So Much To Learn

Inside this featherweight lump of flesh, cradled on my arm, ebbing and flowing with my breathing, a human being is exploring her body, figuring out how it works.  So many parts and pieces to master.  An arm flails.  Gurgling sounds from the belly.  She’s in there, emerging into awareness of this body.   And the body itself is still unfinished.  Her lips move up and down.  The mouth opens a little, now a lot.  The head moves seeking a nipple.  When none is found a soft cry calls out.

Later, satisfied and back on my arm,  An eyelid opens to a slit.  Then closes again.  Now  wide open.  What does she see?  Whoops, her eyeball rolls up leaving a white orb before the lids close. 

Is there any more challenging adventure than mastering one’s own body?  Gaining control of the arms and legs. Slowly gaining full consciousness, bit by bit.  Making sense of the light hitting the eye and the sound waves coming in through the ear holes?  Shaping the involuntary chirps into intentional sounds and then words? 



I look down at her nose and lips and eyes and cheeks and wonder who this little girl is and who she will become.  My daughter’s daughter.  A new being that only my wife and I and two others we only met a year ago call granddaughter.  I watch in wonder as she awakens into life and begins to take control of her body parts, so very slowly, day be day discovering new secrets.  Almost two weeks now I’ve had my heart lightened by her tiny body resting against me. 

Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

I can't recall reading any science fiction since I read Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age and then Snow Crash.


Both those books are huge and incredibly rich in detail, great characters, and mind-stretching ideas. 

Really good science fiction - like Stephenson's - is just good literature.  I found though that much science fiction is good in one area - new worlds, new tech, different takes on human life, good story line -  or another, but often just one area and the characters are often flat.  Women now have much stronger roles than they used to, but character development is often secondary.  Of course, all of this is based more on past reading of science fiction, so I don't read much these days.  Things could have changed a lot.  I know, for example, that strong women characters play a much bigger role in science fiction today than in the past.  I stopped reading it except by strong recommendation, since I couldn't keep track of what was really good.

My daughter gave me this one to read when I was looking for a book in her place.   I've been reading large chunks of pages and then having to put it down so I can do other things.  It's not even close to Stephenson, but it offers some interesting ideas - like the packs which live live in small clusters of individuals that share each others' minds.  It was published in 1992 and every chapter seems to have one or two newsgroup posts.  I read newsgroups in 1992, so that means he was using a technology of the period, not really pushing it out into the future.  Though the importance of data in the economy is a central theme of the book, which is still something most of us haven't considered to the level that he takes it.  Much of the time I'm not completely sure what is happening, though I know enough to be able to follow along.  I don't really knowwhat the title means, but maybe it will become clear by the end.  Though I'm over 500 pages into the book.  So far, the story plot has been fairly predictable, but, again, the book isn't finished.  If there are surprises at the very end, I'll add to this post. 

What's At Stake If The Redistricting Board Starts Over?

[This is the fifth post following up the Alaska Redistricting Board's petition to the Alaska Supreme Court Decision to reconsider its decision telling the Board to start the whole redistricting process over for the 2014 election.  The other posts are listed and linked at the bottom.]

The Alaska Supreme Court has ordered the Alaska Redistricting Board to start over again and once more divide up Alaska into 40 House and 20 Senate districts for the 2014 election.   The Board has petitioned the Court to reconsider its decision.  What all is this all about and what's at stake?  There are two main parts:

• Form over Substance
• The Board's Task
• The Court's Task
• What Happened?
• Form Over Substance?
• My Conclusion
  
• Impact Of Redoing The Plan From Scratch
• A Lot of Work
• Should the job be given back to the Board?
• Impact on the balance of Democrats and Republicans in the legislature
• Impact on voters' connection to their legislators 

Form Over Substance?

The Board's petition charges the Court with substituting form for substance.   Is that the case?

The Board's Task

The Board's job is to divide the state into 40 House and 20 Senate districts.  Each House district should have as nearly as possible 17,755 people based on the 2000 Census.  Additionally there are some state constitutional requirements - compactness, contiguity, and socio-economic integration - and there are some federal requirements based on the Voting Rights Act (VRA).  The VRA required the Board to preserve Alaska Native voting effectiveness, which, in practical terms, means they had to have the same number of districts as before in which Alaska Native voters had enough population to choose the candidate of their choice.  (Here's a previous post that goes into it in more detail.)

The VRA requirements take precedence over the Alaska Constitution, so if the Board can't draw lines that meet the VRA requirements without having to compromise the Alaska Constitution, then it's the Constitution that gets short changed.

Given this, the Board set out to first create the Alaska Native districts and then work out the rest of the districts.  They turned in a plan that they claimed met both the VRA and the Alaska Constitution.

The Court's Task

The Court's job is to make sure that the Alaska Constitution hasn't been violated by the new redistricting plan.  The Court recognizes that the VRA takes precedence, but based on a prior Alaska Supreme Court decision, ordered the Board to follow the "Hickel Process."

The "Hickel Process" requires the Board to start out by making a plan that meets the Alaska Constitution.  Then, if that plan does not meet the VRA requirements, the Board should make the fewest changes necessary to comply with the VRA.  The Court's rationale is that they need a benchmark to determine if the constitutional deviation is the least possible.  So, if they see the constitutional map first, then they can compare that map with the new map to see what changes the Board had to make to also comply with the VRA.  They argue that by starting with the VRA, the Court can't do its job of determining if the deviations from the Alaska Constitution are as minimal as possible.

The "Hickel Process" is also seen as a way to minimize political gerrymandering.  The Board has to show why it's done what it did.  And, as I heard during the process, the idea behind the "Hickel Plan" has been adopted by other states for this very reason.

What Happened?

Since the Board began the plan with first the Alaska Native districts so it would comply with the VRA, the Court had no original Constitutional plan to compare it against.  I would note that the Board's attorney didn't mention the "Hickel Process" to the Board as a requirement they had to meet and appears to have been taken by complete surprise that the Court used it in its decision.   Now, he clearly knew about the court case - Hickel v. Southeast Conference.  Two of the 2010 Redistricting Board members are mentioned as plaintiffs in the case.  But it appears that none took the "Hickel Process" instructions in that case to apply to their work. Possibly because they assumed a constitutional amendment in 1998 changing the redistricting process made it irrelevant.

In sending the plan back to the Board to be redone, the Court did not evaluate whether the districts in the plan were constitutional or not.  The Board argues in its petition, and two of the Court members seemed to agree in their dissent, that if the districts in the plan were constitutional, then it doesn't matter if they did the Native districts first or not.  That would only matter if there were unconstitutional districts.

That assumes, however, that the districts are all constitutional and I would argue that a few of them are not - they are definitely not compact.  I'm not sure one could draw a plan for Alaska in which all districts met a strict definition of compact because there are parts of the state with lots of land and few people.

Form over Substance?

I think the Court's logic about needing a benchmark against which to measure the degree of deviation from the Constitution is sound.

But I also have doubts that, practically, a Board could come up with the best possible map (ie meets VRA and has the least possible deviations from the Alaska Constitutional requirements) by drawing its first map only thinking about the Constitution and not thinking at all about the VRA. The Court has written "the Board ‘painted itself into a corner’ by leaving only a few blank areas on the map."  I would argue the same thing would happen if they did a constitutional map first without any consideration of where the Native districts might go.  The VRA requirements are so different from the constitutional requirements, that to ignore them would likely have the Board end up with a map that would require far more constitutional deviation to adjust at the end.

That said, I think that the VRA can be a cover for the Board to gerrymander districts.  My observation of how the Fairbanks districts were originally determined leads me to believe that they used their VRA districts as an excuse to claim that their clear political tampering with the Fairbanks districts was an unavoidable "ripple effect" of the Native district.  In court, the plaintiffs showed that this was not the case.  

My Conclusion

• The basic notion of the "Hickel Process" is logical, but
• Drawing the constitutional map without any consideration of the VRA could lead to worse plans than not using the Hickel process 
• If the Court were to review each individual district and find them all constitutional, then I would say that requiring the Board to start over using the "Hickel Process" was form over substance
• I don't think they would all be constitutional

Impact Of Redoing The Plan From Scratch


A Lot Of Work 

I couldn't tell you how many hours the Board met, but I have 164 posts labeled "redistricting."  They met much of March 2011 through May 2011, in Anchorage and flying all over the state to meet with people.  They had several court hearings and met again in Spring 2012 a number of times to respond to the court decisions.   There are five Board members from different parts of the state, plus about four staff members. 

If something has been done wrong, the amount of work to fix it shouldn't be the issue.  But how much of a difference will all this work make?  And will the difference benefit the state or do more harm than doing nothing?

Should The Job Be Given Back To The Board? 

The Board certainly understands the job facing them and the technology for doing it.  They should be able to do this much faster than they did the first time round.  But even though this process has a major political impact, the first round had relatively little media attention and I suspect there could be less this time around. 

The current Board is made up of four Republicans and one Democrat.  The Democrat, appointed by the Supreme Court Chief Justice, is an Alaska Native who focused on the Voting Rights Act and did not otherwise appear to watch out for Democratic interests on the Board.  Nearly all, if not all, the significant votes on the Board were unanimous.  Her participation certainly helped the Board reach out to Alaska Natives, but since the Board knew that no Plan could proceed without the Department of Justice approval, they already were concerned about meeting the VRA requirements.

Short of having an evenly balanced Board, I don't see how partisanship can be prevented.  But such a Board might also be stalemated.  And such a Board means little in a state where Non-Partisan (no party affiliation) and Undeclared (no party declared)  make up the largest block of voters.

One Alaska Democratic representative, Les Gara, claimed  that the Court's decision to hand the redistricting task back to the Board would give it a chance to further increase the Republican legislative dominance it gained in the 2012 election:

"Now the Supreme Court has ruled this board can rewrite every district, after seeing how its 2012 plan performed. That lets the board members re-gerrymander lines in those districts where races were closer than they predicted, even if those districts are legal."

I don't know what options the Court has if it finds the plan unconstitutional.   I don't know under what circumstances the Court could dismiss the constitutionally established Board to create another body.  Past redistricting board processes have involved court appointed masters to finalize plans, but I understand that this happened when time was critical and the result plan was only an interim plan.

The only check on partisanship comes when the Court reviews the plan that the Board proposes.


Impact on the balance of Democrats and Republicans in the legislature

This was mentioned in the previous post.  I have no doubt that if the Board had been dominated by Democrats, the Senate bi-partisan coalition would not have been broken in the last election.  There are several Senate districts that were changed in ways that were unnecessary except to impact the balance of Republicans and Democrats.

I see no reason to believe that Rep. Gara's prediction of even further benefit to Republicans wouldn't occur in the next round unless the Court decided to consider political gerrymandering, which is illegal.


Impact on legislators and voters' connection to their legislators


The dissenting opinion on the Supreme Court, while agreeing that the Southeast districts should be revisited, argued against redistricting the whole state. One issue they cited was the impact on voters.

. . . it is highly desirable that election districts not change, or change as little as possible, from one election to the next during every ten-year census cycle. Redistricting inevitably generates significant political disruption and voter confusion, and gives rise to charges of partisan and ad hominem gerrymandering. It results in the truncation of four-year senate terms to two-year terms when there are substantial changes in a Senate district. Further, redistricting may place two incumbents in one district, thus resulting in the inevitable defeat of one of them. In addition, redistricting may cause incumbents to lose the core of their constituency. (p. 33)

The whole process of redistricting is highly disruptive.  Asking the Board to revisit the whole state, including the many districts that are clearly constitutional, unnecessarily invites uncertainty and mischief.



These are the thoughts of an observer of this process.  There's a lot I don't know, but I don't see too much discussion or debate on this so I figure I should at least raise some issues for people to think about, learn more about, and discuss. 


I've written four other posts in response to the Board's petition to the Supreme Court's December decision:


1.  Alaska Redistricting 2010-2013 Overview
2.  Fact Checking The Alaska Redistricting Board's Petition To The Supreme Court
3.  Redistricting Board Petition To SC - Part 2: I Can't Figure Out A Sexy Title For This 
4.  Did the Alaska Supreme Court Violate Separation of Powers as the Board Petition Asserts?

More Than Babysitting - Egypt, Trees, and Birds

Besides babysitting, we did get to stop at the library Saturday morning for a Great Decisions film and speakers on modern Egypt.  A former State Department official moderated and two Egyptian speakers - Marwa Maziad, an Egyptian journalist and fellow at the Middle East Center of the U.W. Jackson School of International Studies.

Marwa Maziad and Tarek Dawoud

Tarek Dawoud is a graduate of Cairo University Computer Engineering department, Tarek came to the United States from Egypt in early 2001 to work in the Software industry.  Tarek currently serves as the president of the Washington state chapter of CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and  as a board member of the Islamic School of Seattle as well as a member of the Interfaith and Outreach Committee at Masjid Ar-Rahmah in Redmond.

Larry Kerr, the moderator,  was a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service for over 25 years after leaving the US military.

Essentially, Marwa and Tarek  both felt that the video made the Mursi government seem much more stable, moderate, and capable than it is.  Both see lots of issues today, but were hopeful for five years from now.


The room was packed - about 60 people [It turns out there were 75 according to Kathleen Thorne who runs the program and supplied me the names and background information on Tarek and James.]  I don’t think there more than a handful (excluding the speakers) under 40.  I’m not sure what that means - I suspect that it has more to do with their time schedules and young families than their interest in the topic. 

We also drove out to Port Gamble.  A town whose architecture was copied from Maine where the settlers came from.  While it had a saw mill once, it seems to be mostly a tourist spot today.  Everything was labeled like this tree. But I see it's still hard to read, so here's what it says:

"It was in 1640 that the "Earl of Camperdown" in Dundee Scotland growing on the floor of his elm forest.  He grafted it to a Scotch Elm and it took hold producing the first Camperdown Elm.  The Scotch Elm is the  only root mass the Camperdown Elm will grow on.  The tree is a mutant and cannot self produce. Every Camperdown Elm tree in the world is part of the original and they must be grafted onto a Scotch Elm tree to get started.  When the graft starts to grow, the Scotch Elm branches are cut off leaving only Camperdown Elm.  This magnificent tree depends on humankind to keep it alive as a species."

A Tree A Day suggests it wasn't the Earl himself who is responsible:

"An astute head-gardener grafted it onto a Wych elm, or Ulmus glabra (there is some controversy involving Ulmus hollandica). What was produced was a sprawling canopy that gave rise to this cultivar's other name, the Umbrella elm."

We've also been seeing some birds we only see in the summer in Anchorage.  A few worth mentioning -  buffleheads,  American widgeons, and one of my favorites, the varied thrush.

New Legislator Bikes To Work

Alaska's youngest legislator,  newly elected Jonathon Kreiss-Tomkins, is using his new legislative license plate on his alternative-energy vehicle. From his Facebook page comes this picture:

Click to enlarge

Latest Kulluk Update

There was a new Update today.  It's been almost two weeks since the last one.  Here it is:

DATE: January 30, 2013 9:20:00 AM AKST

For more information contact:

Unified Command Joint Information Center at (907) 433-3417

Update #44: Kulluk remains stable – engineering analysis continues

Jan. 30, 2013

Unified Command continues to oversee preparations for the next steps in the Kulluk response. Multiple entities remain involved including: the U.S. Coast Guard, Shell, the State of Alaska, Smit Salvage and Det Norske Veritas.

• Unified Command’s priority continues to be the safety of all personnel and the environment.
• Tow equipment has been secured and is currently in Kodiak.
• The Kulluk’s openings on the main deck (i.e., windows and hatches) have been secured and in some cases temporary steel structures have been added to close the openings to make the vessel water- and weather-tight for potential tow operations.  A few remain open to allow for ongoing operations.
• Close coordination with the communities of Kodiak and Old Harbor is ongoing.
• Old Harbor Native Corporation, in collaboration with Unified Command, continues to develop plans to access the shoreline and surrounding area to clean up life boat debris.
• The UC has received confirmation from naval architects that the damage sustained by the grounding poses no threat to the stability or integrity of the Kulluk while anchored in Kiliuda Bay. The next step is an analysis of this data to determine the best course of action to relocate the Kulluk for permanent repairs. The UC will not speculate on this next step until the DNV and USCG give their recommendations for safely relocating the Kulluk.    

Does this debunk Phil's post from yesterday?  I don't know.  What questions does it raise?

•  The Kulluk’s openings on the main deck (i.e., windows and hatches) have been secured and in some cases temporary steel structures have been added to close the openings to make the vessel water- and weather-tight for potential tow operations.  A few remain open to allow for ongoing operations.

I guess this means that the  "openings on the main deck (i.e. windows and hatches)" were damaged enough that they couldn't just fix them.  They had to add 'temporary steel structures.'   Assuming that their use of 'i.e.' is correct, then windows and hatches are the only openings that have been secured this way.  (See Grammar Monster for difference between i.e. and e.g.)

• Tow equipment has been secured and is currently in Kodiak.

Is this in addition to all the tow equipment that was already on hand and that got the Kulluk from its original grounding spot to Kiliuda Bay?  

• Close coordination with the communities of Kodiak and Old Harbor is ongoing.
• Old Harbor Native Corporation, in collaboration with Unified Command, continues to develop plans to access the shoreline and surrounding area to clean up life boat debris.

Basically this is a "we're doing good things" statement without giving any details.  What have they given Kodiak and Old Harbor in exchange for their cooperation?  We know that the Executive Director of Old Harbor Native Corporation, Carl Marrs, wrote a glowing op ed piece for Shell.  But we don't know what Shell promised in exchange.  I understand that Shell might react to this with frustration.  "We're doing everything that we should be doing and the bloggers still complain."  But since we have no idea what it is you are specifically  doing, we can only speculate.  And if our speculation is on the negative end, it's only because we assume that if you had good things to say, you'd tell us.

You do say that you are collaborating with Old Harbor Native Corporation on clean up plans.  What exactly does 'collaborating' mean?  How many jobs for how many dollars per hour will the Corporation members get?  For how long?  What else have you given or promised to give them?  I realize that you don't plan to tell us.  And so we are left to raise questions and to speculate until we get more specific answers.  If everything you were doing were praiseworthy, you'd tell us.  Like the recent story about your helping the Food Bank on Kodiak.

• The UC has received confirmation from naval architects that the damage sustained by the grounding poses no threat to the stability or integrity of the Kulluk while anchored in Kiliuda Bay. The next step is an analysis of this data to determine the best course of action to relocate the Kulluk for permanent repairs. The UC will not speculate on this next step until the DNV* and USCG give their recommendations for safely relocating the Kulluk.   

So long as the Kulluk sits anchored in Kiliuda Bay, it will be ok.  What about when it gets moved out of the Bay?

I understand that you are doing analysis, but according to UPDATE #43, you were finished with the data collection at least by January 18, twelve days ago.  I would have assumed that the data analysis would have started then.  Surely, by now you must know what your likely options are.  What are you trying to protect by not sharing what's going on?  Shell stock prices?  Letting your competition know?  (Surely they talk to the salvagers and know what's happening.)  Preventing those with interests and concerns from mobilizing with the information?

Am I being unduly harsh on Shell here?  Look, I'm one little blogger asking questions of one of the largest multi-national corporations in the world.  And Shell isn't being responsive at all, using the Unified Command and the Coast Guard to refuse to answer very reasonable questions about their operations in Alaska.  I know that they did horrendous things in Nigeria in the 1990's.  There's enough evidence that they've gotten some standing - however temporary - in a US Court.   I don't know  what they've learned from that situation.  But my suspicion is that they will do whatever they can get away with - less where laws and the justice system are stricter, more where they are not.  And even where they are good, Shell's enormous wealth can buy them the best lawyers available.  So, no, I don't think I'm being harsh.



*DNV = I gave a little background of Det Norse Veritas here.

Bloggers, Media Ethics/Standards, And The Kulluk

Bloggers are still writing their own rules about how to go about reporting the news.  Traditional journalists used to have strict rules about confirming what they write. There seems to be a spiraling down of such standards these days though. 

This all comes up because a fellow Alaska blogger posted Monday that Shell's oil rig Kulluk is significantly damaged and may be sent to Asia for repairs.  This would be a pretty big story if it turns out to be true.  There's been no hint of something like this from the Unified Command, which has been silent for over a week now.  I don't have enough knowledge about oil rigs and shipping to read between the lines of their reports that say "the Kulluk is stable and no oil was released."  Nor do I know how significant seawater leakage is.  But the Unified Command's minimalist updates have raised the question: 

What are they hiding?  

So, what should bloggers do when people on the scene give them information that isn't available through the formal channels but hard to verify further?  And what should other bloggers do when they see such stories?

Those aren't rhetorical questions.  I ask questions like that of myself a lot.  Blogs and Twitter and Facebook have tempted traditional media sources into reporting some events without traditional fact checking.  The race to be first to report has a pull, similar to taunts that get teenage boys to do things they oughtn't.

But I've also seen a positive side to alternative media reporting events that haven't been 100% confirmed. 

Individual bloggers don't have the clout or resources that a traditional newsroom has.  (A lot of current traditional newsrooms don't either any more.)  I see a phenomenon happening.  Bloggers each add a little information to the public debate.  Individually, they don't have enough information, but collectively they get important information out into the open.  As long as they give information on how they got the information so others can assess it and they qualify it appropriately, it's ok if it isn't always 100% accurate.  My personal preference is that bloggers consider the impacts of tentative information on the people it's about so they don't unnecessarily do damage.   It's like the traditional newsroom conversations about what to post, except it is publicly available. 

I'm torn about what my proper role is here.  Do I point out Phil's story to others - since it is out there and surely Shell knows about it and - according to Phil's post - wouldn't comment?  Will this needlessly spread rumor that may ultimately prove to be false?  Will it lead others to find other contacts who can help verify what Phil reports?

If it is true, does it matter if it's posted today or waits until Shell is ready to tell the world? I'm guessing that the sooner we know things the more questions there will be and that seeking answers before the corpse is removed will reveal more of what happened.  

A further wrinkle in this for me is that Phil cites this blog's concerns about how sparing Shell and the Unified Command have been with information.  Will pointing out the post be seen as blowing my own horn?  People will see what they want to see, so I can't worry about that.  Phil and I are not working together on this stuff and I didn't know about his post until I saw it posted.

The real questions seem to  me to be:
How newsworthy is this if it's true? 
How well did Phil document the story?

The answer to the first is: very.  To answer the second I asked myself how a traditional newsroom would handle this?  That isn't necessarily the standard that unpaid individual bloggers should have to follow, but it is at least a standard to think about it. 

So I looked up journalistic sourcing online and found that Reuters has an online journalism guide which clearly states that everything must be sourced. 

You must source every statement in every story unless it is an established fact or is information clearly in the public domain, such as court documents or in instances when the reporter, photographer or camera operator was on the scene. Good sources and well-defined sourcing help to protect the integrity of the file from overt outside pressures and manipulation and such hazards as hoaxes.

If an event is not contentious it may be legitimate to begin a story with a paragraph that does not contain a source, as long as the sourcing is clearly given high in the story.

 I take most of this as a given for this blog and Phil does source his allegations.

Reuters goes on to talk about where to place the source.

Newsbreaks should be sourced within the first two paragraphs. You should generally lead your story on the news, not the source, except in the following cases:

• If a story is inflammatory or is an allegation, give the source first. Write, for example: “Gallic leader Vercingetorix accused Emperor Julius Caesar of genocide”. Do not write: “Roman Emperor Julius Caesar has committed genocide, Gallic leader Vercingetorix said."
• If the source of a story is a major figure you would also usually put the source at the start. The same is true if the source is a weak one. For example, the secretary of a CEO who confirms that the executive was on his private jet when it crashed. If responsibility for a statement is clear, do not repeat sourcing unnecessarily.
• If there is an element of doubt in a pick-up, you would normally put the source first e.g. “A leading Manchuk newspaper reported on Friday that the President Mabee Iznogud was on the verge of resigning.”

Phil's post leads with the sources:

"I have now received word from two anonymous sources on Kodiak Island that it appears damage assessment of the Shell Oil drill rig Kulluk is far worse than has been thus far disclosed by the Unified Command."

But when can we use with anonymous sources?   Reuters addresses that:

The weakest sources are those whose names we cannot publish. Reuters uses anonymous sources when we believe they are providing accurate, reliable and newsworthy information that we could not obtain any other way. We should not use anonymous sources when sources we can name are readily available for the same information.

When I first saw Phil's story, I emailed him asking pretty much those questions:  how reliable are these sources?  Phil seems to think they know what they are talking about, but others interested in this aren't ready to go public with it.  He also lists the official sources that he has contacted and who have not responded to his queries. 

I myself contacted the Unified Command a week ago and got a form reply saying that they won't add information to the public updates.  (Someone did manage to let AP know that Shell was helping the Food Bank get food to remote Kodiak villages, so it appears that news that helps Shell's image is shared.  So perhaps news that isn't shared will do them harm.)

Unnamed sources must have direct knowledge of the information they are giving us, or must represent an authority with direct knowledge. Remember that reliability declines the further away the source is from the event, and tougher questions must be asked by reporters and supervisors on the validity of such information.

I don't know if the sources had direct knowledge or not.  But I understood that two separate sources gave him the same information.

Responsibility for reporting what an anonymous source says resides solely with Reuters and the reporter. There is no liability or potential reputational damage to the source, making this the least watertight form of sourcing. We should convey to readers as clearly as possible why we believe the source is reliable, and what steps we have taken to ensure we are not being manipulated. This is done most effectively by the way we describe the source. The more removed the source is from a subject, the less reliable the source is likely to be. Reporters and editors should question the validity of information from a source remote from the action. 

Any media's reputation is based on its credibility.  So to maintain that credibility you want to be sure you report only what you can confirm.  But do you ever take risks because a story is really important to publish?

Be as specific as possible. Negotiate hard with your source to agree a description that is sufficiently precise to enable readers to trust the reliability of our anonymous sourcing.
“A source” or “sources”, “observers” or “quarters” with no further description is vague and unacceptable. So is the use of “informed sources” or “reliable sources”. Would we quote an uninformed or unreliable source?
When reporting a corporate deal, describe the source as specifically as possible. Use “a company executive/banker/lawyer close to the transaction” to convey the fact that your source is directly involved in the deal, but “a source close to the transaction” is also acceptable if the source is unwilling to be identified more specifically. “Banking sources”, “industry sources” and “financial sources” can imply that the source may not have first-hand information and is therefore less authoritative. Always be as specific as possible.
Stories based on anonymous sources require particularly rigorous cross-checking. We should normally have two or three sources for such information.

My sense is that Phil's sources believe they risk retaliation if they are identified which is why they are not named.  He has two different sources.

Stories based on a single, anonymous source should be the exception and require approval by an immediate supervisor – a bureau chief, head of reporting unit in a large centre, or editor in charge.

This is a luxury that bloggers don't have.  And in this case there are two sources.

Bloggers aren't bound by Reuters' rules.  But I do think that Phil has clarified where he's gotten the information.  He used terms like "appears to be"  and "supposedly" to qualify the allegations.  He reports his unsuccessful efforts to get information from Shell and from the Coast Guard. 

I think this story is important enough for other bloggers and for mainstream media to start checking on it and if they find other sources to support Phil's story they should be sharing what they know with the world. 

Shell has assured the US government and the world that they are well experienced in Arctic drilling and that there will be no serious problems that they are unprepared for.  Yet there's been a series of embarrassments with their oil rigs in the last year.  In this case, the rig broke loose from the tug which lost power very close to the last Coast Guard base on the way north.  If they had hit a storm in the Bering Sea and lost the rig there, the story would have been much worse than this will turn out to be.  Shell has been doing its best to minimize the information that gets out to the world.  Journalists have an obligation to get independent information so that Shell isn't in charge of packaging the story of what happened.

How To Cancel An Alaskan Airlines Ticket Without A Fee [NOT]

[UPDATE Feb. 17:  It didn't work.  When I tried to apply my balance to a new ticket, they added the $75 penalty fee I hadn't paid yet.  I knew it was too good to be true.]

[UPDATE June 5, 2015:  Cancellation fees were raised to $125 a while ago. Not all fares have cancellation fees.  My sense is these fees have nothing to do with costs.  It's extortion.  They do it because they can.  Finding this on their website is hard.  However, the Ask Jenn feature did give me the page quickly. ]


[UPDATE Aug 8, 2014:  There is a way - be in the MVP Gold (40,000 or more miles) category.  A table on Elite Status says "Fee Waivers - Call Center Ticketing Fee, Ticket Change/Cancellation Fee, Left on Board Item Return Fee."   Oh dear, I didn't know there was a fee for getting something you left on board.]

When you buy the cheap tickets on Alaska Airlines, the agreement says you have to pay a $75 change fee if you change on line and $100 if you do it by phone or in person.  But a cancelled credit card led me to an option with no fee.  The canceled card kept me from cancelling the ticket on-line, because I couldn't pay the fee with my old card.

[Note:  You can change or cancel an online booked Alaska Airlines ticket within 24 hours for no fee.]

(If you want to skip the background and just find out how to cancel without a fee jump down to 'back to the Alaska Airline ticket.)

So, we have an Alaskan Airlines credit card.  It got rejected back in December when I was trying to pay my way out of the Anchorage Airport parking lot.  That night the operator said it had been cancelled by the cardholder, neither I nor my wife had cancelled it.  And, she noted, people who mess with your card usually do so to use it, not to cancel it.  The next morning when I got the accounting office they said it was cancelled because they didn't have my wife's social security number.  That they'd sent us a letter and we hadn't responded so they cancelled it.  I didn't remember getting a letter when we talked, but since then I remembered.  It was pretty dicey looking - the pages looked xeroxed and the logo was black and white and not in color.  I even called my tax person and asked why my credit card would send a letter asking for my wife's social security number.  We decided it was snail mail spam.

But the operator told me this was required by the Patriot Act and I pointed out it had been passed ten years ago, so it seemed they'd survived all this time . . but she said there were new directives enforcing it and requiring banks to get all the info.  And the reason it said that the customer cancelled the card was to not hurt our credit rating by having something say the bank cancelled our card.  And then she said we had to fax or mail the number in - we couldn't do it by phone.  Not sure what I said in reply (I was polite, but I'm sure I had some smart retort) and she consulted her supervisor and took J's SS# over the phone.

Then, in LA just now, the restaurant said our card was declined.  We called Visa from the restaurant and were assured it was good and transferred to Security, but it disconnected.  So I called again and again was told the card was good and this time he suggested the restaurant's card reader was bad.  We paid cash.

The next day my wife had the card refused somewhere else.  We called again and this time we were told that it was cancelled because one of the vendors we'd used had a security breach and so the cards were cancelled.  They'd sent us a new card.  But we were in LA and the card went to Anchorage.  And we were getting ready to go to Seattle.  They'd fed ex it to Seattle.

Back to the Alaska Airline ticket.  I'd made a reservation to fly to Seattle to Anchorage, but we'd had to go to LA first to check on my mom.  So I wanted to cancel the original ticket.  But when I tried to get the cost of the ticket put into my 'wallet' (Alaska Airline's name for a customer account that can be used to buy tickets or food on a flight) I couldn't because I needed a good credit card to pay the cancellation fee.  (Visa did say I could get a security code for each transaction by calling them when the vendor tried to use the card, but that doesn't work online.) I thought maybe they'd just take the fee out of the money they were putting in the 'wallet' but no, I had to pay that extra.

So I called Alaska to explain my plight:  I can't pay the fee because my Alaska Airlines credit card was cancelled and new one hadn't arrived yet.    That's when Adonica told me to choose the last option - to have them email me my ticket number which I could then apply to another ticket within a year.

"But how do I pay the penalty fee?"

And she said the magic words, "There is no fee if you do it this way." [UPDATE:  Well, there was no fee when I canceled the ticket, but later when I tried to apply the money to another ticket, $75 was added to the fare.]

So, even though you have to pay a change fee of $75 to $100 (online or phone), if you cancel the ticket and apply it to another ticket in a year, there's no fee. [UPDATE:  Again, turns out not to be so.] If I hadn't had my credit card cancelled, I don't think I would have found this out. [But again, this is just a delayed fee, not no fee.]

Keep looking for those silver linings.

Speaking of which, we saw Silver Lining Playbook.  I think if I hadn't heard that it was a good movie and that it was one of the five up for the Academy's best films, I would have liked it much more.  It's good.  Characters are good.  Acting is good.  But it just isn't a heavyweight film in my mind. 

Oh yes.  We got the new cards later that day.  Then the next day I got an email from Visa saying my new credit cards had been sent and should arrive soon.  Sigh. 

Another Five Days or More Until Kulluk Can Be Moved

I posted about Shell's pledge to not move Kulluk until after the Tanner Crab Season which was dated January 16.  I haven't gotten an update from the Kulluk Unified Command since January 18. Today is the 26th.  So that's over a week.  And since I'm not in Anchorage, I thought maybe something got by me.  The Tanner Crab season should have been over by now based on what Mark Stichert, the Shellfish Management Biologist for the Alaska Department of Conservation, in Kodiak told me.

(Shell had said that they wouldn't move the oil rig until after the Tanner Crab season closed.)

So, I called Mark back on Friday (January 25) to find out if it had closed.

He said the season is still open at Kiliuda Bay.  There'd been some bad weather and the ships crabbing are small (40-60 foot) and go in during bad weather.  He said they were down to about 26 boats from the 44 that started.  There was still 140,000 pounds of crab (of the original 520,000 lbs) to be caught before the season would be closed.  

I asked him about a 660,000 pound figure I'd seen on a couple of websites (Island Seafoods and Deckboss).  Mark responded that there were more than one Tanner fishery and that was the combined target.

He said very clearly where it would be open and closed, but my notes aren't consistent so I'm not 100% sure.  My understanding is that the inshore quota has been reached, but not the offshore quota.  But parts of Kiliuda Bay are still open.

How much longer before the season closes (and Shell can move the Kulluk based on their pledge to not move it until the season closes)?

Could be five more days, could be longer.  They've been getting about 30,000 pounds a day, which would be about five days, but it depends on weather and how many boats keep fishing.

So, if someone wanted to keep the Kulluk there, maybe they could call most of the boats in and not get the quota for a while.  I didn't think of that when I was talking to Mark.  What happens if they don't reach the quota?  Is there a time when he closes it even if the quota isn't met?

Allowing Women In Combat Is Wrong Move

 Instead, we should be banning men from combat.

". . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." [Isaiah 2.4]

Now this is a bible passage that I'd like to see more pastors getting fanatical about.