We Should Be In Denali By Now

If all goes as scheduled, when this post goes up, we'll be in Denali taking advantage of the last few days before the buses start and you can drive the first 30 miles into the park as far as Teklanika. 

This is often a great time to be in the park.  The weather is good, animals are out, people are scarce, and you can just hang out on the road, stop anywhere and go walk across the landscape. 

But it's unseasonably chilly as I write this in Anchorage and I understand that's true up north too.  We'll see.  It should still be some good head clearing time.  If I can find wifi I'll put up some pictures.  And I've got this and one more post pre-scheduled for Thursday. 

Benghazi - Testing 2016 Swift Boats

When war hero Kerry ran against draft dodger Bush, the Republican truth-transformers attacked Kerry's strength with pure fiction and created enough doubt by those who wanted to believe in Bush and those who couldn't believe that anyone would so blatantly lie. 

Now they're back, looking for ways to tarnish Hillary Clinton's State Department experience.  To what extent have Americans learned how to see through these illusionist tricks?  To what extent will the people who helped Obama turn Romney's business career into a liability  be able to do that with the next Republican candidate?

• Is there actually some real meat to the Benghazi attacks?  Depends on what you mean by real meat.  
• Was their a difference of opinion inside the administration?  Lots of them. There always is.  It's only natural.  It's not a crime or even bad.  (Well for Republicans it is.)
• Did they leave out information that might have been damaging to the President just before an election?  Seems like it.  Would the Republicans have done the same?  They know perfectly well they would have.
• Was Libya dangerous and was the Benghazi consulate under protected?  No question about it.  There are dangerous places all around the world that are under protected and right now and the Republicans were a major force for cutting the State Department budget.  

Was the White House at its best in this situation?  Definitely not.  And I have issues with a lot of things this White House is doing.  But I also know the job of President isn't easy and there will be mistakes.

It's never easy, in the middle of things, to know whether the opposition is raising important points that should be asked or whether they are trying to turn Benghazi into a liability for the likeliest Democratic presidential candidate.

A good way for me to test this is by looking at how they treated similar situations in their own party.  It's pretty clear now, for instance, that George W. Bush had plenty of warnings about potential Al Qaeda attacks before 9/11.   But Democrats as well as Republicans pretty much united after 9/11.

Few Republicans voiced any serious problems as the Bush administration's deceptions when it became clear their claims of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were much weaker than the told us.  Some Democrats did, but that was a situation far more serious.  Here we have some spinning - making a story look as good as they could - after the fact.  With the WMD we had them leaving out very crucial information about a decision to lead the country into a huge and costly war.

Should we go back to events like Iran-Contra?  St. Ronald (clearly Reagan holds that status among most Republicans) team broke the law and lied to get weapons to Iran to free hostages and to use some of the revenue to help right wing rebels in Nicaragua in clear violation of the Boland Amendment that expressly prohibited any assistance to the Contras rebels.  These were serious, intentional violations of American policy and law.

Could Ambassador Stevens' life have been spared?  Quite possibly.  But we don't know because there is a lot of information that hasn't come out.  We also know that Stevens was one of the savviest Americans in Libya.  He made the decision to go to Benghazi.  And if one report is to be believed, he turned down offers for more security from the Department of Defense.

We also know that Sen. McConnell made defeating Obama his number one priority.  That is consistent with what many believe is unwavering obstruction of everything Obama proposes from health care to appointments to making every issue they can into a political scandal that distracts attention from the business of running the country well. 

Now that Obama can't run again, Republicans are aiming at other candidates. 

How Long Does It Take To Fly From Anchorage To Reykjavik?

The Alaska Department of Transportation sent out press releases today announcing that the first Icelandair flight arrives Wednesday in Anchorage.

". . . Flight time between Reykjavik and Anchorage on the 189-seat Boeing 757-200 is approximately seven hours. Travelers will connect in Reykjavik with more than 20 destinations in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Continental Europe.  

 Lt. Governor Mead Treadwell will lead the inaugural welcome for Wednesday’s arrival of the Icelandair flight in the airport’s North Terminal lobby. Media should arrive by 3:30 p.m. for a photo opportunity on the airfield and press conference. A second event celebrating the first Icelandair departure from Anchorage will be held Thursday, May 16, beginning at 2 p.m. in the South Terminal."

Now we have two summer options to get to Europe relatively quickly.  Condor Air - a Lufthansa subsidiary - also flies from Anchorage to Europe.  And with jetBlue and Virgin here for the summer we can get to San Francisco and other West Coast destinations a little cheaper than in the winter. 

There's an Anchorage Inaugural tour package for six nights at the cabin hotel plus the flight for 1,482 USD.


There are a bunch of tours available, including this Black and Blue tour:

From $191  per person
   Daily  departures s at 09:00 (pickup at 08:30) - min of 2 pax required to operate the tour
Not available Dec 24, 25, 31, Jan 1
 6 hours
No hotel pick up from hotels outside of Reykjavik
Important : If you are arriving in Iceland on an evening flight from North America, this tour is NOT recommended for your arrival day.  Passengers usually arrive at their hotel around 8am.  Any delays could cause you to miss the tour departure.  Icelandair cannot reimburse passengers for unused portions of a package or land only travel once travel starts.
AH172

Start with the "black" part as you explore the hidden world of the lava field under the Þingvellir national park. Walking in a cave and discovering the marvels that volcanic activity has created in the past is an amazing experience.  The Gjabakkahellir cave is a perfect example of an Icelandic lava tube and is situated in one of the most active volcano areas in the world. After the cave, take a break for a picnic  lunch (included)  before moving on into the blue...

Snorkeling in the Silfra fissure is our second adventure. Silfra fissure is world famous for its heavenly shades of blue. The crystal clear water in the deep fissure gives you a feeling of being weightless as you float down with the lazy current. The snorkeling is a relaxing but exotic trip in an environment most will only encounter in their dreams.

The Black & Blue is an amazing trip, a true journey to the borders of reality and dreams.

Hiking boots required
Bring change of clothes

The videos I could find were scuba, not snorkeling.  And I didn't see any fish.   But it looked nice.  Just wondering how cold the water is.  Wikipedia says it's 100 year old water because it comes from glaciers. 

There's more here.   But I had trouble getting it to recognize Anchorage when trying to find other flights. 

How Easy Is Biking Near You? Here's A Bikeability Checklist

Here's a checklist to help evaluate the ease and safety of biking in your community.  Perhaps your own route to work or the library or your kids' route to school.  It even has suggestions for how to improve things.  One might be to send this to your local city council members - but fill it out first so they can see how your route scored.

Bikeability Checklist

There's also a Walkability Checklist.  And both checklists are also available in Spanish here.

How did I find this? I got an Alaska Department of Transportation press release. I tried to paraphrase it, but I'm not completely sure what it means so I'll just quote the paragraph for you:

"The Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (ADOT&PF) Safe Routes to School Program is pleased to announce that 69 schools participated statewide in the event, which ranks sixth in the nation for the total number of participating schools per state; besting several states with much larger populations and much fairer weather, such as Texas and Arizona."

 I don't think this means the most kids biking to school in a state, but rather the most participating schools.  I called the number for more info and left a message, so I can clarify this later.  And maybe even get a link to the rankings which I couldn't find. 

Poking around their links I did find that Alaska has been getting about $1 million a year for this program.  I can't find details on what they did with the money, but presumably it goes to making walking and biking routes to school safer.  There was a program about getting reflective tape onto kids' coats so they can be better seen during the dark months. 

Here's a list of all the states' federal funding on this. 

"Governance and the Utopian Imagination."

That's the Public Administration Theory Network (PATnet) conference theme this year.

I proposed to the conference organizers that we make this a little more personal - what in public administration stirred our own utopian imaginations?  I reasoned: 

Most of us in PATnet have either pursued a doctoral degree and/or a career in the academic field of public administration.

So I thought it useful to ponder:

1. why we have committed so much of our time and abilities to this field
2. whether we have found what we were looking for or have been disappointed.  
3. what we hoped  to get in the field when we began,
4. what we got, and
5. what recommendations we have for people starting out today and for the field of public administration.

I got word that people on the organizing committee liked the idea but didn't know how to fit it into the schedule.  Staci Zavataro contacted me about a Tweet Up and as we talked we came up with the idea of an  ongoing side conversation before, during, and perhaps, after the conference.


Think of this as a movable session the flows throughout the conference and that people can participate in this session in different ways. 

• There's a conference hashtag on Twitter - #PATnet2013.  
• The PATnet Facebook page will host some of this. 
• You can leave comments here. 
• We're looking for help to set up a discussion forum at the PATnet website.
• We're inviting conference attendees to ask these questions of people the meet at the conference during breaks, over meals, in elevators, etc.  
• And we're going to set up an informal gathering for those who'd like to get together to follow this pursuit.  So far we've discussed a post session/pre-dinner gathering in the hotel lobby one night, but we're open to suggestions. 

Meanwhile, you can address the questions or the process in the comments section below this post.  (If you're having trouble getting past the spam blocking steps to comment, you can email me)


[NOTE to regular readers of this blog - I'm using my blog to do this because it's something I know how to do to move this along.   I hope you'll indulge me.]

[NOTE to PATnet members - we needed a place to point people to and I offered this spot on my personal blog until a more appropriate place can be set up.]

Great Civilizations Can Die - Including Ours

"Even in the stable and prosperous times of the Roman Empire, literacy rates, by our standards at least, were not high.  As the empire crumbled, as cities decayed, trade declined, and the increasingly anxious populace scanned the horizon for barbarian armies, the whole Roman system of elementary and higher education fell apart.  What began as downsizing went on to wholesale abandonment.  Schools closed, libraries and academics shut their doors, professional grammarians and teachers of rhetoric found themselves out of work."

I'm just starting Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, described in the jacket:

"In the winter of 1417, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties plucked a very old manuscript off a dusty shelf in a remote monastery, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied.  He was Poggio Bracciolini, the greatest book hunter of the Renaissance.   His discovery, Lucretius' ancient poem On the Nature of Things,  had been almost entirely lost to history for more than a thousand years."

 Lucretius had written about a world with a relatively modern scientific mind set.  From Greenblatt:

"The stuff of the universe, Lucretius proposed, is an infinite number of atoms moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction.  There is no escape from this process  When you look up at the night sky and, feeling unaccountably moved, marvel at the numberless stars, you are not seeing the handiwork of the gods or a crystalline sphere detached from our transient world.  You are seeing  the same material world of which you are a part and from whose elements you are made.  There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design."  

I'm leery when someone writing about the past, slips in modern words - like 'downsizing' and 'intelligent design.'  I'm concerned that they are using such terms to make the connection to the modern day clearer.  As I said, I'm just at the beginning, but this Shakespeare scholar should know the world of 1417 better than most of us.  Columbus hadn't yet sailed and his Shakespeare was still almost 200 years off.

But we do know that the Roman empire fell.  That dark ages followed.  We are faced with fundamentalist religious zealots in Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and other faiths.  In the US they currently play a significant role.  It's hard for Americans to imagine their country crashing.  But it happened in Rome and other dominant cultures over the centuries.  Current attacks on our schools and universities could easily lead to a loss of the collected wisdom of Western Science.  There are other centers in the world that could take up the slack, though the economic interdependence in the world increases the likelihood that if one center goes down, the others could follow.

How will the existence of cyber libraries make things different this time?  At least Bracciolini didn't need an ancient technology to read the manuscripts he hunted, and the technology of pen and ink and parchment was still alive so that he could copy the important texts he found.

We'll see where this book goes.  So far so good. 

----------------------
After writing this, I checked for a good link for people to read more about the book.  Jim Hinch wrote in the LA Review of Books, that:

"The Swerve, in fact, is two books, one deserving of an award, the other not. The first book is an engaging literary detective story about an intrepid Florentine bibliophile named Poggio Braccionlini, who, in 1417, stumbled upon a 500-year-old copy of De Rerum Natura in a German monastery and set the poem free from centuries of neglect to work its intellectual magic on the world. This Swerve, brimming with vivid evocations of Renaissance papal court machinations and a fascinating exploration of Lucretius’s influence on luminaries ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci, to Galileo, to Thomas Jefferson, is wonderful.

"The second Swerve is an anti-religious polemic. According to this book, the lucky fate of De Rerum Natura is a proxy for the much more consequential story of how modern western secular culture liberated itself from the deadening hand of centuries of medieval religious dogmatism.  .  .

"This is a powerful vision of the world entering a prolonged period of cultural darkness. If it were true, then Greenblatt’s second Swerve, the anti-religious polemic, also would deserve every award and plaudit it won. However, Greenblatt’s vision is not true, not even remotely.  .  .

"I’m at a loss to explain how two distinguished prize juries managed to overlook the fact that The Swerve’s animating thesis is at best “questionable,” and at worst “unwarranted,” as Renaissance historian John Monfasani put it this summer in the online journal Reviews in History. Still, to make clear the extent of The Swerve’s errors, I’ll go through Greenblatt’s portrait of the Middle Ages point by point. . . " 

And you can read the point by point at the LARB.

" if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently"

Writer David Foster Wallace's 2005 graduation speech at Kenyon College has now arrived on video with appropriate visualizations.

It's all about paying attention to what you know.  About becoming aware of your  'default setting, hard wired into our boards at birth'  - the 'deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence'.

And realizing that we have the choice to change the hard wiring, to see the world differently.  To see others differently.

I'm posting the video because the fundamental purpose of this blog is to explore how we know the world and this video does that thoughtfully and entertainingly.  And more explicitly than most posts here.





Actually, there seem to be multiple versions of Wallace's speech. There's the version on the video.  The Guardian has an adapted version here.

More Intelligent Life has a version with an Alaskan reference (see bottom of post.)

Here's the ending of the speech that is basic (bolded part) to a paper I'm working on at the moment.

"The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: 'This is water, this is water.'"

(The speech starts and ends with gold fish who don't realize they are surrounded by water.)

When you read 'wanting to shoot yourself in the head,'  it's probably instructive to know that three years after this speech, at age 46, Foster hanged himself. Pursuing great themes and seeing past what most people (want to?) see, is sometimes a curse as well as a gift. 





*Since this is an Alaskan blog, here's the Alaskan story and relevant interpretation that gets into the nature of reality from More Intelligent Life's version:

There are these two guys sitting together in a bar in the remote Alaskan wilderness. One of the guys is religious, the other is an atheist, and the two are arguing about the existence of God with that special intensity that comes after about the fourth beer. And the atheist says: "Look, it's not like I don't have actual reasons for not believing in God. It's not like I haven't ever experimented with the whole God and prayer thing. Just last month I got caught away from the camp in that terrible blizzard, and I was totally lost and I couldn't see a thing, and it was 50 below, and so I tried it: I fell to my knees in the snow and cried out 'Oh, God, if there is a God, I'm lost in this blizzard, and I'm gonna die if you don't help me.'" And now, in the bar, the religious guy looks at the atheist all puzzled. "Well then you must believe now," he says, "After all, here you are, alive." The atheist just rolls his eyes. "No, man, all that was was a couple Eskimos happened to come wandering by and showed me the way back to camp."

It's easy to run this story through kind of a standard liberal arts analysis: the exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two different people, given those people's two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience. Because we prize tolerance and diversity of belief, nowhere in our liberal arts analysis do we want to claim that one guy's interpretation is true and the other guy's is false or bad. Which is fine, except we also never end up talking about just where these individual templates and beliefs come from. Meaning, where they come from INSIDE the two guys. As if a person's most basic orientation toward the world, and the meaning of his experience were somehow just hard-wired, like height or shoe-size; or automatically absorbed from the culture, like language. As if how we construct meaning were not actually a matter of personal, intentional choice. Plus, there's the whole matter of arrogance. The nonreligious guy is so totally certain in his dismissal of the possibility that the passing Eskimos had anything to do with his prayer for help. True, there are plenty of religious people who seem arrogant and certain of their own interpretations, too. They're probably even more repulsive than atheists, at least to most of us. But religious dogmatists' problem is exactly the same as the story's unbeliever: blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to an imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up.

How Things Used To Be - Great Service At Speedy Glass

I've had a number of encounters with businesses large and small that were not particularly customer friendly.  (That's Steve-talk for bad service and overpriced.)  So I was in for a pleasant surprise Friday at Speedy Glass at Fireweed and Arctic.

The rear window brake light on the back window of my car had gotten knocked off a while ago when we put some furniture into the car.  It's been that way much too long now.  I tried to fix it myself.  Got some glue for glass, but it took too long to dry and I couldn't hold it against the glass long enough.  And even using duct tape, I couldn't hold it down tight enough.  It would very slowly slide down.

So, Friday I finally got over to a place that does auto glass things.  I'd looked in the phone book and picked Speedy Glass.  I walked in.  Told Eric what I needed.  He came out and looked at the car.  Said, be right back.  Came back with a spray to loosen the old adhesive I'd used. Scraped it off with a razor blade.  Then he had his own adhesive - fast dry he said - and sprayed it.  In less than ten minutes it was back up and sticking.  I asked him what I owed.  He just looked at me, waved his hand, and dismissed my question.  Nothing.

It's about nine hours later and it's still up and fine. 

Businesses used to do things like that regularly.  If it didn't take long and wasn't a big deal, they just smiled and said, glad I could help.  It was exactly what I needed today.

You know where I'm going if I need anything to do with glass in the future.

Just looked them up to make sure I got the name right.  It seems my experience wasn't unusual.  Here are two google reviews I found:

"Best Speedy location ever! Eric is a very helpful manager, the work is finished quickly. Can't beat the prices. The customer service is the best! #1 recommended location for glass needs."

"If I could put another star I would. Especially considering what a asswipe at the 5th avenue location treated me, (no back in jan 2012) Eric &club Brian took the issue, resolved it with no questions asked, and did a phenomenal job. From Carmen in the front, always so inviting and was very quick to get me a appointment the next day after coming in. I can speak alllllll day about these guys. Everyone was so chill. And they even called me back to make sure they vacuumed out the back. Thanks a million team."

Red Necked Grebe and Muskrat Potter Marsh 10:30-11pm

First time out with the new camera.  Dinner with friends in south Anchorage, so after we went to Potter Marsh.



 Indulge me.   This all was between 10:30pm and 11pm, so it was getting dark and when I saw that some of these were as slow as 1/15 of a second, I wasn't so disappointed with the results.  Not as sharp as they should be, but a promising start.  Think of what the camera will do when the

sun's out.

From Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

The Red-necked Grebe breeds on small inland lakes in Canada and Alaska, and winters along both coasts of North America. Boldly marked, vocal, and aggressive during the breeding season, it is quiet and subtly attired in winter.

There was a pair that ran atop the water, but they were too far away.




And the muskrat.  

 From National Trappers:

"Muskrats are somewhat sociable with others of the same species, but will often fight to the death as populations become dense. Preferred foods include a variety of vegetation, including roots, stems, and buds. Muskrats often seek out undercut banks for protection while feeding. Food is usually carried by this furbearer by mouth, and eating takes place above the water level. Muskrats are often active during the day, as well as night, with peak activities near dawn and dusk. Muskrats commonly stay underwater for five minutes while searching for food and they are capable of holding their breath underwater for 10-12 minutes."

The muskrat is hard to see (it's the brown lump in the water in the middle), but I thought reflection and ripples made it worth posting.  

Peek At Summer, Yesterday

Sky was blue. 



We came close to 60˚F. 


And I took advantage and did my run in shorts and a t-shirt.  It felt good.


The Chester Creek bike trail was mostly clear of snow but there were some patches, like here where a temporary unnamed creek flowed across the trail. 




But the trail was clear again up ahead.

A great day everyone's been waiting for.  Still in the 50s today, but mostly grey.