Mudflats, Rocks, Downed Trees, And More On Sunny Sunday on Seward Highway

It was too nice a day to stay home.

We drove down the Seward Highway.

Here are the railroad tracks looking south down Turnagain Arm.












Looking back toward Anchorage you could see the Alaska Range bright and clear in the distance. 

Our goal was a patch of rocky beach we like.  But it was pretty windy (I'd guess 20 to 30 mph) and J found a nice rock that blocked the wind and let her enjoy the sunshine while I walked down the beach.










The rocks go to the edge of the mudflats.  Here you can see a layer of mudflats, then the water, then the base of the mountains on the other side. 














 J didn't want to walk in the strong wind so we backtracked to McHugh Creek and took the path toward Potter.  Up there - on the other side of the Seward Highway and up a bit into the trees - there was no wind and it began to feel warm in the sun.

 But all those cottonwoods proved to be vulnerable to the winds we had last week.  (I'm assuming these were recent falls we came upon, though some - as you'll see - had been sawed to clear the trail.)

 It was a little messy, but we could negotiate the trail pretty easily here. 

















 The insides of the downed cottonwoods were pretty soft.  You could squeeze the pulp like a sponge almost. 

I liked the sun-like design where the chainsaw had cut the mature trees, with their ridged trunks.

While you could see the water through the trees for a lot of the trail, this was one of just a couple of spots where you got a view of Turnagain Arm and the Seward Highway below.

 This spider - well I assumed it was a spider, but I only see five of its eight legs - seemed to be enjoying the sun on the newly exposed cottonwood insides.  [Now that was a good case of transferring human feelings to animals.  Who knows what it was feeling out there?]

The body would have fit on a quarter easily.


In addition to cottonwoods, devil's club was everywhere and also some red baneberries. 

At first glance they look pretty similar, but the devil's club has much larger thorned leaves and their berries aren't translucent like the baneberries are.  Don't eat the baneberries!!


The US Forest Service has lots of information on baneberries:

NUTRITIONAL VALUE: Red baneberry's energy and protein value are rated as poor [21].  Red baneberry's name comes from a poisonous essential oil or glycoside (protoanemonin) found in all parts of the plant but most concentrated in the berries and root [43,72].  Symptoms of poisoning include gastroenteritis, stomach cramps, headache, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea and circulatory failure [72].

 But some bird species eat the berries and elk and other deer eat the foliage.

We hiked about 3 miles in (almost to the Potter Marsh end) but decided these two big cottonwoods across the trail was a good place to turn back. 

There were lots of people on the trail and lots of dogs.  We heard reports from hikers going to and back of four black bears sighted.  We didn't see them.  J wasn't very disappointed about that. 

We also saw this young agent of the devil's club.    Actually he zipped up the hood to show me that his sweatshirt turned into this neat Halloween costume. The eyes had a mesh covering he could see through.













These trees seemed to be dancing on the side of the trail.

Here's yet another fallen cottonwood, but it was high enough over the trail not to be a problem.


As we got near the McHugh Creek parking lot we passed a man in an electronic wheel chair making his way up the trail.  I'm not sure how far he would be able to get, but I was impressed he got that far. 


Finally, on the drive back home we stopped at Potter Marsh where we saw a pair of swans in the distance.  If I had a good telephoto, I'd show you.  This picture is much better than the one I got of the swans. 

The House of Sarah

This is a very short post.  

My daughter told me a story yesterday she'd never told before.  At her college there was one small dorm that only housed 60 people.  One year, the student in charge of assigning students to dorms assigned only students named Sarah to that dorm.

At first blush it sounds pretty funny, but when the Sarahs realized what had happened they were not pleased and the student who'd made the assignments lost her job.  Apparently she wasn't identified and got another student job.  I can imagine it made things fairly complicated.  And for some reason it was too late to make any changes without disturbing other students.

I imagine there were students in other dorms who would have traded roommates.  What would it have been like to be the only non-Sarah in the building?  I wonder if anyone ever followed up with that group later to see what their year was like and what lessons they learned from it.  This is a social experiment just waiting to be studied.

Assembly Work Session Hears Judge Hensley Again on Voting Problems

I went to the Assembly work session today with Judge Hensley, the consultant who investigated the problems with the April 3, 2012 Municipal election.

I got there twenty minutes late.  Actually, I thought this was going to be a two hour follow up on the earlier working group with Assembly attorney Julia Tucker.  So I was surprised to see Hensley and most of the Assembly there.  Hensley was finishing his report as I arrived and then took questions.  There was no amplification and the Judge spoke softly facing away from the audience.  Plus something (heating?) was making a lot of noise. The whole meeting took about 30 minutes.  You can listen to the Municipal recording of the meeting.  [You have to go to Archived Videos and Agendas.  Hensley's Report Worksession is at the top today, but will move down as new videos are added.  You can also try one of these:

MP3 Audio

MP4 Video

(there's only audio on the video)]

The written report and the supplemental can be found:


June 30, 2012 Report 
July 24, 2012 Report

You can see other documents relating to the April 3, 2012 election at the Municipal Clerk's election page.

Hensley's Report Overview:

He said his first question was to determine if someone tried to manipulate the outcome of this election.  The answer is no.

Second task, if no one intentionally tried, how did it happen?  Someone took their eye of the ball - leadership in the Clerk's office for sure and while the Assembly had the right to expect the Clerk to run the elections well, clearly the Assembly needs to keep some oversight.  


Basically felt that the key problem was the failure in ballot allocation in not realizing that turnout would not be like 2011 or 2010.

I don't really think that there was anything terribly significant said that you couldn't find by just reading the reports.  The audio is just 29 minutes so if you really want to know, you can listen to it. 

I didn't feel the Assembly was particularly deep in their questioning.  Flynn did ask about the variety of ballots (there have to be different ballots because there are so many small special service districts that have elections.)  Johnston asked about training for workers.  Traini, Drummond, and Jackson-Gray asked about the voting machines. 

New metal seal for ballot bags and voting machines

After the meeting I spoke with the Clerk and a staff person.  One change they have worked out already is to get more secure seals.  They are metal and it will be very clear if they are tampered with and they are numbered so people can't simply replace them with another tag.  (I believe someone said the old plastic ones were also numbered.)  They are also hoping to reconstitute the Technical board to hand count random ballots for at least three precincts. 

As Shell Is About to Drill, What Do We Know About Arctic Sea Ice?

Image from World Atlas

I'm treading on ground I know little about here, but one thing led to another.  Given the assurances BP gave us about safety in the Gulf, I think it behooves us to ask as many questions as we can about safety in the Chukchi Sea. There's a lot here and it's technical, but I dare you to go through it, even if you only skim.  And this post has also been influenced by power and internet outages.  So the present tense changes each time I start writing again.

This post began with an email from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Frontier Science website about their new Arctic Sea Ice videos.  I thought it relevant to see what Shell Oil had up on sea ice in the Chukchi Sea.  I was close to posting Tuesday night when I was having trouble with blogger and saved the post and reopened it to find most of the post gone.

A severe storm that's been predicted for Anchorage has just made its presence known through noisy wind slamming windows and mimicking airplanes flying over the house.  We're supposed to have 80 to 100 mile/hour winds.  I was sure that the electricity would go out before I finished this.  Now that I have to recreate much of it, I can only cross my fingers.  I've gotten candles out just in case.  In my heart of hearts, I know this will be a better post for being rewritten, but I'm still not happy. 

Here are two Frontier Science videos on Arctic ice.  The first is Modeling Arctic Ice:




and the second one on Bering Sea Ice Movements


Tuesday 10:26pm - the electricity just went out, but J had lit the candles already.  The wind is huffing and puffing and banging tree limbs against the house. 

So, I wanted to see what Shell Oil had about sea ice.  At the Alaska Press Club Conference in April I learned at one panel that included a Shell representative and other Arctic researchers, that Shell (and I think other corporations) had agreed to share their research findings in the Arctic and not keep them proprietary.  So if that has happened, then the Frontier Scientists should have access to it.

A Shell webpage on Oil spill prevention and response got me to a pdf of a report:  PREVENTING AND RESPONDING TO OIL SPILLS IN THE ALASKAN ARCTIC.   On page three it had a Prevention Toolkit.  The tools listed included:

• Redundancy - "Shell applies a multi-layered well control system designed to eliminate the possibility of a low probability, high impact event. If any one system or device fails, it should not lead to a blowout."     It suggests that there are different systems to notice problems so if one fails another will pick it up.  I'd note that in Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that airplane crashes happen when five or six backup systems go wrong at once.
• The Safety Case Approach - "As an example, Shell has used the “Safety Case” approach recommended by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling for all its contracted drilling rigs, globally, for many years."  That's odd, since the spill occurred in 2010 and the National Commission report came out in 2011.  How could they have used this approach for many years?  Maybe the approach was around and the Commission endorsed it in its report.  Ah, writing is so tricky.
• Safety Culture - "Since 90% or more of all incidents are caused by human error, a true culture of safety that permeates and guides all activities is perhaps the most important method of spill prevention"
  
• Blowout Preventer - "In the unlikely event that measures of early detection fail, mechanical barriers such as blowout preventers (BOP) can seal off the well."
• Ice Management - For the previous tools, I've just given an excerpt of each, but since this is the issue we started with, I should give you their whole explanation:

"Shell’s exploration activities will occur during a four-month period from mid-July through October, in predominantly open water conditions. However, to address the natural variability of ice conditions during thaw and freeze up, Shell has developed an Ice Management Plan (IMP) to ensure safe drilling operations and identify conditions that may put operations at risk.

Shell’s ice management system is a combination of ice monitoring, forecasting, and management techniques. Monitoring includes satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar, airborne and vessel reconnaissance. Forecasting incorporates data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Canadian Ice Service. Shell will use specialized software to integrate ice speed and direction data from the vessel’s radar, aerial reconnaissance, and satellite imagery in order to predict individual ice floe movement, allowing modification of ice management operations on a real-time basis. Shell has established strict protocols to be followed in the event of potential hazards. Ice management vessels can be used to deflect approaching ice around the rig and, if necessary, the rig can quickly stop drilling, secure the well, and move safely off-site."  [emphasis added.]

I wasn't paying close enough attention the first time and glazed over the Ice Management Plan (IMP) but I did see "strict protocols to be followed in the event of potential hazards" and googled that and got to "2010 Plan of Cooperation Camden Bay, Alaska" and this relevant paragraph:

"Shell has developed and will implement a Critical Operations and Curtailment Plan (COCP), which establishes protocols to be followed in the event potential hazards, including ice, are identified in the vicinity of the drilling operations (e.g., ice floes, inclement weather, etc.). Like the IMP, the COCP threat classifications are based on the time available to prepare the well and escape the location. The COCP also contains provisions for not initiating certain critical operations if there is insufficient time available before the arrival of the hazard at the drill site."

At this point I started questioning my obligations as a blogger.  How far am I supposed to go digging? Couldn't I just say my job was to start raising these issues and let someone else take the baton from here?

But how much trouble would it be to look up COCP and IMP?  It turns out, not much at all.  I found them easily.  But then writing up what I found was another issue altogether. That took time.  Time enough to lose most of what I wrote and then get disconnected from the internet by a windstorm taking out our electricity.  I just looked out the window.  It is really, really dark out.  The only lights I can see are a few car lights off in the distance.   I guess a severe storm is an appropriate context for writing about Chukchi Sea emergency oil drilling procedures.  I have an hour left on my laptop battery.


CRITICAL OPERATIONS AND CURTAILMENT PLAN (COCP)
Chukchi Sea, Alaska  (Total of 16 pages)

That's a mouthful, but if you actually think about it, it really says what it's about - a) critical operations and b) curtailment plan.  You'll see below.  It basically is about procedures.  It . . .

• Identifies Planned and Unplanned Critical Operations
• Identifies Circumstance/Conditions  Requiring Curtailment 
• Severe Weather Sea    
• Ice     
• Sea Spray .
• Unavailability of Materials, Personnel, and / or Equipment   
• Well Control

The first three are weather caused issues.  The fourth is about human caused issues.  The last one isn't real clear.  Here's what the COCP says about Well Control:

"Critical operations, other than efforts to restore primary well control, will not be undertaken during a well control event (e.g., drilling will cease pending circulation of a kick out of the hole and adjusting mud density to prevent further kicks from entering the wellbore). The curtailment of critical operations due to a well control event is the responsibility of the Shell Drilling Foreman."

I guess this means if something goes wrong with the well, they'll stop everything else, but I'm not sure. 

Then it goes into different kinds of Time.
There's ST or Secure Time which is how long it takes to secure the rig
There's MT or Move-Off Time - how long it takes to get people evacuated
There's  T-Tine or Total time, which combines ST and MT.
But there is also HT or Hazard Time, how long, in hours, before the hazard arrives.

My question was what if the Hazard Time is less than the T-Time?  That is, if the hazard is due to arrive before they have time to curtail and evacuate? It turns out that got answered in IMP below.*

Then there's the curtailment decision process which basically is about who makes the decisions and who gets told by whom.

And then there's training:

All personnel will be made aware of their roles and responsibilities described within this COCP and the IMP through a training program to be taught before the vessel is on site. All persons with a key position in the COCP will be provided a copy of this document, and training will be provided by Shell prior to deployment. This training will include a table-top exercise that will be carried out prior to initiating operations in the Chukchi Sea.

 Table-top exercise, according CSOOnline,

"is a great way to get business continuity plans off the written page without the interruption of a full-scale drill. Rather than actually simulating a disaster, the crisis management group gathers for three hours to talk through a simulated disaster.

Just talking is good up to a point.  I'd really like them to be doing some shipboard training in a storm. 

ICE MANAGEMENT PLAN (IMP)
(Total 50 pages)

Then I went looking for the Ice Management Plan (IMP). [Doesn't Shell know the definition of 'imp'?  Dictionary.com's first definition of 'imp' is:

"a little devil or demon; an evil spirit."]

Is that the acronym you'd want for your plan for managing ice [assuming humans can do more than respond to ice movements in the Arctic] to prevent oil spills?  Was it a Freudian slip?

Here's the overview from the the little devil's Table of Contents:

• VESSELS  COVERED BY IMP  
• SHELL ICE AND WEATHER ADVISORY CENTER
• ICE ALERT LEVELS AND PROCEDURES  
• ICE MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY  
• WELL SUSPENSION   
• MOORING SYSTEM RELEASE/RECOVERY MOVING ONTO OR RETURNING   TO THE DRILL SITE
• TRAINING

In more detail:

• Vessels - this is probably the most technical section that describes the ships and their capabilities.  For example:
  
  "The Kulluk has an Arctic Class IV hull design, is capable of drilling in up to 600 feet (ft) [182.9 meters (m)]) of water and is moored using a 12-point anchor system. The Kulluk mooring system consists of 12 Hepburn winches located on the outboard side of the main deck, Anchor wires lead off the bottom of each winch drum inboard for approximately 55 ft (16.8 m). The wire is then redirected by a sheave, down through a hawse pipe to an underwater, ice protected, swivel fairlead. The wire travels from the fairlead directly under the hull to the anchor system on the seafloor.
  
  The Kulluk is designed to maintain its location in drilling mode in moving ice with thickness up to 4 ft (1.2 m) without the aid of any active ice management. With the aid of IMVs, the Kulluk would be able to withstand more severe ice conditions. In more open water conditions, the Kulluk can maintain its drilling location during storm events with wave heights up to 18 ft (5.5 m) while drilling, and can withstand wave heights of up to 40 ft (12.2 m) when not drilling and disconnected (assuming a storm duration of 24 hours)."

• Shell Ice and Weather Advisory Center (SIWAC)   - Unit in Anchorage that monitors ice and weather conditions and gets the information out to the drilling rigs.
  
  
• Ice Alerts and Procedures    - Color coded chart from green to red (black is shut down.)  This gives a sense of how long it takes to shut down, because 24 hours notice is green.  Between 24 and 12 hours they initiate risk assessment.  Between 12 and 6 hours limited operations and begin to secure the well.  Under 6 hours the well should be shut down and anchor recovery should commence.
  
  *This section also answers the question I had above about what happens if the hazard time is greater than the total time to shut down:
  
  "Guidance Note: If T-Time becomes greater than HT at any time, well securement and drill site evacuation contingency plans will be implemented."
  There are also more detailed charts and description of who is responsible for doing what in the event of a shut down.

• Ice Management Philosophy   -  I don't know how to take their use of the word Philosophy here.  Is it an attempt to make this sound grander than it is?  If so it is good to know that Philosophy still has a noble image.  But I'd hardly call this a philosophy.  Particularly after reading McPhee's The Control of Nature, I'd call this more a religious doctrine of faith - We believe that if we have these procedures in place, God will not allow bad things to happen. Really, this is just a list of conditions of alleged readiness.  For example:
• "The IMVs will be capable IMVs, with the appropriate ice strengthening, and have been contracted to support the exploration campaign."
• "A systematic approach for risk mitigation is adopted by developing effective work processes.
  Development of effective ice management strategies based on available information (global and local)"
  
• Well Suspension Procedures  - Why is this not reassuring? 
  
  "As part of securing the well, well suspension procedures will be established. These procedures will supplement the detailed well securing procedures that will be contained within the Rig Operations Procedures and will be specific to securing the well in response to the threat of hazardous ice."
  OK, it's not quite that bad.  There is a more detailed table of things to do (p. 16) though I don't have the expertise to know how adequate it is.  


• Mooring System Recovery and Release  - Again, I don't have the expertise to evaluate this, but it is always disconcerting when one of the options - Running of Wires - in the cell for "Advantages" has the word 'none.'  If there are no advantages to that method, then why is it there? 
  
• Moving onto the Drill Site   -  Clarifies who decides when to return to the rig.
  
  
• Training -  Each ship will have a table top exercise and it has a list of people who will participate. 

Both the IMP and the COCP have what I'll call a "good judgment clause."

This is obviously a complicated affair.  These two plans - the CRITICAL OPERATIONS AND CURTAILMENT PLAN (COCP) and the ICE MANAGEMENT PLAN (IMP)  are more about gathering weather data, who makes decisions and who communicates with whom.  These are important things, but they don't really address the technical issues of ice flows in the Arctic and how to shut actually shut down the rig in an emergency.  Those are referred to, almost in passing, in what I'm calling the IMP's 'good judgement' clause. (p. 1)

"This plan is not a substitute for good judgment.

Guidance Note: This document is not intended to contain detailed procedures. Detailed procedures are contained within the vessel-specific operating manuals." [Emphasis added.]

So, the actual procedures for dealing with ice emergencies are yet somewhere else.  Perhaps they are so detailed that there is a justifiable reason for their not being here with these plans.  And presumably each vessel has different plans.  But those more detailed manuals would be critical for someone evaluating the adequacy of the plans.  And given the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, I don't think anyone is willing to just trust the assurances of the oil companies.  But the internet is still out at my house this morning - though the electricity came on around 7am, so I can't search for the operating manuals of the vessels.  (That's an excuse I'm happy to use to get this post done.  Maybe I'll do a follow up post.)

I would note that the Critical Operations and Curtailment Plan (COCP) also has a 'good judgment' clause:

"No contingency plan can adequately cover all conceivable situations and circumstances, nor is this plan intended to be a substitute for good judgment and experience in dealing with unexpected situations."

This is way more than I was expecting to do on this and I haven't even scratched the surface.  I hope it piques some people's curiosity and they try some links and go exploring further.  If you find anything interesting, please report back in the comments.

NOTE: It's 2:30pm Wednesday.  I'm at the dentist's office where there's wifi.   I need to review this, but I'm not sure the internet is working at home, so I'm scheduling it to post at 5pm. I think it's mostly ok. If our home internet isn't working and there are problems, I'll fix it later.
5:51 - I didn't have internet at home so now I'm at Loussac library working on this.

It wasn't until the end of this that I found the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) webpage with lots of links related to their permitting of Shell's 2012 Chukchi oil exploration.

2:35pm Thursday - I thought this went up Wednesday night, but it didn't.  OK, I'll hold it another day.

Anchorage Student Blogs From Buenos Aires

Sophie is the daughter of friends here in Anchorage and she's studying in Buenos Aires for five months (then off to Oxford for a term) and blogging.  Here's an excerpt from one of her posts:

On Thursday I went to Spanglish, a program held in bars around Buenos Aires Thurs-Sat to allow locals and foreigners to practice their Spanish or English (they also operate in Madrid). The program I’m on (IFSA) had sent out an email about it a while ago, but I didn’t RSVP until this time. When I got there, I was assigned a table number and left to mingle for about half an hour. After that, they told us to find our tables and begin talking to our partner (in my case, always an Argentinian) in one language for five minutes. After that they came around twice more: once to tell us to switch languages and once to tell the English-speaker in the pairing to move up one table. It was like speed dating and it was a lot of fun. I made several porteño (local - from BsAs) friends, which leads me to my next story…

She's using tumbler.  Here's a link to Sophie's Adventures Abroad.

Inspection Run And OutNorth Revival Meeting Tonight

I  took advantage of the sunny (if breezy) weather to get a run in and see how the neighborhood fared the storm. Except for this one cottonwood that was covering most of the street nearby, things seemed to be ok.  Oh, the traffic light at MacInnes and 36th was still not working.  There did appear to be some trees down in the woods along the bike trail too, but they could have been like that awhile.

Thursday

[UPDATE  Friday, next day:  Here's what's left of the tree:

Friday]

There is termination dust* on the mountains. 

 

And the Chester Creek bike trail was still beautiful. 

*Termination dust, the first snow on the mountains, marks the end of summer for folks in Anchorage.

Also, want to remind people that OutNorth is having a fundraiser tonight.  It's $40 a person at the door which sounds steep except it includes food and drinks. (Well I expect they might charge for the alcoholic drinks.  It is a fund raiser.)

OutNorth continues to bring Anchorage the most interesting and often the most edgy performances by local and Outside performers and artists.  Really incredible stuff and sometimes things that don't quite work, but are interesting attempts.  So $40 including food isn't that much to help keep this theater/arts non-profit alive and well. 

Their website says 

Includes Midnight Sun beer, wine, food, edification, salvation, entertainment, and remarkable deals on art, objects, services, experiences and upcoming shows.

It starts at 5:30pm and will give you a chance to chat with artists from the many community groups affiliated with them - from Hmong high schoolers learning to play their traditional bamboo flute, to actors, musicians, dancers, visual artists.  You can get a sense of the eclectic mix at their radio station which went on the air this year KONR (KOutNorthRadio) at 106.1 FM.  They're doing a special program to coincide with the Revival.  From their website:

"Anchorage Augmented
On September 6th, KONR Out North Art House Radio will host an augmented reality mix tape of Anchorage featuring the recorded works of local musicians, poets and performers as augmented reality works of art. If you are a local artist, musician, poet or performer with recorded works of art that you would like included in this project please email them to us in mp3 format. Anchorage Augmented will be taking place as part of Out North's Season 28 Revival, festivities will begin at 5:30 at Out North Contemporary Art House."

Do I have vested interest in OutNorth? Yeah I do. I want to see the kinds of performers they bring to Anchorage and I want to see them using those performers to help our local performers - including kids - stretch their imaginations and talents and contacts. So getting the word out to get more people there increases the likelihood they'll survive and thrive. That's my vested interest. A dumb thing on my part was that I didn't start labeling posts about OutNorth events until recently, but you can look at some of the old posts about their events by clicking here.

Back Online. ACS Message Misleading, But Sam Was Great

If you call the tech help line for ACS (611) you get a message (still, 36 hours after the power first went out) that says

"Currently we are experiencing a widespread outage in the Anchorage area.  We are also experiencing troubles in Fairbanks.  If you are not in one of the affected areas  . . . a technician will be with you shortly."

Here's most of the message:

Welcome to Alaska Communications Repair and Technical Support.
Select one of the following options.
For assistance with your wireless phones press 2.
For internet technical support press 3.

In order to assure quality customer care for our valued customers this call may be monitored or recorded.

Thank you for calling Alaska Communications.  For your convenience, there are self-help and remote assistance  options on the web at support.alaskacommunications.com

Currently we are experiencing a widespread outage in the Anchorage area.  We are also experiencing troubles in Faribanks.  If you are not in one of the affected areas and are experiencing and interruption with your internet service please disconnect the power to your modem and any router you may have for sixty seconds  . . . and a technician will be with you shortly.

It told me the wait was 21 minutes.  Fortunately I have a speaker phone option so I could do other things.


Sam answered the phone 20 some minutes later and was amazingly calm, polite, and patient.  When I told him I was sorry but I had to turn on my computer, he said, "You probably waited for me a long time, so I can wait for your computer to boot up."  Wow!

He then proceeded to get me to link to the ACS modem and walked me through various pages to  change the password to the modem.  From what he said, I understood that in trying to fix things all the passwords had to be redone.

My beef?  Why are they continuing to say that Anchorage and Fairbanks have widespread outages, but others should hold on and get assistance?  Anchorage is back on line and we need technical assistance to get our home computers connected again.

Yesterday I bought that line, thinking if there was nothing they could do, I shouldn't add to the delays by calling when they can't do anything about it.  But someone last night said ACS was working.  So today I decided to call, to check and, as a blogger, find out what the problem was, since I was able to get internet yesterday at Providence and at Loussac.

If every Anchorage ACS user needs to change the modem password - and you have to go through technical help to do that - that could take forever.  Or at least a week or two.

But Sam was fantastic.  Not only did he convey patience and understanding of my frustration, but he also was able to fix it quickly.  When we got to about the fourth screen and he said, "You should see ...." I said, "I think you've done this before."  He replied, "Once or twice."  People like Sam make customers like me feel ok even when the company has screwed up.  ACS should give him some sort of bonus.  

Storm's Over, Maybe

The wind roared into Anchorage last night while I was working on longish post and I just knew the power was going to go out, which it did before the post was ready. J already had candles lit.

Schools were closed today and so was the university.  Our electricity came back on about 7am, but not our internet connection.  I'm using the wifi at my dentist's office for this.  Our house looked ok this morning - just a few small branches in the driveway.  But my hygienist said they'd lost shingles from the roof and a few trees blew over.  



Here's this afternoon's sky from the dentist's office.

Romney's Cotton Candy Acceptance Speech

Reading through Romney's acceptance speech again, a few days later, it's cotton candy.  It's soft, sugary, fluffy, and full of air.  There's absolutely no substance.  When you try to sink your teeth into it, it simply evaporates.

It has the signs of being designed by the marketing department - based on focus group feedback about what words and phrases push people's emotional buttons and then written to push them.  Neither reality nor honesty is a factor.  Tell them what they want to hear.  But since there are almost no facts, it's safe from the fact checkers.   It's the same stuff as glossy magazine ads - empty promises that Americans, individually and collective, can be an impossibly and perfectly beautiful people.

It's guys in the back room poring through the data and coming up with a formula to grab the audience.   But unfortunately for Romney, it's based on data, not on a caring or even intuitive sense of the people behind the data.


Note:  When I got to the end of this post, without having covered that much of Romney's acceptance speech, I asked myself why I was doing this?  Who cares?  Does it matter?

It only matters if people think this is more than just marketing, if people actually believe that there is something here.  So for that reason alone, it makes sense to go through the speech.  My approach is to try to pull out of it the key parts and to try to get at what the speech is about.   And to show there isn't any meat.  It's basically empty words.

Going through the speech, these are the themes that I see.  They aren't necessarily in order in the speech, but rather are scattered about and sometimes they overlap:  

• Trying to show different constituencies that the Romney's presidency would care about them.
• To outline what Romney believes the USA is all about.
• To outline why Obama should be replaced by Romney. (And why people who had hoped that Obama would do great things, should now abandon him for Romney.)
• To show that Romney has both the personal and professional skills necessary to fix the problems Obama hasn't fixed.

In this post I'm just going to focus on the first theme, showing the different constituencies Romney tries to touch.  Or more realistically, those marketing guys in the back room saying, "We need to get various demographics."

Romney's a product and this is an attempt to interest consumers into buying the product.  [Mind you I don't expect much different at the Democratic convention, but I suspect the marketing team will do a better job of connecting with the prospective consumers.]

My quotes come from NPR's transcript of the speech.

The Independent Voters and maybe some Democrats:

"Four years ago, I know that many Americans felt a fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president. That president was not the choice of our party but Americans always come together after elections. We are a good and generous people who are united by so much more than what divides us. . .

But today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future.

It is not what we were promised."

Parents, Small Business Owners, Students:

"Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who's living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity.

Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team.

Every new college graduate thought they'd have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future."

Norman Rockwell miniatures of the perfect America.

And those struggling to get by:

"You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you're an American and you don't quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you'd have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn't right."

Immigrants:

"When every new wave of immigrants looked up and saw the Statue of Liberty, or knelt down and kissed the shores of freedom just ninety miles from Castro's tyranny, these new Americans surely had many questions. But none doubted that here in America they could build a better life, that in America their children would be more blessed than they."

Well, at least the white European immigrants coming through Ellis Island and those escaping communism in Cuba.  Those coming from non-communist Central or South America or from Asia aren't as directly recognized.

Even astronauts:

"God bless Neil Armstrong."

Will this blessing be backed with cuts to NASA's budget?  Maybe a fire sale of NASA assets to private companies?

And women.  Oh yes, he didn't forget women:

"Those days were toughest on Ann, of course. She was heroic. . . I knew that her job as a mom was harder than mine. And I knew without question, that her job as a mom was a lot more important than mine. . . Ann would have succeeded at anything she wanted to.  . .

When my mom ran for the Senate [she lost by a huge margin], my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, "Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?"

I wish she could have been here at the convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As Governor of Massachusetts, I chose a woman Lt. Governor, a woman chief of staff, half of my cabinet and senior officials were women, and in business, I mentored and supported great women leaders who went on to run great companies.  [But he didn't choose a woman as his running mate.]

Of course, the PR guys writing this don't seem to realize that this next quote could just wipe out all their other attempts to win women voters:

"He [Dad, George Romney] convinced my mom, a beautiful young actress, to give up Hollywood to marry him. He moved to Detroit, led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan."

 Maybe the guys will be impressed that Papa Romney got a beautiful young actress, but women aren't going to be excited about him talking her out of her Hollywood career to move to, yeah, Detroit.

And, of course, a coded wink to the religious conservatives:

"As president, I will protect the sanctity of life. I will honor the institution of marriage. And I will guarantee America's first liberty: the freedom of religion."

Even though he didn't say it explicitly, they knew he meant - fight abortions, fight gay marriage, and support such evangelical goals as getting prayer back into public spaces.



How much time should I actually spend going through this speech?  Did anyone actually expect him to say anything?  It's really a pretty cynical speech.  To me, these mentions of the various constituencies are just that - mentions.  They don't reflect a deep understanding of who these constituencies are.  They don't hone in on the issues that might resonate with them - except the religious conservatives.  Rather they are a marketer's attempt to convert focus group data into some votes.

More telling is that there is no substance.  It's simply various ways of saying "Obama failed, but I'll deliver" with nothing that offers how he's going to do it.  Well, yes, his 5 point plan is going to create 12 million new jobs by cutting regulations and taxes and giving parents school choice, and cutting the deficit.  How he's going to cut taxes and the deficit without pretty much shutting down the government he didn't explain.

It's a speech that needed to cover certain things, and I guess it did, but without grace or wit or, as I've said already, substance.

Elephant Beggars Follow Up

Elephant and mahout coming to beg at Chiang Mai restaurant 2008

Four years ago, I posted about elephant beggars in Chiang Mai, Thailand.  Today I got this email:

"I typed a response to your post about elephants begging in Chiang Mai, but when I clicked the preview button the post disappeared. That is why I am emailing you now."

[I get complaints now and then about how hard it is to leave comments.  I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but enough spam messages get through with the Blogspot obstacles, that I'm not ready to turn them off.  I trust my readers to be persistent enough to stick with it until their comment gets through, or, as Tim did, just send me an email.]

"In late 2010, a mahout, using as a weapon his metal-tipped wooden mahout stick, severely beat a couple of Australian tourists, who'd attempted to lecture the mahouts on the ethical treatment of animals. The mahout, and several others who'd been with him at the time of the beating, were arrested. The mahout was charged with some minor offense. All were released the following morning and were back with their elephants on the street within twenty-four hours of the attack. The Australians required hospitalization. The fallout of this awful event was such that the local Thai authorities decided it was time to rid Chiang Mai of the mahouts and their elephants. To that end, the police and the mahouts had a little meeting, which resulted in the mahouts and their elephants being shipped back from whence they came, a province along the Cambodia border. The mahouts, having successfully argued that they must beg in order to feed their elephants, are now subsidized. Or so the story goes. I was living in Chiang Mai at the time, and still am, but was away from Thailand when all this transpired. I've read the seder guest's comment about the elephants being owned by wealthy Thais. That makes this story even more interesting. Living in Alaska is a life-long fantasy of mine. Someday I'll get there. Best wishes, Tim"

I emailed back to Tim to get permission to post his email and found out he's a musician living in Chiang Mai but working in other Asian countries.  He also sent a Bangkok Post article on the attack.

I did some check up on this, including contacting Josh Plotnik who'd we met in Chiang Mai when he was doing his doctoral dissertation studying elephant behavior at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang.  Josh is now doing post-doctoral studies at Cambridge University, though he's spending most of his time in Northern Thailand where he's set up an organization called Think Elephant International.  The website explains the reasons behind of Think Elephant:

Why We Think Elephants

The loss of natural habitat, poaching for ivory, and human-elephant conflict are serious threats to the sustainability of elephants in the wild. Put simply, we will be without elephants, and many other species in the wild, in less than 50 years. Although conservation and wildlife management are not new ideas, clearly new approaches are needed. Think Elephants International is a non-profit focused on practicing science in the field, and teaching it in classrooms. Through research on elephant (and other animal) intelligence, we hope to better inform conservation practice in the wild by helping to formulate action plans that along with focusing on the needs of local human populations, take advantage of what we know about the animal's needs as well. Our research focuses on how elephants "see" their natural world – through smell and sound – and how they navigate this world – through problem solving and cooperation. Equipped with a better understanding of how these animals live, we hope to better help protect them in the wild.

Think Elephants is something else as well – an organization focused on conservation through education. But we don't just teach kids about the conservation battle, we bring the battle to them by bringing the elephants into their classrooms.

Josh confirmed Tim's report:

"The begging elephants situation is extremely complex -- yes, most of the eles were removed from the streets of Bangkok, and went home to Surin. In Surin, the government does subsidize the elephants and thus the mahouts get to stay home for 7,500THB [$240] a month (approximately). Unfortunately, I hear the eles are slowly making their way back to the streets in outlying provinces."

He also sent me to John Roberts' blog for the Golden Asian Triangle Elephant Foundation
(GTEAF*).  Their website describes (in part) their work:

"Yet, despite the strong bond between Thai people and their nation’s most genteel species, there are still a worrying number of elephants forced to walk the city streets to make their mahout a miserly living by begging from tourists.

In an ideal world all elephants would live in the wild and there would be no need to discuss elephants' work.  But until that point is reached, the GTAEF also aims to create and promote ethical work for the elephants and mahouts that are capable, whilst providing care for those that are unable."

Roberts, who is the Director of Elephants at Anantara Golden Triangle’s on-site Elephant Camp, wrote in a blog post just over a year ago (again, in part):

. . .You see, I believe (& I do have some idea which elephants are out there and what their history is) that there exists a perfectly reasonable (and improving) alternative back in the home town of these mahouts, an alternative provided by the Government (& improved for as many as possible by The Surin Project).
Not only is a viable alternative provided it has been very strongly explained to the mahouts that the penalties for being on the streets will be enforced.  “Go back home”, the authorities say, “we may not be able to make you rich there but we’ll keep you & your elephant there in the bosom of your family and, what’s more, if you come back out it’s ‘no more mister nice guy’, powerful people have noticed you, we’ll have to make your life a misery”
To me, that the message has hit home and so many elephants are still in Ban Ta Klang (in previous times when this approach was tried the elephants would stay until their existence became untenable: the food ran out or the money ran dry) means that this time, this IS a viable alternative.
So, I believe that the mahouts out there on the streets now, at least the ones I know about, have few excuses left (...a tendency toward an itinerant lifestyle?  ...a nagging wife?) - it is my belief that they are there for financial gain.  Believe it or not, the natural graze out on the streets may, at times, be better than can be found back at home but I believe the decision to go back out (most came home then went out again) was a purely financial one and has very little justification in ‘traditional lifestyle’ or ‘elephant welfare’ terms and none at all in the ‘no alternative’ terms. . .

You can follow Roberts' blog, Elephant Tails , here.  The most recent post is about selling coffee beans that have been processed by having elephants eat them before they are roasted.  Come on now, it's not that strange.  After all earlier this year I did a post about acacia trees whose seeds had to go through a giraffe's digestive system before they could germinate. 

Clearly there is a lively 'elephant world' out there that I've only glimpsed into. 

This post is long and convoluted enough.  I'll try to do another one on elephants soon though.

*GTAEF, from what I can tell, is a project of Anantara, a luxury hotel chain, that caters to the wealthy (I checked on a room in their hotel by the elephant camp and it started at over $1000 per night.  We stayed a night once in nearby Chiang Rai, in what we thought was a pretty fancy hotel for $35 per night.  That was an internet discount, but they weren't losing money on that price.)  This could be a great example of what's known as social entrepreneurship - using the market to support important non-profit causes.  Or it could be using green issues as a marketing ploy.  I just don't know enough about the organization to evaluate.