"Come bang me baby. . ."

I found this on a Xanga forum:

What kind of father would do this?  I think it's totally sick.  It doesn't even seem like a good test.  If they've agreed to wait until marriage, the tone and language wouldn't sound like his girl friend.  He'd be totally shocked, and respond as he did. 

At first I thought that its appropriateness might be affected by the age of the daughter.  But the idea of testing the boyfriend of an older girl is perverse and sending an explicit text to the boyfriend of a younger girl is even more perverse.  Is any age appropriate for this?

And what is the daughter's role here?  Is she glad for the $100 and proving to her dad that her boyfriend isn't 'that kind of boy'?  Or does she feel her dad doesn't trust her? Or that he's a dirty old man?  Or maybe she's exploiting his fear and collects $100 with each new boyfriend.  And what kind of power trip is the dad on?  He's going to 'protect' his daughter from all the males on earth trying to deflower her?  Is a burka next? 

Or is this just a hoax?  In addition to the inconsistent tone and language, the father is talking about giving permission to date his daughter, but the boy wrote, "Since we started dating. . ." which suggests they've already been dating.  OK, they could date without the father's permission, but . . .

But now that I've seen it, hoax or not, something about it bothers at me.  

Maybe it's just distraction from meatier topics I should be writing about but that haven't gestated enough to make coherent posts,

141 "Potentially Uncounted Ballots" Found July 11 (From April Election)

The following press release came out this evening:

The email is dated July 13, 2012 6:29pm.  Friday night is typically a good time to bury a story, especially in the summer, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions.  If the ballots were discovered July 11, they've had two days to figure out what they had and how to announce it.

The Record of Inventory Checklist  is a table that came in pdf format.  I'm not quite sure what it means.    There is a column that says "No Zip Tie" which I'm guessing refers to the seals that were on each election sack to show they were sealed.  There are 22 check marks in this column. 

I did try to call the Clerk's office to get more information, but it's after office hours and no one answered. 

The photo is one I took on May 10, 2012 during the recount.  It shows a ballot bag with what I believe they mean by zip tie attached to the tag that identifies the voting location. The arrow is pointing at the clear plastic zip tie.  Conversation I overheard at the time said it was pretty easy to take these off and redo them, but I didn't see a demonstration of that so I can't be sure.


It would seem that in terms of the election outcome, 141 votes won't affect the outcome of any specific race.  But this would seem to be one more example of the general sloppiness of the handling of the election.  The Assembly's attorney has met once with the citizen's group that called for the election recount to go over the many specific problems they raised based on their observation of the recount.  That meeting gave me some confidence that at least the Assembly's Attorney is taking this seriously and I believe that the new Municipal Clerk is as well.  This election has exposed a whole array of potential weak spots that someone intent in stealing an election could take advantage of.  Given that voting is the fundamental means of participating in a democracy, I believe it's critical that every single one of these breaches is fixed before the next Municipal election and that the state Division of Elections is paying close attention.

This Is The Third Friday The 13th This Year

The other two this year were in January and April.  Next year (2013) there will only be two (September and December).  Last year there was only one (May). 

So, is three a lot?  According to Paul Lutus at Arachnoid:

• The probability that there will be a Friday the 13th during any given month is equal to the reciprocal of the number of weekdays: 1/7 or 14.1%.
• The average number of Friday the 13ths in a year is equal to the number of months divided by the number of weekdays: 12/7 or 1.71.

So, almost 2 per year.  But according to Jim Loy, who figured the 1/7 figure as well,

It turns out that this is not quite true. It was shown by Brown (I don't know his first name) in 1933 that the Gregorian Calendar (which we use) repeats itself exactly, every 400 years. In that time, there are 4800 months and 4800 13ths. Of those 4800 13ths, 688 occur on Friday. So the probability of a Friday the 13th is 688/4800 which is .143333..., which is slightly greater than 1/7. In fact, Friday is the most likely 13th, slightly. Of the 4800 13ths, Sunday is the 13th 687 times, Monday 685, Tuesday 685, Wednesday 687, Thursday 684, Friday 688, and Saturday 684.

Bicyclists Getting A Little More Respect This Year From DOT

Last Saturday when I biked over to the Japanese Summer Festival, I noticed that for once, the Department of Transportation was thinking about cyclists and even gave us some benefits cars didn't get.  I knew there was construction on the Campbell Creek trail under the Seward Highway and at Dowling and I decided to take surface streets to avoid that.  But going south on C Street from Tudor, I saw there was a detour at Potter.

BUT, while cars were forced to go right or left because C Street was closed, the bike path on the west side of C Street was open, allowing me to keep to my route.  And it was marked too.  This is something that didn't use to happen.  But clearly someone had to have thought about this and said, "Well, we can leave the bike trail open."  Hey, humor me, I measure progress in very small increments.

On the way home, without having to worry about time, I picked up the Campbell Creek trail at its terminus near Dimond High School. 


The cow parsnip was in full bloom along the path.  This picture of the creek along the trail should give you a sense why I was willing to add a mile to my (now seven mile) trip back to be on the trail instead of the city streets. 

Under Minnesota the creek had flooded and the trail was covered in mud and water.  Fortunately there were some drier spots (on the left.)







But then it was beautiful again.

At Taku Lake  (I posted a video of the beaver I saw there already), there was also this duck dock right near the trail. So much nicer that navigating the sidewalks and intersections. 








But soon I was nearing Dowling and getting curious how I was going to get past the construction.  I needn't have worried.  There was a big sign blocking the path, but pointing out a detour.  In the past, there just would have been a sign blocking the path with no help for the cyclist to navigate around the blockage.  But this detour led to the construction site (Dowling Road) where a flagger got me and a pedestrian past the heavy equipment and around to another flagger who directed me to more signs that led me easily back to the bike path.

At Old Seward Highway, after the Arctic Road Runner near the Peanut Farm, the signs aren't quite as helpful.  There they say the trail is blocked at Seward Highway and direct you to take Tudor or Dowling.  There, you really have to know how to find the bike trail yourself.  You have to wander through the neighborhoods to pick it up after the creek crosses under the New Seward Highway, where they are widening the road and raising the bridges over the creek and where, by the end of next summer they say, there will be a real bike trail under the highway.  Now, from Tudor, looking south, the construction looks like this.

When the trail goes under Dowling and New Seward when this construction is done, you'll be able to bike from Dimond and Northwood to University Lake between APU and the Native Hospital (about 7.5 miles) with only having to cross one street (Lake Otis).  It mostly follows Campbell Creek going under or over bridges at other roads.   And I found this cool 2009 video by MijelRiak that takes you on the trail from New Seward Highway to Dimond and Northwood.  (Where the video crosses the street is Dowliing, where the construction is now.)

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

That quote came to mind when I heard that the House Republicans had voted to abolish or amend the Affordable Care Act for the 33rd time.  Brainy Quote credits Albert Einstein with saying that.

If their goal was to appeal the Act, then Einstein's words would apply.  There was no chance of getting what they passed through the Senate.

But while they may tell us that is their goal, we all know that the intent was probably a combination of other things.  If I acted like a House Republican, I'd try, with a straight face, to pin that quote on the House Republicans.  But I don't and I won't.

First, just because Einstein said it, doesn't make it true.  And if it is true, we don't know what results they are expecting.  Clearly, they know their bill won't pass the Senate. 

Presumably they are expecting other results, results they've gotten in the past over this.  They want to force some Democrats to vote 'no' so they can use that vote to campaign against them.  And they want to force some Democrats to vote 'yes' so they can embarrass Obama and make claims for bi-partisan support.  They want television attention on their anti-health care sound bites. 

And I suspect that like abortion and gay issues for some preachers, this is a topic that bumps up contributions among the rabidly anti-ACA.

But they took up two days in the House for this gimmick.  These are folks who  complain loudly about the cost of government.  But they spent two days on what appears to be a PR campaign instead of solving the problems facing the US.  But then, their goal has been to do everything to obstruct solutions - because they don't want anything good to happen on Obama's watch.

A Rollcall article last November calculated that it costs the taxpayers  "roughly $592,000 per legislative day on Members’ salaries."  Just counting member salaries and nothing else, their PR campaign has cost US taxpayers almost $1.2 million.  If we we give them a break on their first two attempts on repeal ACA, that leaves 30 more times they spent time on this.  I don't know how many hours the other debates took, but it does raise questions about how serious they are about saving taxpayer money.

Of course, I'm taking a certain amount of license here too.  After all, I suspect that most of the Congress members were not on the floor of Congress most of those two days.  (Steve, you say, why do you keep poking holes in your argument?  Because this blog is about 'how we know what we know' and I'm simply using my own argument to demonstrate what every citizen should be doing with everything they hear from politicians, corporate spokespersons, marketing in all its forms, and your religious leaders, and teachers.  I'm not saying reject what they say, just keep raising questions until they prove it.)

Besides, when those Congress members weren't on the floor, they were probably on the phone calling donors to raise money for their reelections.  

[UPDATE Friday 13, Turns out that an hour after I posted this, Huffington Post had something up about a story on the cost of the Republican ACA repeal on CBS that is dated four hours earlier than mine.  CBS, using a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $24 million a week to run the House, said the cost of the repeal votes was just under $50 million.  That's a lot more than my estimate, which only included representatives' salaries, and it didn't factor in the issues I raised, such as most representatives probably were doing other things most of those days anyway.  I'm not making light of this as a waste of time and money, but I am trying to focus on the simplistic reporting of such things.]

Anchorage Shots - Grey Summer Days

Glass Sky

Most days this summer seem to be cloudy, so here are a few leftover photos.


This building has Nana Worley Parsons and Alyeska Pipeline signs near the roof.

Cottonwood Cotton

Cottonwood has been in full-fluff for a while now.

I think this was a black-capped chickadee.

Wild Rose

Arctic Slope Building

The Yamato Ya restaurant doesn't seem to have the same traffic it did when it was part of the Sagaya complex up the street on Old Seward. 

This was at a 4th of July barbecue. 

A Mercury Comet. 

"“He is not the pastor of the United States, he’s the President of the United States.” - Not All Baptists Are Against Gay Marriage

Here is Senior Pastor Frederick Haynes III preaching on OBAMA'S "PERSONAL" stance on gay marriage. Not quite what you might have expected. Here are some excerpts, but he says it himself a lot more powerfully in the video.

“Don’t forget he was sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States which was born out of the Declaration of Independence . . . we hold these truths to be self evident that all men, all people, are equal . . . notice it does not say that all straight men are equal . . . he swore on an oath to uphold, protect, and defend the Constitution, not the bible."

 “He is not the pastor of the United States, he’s the President of the United States.”

"We have a President who has dared to use his position to make the democratic promise available not just for a select few who are up and in, but to everybody regardless of their race, their creed, their color, or their sexual orientation."

"Whenever you want to ostracize another person it is because of a fear you have yourself, the fear that you have finds itself rooted in an ignorance of other people or in a projection of your issues."

"You are so outraged over what the president said. . . .Take a chill pill. . . You are not going to lose your 501c3* if you do not marry a same gender, loving couple."

"Why are you so upset? . . . Why were you so emotional that you had to clothe your anger with the bible and justify your bigotry with scripture . . .?"

"Because we got issues with sexuality, we can’t have a healthy discussion about homosexuality. We love to judge other people’s sins because it keeps it off of us as opposed to looking at us."

 I've just finished a novel about Spinoza and then I saw this sermon which was delivered a month ago.  I'm still digesting the Spinoza book, but I hope to get something up here.  It's definitely related to this and to almost everything we're dealing with in the US today.

 *501c3 refers to the section of the tax code that gives tax exemptions to non-profits, including churches.

Frass

Gary Snyder read a poem about splitting timber at UAA Sunday night and my ears perked up at the word frass.  At the end of the poem, Snyder mentioned frass as a word not too many people knew.  It means, he said, the sawdust left when a beetle bores into a tree.

Click to enlarge

Snyder is something of a poet legend in the US, at least for those of us old enough to remember him as a spokesman for the back-to-the-land/environmental/zen pioneers of the 60s and 70s.  Somewhere in the clutter I have a copy of his book with a nautilus shell on the cover.  I found a king bolete on the way home from the reading and I thought it would make a fitting background to the Snyder collage. 

A good evening.  Part of UAA's Northern Renaissance Arts and Sciences.  I'm not sure what all that is about, but this looks a lot like what they used to call - something like the Summer Reading Series.  They're creative writing program has an intensive session now and most of the faculty give free readings in the evening.

Tues[Thurs]day night (July 10[12], 2012) will have three poets I've heard before who will make a great evening:

Richard Chiappone, Linda McCarriston, Zack Rogow

[UPDATE July 10 11:30pm - My face is red.  After Jacob warned me in the comments to check my facts, I posted this group to be on tonight, but it was three others.  They were ok, but I know these three will be better.  The UAA website says Chiappone, McCarriston, and Rogow will be Thursday.  I can't find a permanently posted schedule and the UAA one changes, I can't go back to see how I messed this up.  I thought perhaps I'd taken the Monday program for Tuesday, but no, they are scheduled Thursday.  Well, at least you still have a chance to hear them read.]

(Really, these three are good.  I wouldn't push this if I didn't think they were good.  For the poetry challenged, these three should make an interesting night.  You can check out a video on a post of Rogow I did three years ago. And I repeat:  it's free, if you don't like it, you can walk out without losing any money.  I found an old Linda McCarriston post with video too.)

It's at the UAA Fine Arts Building, Room 150, beginning at 8 p.m. The series runs July 9-17.

[The Arts Building - take Providence east from Lake Otis to the traffic light at the east side of the original Providence hospital building (just past the UAA library on the left) and turn left.  Then right at the first street to the right.  Then wind around to the Arts building and there's a big parking lot.]



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Six Years Began With Spittle Bug Post

That first post went up July 9, 2006.  There was another spittle bug post after I learned how to put up photos. And the spittle bugs are back this year, but now I know they don't do my plants harm and I can just wash them off if it gets too much.

I've posted a lot since then.  Blogging has taught me a lot and introduced me to neat people. If some folks are to be believed, the blog has added a bit of value to the world.  As I think back on this last year, the biggest single focus was the Alaska Redistricting Board.  There's a tab above that gets you to an overview of my posts on the board.  But there was a lot more. 

What surprises me most is the wide range of topics I've posted about - which is brought home when I look at the search terms people use to get here.  Here's a March 2012 post on search terms people used to get here as an example. And for most of them, I actually have what they are looking for.

So far I haven't mentioned another highlight here.  I'm still examining my reluctance to share things like this.  In some cultures you don't brag about your children lest you attract evil eye.  I also have an aversion to competitive contests - the choosing of 'best' and how that is defined are complicated and imperfect processes.  That's the closest I can get to explaining why I haven't mentioned the two Alaska Press Club Awards I received in April. 

I got third best Current Events/News Blog.  The Anchorage Daily News' Iditarod Live: The Sled Blog written by Kyle Hopkins, Scott Levin, Mike Campbell, Beth Bragg, David Hulen, and Bob Hallinen was first and Scott Woodham's The Concerned - Current Issues of Alaska at the Alaska Dispatch was second.  The judge, Ellyn Angelotti, wrote:

The "What Do I Know?" blog provides in-depth information about current events complete with direct copies of memos and email. It also boasts active personal engagement in the comments section.

 I got second Best Commentary Blog.  First went to Craig Medred's Alaska Life at the Alaska Dispatch.  The judge in this category, Abraham Hyatt, wrote:

"Aufrecht's posts are a reminder of the journalistic freedom and fun that blogging allows. Jumping from topic to topic, he successfully treads that delicate line in blogging between ego fulfillment and serious insight."

You can read all the press awards yourself here.  The list goes on for 31 pages (only 22 for the one without comments.)

I'm sure that most Alaskan bloggers didn't even know there were categories for bloggers.  I only learned last year when I accidentally ran into the Press Club conference at UAA. 

I wasn't sure how a blog would be judged.  I had to pick about ten posts for each category.  But that hardly gives a sense of a blog.  Plus it was hard to separate news posts from commentary posts.  And it's hard to say the blog is one or the other.  Having Outsiders judge is good because it minimizes bias based on who you know - a big problem in a state where everyone knows everyone.  But it also means that they are looking at posts without any context of the state and the media coverage here.



Anniversaries stimulate reflection and I've decided it's time to review how I've got the blog set up.  At the beginning, when I knew nothing and things were less complicated, I was constantly making changes.  But I've grown into a routine and leaving the basic platform alone is easier.  But I know I want to add a tab on top that will focus on the why's and wherefore's of the blog to make it a little easier for people trying to navigate.  But I'd rather spend more time blogging than monitoring all the new gizmos available to spiff up the blog.

When I started, I purposely left my identity vague.  I wanted people to read my posts without being colored by what I looked like or by how I was labeled.  If they wanted to know about me, they could read the posts.  Over time a lot is revealed.  I'm still vaguely identified, but I don't hide who I am  when i talk to people or when it's relevant to the post - like this one - and I've been identified publicly on other blogs.

Finally my appreciation goes out to all of you who read this blog and especially to those of you who take time to comment or email.   And those who point people my way.  Google has made this more than a private notebook and the Immoral Minority and Progressive Alaska have sent quite a few readers this way too.  Thanks to you all.  

Taku Lake Beaver Gets Close

Biking home yesterday on along the Campbell Creek trail I checked for the beaver I saw in Taku Lake last time.  There it was, lazily eating, not far from shore.  I stopped and started to video.  And then it came closer.  I kept videoing, but I did start wondering whether beavers attack people.

A google search says yes, but rarely.  Here's a Swedish account  (in English) of people attacked while swimming.  The Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue Effort says

Fight or Flight Zone:  The fight or flight zone for beaver is dependent on whether they are in the water or on land.  On land they will run as soon as they perceive your presence.  In the water they are a little less afraid but they will submerge quickly.

Behaviors:

• Beaver represent no threat to humans.
• Beavers slap their tail on the water to warn trespassers.

But there are accounts of a rabid beaver attacking  three people in a Philadelphia park.

I didn't know any of that at the time.  I was thinking that the beaver was coming to me, so I wasn't threatening it.  But I'm guessing it was less than ten feet away. 

As you watch the video, at the end, pay attention to the tail.  You can see that I was surprised.  A tripod would have helped.  Or would I have knocked it over?





The Pacific Streamkeepers Federation has a lengthy but straightforward page on problems caused by beavers and if and how to intervene.