Ethiopian Children with hula hoops and other Google Searches

I think this has been hanging around as a draft long enough.  Here are search terms that people used to get here.  Some got exactly what they were looking for, some google (most are google, but sometimes another search engine

ethiopian children with hula hoops - No Ethiopian kids, but there were some hula hoops at the post they got.

what do egyptian people look like  - The was from a computer at the Egleston's Children's Hospital in Atlanta, so let's assume it was someone young asking this question.  They got to a post with some pictures of Egyptian statues in the Berlin Museum.




things to know about alaskan backyards -  This Kiwi got to a post on moose in the backyard.  Alaska's a big place and some places, like Juneau, don't have moose.  But it's certainly something to know about Anchorage backyards. 



how do you make teotihuacan mask from egypt - It's not easy, since Teotihuacan is in Mexico. They did get to some Egyptian mummy masks in Berlin's Neues Museum.

as an artist, diego rivera related the concerns of, a.) the u.s., b.) the government, c.) workers, d.) women-  Sure looks like a test question.  The answer's on the post about the Detroit Institute of Art's Rivera room, but he or she'll will have to figure it out. 


how big does a glacier have to be - To qualify as a glacier and not an ice cube?  To not melt in the next 50 years?  Wonder what the person wanted to know?  Google did the best it could and got him He got to the post How big is big?  Child's Glacier


2zghx ch`ด' - This was a Babylon search and it showed me what the person got:

What Do I Know?: November 2008
Nov 30, 2008 ... Lévi-Strauss, in Myth and Meaning ponders in a chapter called "When ... The ones in this chapter are particularly relevant to Alaskan since they ...whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html - 379k - Similar pages

 I checked the archive page this was on.  I have no idea why my page showed up.  There are other posts which have Thai script on them including the letter 'ด' but I couldn't find one on this page.  This Lévi-Strauss post does mention Thailand.  The searcher was from Chile.

baskin robbins halal certificates -Sometimes even I am surprised at what all is on my blog.  This person in Malaysia found a photo of the IFANCA (Islamic Food And Nutrition Council of America) certificate in a Baskin Robbins shop in Klang, Malaysia in this post.

woodpecker shoes pakistan - Lots of thoughts went through my head.  Can't be woodpeckers wearing shoes. . . . Until finally the most logical would be really pointy toed shoes, like a woodpecker's beak.  But who knows?  They didn't get either, but they got to this inspiring story:  Pakistani Official Tends Sikh Shoes and Toilets To Atone Muslim Killing Of Sikh.

Mimas tiliae

Mimas tiliae - Sometimes this blog is like a little bookstore that has obscure titles hidden away, just waiting for the one person who will want that particular book. It's been two years since I posted this one and finally someone from Denmark came looking for it: Instead of a real post - here's Mimas tiliae 


what is interim plan - I recognize that I sometimes report on things that have a lot of jargon.  I have explained more than once, say, terms used by the Redistricting Board, knowing that many readers haven't read the previous posts.  But I didn't think I needed to explain 'interim.'  I can't help but say to myself, "Get a dictionary."  But google does serve that function too.  And bloggers can't be choosers.  I should be saying thanks to the  several people  who got to this Redistricting Board post where I mention the interim plan and I say the Board adopted an Amended Plan and "an Interim plan in case the Amended plan doesn't get all the approvals it needs in time for the June 1 candidate filing deadline."  Do you think that's enough context for them to figure it out? 

rubber ring blender on top or bottom of blade - There's a long colonoscopy post which includes having to buy a new osterizer and then finding out all I needed was the rubber ring.
Maybe the picture helped this person answer the question.


a five column chart for nectarines using your five senses - This was an image search. Something about a chart I had up distracted them from nectarines. They got to a chart on Reported Rates of Voting and Registration: 1996 - 2008 post on Senate candidate Scott McAdams 

yhgujniolmpw - This person, from the Philippines with a US-English language computer, got to an archive page that had a story about an Anchorage man we know who was back from Afghanistan.  It had a word with 'yh' in it. Was this just random typing?

He was in a FOB (Forward Operating Base) in Iskandiriayh most of the time.

That's my best guess why they got to this blog.

batman in arabic -  Another direct hit.  This person got this picture from a post on a hot day in Chicago.   If you enlarge the picture enough and you know Arabic, I think you can see it.


anybody record if i sex with my wife through skype? - I'm not sure if this guy is worried that someone might record them or is looking for someone to record them. I suspect the former. He got to my post on Call Recorder which lets you record skype conversations and video. Your own conversations only.  But he's right to be concerned.  I could tell from his footprint here that he was checking from Vancouver, Canada and his computer is set up to use Indian English.

english mass nouns two gallon gasoline - It took me a bit to figure this one out. But it makes sense and this searcher got to a post on countable vs. mass nouns called "amount of people employed as an architect" 

kosti nohy - 
ayak kemikleri -  I've learned (with the help of online translation websites) that kosti nohy is foot bones in Czech and ayak kemikieri is foot bones in Turkish.  For some reason, I get hits at my post on J's broken foot in Czech and Turkish (and English), but not other languages.



can i copy verbatim from a press release? -Hmmm.  Is this from a newspaper writer?  A blogger?  Got to my follow up post on this exact practice.

what are those cotton like things floating in anchorage - And this person got to a post which answers the question - cottonwood seeds.

porno beauti - First, how does Google offer an image titled 'looking up cactus" to someone seeking 'porno beauti'? Second, why would a porn seeker choose that image over the others that come up? This is definitely a kink I've never heard of before. But once I actually looked at the image I realized it does have some phallic qualities, but really . . .




a travel club of musicians,poets,dancers all come together have a art festival - I had no idea where that might have gone, but the Spenard jazz festival poetry and dance turned out to be related to the search.

only chinese people like kenny g - This is terrible, but I have to admit I laughed. It got to a post on Pat Metheny's view on kenny g. Actually, this almost calls for a whole post to discuss. Let's say I think this person makes kenny g seem better than he is and Chinese people worse than they are.






what is the term for vampire arousal -  We should have a contest to answer this.  It got to my post on Thanksgiving Neckrophelia. I thought maybe I'm just behind the times so I googled "vampire arousal" and looked at the first to sites that popped up:  Vampire Seduction Guide  and Vampire Sexual Secrets.  Neither seemed to have a special term for vampire arousal.

Chester Creek Flows Red-Orange

Photo credited to [Brendan Babb]  Julia O'Malley's
FB post

[UPDATE July 27:  Julia O'Malley has a follow up in the ADN.  She also credits the picture here to Brendan Babb.]




This morning I got an email with a link to a Facebook post with a picture (credited to Julia O'Malley[UPDATE: she credits it to Brendan Babb in ADN update.]) of Chester Creek at Valley of the Moon Park yesterday morning.




This was a follow up of a call I got yesterday afternoon - did I want to bike down the Chester Creek Trail and check on a report about the Creek being red?  It was supposed to be at Valley of the Moon Park.  East of the park was supposed to be clear.   It was one of the nicest days all summer and I'd been home waiting for the plumber, so I jumped at the chance, leaving the plumber working on the hot water tank. (Another post maybe.)

So, off I went, heading west to Valley of the Moon Park.  Here's the creek near Mulcahy Stadium.

Here's the creek at C Street.  The orange in the background is plastic fencing, not water.

And as I go through Valley of the Moon Park, the creek looks the same.  Although it looks brown, the water itself is clear and you can see the bottom (which is why, I guess, it looks brown.)  There was another bridge over the creek just past (west of) the park and E street.

Looks ok to me.  Whatever it was, was gone.











For folks unfamiliar with Anchorage, this greenbelt goes right through Anchorage between downtown and midtown.  A beautiful strip of natural escape in the middle of the city.


This morning I found a  KTUU report yesterday that said  (in part):

Images taken by Brendan Babb of the creek near Valley of the Moon Park in Midtown at about 11:15 a.m. show brightly hued water flowing beneath a footbridge. Babb says the coloration had passed when he saw the creek again two hours later.
A city biologist investigating the incident believes that someone may have introduced the unidentified contaminant upstream.

[Did O'Malley post Babb's photo?  I don't know.]

What pressures were on the people who got rid of their red-orange gunk into this beautiful creek, not far from where it flows into Westchester Lagoon?  What were they thinking?  Are they totally ignorant of the idea of pollution?  Were they pressured by their boss to get rid of it?  Were they trying to avoid fees or lines at the city's disposal sites?  Will we ever find out?

Who knows?  But the ride did reveal that the city had been busy along the Chester Creek Trail yesterday (or maybe the day before) cleaning out homeless camps.  Here are three collections that were at the edge of the trail waiting, I presume, to be picked up.

By the way, if you saw the previous post and the video was missing, I've fixed that.  Really, go back and check the video.  It will make up for this depressing post.

Seize The Limitation - Shaky Artist Finds Ways

I went from a Pentax film camera with a 200 mm telephoto lens to a tiny digital Canon Powershot with 3X optical zoom. I've been telling myself that I should make the limits of the camera into assets. Poets who write sonnets have a very strict structure - 14 lines of iambic pentameter (ten beats per line - du dah, du dah, du dah, du dah, du dah), and a strict rhyme scheme. . . well you can see more here. 

Despite those limitations, or maybe because of the limitations, poets have written great poems.  So I've been thinking about my camera as the limits of a sonnet structure.  A sonnet writer can't write a novel,  a short story, or even haiku.  But within those constraints poets have created a wide variety of sonnets.   So with my camera.  There is a lot I can't to, but I see my task as to push it, within those limits, as far as I can.  

My motto became, once I heard this quote, "The best camera is the one you have with you" and my Powershot fits in my pocket and goes with me all the time.

Screen shot from Phil Hanson: The art of the Imperfect

So watching this video tape was more than inspiring.

Here's this guy who wants to be an artist, except he has a tremor in his hand that's so bad he can't make a straight line.

He drops out of art school.  But several years later he feels compelled to go back to art and so he has to reinvent what being an artist means.

The Ted video is only 4 minutes long.  Trust me here.  Once you see the first 30 seconds, you'll watch the whole thing.  This is how humans got beyond hunting and gathering, by seizing the limitation. 
[UPDATE: July 19 - just saw that the video isn't there. I fixed that. Really, it's worth watching.]




Of course, you can look at the great work that Anchorage artist, Peter Dunlap-Shohl, still does with Parkinsons Disease. He's found ways to continue being an artist and blogs his art to help people understand Parkinsons Disease.  He also has a blog of his non PD cartoons.

Finding a Pale Beauty in the Shower

There she was, a beguiling light green, sitting on white tile.   I found it quickly in Dominique Collet's Insects of south-central Alaska though the antenna feathering in the book's photo is much thicker than in my photo.

It's a Pale Beauty or Campaea Perlata.

Bug Guide tells us it can range from pale green to grayish-white, fading to yellow.  They are found from

"Alaska across Canada to Nova Scotia; south to central California, Arizona and Colorado; in the eastern U. S. south to North Carolina.(2)"

Their habitat is:

"coniferous, mixed, and deciduous forests and shrubby areas; adults are nocturnal and come to light, but in the arctic where summer nights are short or absent, adults fly during the day"

This one had come in to the light of the bathroom when it was as close to dark as it gets outside this time of year.

"[L]arvae have been reported to feed on leaves of 65 species of coniferous and deciduous trees and shrubs, including alder, ash, basswood, beech, birch, blueberry, Buffaloberry (Shepherdia canadensis), cherry, fir, elm, hemlock, maple, oak, pine, poplar, rose, spruce, tamarack, willow [list taken from Handfield, 1999]"

And how do they survive the winter here?  Bug Guide says about the life cylce:

"two generations per year in the south; one generation in the far north; overwinters as a third-instar or fourth-instar larva, likely exposed on bark and branches"

Here's a picture showing this moth on the four inch square tile so you can see its size.

 You can tell a moth from a butterfly by the antennae.  Moths have feathered antennae (see top photo) and butterfly antennae are plain with a little knob on the end.  Enchanted Learning lists some other differences.

Former Anchorage Resident Now Has Dual Citizenship

I got an email announcing that Jay Dugan[-Brause], who has evolved into Jacob Dugan[-Brause], now has a British passport to go along with his US passport.  He became a British citizen July 12. Jacob and his partner Eugene founded and ran Anchorage's Out North Theater. 

The idea of dual citizenship is difficult for many Americans to get their heads around, including me.  People whose parents were forced out of Nazi Germany, if they meet the right conditions, can get German citizenship.  The benefits include being able to live and work in the European Union (EU) without going through complex work permit paperwork.  My son, after dealing with the Danish bureaucracy while working there for a year has suggested it would be nice to have.

For those of us who think of ourselves as citizens of the world and believe that human beings are human beings wherever they live,  perhaps getting a second citizenship is the first step to living that ideal.

The US State Department says:

The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a citizen of two countries at the same time. Each country has its own citizenship laws based on its own policy.Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice. For example, a child born in a foreign country to U.S. citizen parents may be both a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the country of birth.
A U.S. citizen may acquire foreign citizenship by marriage, or a person naturalized as a U.S. citizen may not lose the citizenship of the country of birth.U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one citizenship or another. Also, a person who is automatically granted another citizenship does not risk losing U.S. citizenship. However, a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship. In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship.
Intent can be shown by the person's statements or conduct.The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. citizens may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist citizens abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person's allegiance.
However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries. Either country has the right to enforce its laws, particularly if the person later travels there.Most U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport does not endanger U.S. citizenship.Most countries permit a person to renounce or otherwise lose citizenship.
Information on losing foreign citizenship can be obtained from the foreign country's embassy and consulates in the United States. Americans can renounce U.S. citizenship in the proper form at U.S. embassies and consulates abroad.

Looking around the web, I see that some liken dual citizenship to bigamy. I think for some it's more like a Yankee fan also rooting for Boston.  But what if you have dual citizenship with a close ally of your home country?   More and more countries are allowing dual citizenship, though some, like Holland, are pulling back.      
 
Californians elected dual-passport holder Arnold Schwartzenegger (Austria) and but Michele Bachman (Switzerland) decided keeping her Swiss passport wasn't a good idea when she was running for president.

Clearly, it's a very emotional issue for people whether they are for it or against it.  Anyone perceived as leaving 'their group' whether it be a business, a religion, or a country may be perceived by some members of the original group to be a traitor.  I suspect that has more to do with the offended person's issues than those of the person leaving.  And, of course, dual citizenship isn't actually leaving. 

Congratulations to Jacob. 

Local Anchorage TV Station Fights Citizens United With Free Airtime For Candidates

Jeremy Lansman, the owner of KYES television in Anchorage, and, from what I can tell, one of the few independent and locally owned television stations in the country, sent out emails to candidates yesterday.  He emailed those candidates running for the legislature who have emails listed with the Alaska Division of Elections.

Jeremy is a friend of mine and the information for this post comes from conversations and emails, including a Skype chat I recorded Monday evening July 16, which you can listen to below.

Essentially, as I understand this, each candidate can make video spots of 30 seconds.   Jeremy is allocating 10% of his ad time to this project. That comes to about two per hour.  If he has two candidates send him videos, that air time will be divided by the two equally.  If 30 respond, the available space will be divided evenly among all 30 of them.

This is a new project and there are still some things to work out.  It depends on the response.  He will allow people to turn in more than one video, or new ones as time goes by.   Any changes will be made at the next weekly schedule.   

His motivation comes, in part, from his lifelong interest in using radio and television to promote the democratic process. Jeremy, I've learned over the years, is something of a legend among those who know about community radio in the US.  You can read about more about his past here.

The free tv time is stimulated now by the threat of huge amounts of money anonymously spent on ads to attack candidates that seems to be the most talked about outcome of the Supreme Court's 2010 decision Citizens United.  

Just last night, the US Senate, on a party line vote, The Disclose Act, was voted down 51-43. (It used to be that a seven person margin was enough to pass a bill.  Remember those days?)  The bill would have required the disclosure of the names of people who contributed more than $10,000 to independent groups that air so called issue ads that are aimed at affecting elections. 

There was a late night Democratic telethon for the bill on CSPAN and apparently it will be reintroduced Tuesday.  The picture is a screenshot of Sen. Merkley of Oregon explaining how the Supreme Court has changed the Declaration of Independence opening words from "We the People" to "We the Powerful" in the mostly empty Senate chambers.

While the topic is important, I must admit it was not riveting television.  They had more time to talk than they were prepared to fill well.   Limiting politicians to 30 seconds, as KYES proposes,  while forcing a certain amount of superficiality, will also require candidates to distill their most important messages.


I was hoping to get this up as an audio file, but I'm having troubles doing that.  So it's video format, but just audio.  It's most of a conversation I had with Jeremy about how exactly he plans to make this work.  It gives you a sense of Jeremy's motivation and the experimental nature of this. 

Our Record Snow Still Evident at Powerline Pass

We quickly learned when we moved up here 35 years ago from LA, that if you were going to wait for sunshine, you'd never get out for a hike.  The summers gradually got warmer and longer, but last summer and this summer it seems like we've gone back to the old days.  So despite the heavy cloud cover on the hillside, I set out for an evening hike.  Well, it was 9:30 pm when I left.  (At least the light and dark patterns remain constant, even if the weather doesn't.)



But Glen Alps was not socked in when we got there.  While summer is a little delayed there, the wild flowers were out.

The lupine.

The dogwood.

Humor me.  I'm constantly experimenting with photoshop.  I know this looks like a birthday card for an elderly grandmother.  The yellow is a paintbrush, the blue a wild geranium, and I don't know the white [is Valeriana officinalis, Valerian. (thanks Anon in comments)]

Powerline Pass

This landscape never ceases to awe me.  The sweep of greens surrounded by snowy peaks is always breathtaking and just a 20 minute ride from home.

I played with curves in Aperture (and distorted the colors wildly) to highlight the snow chute you have to negotiate to get to the Ballpark.   That's a lot more snow than I've seen there in recent summers, reflecting our record snow fall this past winter and the record cold for the first half July. 

And my walking companion last night reminds me all the time that the powerlines are the most interesting part of the walk.

I guess the clouds and drizzle kept people away last night.  Even in the drizzle it was magnificent.  Here's the parking lot when we got back, almost 11pm.  A stark contrast to the nights when cars are parked down the road because the lot's full.  For those relatively few times in a year, I think it would be cheaper and better to just have a shuttle bus come up from Hillside instead of bulldozing out more parking lots.  After all, the parking lot looks like this, probably 90% of the time.  (I know, there would have to be a parking lot down below.  Just throwing it out there as something to chew on.) 

Lost Tooth

I was visiting friends on the way home from getting some errands done the other day when the youngest daughter suddenly said she lost a tooth. 

It's been a while since I was around when a tooth was lost.  But I'd been thinking about this milestone, because just a couple days before, while cleaning the garage - yes, that's still happening - I came across our kids' tooth fairy pillow case.  My wife says she thinks that Auntie Esther made it.   The tooth pocket  is at that little rectangle at the bottom with Bambi on it. 

"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.