review with, possibly, some clips or passages, from the original work.  Or an idea from a news article should lead to either my own thoughts or other added meaning such as an overview of what a lot of people thought about the topic.  The original part could include the synthesizing of facts or opinion from various sources including a description of my analytic process.
• More value than just reposting other people's work as filler  - Even if I just find a great idea or video or a picture from somewhere else, I should explain why its important to me to post. The percent of such posts should also be low, maybe once or twice a month at best.  These should be posted either because I found something I thought remarkable and/or that would lift people's spirits.  Sometimes I save things like this for a day when I don't have time to write anything.
• It's ok to plug something I really like - But not just because they asked me to, or even worse, because I'm getting paid (in the broadest sense) for posting.  And all such promotion should identify any connections I have with the person or organization you are promoting.
• Don't post something just to boost hits - Posting a topic only because I know it will boost my ratings is something I don't consciously do.  I've learned to be aware that some topics will get more attention and I have debates with myself about my motives before I post.

I don't think it's necessary to set percentage goals for each type.  General terms like 'most'
and not too often are good enough.  

Content Quality

• Originality - There's very little that hasn't been said before.  One of the brutal tasks of academic writing is making sure no one has written what you are writing.  I don't have that high a standard here.  I do tend to google around to find out what others have said.  My standard seems to be that I'm writing what is original in my experience and if I knowingly get ideas from somewhere else, I'll cite and link them. 
• Respect and Fairness - I try (note I don't claim any particular level of success) to treat the people I write about with respect and fairness.  This means I force myself to think about them as human beings, as people who have parents and children and are struggling to find a way to their own self-respect in a challenging world.  I try to see how the situation looks from their vantage point. That doesn't mean I can't raise questions about their actions, and even their intent, but I constantly remind myself that I really cannot know what they were thinking.  I can only infer.  Raising questions rather than making declaratory statements seems safer.  Would I want someone writing about me the way I'm writing about them?  The qualifications necessary to accurately express how little we truly know about the world can slow down the pace and dim the sparkle of good prose. Can, but doesn't have to.
• Good Prose - This is a goal, often compromised by (self-imposed) deadlines and late night writing.  Strunk and White are my practical guides to succinctness.  They remind me to seek solid nouns and verbs. . . . but, I'm afraid I'm usually in too great a hurry.  Oh, dear.  Time waits for no word.  For particularly sensitive posts, I'll proof and proof and proof to be as clear as possible and avoid unnecessarily offending readers.  For most posts, I've come to realize, I'm scribbling notes to myself that I might be able to use in something later on.  But almost nothing here is a first draft.  Many have been played with five or ten times or more before I hit the publish button.  But I'm still appalled at how many typos manage to slip through.
• Process and Self-Awareness - My inspiration comes from British novelists such as Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy), Anthony Trollope (Barchester Towers), and Charles Dickens. [I never realized how much influence that British Novels class would have on me.] All of these writers chat directly with their readers behind their characters' backs. They talk about how they are writing the book and about what's going on in their characters' lives. They make process into substance.  I've already done a post on Dickens' discussion of meandering at the beginning of David Copperfield.

These are standards that I find myself striving to meet.  I'm not prescribing them for other bloggers. And I make no claims to how often or how well I achieve them, but they're what I'm aiming at. [I never bought into the prohibition against dangling participles.]


Blog Maintenance

Sometimes I think of my blog as an attic for ideas.  Just write them up as they come and shove them into the blog.  But even though the structure of a blog makes it easier to find things, there is a need to do some maintenance now and then.

• Keeping the Pages Up-to-Date - The "Page" tabs on top make it possible to give readers an easier way to find posts on some topics.  My Redistricting Page, for example, lists all the posts on redistricting, but I'm still a few posts behind.  
• Updating Old Posts - Occasionally, through Sitemeter, I see that someone has gone to an old post and I check it out and find it needs fixing. 
• Fixing errors -  If I find typos, I have no problem with fixing them without calling attention to the change.  That holds true if I clean up the writing by eliminating an unnecessary word or two.  
• Fixing Content - But if I'm changing the content or meaning, then I need to let people know I've made a change and when.  I try to use strikeout and [brackets] to show what's but changed. 
• Fixing missing pictures or bad links - For some reason, some pictures stop working.  These are glaring.  Links are harder to check, but as I write this I remember some tool for checking if your old links are bad.  I haven't tested this out.  It's for Blogspot blogs.  But google will find others. 
• Updates - I don't think I have any obligation to update old posts, there are just too many, but sometimes it just makes sense.  If I do a follow-up post on something, I try to link the old one and new one to each other.  For example, I wrote about Child's Glacier in 2011, and later that year, a bridge to the glacier was closed for repairs and it won't be rebuilt for at least five years.  Driving to Child's Glacier is out of the question now and it seemed relevant to add that to the original post too.  But sometimes I just have to trust that readers are smart enough to look at the dates of posts, so when someone googles "Seward Highway Closure"  they realize the post they found was written in 2009.
• Labels (also known as tags or categories) - Grrrr.  These are the reference terms bloggers can attach to posts to help search engines find the post and that form a very rough blog index - in the right column at the bottom on my blog.  I'm not sure how much they are still used by search engines - based on tracking people's search terms and what posts google offers them.  My labels list is pretty uneven.  I have some labels with just one post referenced.  There are other names or topics which show up in many posts, but I never made labels for them.  I'm not sure how valuable it is to try to add labels to old posts or get rid of labels that only have one post.  Mel, at Bent Alaska, has suggested this as a reason to move to WordPress, but things aren't broken enough to switch.  
• Blogger Changes - Blogspot regularly offers new ways to do things, new ways to organize the page.  It's well past time I catch up with the latest improvements to see if there are ones that fit my needs.
• Basic Review - It's coming up on six years now.  It's time to update things like my profile. I should probably write a Page (again, this means here those tabs on top) about what I'm trying to do here. Then I could link to pages like this one for those who want to know why I'm doing what I do.

Generally, blogging is fun.  Sometimes though, I need time for a post to germinate, and it has to just sit until I'm ready to tease it out.  Sometimes, blogging is a way to avoid doing things I need to do - like battles in the Clutter Wars, or doing other house maintenance work.

So, recognizing this, I'm thinking about limiting my blog time until I get necessary chores completed.  I may even take a few breaks this summer.   Or maybe I'll find a way to do decent posts that don't take up too much time.  Or highlight some older posts that deserve a second look.  It's still an experiment in what can be done with this medium. 

Potter Marsh

We stopped by Potter Marsh Saturday afternoon.  I've stopped being frustrated with my camera's limited ability to get decent distant shots (ie - most birds) and take it as a challenge to find good photos and ways to push the limits of my camera.

So the purple nailed hand dangling from this truck that pulled in next to us and blocked my view of the water seemed like a natural shot.

And this dead gull floating near the shore.  Not sure what the story was, perhaps it was hit by a vehicle.  It wasn't far from the road.

Last year's dead grasses and reeds are still evident.  While most of Anchorage's trees are fully green now, Potter Marsh still has lots of ungreen.

From the board walk we saw a wide array of birds - most impressive were a sandhill crane that flew a wide arc, a bald eagle that flew out of its nest at the end of the boardwalk, a pair of teal, and the little swallows that were sitting on the railings.  I did figure out how to use the free public telescopes on the viewing platforms as a telephoto lens for my camera.  It's not perfect, but it did yield this picture of a pair of American wigeons.  Then my battery died. 

Drugs Delivered By High Tech Mosquito Bite

From MIT News:

MIT researchers have engineered a device that delivers a tiny, high-pressure jet of medicine through the skin without the use of a hypodermic needle. The device can be programmed to deliver a range of doses to various depths — an improvement over similar jet-injection systems that are now commercially available. 

The researchers say that among other benefits, the technology may help reduce the potential for needle-stick injuries; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that hospital-based health care workers accidentally prick themselves with needles 385,000 times each year. A needleless device may also help improve compliance among patients who might otherwise avoid the discomfort of regularly injecting themselves with drugs such as insulin.

Now the MIT team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, has engineered a jet-injection system that delivers a range of doses to variable depths in a highly controlled manner. The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator — a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule’s nozzle — an opening as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis.(Emphasis added.)

 In the movie the professor says something like, as we all know, we don't feel it when the mosquito inserts its proboscis into the skin . . . He obviously hasn't experienced Alaskan mosquitoes.

As someone whose body instinctively rejects the idea of needles and getting shots since my first encounter many, many years ago, this sounds like a great alternative.

They don't discuss in the video whether the pressure or magnets can in any way change chemical composition of the drugs which might affect their effectiveness.  Or whether one can feel, if not a needle, the pressure of the drug coming into the body. 

There are always issues when very simple, mechanical devices are replaced with much more complex electronic devices.  The cost of such a device will clearly be much greater than the cost of a plastic hypodermic needle.  But since those needles get tossed after one use, one might expect some environmental benefits.  But how many times can one of these gadgets deliver the meds before it needs repair or maintenance?  In other words, how much does it cost per shot compared to the present?  How is it disposed when it finally dies?

While it sounds like such a device will make self-injection (say for a diabetic) a little simpler, and without having to puncture one's skin, it will also most likely make it a lot more expensive.  And what happens if you drop one of these babies?  Will it have to be repaired or replaced?

A hypodermic needle is pretty basic technology.  How will a nurse know that this new gun isn't delivering a drug at the programmed speed?  I'm sure they have asked all these questions, but the cynic in me is always questioning.  I get, very well, the benefit of injection without a needle prick - though I'm not sure that the 'mosquito proboscis' isn't really a tiny needle - but I don't get the need for all the velocity control.

And presumably, the profits from this device would be shared by the inventors and MIT.

Medals for Killing, Discharged for Loving and Other Randomly Related Thoughts

People sometimes think bloggers are on the cutting edge, but let me tell you, this blogger feels like the edge is cutting me.  I'm still trying to figure out how to get the most out of Facebook.  There are a couple of long lost students and others who found me through FB, and there are some people I can find often in chat if I need to talk to them.  But I wasn't pleased when my FB picture and link showed up on a comment on a totally unrelated blog.  On the other hand, Skype makes sense to me, but maybe that's because it's relatively limited in scope.  Tweet?  I don't get it.  Is that a blog for people with short attention spans?  And then there's Tumbler - which seems to be for people to blog in pictures.  And they tend not to be their own pictures.  Photographers seem to have no control at all over the pictures any more.  It's fine if you just want to spread a message or like knowing so many people have seen your picture - even if they don't know you took it.  But what about photographers who make a living taking pictures?

Mark Myers who seems to have changed the title of his blog from A Genius So To Speak For Sauntering, to Mark Myers Photography: Photo Blog and one of the most thoughtful Alaskan bloggers mused on the future of professional photographers two weeks ago.   Another Alaskan photographer whose work I ran into after he left a short comment on one of my posts - Stephen Cysewski - has great pictures of 1970s Anchorage and more recent shots of Bangkok and Sukhothai - all places close to my heart. (My Peace Corps home was in the southern border town of the Sukhotai kingdom and so the Buddhas are the same style.)  But how does one find him without being pointed there?

All that is lead-in to a couple of  pictures I saw on tumbler yesterday.  To be precise, this one is from Obsessive Cumpulsive Disaster:

"They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one"

If this were a perfect picture, I wouldn't have to write the words of the T-shirt in the caption.  But it's pretty powerful nevertheless.  What more perfect commentary can there be on the world today?  Technologically in the 21st Century, emotionally still in the dark ages.

And this one is from Come On Home:

I think the issue is that we all now have so many different tools - whether programs on our computer which are constantly changing, phones, cameras, sound systems, microwaves - that all come with (or even worse don't) extensive instructions manuals.  It's impossible to just sit on your old technology, because soon it won't work with the new versions and so you have to update.  And all your routines are thrown out the window because they work differently now. And dollars change hands too. Considering that humans went centuries with relatively minor systemic changes (no I'm not asking to go back, many were locked into grinding poverty and oppression) I'm not sure we are wired for this rapid change.  It may be a reason so many people can't cope and drop out and/or turn to alcohol, drugs, or Fox News to inure them to such rapid change.  Maybe the guy hanging on to the balloons is hoping to escape the modern world. 

When I read in the history books about the changes of the industrial revolution, I didn't dwell on the disruptions in people's lives that we've all eventually become the beneficiaries of.  But now that we are going through that again, I think about whether there are ways to do this without as much social upheaval.  Which, is nothing compared to the upheaval we're part of in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Think I'm wandering a bit?  Everything is related. 

Assembly Exchanging Barbs: Barbara Jones To Replace Barbara Gruenstein as Municipal Clerk

PRESS RELEASE

 5/30/2012
Chair of the Anchorage Assembly

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On May 30, 2012, Anchorage Assembly Chair Ernie Hall announced that Barbara A. Jones will be appointed as Anchorage Municipal Clerk effective July 1.

Jones will be replacing Barbara Gruenstein, who retires on June 30.
Gruenstein has been Anchorage Municipal Clerk since June 16, 2003.

Jones is currently the Municipal Ombudsman and previously served for 12 years as the Executive Director and Staff Attorney for the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission.

CONTACT:
Ernie Hall, Chair, Anchorage Assembly
Phone:907-562-2088
Email:  hallER@muni.org
 

In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that I know Barb Jones because she serves on the Healing Racism in Anchorage steering committee on which I also serve.  From working with her there, I've seen her to be both technically competent and personally dedicated to serving the public well and fairly.

Taku Lake Beaver and Campbell Creek Bike Trail Improvements

Riding home on the Campbell Creek bike trail from last night's book club meeting near Campbell Lake, I saw a big brown lump swimming through the water of Taku Lake carrying a good sized piece of wood in its mouth.








It was clear that he had been busy for a while.  There were quite a few of these chewed off tree stumps. 






A couple of big cottonwoods showed the early chewing of a beaver, but someone had put wire around the trunk before it got too far.

The beaver disappeared under the water where the chewed tree goes into the water.

The Campbell Creek trail ends (for me, begins for others) in the southwest near Victor and Dimond.  It's a great diagonal commuting trail for anyone going from that area - Dimond High is near that end too - to the Alaska Native Medical Center on Tudor past Elmore or spots in-between.  From Dimond to ANMC it's through the woods with occasional views of houses or businesses and there are only three spots where the trail abruptly ends to cross a street - Dowling, Seward Highway, and Lake Otis. 

They've already begun work at Dowling.  According to a Department of Transportation document   they will "replace Campbell Creek Bridge, install a new traffic signal at C Street, re-align the Campbell Creek Trail to go under the new bridge. . ." 


The picture is of the trail yesterday, from north of Dowling.  A new trail goes up to the left.  I think it will go to the new trail along Dowling, and the old trail will go under the new bridge and no longer cross the street.  The orange fencing on the right of the picture is where they are re-aligning the creek.






The infamous 'gap' under the New Seward Highway where you had to carefully maneuver you bike under four bridges of rocky trail (I see that some of the pictures have vanished from that post, I'll try to recover them soon) and sometimes high water, is now being changed into official bike trail.  They are going to raise each of the four bridges (north and south parts of the highway and the frontage roads).  Here's a shot from the east side of the Seward Highway from last week.    The project engineer told me that the September 2014 completion date will be for landscaping, but the trail should be complete by September 2013.




They've blocked it with a big chain link fence.

The only place you'll have to cross a street is at Lake Otis.  Either a few side streets to get to the tunnel or if you go directly, Lake Otis itself. 

The Seward Highway is less than 1/4 mile west of this map.


For now, the best option (going southwest) seems to be to go to Tudor and back up Old Seward Highway to the Peanut Farm or Arctic Roadrunner to pick up the trail again. 

Blog Contest: How many dandelions are in the bag?

 Be the first to get the right answer and win a prize.  Details below.

This contest arose when I saw the yellow flowers in the lawn.  Pick them now, this voice said, or they will multiply beyond counting.  OK, I’ll pick 200 today and maybe get my wife to do another 200 and keep that pace until they are gone.  [I know, purists dig the whole plant out of the ground, including the long deep roots.  That’s just not going to happen.  I can do the minimum which is stop the seeds from forming and blowing all over.]

So I got a bag and started picking and counting.  I stopped at one point and took the picture below just to have a record of what I’d done - besides the bag. 


   

As I counted toward my 200, my mind wandered to the recent election and the problem of counting the ballots.  Would readers challenge my count?  How could I prove how many dandelions were in the bag?  And I found myself picking not just yellow dandelions, but also dandelion buds that hadn’t opened yet, and dandelion flowers that had finished, but not yet turned to seedballs.  Do all three all count?  In the ultmate number in the bag? 

If someone challenged me, could we do a recount?  Maybe I should build a dandelion counting machine.  I could put them in the machine to verify the handcount. 

Was it necessary to count at all?  Couldn’t I use the picture of a patch of dandelions and see how many dandelions were in six square feet of lawn?  We could, but not every six square foot patch had the same number of dandelions. 

How important is it to be exact?  Well, if I have a contest and four people were within five or six dandelions from the exact number, surely they would want to be sure that the person who was the closest won.  Unless, of course, they were close but not the closest.  Then a miscount might make them the winner.

In the recent election, assuming that no voting machines were hijacked, the margins of victory were high enough that miscounting by three or four, even 20 votes, wouldn’t have mattered.  It was close enough to know who won.  But what happens when the elections are closer?  Where three votes off would change the winner? 

And because we have machines, we need to do hand counts regularly because that seems to be the only way to be assured that none of the machines were hijacked.  I tend to think this didn’t happen in this election, but I also have no patience with people who dismiss this possibility completely.  It’s more than a theoretical possibility.  It’s happened in other locations using the same machines.  If you haven’t watched the film Hacking Democracy, (it's free online at the link) I think you have no standing to dispute me on this.  If you have watched it, and still think it’s impossible or even unlikely, then tell me why.  People are spending billions of dollars to get their favored candidates elected.  Why wouldn’t they be likely to try to tamper with the cards in the voting machines? 



CONTEST DETAILS

OK, back to the important things.  How many dandelions are in the bag? 

How to participate:
1.  Post your answers in the comment section.  You can post anonymously if you like, but you need to sign a name (any name you like) and city (real city) in the comments.
2.  Email me to let me know that you made a comment, the number of dandelions, the name you used, and the city. 

Deadline:  Thursday, May 31, 2012 5pm Alaska Daylight Savings Time.

Prize: 
For people near Anchorage - I'll take you to dinner at the Thai Kitchen.  (People in the Seattle or LA areas, we can possibly work a dinner somewhere in late June.)
For others:  I’ll make and send you five hand made greeting cards using images you choose from this blog. (I have most, but not all, in high enough resolution to do this.)

Verification/Security:  
Although this contest has relatively minor consequences, it seems important, even here, to have reasonable security measures, so that you can be assured the contest is not rigged in any way.  Therefore, I have emailed the actual number to an Anchorage expert on plant biology.   I won't name her now so people do not pester her for the number (which she wouldn't give anyway.) 


Additional notes:
1.  I went well beyond 200.
2.  There will be no recount of the dandelions, but you can have the bag of dandelions if you pick it up or pay for shipping.

Memorial Day Sees Hmong Vets Shut Out Of US Veterans Cemeteries That Include POWs

[UPDATE October 23, 2014:  News on Hmong vet march on Congressional offices here.]

Brief Overview:  Hmong soldiers played a major role in what is called the CIA's Secret War in Laos during the Vietnam war.  The percentage of their population that gave their lives in the war was enormous.  Many ended up in refugee camps in Thailand where they waited for years before being able to emigrate to the United States.  Now, some of those who fought with the US are dying and they would like to be buried in Veterans Cemeteries like the men they fought with.  But they are being denied this, being told the cemeteries are for Americans only.  But I've found that Arlington National Cemetery alone has 61 foreign nationals buried there, including one German and two Italian POW's.  The Chatanooga National Cemetery has another 78 German POWs.


The Role of Hmong Soldiers in the Vietnam War.  (From culturalorientation.net):

Map from Geology.com

After the defeat of the French in Indochina in 1954, the United States, fearing a communist takeover of Indochina and eventually all of non-communist Asia, became a major player in the region. Laos, strategically situated between Western-aligned Thailand, Cambodia, and South Vietnam and their neighbors Communist China and North Vietnam, became a key domino in the Cold War. President Eisenhower warned that “if Laos were lost, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow and the gateway to India would be opened.”

In the early 1960s, the United States, barred by a Geneva agreement from committing American troops to Laos, launched what later became known as the secret war, a 10-year air and ground campaign that cost an estimated $20 billion. Between 1968 and 1973, U.S. Air Force planes flying out of bases in Thailand dropped more than 2 million tons of explosives on communist targets in Laos, making that country one of the most heavily bombed nations in history.

The ground war in Laos was a CIA-run operation that began as a ragtag collection of a few hundred guerrillas and grew to an army of nearly 40,000. Most of the soldiers in this secret army were Hmong, who the Americans believed possessed an aptitude for warfare that the easygoing lowland Lao lacked. At first, the Hmong were used only to gather intelligence on North Vietnamese movements in Laos, but by the mid-1960s, under the leadership of Major General Vang Pao, Hmong soldiers were rescuing downed American pilots, flying combat missions, and fighting the ground war. Not all Hmong supported the American side, however: About 20% of the Hmong in Laos joined the communist side, under the leadership of Touby Lyfoung’s old enemy, Faydang Lobliayao.

Why did the Hmong join the American cause? Different answers have been proposed by different writers. Anticommunism is one answer that has been offered, and a fear of what life under a North Vietnamese-dominated government would be like for the Hmong is another. Other writers claim that Hmong leaders hoped that a U.S. victory would serve to improve the status of the Hmong in Laos, perhaps even earning them a measure of self-rule.

Whatever their reasons for supporting the United States, almost all Hmong share the conviction that their involvement in the war was part of a promise made to them by the U.S. government. While there is no evidence that the promise was ever written down, almost every Hmong who fought in the war can repeat some version of it. According to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,“[t]hough there are several versions of the ‘Promise,’ there can be no doubt that assurances were made to support the Hmong during the war, and to provide assistance in the event Laos was lost to the communists.”

The decision to support the United States in Laos cost the Hmong dearly. An estimated 30,000 people, more than 10% of the Hmong population in Laos, were killed in the war. (Had the United States suffered an equivalent proportion of deaths, 17.5 million Americans would have died in the war.) Another 30%—about 100,000 Hmong men, women, and children—became refugees inside Laos, settling into already-existing towns or in resettlement centers. [Emphasis added]

Hmong Vets Denied Burial in US Veterans Cemeteries

An article in the Star Tribune (Minneapolis/St. Paul) describes the problems of Hmong veterans living in the United States who wish to be buried in veterans cemeteries, but are told they cannot.

When they die, these secret warriors of a secret American war want to buried in veterans cemeteries alongside their American comrades. But even though they now are commonly acknowledged as having fought for the United States in northern Laos, they are prohibited by law from being buried in national or state veterans cemeteries, which are reserved for American service members and honorably discharged U.S. military veterans and their families.

 . . .Minnesota Veterans Affairs Commissioner Larry Shellito, himself a Vietnam veteran, acknowledged the role Hmong fighters had in the secret war in Laos, and pointed out that the state has proclaimed a special Royal Lao Armed Forces Day each year. But, Shellito said, granting special rights for Hmong fighters would represent a precedent, and any honor bestowed on Hmong veterans would have to be provided equally to others, such as Vietnamese, Iragis, Afghans, and Somalis.
"As you know, the Laotians are not unique in having served alongside U.S. Forces in the past," he wrote.   (The article goes into much more detail.)

But it turns out there are 63* foreign nationals interred in Arlington National Cemetery alone:

Foreign Nationals Buried at Arlington National Cemetery Totals Australian 1 British (U.K.) 23 Canadian 4* Chinese 1 Dutch (Netherlands) 2 French 13 German (1 POW) Greek 1 Italian 4 (2 POW) South African 1 South Vietnamese 9* Unknown Origin 1 61* Total
*This chart comes from the Arlington National Cemetery Site but is two off from a more detailed list that includes 5 Canadians and ten Vietnamese.

As you can see, there are non-American soldiers buried in Arlington which is the premier cemetery for active military and veterans.  This includes Vietnamese, even though Shellito mentioned in the article above that needing to allow Vietnamese soldiers was a reason not to allow Hmong.  Altogether there are 131 national veterans cemeteries and about 90 state veterans cemeteries.

There's a even a German POW among those buried at Arlington and two Italian POWs.

How did Hilberath end up at Arlington? Under the Geneva Convention, prisoners were given military funerals at the nearest government cemetery. At the time that was Arlington.  After dying of an undisclosed illness, Hilberath along with deceased Italian soldiers Arcangelo Prudenza and Mario Batista were buried in Arlington.

There are 78 more German POWs from WWI buried in the Chatanooga National Cemetery.

In addition to Civil War veterans, there are 78 German prisoners of war buried here. Pursuant to provisions included in the peace treaty between the United States and Germany at the end of World War I, the German government sought the location and status of the gravesites of Germans who died while detained in the United States. An investigation conducted by the War Department found that the largest number of German POWs was interred at Chattanooga National Cemetery. For a short time, thought was given to removing all other German interments to Chattanooga. In the end, however, the German government decided that only 23 remains from Hot Springs National Cemetery should be reinterred here. The German government assumed the cost of disinterment and transportation to Chattanooga, and erected a monument to commemorate the POWs.

 I understand that some of these foreign nationals ended up in US veterans cemeteries at an earlier time and laws have probably changed.  But the law can be changed again.  It would seem that these soldiers who played such an important role in the Vietnam war and who are not welcome in today's Laos, should have access to burial in US veterans cemeteries, especially since enemy combatants such as the German and Italian Prisoners of War are interred in US veterans cemeteries.  

The Council of Asian Pacific Minnesotans is working to change the law.