A Few Leftover Seattle Images

Batman and friends at Emerald City Comicon

Been busy catching up on errands and projects.  Here are some photos that didn't fit into other posts.  Last Sunday coming back from the hike we passed the Emerald City Comicon.  

Ferry Car deck coming into Seattle

Ethan Currier sculpture Winslow Harbor

More Comicon

Two Seattle statues

One of these statues moved. 

Coincidentally Meeting Victoria Amazonica and Chico Mendes

The etymology dictionary defines a coincidence as "a concurrence of events with no apparent connection." A related word is coincide.

We dropped M off at the UW Medical Center where she had an appointment.  In the lobby I saw this painting, which, because of the lights and a glass frame, was hard to photograph.   Here are parts.  I wasn't completely taken.  I liked the birds - and there are other animals as well - but I wasn't sure about the style.  But then I read the caption. 

"If you look closely you'll see the noble face of Chico Mendes peering out of the rain forest.  Mendes was the Brazilian rubber harvester who fought to defend the Amazonian forest.  In 1988 he was murdered by timber interests who resented his efforts"

 The painting is by Alredo Arrequin who came to Washington from Mexico when he was 23 to study at the University of Washington.

A New York Times book review of two books about Mendes says:

In life, Mendes was a unionist who defended the rights of his fellow Amazonian rubber tappers to live in the forest and harvest rubber and nuts. In Acre, where 130 ranchers expelled an estimated 100,000 tappers from the forest, Mendes fought back, rallying families to stand in front of chain saws and bulldozers. In death, Mendes, an international eco-martyr, became the catalyst for popularizing the concept that the wealth of the Amazon resides in its profusion of plant and animal life, not in its thin, sandy soil.
''In leading this struggle to preserve the Amazon, Chico Mendes had made a lot of trouble for a lot of powerful people,'' Andrew Revkin writes in ''The Burning Season.'' ''He was to the ranchers of the Amazon what Cesar Chavez was to the citrus kings of California, what Lech Walesa was to the shipyard managers of Gdansk.''

 So, now I know Chico Mendes because an artist painted a picture dedicated to him and it ended up on the wall of a Seattle medical center.

So we had time and took Z for a walk around the campus.  We stumbled into the greenhouses where we saw Victoria Amazonica.

 From Tree of Life Website:

"The most interesting thing about this flower is the large leaves that it creates. The leaves can grow up to 46 centimeters in size and can hold up to 136 kilograms, the leaves are flat before growing rims at the edge of the leaf. The leaves are strong and stiff thanks to the strong bottom of the leaves. The bottoms are covered with spines to help support the ribs. The bottom of the leaf is maroon in colour. The Giant Water Lily does not grow year round in areas where it is not a native species, such as Great Britain; it only grows and reproduces in the summertime when the climate is warm. However, in its native Brazil and in the Amazon it grows all year long, due to the optimum conditions."

Some other plants we saw in the greenhouses:

Then we wandered around the campus before meeting back up with M.

Where Can I Ride A Trained Polar Bear? More (Mostly) Google Searches

A few of the more interesting search terms people used to get here since December.  Some are here because I'm just pleased to be able to provide information to people seeking very specific information like the first three. 


the establishment of fire breaks northern thailand - This is a pretty specific request and I just happened to have attended a ceremonial opening of a fire break in Northern Thailand when I was a volunteer with the Northern Peasants' Association which helped to organize the work. The Australian search got to this post Fire Break Construction Ceremony Chiang Dao

Photo from fogonazos

where can i ride a trained polar bear - This Florida googler got to this picture of
swimming with polar bears in a post called Polar Bear Rehap and Training.




canterbury cathedral diagram - I admit to a perverse pleasure when someone from Canterbury comes to this Alaskan blog to find a diagram of the Caterbury Cathedral.  I also recently had someone from the Congressional Information Office come to my post on the number of Black members of the 113th Congress. 



he relationship of sugar to population-level diabetes prevalence: an econometric analysis of repeated cross-sectional data -This one got to  “This study is proof enough that sugar is toxic. Now it’s time to do something about it.”  That makes sense.  A good hit.  But what makes it noteworthy here is the IP Address included "Nat Soft Drink Association."  Why do I think they are looking at this to find ways to deny it rather than to improve their products?

 do mormon missionaries fall in love on their mission -A good starting point for a short story this searcher from Sweden using a Swedish language computer.  Is she hoping they do?  And he will with her?  She got to a post about the movie The Falls about two Mormon missionaries who fall in love with each other. 

san francisco giants,native american bead work  -  Maybe they were looking for the Giant's logo in bead work.  I don't know.  I have several posts with Native American bead work and a post from the Giants stadium before the second game of last year's world series.  But this searcher got to a post on Detroit.  There is a photo about Native American beadwork at the Detroit Institute of Art.  And the word 'giant' is in the description of the Tigers' ballpark.  And San Francisco is listed among the many labels in the right column.

loneliness and enemy next to a stove - A great line to start a story.  I don't think they got what they wanted from here, just a page with December 2012 posts that had enemy, lonely, and stove scattered among different posts.  

how to make an outline using cottoncandy -  I'm sure this made sense to the searcher.  Not sure they got what they wanted.  They got to Romney's cotton candy acceptance speech"

what time does the world end in sc - This South Carolina search came just before the predicted Mayan end of the world date.  They got to an appropriate post called So, Will The World End Time Zone By Time Zone?


does it snow on mountains -  Alaska tour guides like to collect the most ridiculous questions they get from tourists.  One of my favorites comes from tourists either on a boat on the ocean or standing next to the ocean or body of water connected to the ocean, "What altitude are we?"   I'm going to give this Alabama googler the benefit of the doubt and assume it's someone under the age of ten.  He or she got to A Beautiful Fall Day:  Fresh Snow on the Mountains that included a picture of snow on the mountains.


does the first amendment take precedence over the second It would be nice to think that freedom of speech and religion take precedence over the right to own guns, but the amendments to the constitution are numbered chronologically, not necessarily in order of importance.  The searcher got to a post entitled "What Takes Precedence for Americans:  The First Amendment or the first Commandment?" 

you can't tell the players without a program meaning - Got a post You Can't Tell The Players Without a Program - Baseball Cards For Politicians.  I didn't define the expression and I'm not sure the reader would know more after reading the post. 



does higher cc mean faster trucks - This went to a current post Which Is More Important? Right To Life? Right to Bear Arms?  This make no sense to me whatsoever.  I tried to duplicate it by searching the phrase on google but just got truck sites.


--------  -  There's no search word, but the ISP is Naval Ocean Systems Center and the city is listed as USAF Academy in Colorado.  They've been looking at the post Airshows And The Cost Of Military Fuel.  Will sequestration mean the end of military air shows?

World Climate Like An Athlete On Steroids

"'I think one of the best ways of thinking about it is imagining that the base line has shifted,' Tim Flannery, the commission’s leader, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “If an athlete takes steroids, for example, their base line shifts. They’ll do fewer slow times and many more record-breaking fast times.”

'The same thing is happening with our climate system,' he said. 'As it warms up, we’re getting fewer cold days and cold events and many more record hot events.'" (NY Times "Report Blames Climate Change For Extremes in Australia")

 His evidence:

"At least 123 weather records fell during the 90-day period the report examined.  Included were milestones like the hottest summer on record, the hottest day for Australia as a whole and the hottest seven consecutive days ever recorded.  To put it into perspective, in the 102 years since Australia began gathering national records, there have been 21 days when the country averaged a high of more than 102 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius) and eight of them were in 2012."

Of those who denied global climate change for years and years and now accept that it is happening, many still deny that it is human caused. Of those who acknowledge human's contribution, many believe there is nothing we can do about it except work on mitigating the effects.

The concerns I have with Arctic oil drilling are not simply concern about the possibility of an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean.  My longer term concern is that we continue to go after energy sources that exacerbate climate change and make the long term damage worse.  The $5 billion that Shell says they've already invested in Arctic drilling in Alaska would have been much better spent on developing affordable alternative energy.

But those whose aptitudes and expertise are geared toward drilling oil, and who work for multinational oil companies whose infrastructure is aimed at drilling oil, are like addicts in denial.  Their life work, not to mention their life style, are all built on the belief that they are doing the world good by supplying us with oil.  To accept the idea that they are also contributing to climate change which could lead to the submergence of island nations and low lying geography like Florida and Manhattan, is in conflict with who they are and what they do. 

And while they gained wealth and privilege through their oil work, even the enormous wealth of the oil companies cannot compensate for the damage that will come.    

Wag It, Then Go Kaleidoscopic

Caught this sticker on the back of a car at the Little Su hike parking lot.  I want one of these.  It says it all. 


Not only that, but this post offers you another treat.  Trust me - go to this link and let your inner child play a little.  (Or let your outer child play if you have one around.) 

Frosty Sunrise

We have a great view every morning where we're staying, but this  morning (Monday) it was particularly nice.  Those are bufflehead in the water. 

 
I thought it was supposed to get warmer in March, but we had frost for the second morning in a row.

This Is Going To Be Big: Eulerian Video Magnification Shows The Invisible

Screenshot from NY Times article

We tend to think of 'invisibility' as some magic trick that hides things we normally should  see, like Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. 

But really, invisibility just means things that are beyond the range of our eyes to detect.  There are lots of things that we can't see.  From a promo for a BBC television show "What The Human Eye Can't See":

“The human eye is a remarkable piece of precision engineering, but all around us is an astonishing and beautiful world we cannot see. Some wonders are outside the visible spectrum, others are too fast, too slow, too small or too remote for our eyes and brains to interpret.”

Wavelength image from Universe by Freedman and Kaufmann, posted on NASA website

The chart to the right shows what a small range of colors the human eye can actually see. 



Throughout history humans have found or invented ways to see things the human eye couldn't see.  A simple example is a mirror, allowing people to see themselves.  More complex are microscopes, telescopes,  and X rays.

The New York Times article  "Scientists Uncover Invisible Motion in Video"
reports on a new process that finds tiny variations in color or motion that are too small for the human eye to detect.  The process then magnifies the variations so that they become visible to humans. 

The example in the video above (I couldn't find a way to embed the video, you'll have to go to the article to see it)  captures a very slight variation in the color of the baby's face - ever so slightly redder.  This variation is magnified 100 times so it looks bright red.  Then, bingo, you can see the baby's pulse.  They have another example of a baby breathing.  The actual breathing is barely visible, but when the movement is magnified, you can see it clearly.  There are other examples as well, but since I've been spending so much time with my new granddaughter, the baby examples resonate with me. 


Why is this big?

Any time you can see things that used to be invisible, there is a big potential to learn a lot more about the world we live in.  I'm sure there are millions of situations where there are variations in color or movement that humans don't see, but if we could see them, we would understand 'why' about many, many things.  This will allow us to see so many missing puzzle pieces.  Where we think there is no reaction, we now have the opportunity to see that there is.  We'll be able to detect minor changes sooner to alert us to events - something about to fall, catch fire, explode, spill - earlier.  The video suggests lots of medical uses.

And there will be ominous uses of this technology as well.  I'm sure that our faces give out lots of now invisible signals about how we feel or think that will be detectable in the future.  This can be put to good and evil use.

The researchers have made the code for using this method available so that anyone - with some, apparently, more than basic digital abilities - can experiment with this.  I predict using this process we will expand our knowledge of the world greatly and find many, many practical ways to use it to make our lives easier.  And there will be plenty of silly uses as well. 

Thanks to LL for the tip.

Mt. Si Hike on Sunny Seattle Day

A friend of my daughter visited yesterday.  He's here from Boston for work, but had today off and wanted to go for a hike.  So I took the ferry into Seattle this morning and to join him.  He picked me up at the ferry and together we went to Little Si. 

From Hikingwithmybrother:

        Little Si crouches in the shadow of Mount Si’s western slopes, both edifices named in honor of Josiah "Uncle Si" Merritt, who set up a cabin at the base of Si in 1862.

His comment at the end of his post seemed fitting:

Little Si is close, easily accessible, and just hard enough to feel like a hike, yet still gentle enough for the whole family.

 

It was one of the rare sunny days here.  And temps got into the mid 50's. Although yesterday morning when I got up and checked, it was 55˚F, today it was 35˚F and there was frost.  We even had some snow on the sides of the road going over a pass, but at the trail there was no snow.

View from end of Little Si trail

 However, there was snow on, what I'm guessing from the trail descriptions, was Big Si.

The view reminded me of the view we had of Mt. Roberts from our apartment when we were in Juneau.

There's a  massive rock behind the trees.  I think that might be Mt. Si and the view point was from the top. 

“This study is proof enough that sugar is toxic. Now it’s time to do something about it.”

The study is

"The Relationship of Sugar to Population-Level Diabetes Prevalence: An Econometric Analysis of Repeated Cross-Sectional Data" by Sanjay Basu, Paula Yoffe, Nancy Hills,and Robert H. Lustig



Here's the study Abstract:   (A simpler NY Times version is just below)

While experimental and observational studies suggest that sugar intake is associated with the development of type 2 diabetes, independent of its role in obesity, it is unclear whether alterations in sugar intake can account for differences in diabetes prevalence among overall populations. Using econometric models of repeated cross-sectional data on diabetes and nutritional components of food from 175 countries, we found that every 150 kcal/person/day increase in sugar availability (about one can of soda/day) was associated with increased diabetes prevalence by 1.1% (p <0.001) after testing for potential selection biases and controlling for other food types (including fibers, meats, fruits, oils, cereals), total calories, overweight and obesity, period-effects, and several socioeconomic variables such as aging, urbanization and income. No other food types yielded significant individual associations with diabetes prevalence after controlling for obesity and other confounders. The impact of sugar on diabetes was independent of sedentary behavior and alcohol use, and the effect was modified but not confounded by obesity or overweight. Duration and degree of sugar exposure correlated significantly with diabetes prevalence in a dose-dependent manner, while declines in sugar exposure correlated with significant subsequent declines in diabetes rates independently of other socioeconomic, dietary and obesity prevalence changes. Differences in sugar availability statistically explain variations in diabetes prevalence rates at a population level that are not explained by physical activity, overweight or obesity. 

The NY Times article translates this into less academic language:

Sugar is indeed toxic. It may not be the only problem with the Standard American Diet, but it’s fast becoming clear that it’s the major one.
A study published in the Feb. 27 issue of the journal PLoS One links increased consumption of sugar with increased rates of diabetes by examining the data on sugar availability and the rate of diabetes in 175 countries over the past decade. And after accounting for many other factors, the researchers found that increased sugar in a population’s food supply was linked to higher diabetes rates independent of rates of obesity.

The Times reported just a few days ago that the Mediterranean diet helped prevent heart attacks and strokes.

About 30 percent of heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease can be prevented in people at high risk if they switch to a Mediterranean diet rich in olive oil, nuts, beans, fish, fruits and vegetables, and even drink wine with meals, a large and rigorous new study has found.

People have known for a long time that fat and sugar weren't good for health.  Dean Ornish's  Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease, came out in 1990 arguing for a low fat diet.  The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook  came out in 1994.

It's hard to 'prove' that one political party has a more sensible program than another.  And it takes a certain level of scientific savvy to see why evolution and global climate change caused by humans make far more sense than alternative explanations.

But everyone understands that obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and strokes are not good things.  And it's not hard to understand that sugar and fat lead to those conditions and that the incidence of obesity and diabetes can be dramatically reduced by intelligent diet. 

This knowledge has been around for years.  So I would argue that many of the people who are obese and/or have diabetes probably also eat an unhealthy selection of foods.  Either because they don't know any better or because they don't have enough self control and discipline to resist the call of the junk food industry and buy and cook healthy food.   I also must acknowledge that junk food is often cheaper than healthy food, so some poor folks may eat junk food for economic reasons.  Though smart poor folks find ways to feed their family well. 

So I'd offer this chart of the ten most and least obese US states color coded to show how they voted in the last presidential election. Some might argue that the quality of their choices in food reflect the quality of their political choices as well. 

Most Obese U.S. States	Least Obese U.S. States
State % Obese 1. Mississippi 34.9% 2. Louisiana 33.4% 3. West Virginia 32.4% 4. Alabama 32.0% 5. Michigan 31.3% 6. Oklahoma 31.1% 7. Arkansas 30.9% 8. Indiana 30.8% 8. South Carolina 30.8% 10. Kentucky 30.4% 10. Texas 30.4%	State % Obese 1. Colorado 20.7% 2. Hawaii 21.8% 3. Massachussetts 22.7% 4. New Jersey 23.7% 4. Washington, D.C. 23.7% 6. California 23.8% 7. Utah 24.4% 8. New York 24.5% 8. Nevada 24.5% 8. Connecticut 24.5%

Devangelical and Debt - Newish Books at Eliot Bay Book Store

Browsing a good book store is one of the great pleasures in life.   A giant bazaar of ideas and adventure beckoning for one's attention.  It's the chance to climb into other people's brains and find out what the world looks like to them.  So when I was the designated driver on a doctor's visit in Seattle, I got to go to the Eliot Bay Book Company, a very good bookstore on Capitol Hill, for an hour of adventure.

So here are a few of the books that caught my attention.

Devangelical by Erika Rae

From an online interview at The Rumpus with another former Evangelical: 

"Not wanting to understand the Evangelical culture in our current political climate is a bit like not wanting to understand, say, the Mexican-American community in the middle of the immigration debates. But also, I believe that a lot of the issues I deal with in the book are a bit more universal to other religion—or religious culture—defectors. I have heard recovering Catholics, Jews, or even former members of the L.D.S. Church who say they can relate."

Rumpus also asks her about her somewhat provocative pose on the cover of the book.  The video below is about the photo shoot.

The discussion of the Rapture helps explain a lot of (to me) perplexing behavior:

"Rumpus: We both grew up waiting on the world to come to an end, and you make the point in Devangelical that Evangelical culture welcomes the end of the world. How do you think this paradigm express itself in today’s political climate?

Rae: The debate over global warming is a good example. This is because the general church has been approaching the issue from the angle that only God will destroy the earth, and not humans. This isn’t too different from the distrust of recycling back in the 1980s. Again, only God could destroy the earth, so we had better focus our time on saving souls rather than the Redwoods. Plus, it didn’t help that people who were into “saving the earth” were “a bunch of pagans who worshipped the earth as mother.” Luckily, a growing number within the church has realized that they can still take care of the “creation” without slapping the “creator” in the face.

It is also critical to understand that most Evangelicals (like other Christian branches) may be citizens in the world, but they do not consider themselves citizens “of” the world. For many, this essentially means that they do not feel this is their true home. Heaven is their true home. Therefore, they don’t really belong here, and they long for the day when they will be taken away to a place where they will be cherished and understood by a loving God. When they disagree with “the world” on certain issues, it really doesn’t matter since their citizenship is in Heaven. It is more important that their perception of God’s laws be enforced via legislation. It seems to me that this does not always open the door for peace or tolerance, which again, is not the goal. This may help to explain the current state of polarization our country finds itself in."

Now, onto  Debt by David Graeber.  This one probably has the most audacious and exciting ideas to contribute.  It questions our modern notions of debt as something that must be repaid.  It contrasts ideas like the biblical jubilee and the modern bankruptcy as two methods of forgiving debt.

It's a big book. 

 From Benjamin Kunkel in the London Review of Books:

"Graeber’s first proposition is that debt can’t be considered apart from the history of money, when it is money that distinguishes a debt from a mere obligation or promise. Obligations are immemorial and incalculable, but until the advent of money such relations of mutual obligation evade mathematical specification. Only through money do nebulous obligations condense into numerically precise debts, which can and – according to ‘our accustomed morality’ – must one day be paid off." [emphasis added]

Think about this - the distinction between a debt and an obligation.

Then he talks about three  types of human economic relationships.  Again from Kunkel's London Review of Books review (I'm using his words, but reformatting them a little differently on the page so these concepts don't get lost):

"The theoretical core of Debt is a loose schema of three types of human economic relationship.

• Communism (Graeber admits his use of the word ‘is a bit provocative’), 
• exchange and 
• hierarchy 

don’t describe distinct types of society but different ‘modalities’ of behaviour that operate to a greater or lesser degree in all societies, monetised or not.

Graeber’s communism, which bears a resemblance to Kropotkin’s ‘mutual aid’, covers relationships answering to Marx’s dictum: to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. People act as communists not only towards friends and family but often towards guests, neighbours and strangers: ‘What is equal on both sides is the knowledge that the other person would do the same for you, not that they necessarily will.’

Relationships of exchange, by contrast, entail that each party gets from the other a more or less exact equivalent to whatever it’s given. Because exchange ‘gives us a way to call it even: hence, to end the relationship’, it takes place mostly among strangers.

Hierarchy is, like communism, a mode of ongoing relationship, but between unequals. Enforced by custom, hierarchy requires that social inferiors make repeated material tribute to their betters in caste or status.

And about the author, Kunkel writes:

". . . the American press, content to ignore Debt when it first appeared (published as it was by a small press and animated by a radical politics), has hailed Graeber as the most intellectually imposing voice of Occupy. In person Graeber is brilliant, if somewhat hectic, plain-spoken, erudite, quick to indignation as to well as to laughter, and – minus the laugh – he offers much the same heady experience on the page. Debt is probably best considered as a long, written-out lecture, informal in style, not as a conventional work of history, economics or anthropology."

Here's Graeber with Charlie Rose:




I'm afraid I got carried away here.

There are ten more books I was going to share, but these two should give you more than enough to think about.





But I'll add two more titles that caught my attention and are relevant to the first book particularly - given the importance of religion in the US today, its divisive role, and Rae's warning that Americans should understand what drives Evangelicals (assuming people can be grouped like that.)  Clearly, religion serves important needs for people.

And it appears that religion plays a role in  Debt, as well. Judging from Kunkel's review, it alludes not only to Christianity, but also to Islam. 










Note on spelling:  When I pasted the quote on Devangelical that included the word 'worshipped,' Blogger's spellchecker flagged it and said it should only have one "p".  So I looked it up at Future Perfect:

Verbs ending in ‘p’

Most verbs ending in ‘p’, after an unstressed vowel, have no doubling of that final consonant in standard received British English or American English.
Here are some which follow the ‘most verbs’ rule: ‘develop’, ‘gossip’, ‘gallop’ – these become just ‘developing/developed’, ‘gossiping/gossiped’, ‘galloping/galloped’.

Even here, there are pesky exceptions: ‘worship’, ‘handicap’ and ‘kidnap’ become ‘worshipping/worshipped’, ‘handicapping/handicapped’ and ‘kidnapping/kidnapped’ in standard received British English.

The spellchecker doesn't mind handicapping or kidnapping, but it doesn't like worshipping. Obviously Blogspot and its owner Google are anti-religious.  :)


And finally, here's a shot as we leave Seattle on the 5:25 pm ferry for Bainbridge Island.