The Membership And Context Of The "State House Sustainable Education Task Force Report"

They say that context is everything.

Others say it's all in the details.  I'd say that without the context, the details mean nothing.  But context with no details is also problematic.  We need both. 

This started with this Dec. 31 Anchorage Daily News story:  

"Task force members clash on education funding"

There are so many contexts to examine here. 

[Before getting into them, let me just say, this post grew on me and I'm going to focus on the first context in this post - task force membership - and give a brief overview of the other contexts.  I'm hoping I'll be able to write followups a couple of the other contexts.] [Here's the follow-up]


1.  The political context of this Alaska task force.

The report is identified as coming from "State House Sustainable Education Task Force."
However, it's available at

http://www.housemajority.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Final_Report_Sustainable_Education_Task_Force_20140101.pdf  (empahsis added)

And it looks like most if not all of the members are Republicans.  The ADN article identifies the members:

"The panel includes three lawmakers, Republican Reps. Tammie Wilson, Lynn Gattis and Charisse Millett. The resolution setting out the task force also called for one member representing a regional Native corporation, in this case, Andy Baker; two educators, Jerry Covey and Nees; and two representatives of the business community, Halcro and Keithley. Wilson and Gattis are co-chairs. "

The three members of the house are all Republicans.  And, given this is an Education task force, I guess it's not surprising they are all women.   Apparently no male legislators thought it important enough to get on.  But all the outside members are men.  What does that mean? 

I'm only vaguely familiar with the others, but here's a little of what I found online.

Andy Baker is listed as vice-president of Baker Aviation in a 2007 Bienniel Report, a company his parents created in 1964.  However, the state of Alaska has a Certificate of Involuntary Dissolution/Revocation on file for Baker Aviation dated June 11, 2013.  In 2007 he was listed as a lobbyist for Teck Cominco AK.

Jerry Covey is an Anchorage based consultant and former teacher and Commissioner of Education appionted by Gov. Wally Hickel in 1990.

David Nees is a math teacher, has been an Anchorage school board candidate, and, according to the Anchorage Press, is a Republican who was supported by Anchorage mayor Dan Sullivan.

Didn't know much at all about Brad Keithly before reading this article, but apparently I should have.  He is an oil industry consultant/attorney who has stopped writing his Alaska Business Review column because, as his says on his website

"I have suspended that column while some talk about me running for Governor (ABM’s policy understandably is to discontinue any “writings” by formally announced, or potential candidates)." 

He's also been banned by the University of Alaska Anchorage from being involved in UAA Athletics and some women he's dated are pretty pissed at him (I'll leave it at that and not link to the site.)  In trying to confirm he is a Republican, I found another Amanda Coyne piece that reports some Republicans saying he's a stealth Democrat from Texas who might run for governor as an Independent.  

Andrew Halcro is a bright former Republican state house member and Indepndent gubernatorial candidate and runs (has run?) the family Avis franchise and is the new president of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce.  He does things his own way and frequently ruffles feathers as he seems to have done on this committee by being the lone dissenter. 

This is clearly a House Majority task force set up to come to fairly predictable conclusions.  There are no House Democrats and most of the outside members seem to be chosen more for their support of budget cutting than their educational expertise.  Only Halcro has not gone along with the script. 


2.  The larger partisan political national context which might influence the study. 
This was what I was originally going to write about - the general right wing movement to cut government spending in general, and in education, to push vouchers and other ways to get hold of public school money and move it to private schools.  When I first reported on the Koch Brothers supported ALEC, which champions the free market as the cure for everything,  Rep. Tammy Wilson attended the presentation along with Reps. Wes Keller and Carl Gatto, and Sen. Dyson.  I'll try to add this context in the next installment.


3.  The context of past studies of education and education funding in Alaska.

Alaska education reports are a dime a dozen.  The legislature has its fair share of reports.  I remember one being set up in the legislature when I was blogging it in 2010. It would probably be more productive to have a task force simply review the findings of the last ten legislative reports on education and identify:

• all the recommendations made
• how many times the same recommendation is made in different reports
• which recommendations have actually been followed
• which recommendations have not been followed
• why some were and weren't followed through on

Here are some that are just reports written for the legislature:
2001
2007
2011



4.  The context of the Anchorage Daily News coverage.

I won't spend much time on this, but I thought it interesting that the ADN focused on the clash in the committee.  The title is about the 'clash,' and the first sentence focuses on the clash as does the last sentence in the first paragraph:

"The disagreement came over whether to include proposed language that, in the current budget environment, state education funding needs to be reduced as well. "

From what the article reports, Halcro was the only member opposed.  While I think the issue is important, I wonder if Halcro hadn't dissented, would it have even been reported?


5.  My own context.

I'm preparing to teach the UAA MPA capstone class in which students show their understanding of what they've been learning in the program by doing a management research project and reporting on their findings.  I've taught this class numerous times over my career and this is the first time since I retired in 2006.  So, I've been thinking deeply about reports that analyze government programs and policies and how to research and write reports that come as close as possible to objectively finding useful data and interpreting and presenting it so that the reader can understand

• what theoretical models were used to organize the study, 
• how data were collected, 
• how the researchers interpreted the data and came to their conclusions

It's also important to see the data.  Not necessarily the raw data, but enough of the data that the knowledgeable reader can see how the researchers got from the data to the conclusions.  If the data are there, the reader who disagrees with the conclusions, can still use them to follow other possible implications. 

When I look at the full two page report itself - which you can see here - I'll use my own training and experience in what a good policy report should cover to review this report.

Here are Some first, quick reactions: 

This report is a bit thin.  The URL hays "Final Report" in it,  but the two page document calls itself an initial report.  The ADN article reports:

The panel was created by a House resolution last April and charged with "examining the efficiency and effectiveness of public education delivery." It faced a Wednesday deadline for submitting its recommendations and findings to the governor, Legislature and state education department. The panel is scheduled to expire Jan. 1, 2015.

So, they've had the interim in the legislative session to prepare a report - about seven months.  Despite being an 'Initial Report' it manages to reach conclusions without reporting any supporting evidence for the conclusions. My students will only have about three months to come up with much more substantive findings.  They'll have no staff and no budget.  But they'll come up with real reports with support for their findings. 


6.  The context of Alaska's difficult educational environment.  Alaska has many small towns and villages scattered across a huge geographical area and a few 'urban' areas most of which would not be recognized as urban in the rest of the United States.  So many small populations, off the road system give Alaska challenges significantly different from what other states face.  Added to this is the mix of Alaska Native culture and the dominant non-Native culture and the lack of serious cross-cultural understanding.  

This context is worth several books and I won't try to do more here.  But I did want to mention this as a critical context.  And you'll note that the Task Force says they have traveled the state and taken testimony.




Again, this post focused on the membership and the various contexts of this issue.  I'll  write more about the national political context of this topic and then focus specifically on this Report. 

AIFF 2013: The Words I Love Director On Anchorage And His Film

I still have film festival video and other posts to put up.  One film maker I almost didn't record was Thanachart 'Ben'* Siripatrachai. 


The irony is that Ben stayed with us for several days of the festival and so I guess I thought I could get him any time.  Finally, I decided as we were having lunch downtown between films, I better do it.

His film The Words I Love  won honorable mention in the short docs category.  It was a film that caught my attention when I first saw the description and turned out to be a very unique film, Ben just doing seemed right to him, not following any preset rules for how to tell his story.  The audiences responded well with frequent laughs and chuckles.

Here's video we did. 






*If anyone is interested:

His nick name is 'Benz' like the car.  But in Thai, there is no final 'nz' sound, so it just becomes Ben.  So I've decided to just write in 'Ben'.  On his website he writes it in Thai (see image on top) as a final 'n.'  There really is no letter for a 'z' in Thai, though in Thai 'Benz' would  have a final 's' [เบนซ์] that wouldn't be pronounced (the squiggly line above the 's' on the end [ซ์] makes the 's' sound silent.  But in English he writes Benz.  But when he pronounced it, he said Ben.  In the image the first letter [เ] is the vowel sound 'eh'.  Then comes [บ] the 'b' sound, and finally the [น] 'n' sound. The squiggly mark on top appears to be a high tone mark [ป็], though at first I thought it was a 'Mai Dtaikhu' which shortens the vowel sound and would be found in the Thai word เป็น which is the word for 'to be.'  

So we have - เบ๊น- the way Ben spells his name in Thai.
We have -เบนซ์ -  the way Mercedes-Benz is spelled in Thai.
And - เป็น  -  the common word for the verb 'to be.'

[Update Jan 5, 2013:  I don't write Thai very often these days and I forgot a small detail.  There are two different Thai letters that represent two slightly different sounds that English uses the letter B for.  I think it's pretty easy to see the difference between ป and  บ. The first one is unvoiced and the second one is voiced.  I won't even try to explain that but if you are interested here are two sites that explain it - one in writing and one with a video. ]

 

People Born In 1914: Superman, The Lone Ranger, and Obiwan Ben Kenobi

When I did my first post on people born 100 years ago - 1908 - there weren't many lists like that available.  Nowadays, there's a lot more available. And mine got so elaborate that they took forever to write. So I'm going to leave it to others now to do the comprehensive lists and just focus on a few folks that were important to me and to the world.  To see one of the more comprehensive lists go to NNDB.

Here are two people whose roles were their public persona:  George Reeves (Superman) and Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger.)  And one more - Alec Guinness - whose acting career was much greater than the only role that many know him as - Obiwan Ben Kenobi. 

Alec Guinness April 2, 1914- August 5, 2000 (86) Guinness was a great actor.  I first remember him from The Horse's Mouth.  He went on to win an Academy Award as a Colonel in Bridge on The River Kwai.   He was a prince in Lawrence of Arabia and a general in Dr. Zhivago. A Business Insider article in 2013 quotes Guinness' biography: "I have been offered a movie (20th Cent. Fox) which I may accept, if they come up with proper money. London and N. Africa, starting in mid-March. Science fiction – which gives me pause – but is to be directed by Paul [sic] Lucas who did "American Graffiti, which makes me feel I should. Big part. Fairy-tale rubbish but could be interesting perhaps." Guinness goes on to recall Twentieth Century Fox offered him $150,000 plus two percent of the producer's profit in January 1976 for the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi – double what they offered him the week before." More about this great actor of the 20th Century here  and here.

George Reeves January 5, 1914 - June 15, 1959 One of my first memories of irony was that the man of steel committed suicide.  Below is a video bio of Reeves.  The video suggests maybe he didn't commit suicide.

From a Clayton More website Jack Carlton Moore was born in Chicago, Illinois on September 14, 1914. He was the youngest of three boys who grew up in a loving family home. His father was a real estate developer. Before his rise to the silver screen, Moore first became an acrobat in a flying circus troupe when he was in his twenties. This troupe of talented daredevils was the first to work without the benefit of a net, and the first to work over water. After Moore left the troupe, he went on to do some modeling jobs in New York before he finally found his way to Hollywood in 1938. He had changed his name to Clayton Moore in the mean time, and he did some stuntman work and some extra parts for the movie industry. By 1941, Moore was working steady for Republic Pictures. He portrayed heroes, the guys in the white hats, as well as bad guys, who always wore the black hats, of course, in several western movies. But it was 1949 when Clayton Moore finally got the big break that would change his life forever. "The Lone Ranger Show" had been on the radio for fifteen years by now, and Republic Pictures had already produced a couple of low-cost Lone Ranger films. But the studio decided it was time to make a weekly series out of the famous "Lone Ranger." (From Weirdscifi - I originally got the picture above from there too, but it really is weird because the picture changed to something pretty weird and I had to find a new source.)

There are others of significance born in 1914 and I may do additional posts to cover some of them.  But for now, here are some highlights.

Jonas Salk Oct 28, 1914 - June 23, 1995 (80) - Probably the man born in 1914 who had the most positive impact on the world was Jonas Salk, the man who invented the polio vaccine.

Kenneth Bancroft Clark  - July 24, 1914 - May 1, 2004 (89) The first black fully tenured professor at City University of New York and first black president of the American Psychological Society, his study of the effects of discrimination in the US played a key role in the landmark Supreme Court Decision Brown v. Board of Education.  Also worked with Gunnar Myrdal on his classic study of race in the US. 

Sports:
Joe DiMaggio   November 25, 1014 - March 8, 1999 (84)
Joe Louis  May 13, 1914 - April 12, 1981 (66)
Tenzing Norgay  May 15, 1914 - May 9, 1986 (71)

Writers:
William Bourroughs  Feb 5, 1914 - August 2, 1997 (83)
Ralph Ellison   March 1, 1914 - April 16, 1994 (80)
John Hersey June 17, 1914 - March 24, 1993  (78)
Bernard Malahmud  April 26, 1914 - March 18, 1986 (71)
Octavio Paz  March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998 (84)
Dylan Thomas October 27, 1914 - Nov 9, 1953 (41)

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15377#sthash.H0fnXwbZ.dpuf

Alaskan Related:
Hale Boggs  Feb 15, 1914 - Oct 16, 1972  - Louisiana Congressman, and father of Cokie Roberts, died in plane crash with Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich. 
William A. Egan  Oct 8, 1914 - May 6 1984  - Two time Alaska governor.


War and Space:
 James Van Allen  Sept 7, 1914 - August 9 2006 (91)
William Westmoreland March 26, 1914 - July 18, 2005 (91)

Happy Drone New Year Alaska

Drone images from here and here.

Now that we learn that Alaska is one of six states to get drone research funding, there are all kinds of possibilities. 


Road Safety: 

• Alerting drivers of moose near the road and of icy patches
• Spotting drunk drivers and alerting authorities, or better yet, turning off their engines

Household

• Clearing snow from driveways
• Monitoring children playing outside
• Mildly zapping dogs that bark for more than five minutes straight
• Warning when moose or bear are nearby - with zapping ability to keep them from eating the broccoli or raiding the garbage

Politics

• Each politician gets a drone upon election
• that follows them around recording everyone they meet with, what they say 
• with programs that highlight contradictions between public and private promises
• that allows constituents to know where their rep is and what he's doing at any moment and voice an opinion about it

Hunting and Fishing

• Alerts game animals when hunters enter their territory
• Same for fish

Work and School

• Can take homework to school while kids sleep in
• Monitors class so kids can watch it when they feel like it
• Alerts employees when boss is nearby

Other

• All drones equipped to call for medical assistance when they injure some one
• Monitoring prisoners on home detention or probation
• Pick up coffee
• Warn cyclists of nearby cars and other hazards

This is just a quick, off-the-top-of-my-head, list. I'm sure you can think of many, many more uses.  We'll let Rand Paul deal with the privacy concerns. 

Happy Brave New Year - let's do lunch soon.  Have your drone contact my drone. 

2014 New Year's Res: Can Terror Management Lead to Better Time Management?

I used to be phenomenally well organized.  But after I retired I decided to become, not disorganized, but more like non-organized.  That led to occasional missed meetings and things not getting done (like the clutter room downstairs) and I learned to not worry about such things. 

But I do have to get that downstairs room cleaned up - we have someone moving into it in February - and I'm going to be teaching a class at UAA in the spring and that means deadlines I have to meet for the students' sakes.  Plus this blog has - so it tells me - 4387 published posts and 183 unpublished drafts.  I need to do some housekeeping here. I want to give readers better guidance to what's here.  What can I do with the redistricting posts?  What about the notes to readers that need updating?  And there are some academic articles to finish up and submit.

I can do this.  I know how.  But being non-organized for the last six or seven years has also helped me understand those of my students who could never get their work in on time.

I was already thinking about this when I heard the NPR piece on the tikker this morning.  A Swedish guy has created a wristwatch that tells you how much time you have until you die.  That's supposed to be a reminder to use the time you have on things you really want to do.  That's how I'd use it.  But the piece cited terror management experts who said that thinking about death makes people xenophobic.  I don't think that would be a problem for me, since I think of myself as part of the human tribe.

I don't usually do New Year's resolutions and this isn't so much of a resolution as a decision and the new year is a good time to start. 

Anyone else resolving things?  Don't worry if you're not.  Have a great new year's eve and day and may you enjoy the beauty around you in 2014.  It's there if you look. 

Are Special Elections The Unintended Consequence Of California Term Limits?

This assertion in a Culver City Observer article caught my attention in an article on the Dec. 3, 2013 special election in my mom's California Assembly race:

Since the advent of term limits, special elections have become the norm throughout California as politicians jockey from one office to another to avoid being termed out and losing a seat in what has become a game resembling musical chairs.  [emphasis added] 

I was going through my mom's paper work and her ballot for that election was still there.  
We'd tried to help her figure out who to vote for, but in the end, she had no basis for voting for one candidate over another and didn't vote.

It turns out she wasn't alone. A Culver City Observer article says that only 6.8% of the voters voted and that the winner, Sebastian Ridley-Thomas,  (60% to 36% for the next candidate) spent $60 in campaign funds per vote. 

Really, it was hard for a casual observer to figure out whom to vote for.  The mailings and websites were all slick public relations work and I had trouble finding anything that gave me reason to vote for one candidate or another.

But what caught my attention in the article was this line:

Since the advent of term limits, special elections have become the norm throughout California as politicians jockey from one office to another to avoid being termed out and losing a seat in what has become a game resembling musical chairs.  [emphasis added]

That's interesting, was my first reaction.  And it makes sense.  Are there others who have found this?   So I looked up  how many special elections there had been in California.   First, when did the term limits start?

The League of Women Voters tells us that a new term limit law came into effect in 2012:

In June 2012, term limits for California state legislators (Assembly and state Senate) were changed by the passage of Proposition 28. Newly elected members -- people elected to the legislature for the first time in 2012 or later -- will be subject to the new term limits. These rules are that they may serve a total of twelve years in either house, or a combination of the two houses. A person may serve all twelve years in either the Assembly or the Senate, or split between the two houses.

They go on to explain the old law which was passed by the voters in 1990.

Those officials who have served terms prior to the passage of Proposition 28 will be subject to the old term limits rules. California State Assembly members are limited to three terms (6 years) since 1996. State Senate members have been limited to two terms (8 years) since 1998. These term limits are lifetime, not consecutive.
The Governor and all other statewide officers except the Insuance Commissioner can serve two terms of four years, with a limit of two terms. This constitutional limitation was passed in November 1990.

The new law increased how long legislators can be in office in one house, but limited how long they could potentially be in office if they went from the Assembly to the Senate.

The lifetime term limit seems pretty harsh.  That means a great stateswoman would not be able to stay in office, even if her constituents wanted her too.  That seems a little anti-democratic to me. It also aims at the wrong target.  But then one district - like Alaska - keeping the same US Senator forever increased his seniority over other Senators.  Gerrymandering of districts causes problematic long term incumbency, it would seem, more than lack of term limits. (Though not in a US Senate race.)  But if seniority starts over again when there's a break in service, that wouldn't be a problem.  Ironically, California's current governor served two terms from 1975-1983 and the voters reelected him in 2010. 

Wikipedia lists the special elections in California since 1960.  (Remember, term limits were passed in 1990 and went into effect in 1996 for Assembly members and 1998 for Senate members.)  Here's how many special elections there were each decade since the 1960s according to Wikipedia.

1960s - 5
1970s - 13
1980s - 5
1990s - 17 ( nine before Nov. 3 1993))
2000s - 6
2010s - 7

This hardly looks like proof that there is a difference in the norm before and after term limits as the article suggests.   The seven special elections so far in the 2010s is high, but less than the number by Dec 1993 in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, special stand alone elections would appear to be costly and one would expect a low turnout - as the Dec. 3 special election turn out to have.  

A 2004 report by the Public Policy Institute of Calfiornia doesn't mention the increase in special elections outright, but says that legislative careerism hasn't changed. I've outlined their findings:

• did not revolutionize—the type of legislator who comes to Sacramento.
• accelerated trends of increasing female and minority representation that were already under way in California.
• new members after term limits behave a great deal like their precursors.
• Careerism remains a constant in California politics.
• effects on Sacramento’s policymaking processes have been more profound.
• In both houses, committees now screen out fewer bills assigned to them and are more likely to see their work rewritten at later stages.
• The practice of“hijacking” Assembly bills—gutting their contents and amending them thoroughly in the Senate—has increased sharply. 
• As a body, the Legislature is less likely to alter the Governor’s Budget, and 
• its own budget process neither encourages fiscal discipline nor links legislators’ requests to overall spending goals.
• legislative oversight of the executive branch has declined significantly.
•  widespread sense in Sacramento that something needs to be done soon to provide more stability and expertise to the Legislature’s policymaking process.
• leaders remain central to the process, and 
• term limits cannot be blamed for Sacramento’s intensifying partisan polarization.
• Term limits have had a mixed effect on the Legislature’s policy products. 
• no effect on the breadth and complexity of bills passed into law,
• recently instituted programs to train members and staff do not appear to improve a legislator’s “batting average”—that is, his or her chances of passing a bill or seeing it signed into law—although legislators who receive that training tend to write shorter bills that change more code sections.

Did term limits increase the number of special elections?  The numbers from the Wikipedia article don't seem to bear that out.  And even if there is a correlation, we can't be sure of the cause and effect relationship.   But it's not uncommon for people to generalize from their personal experience of what seems like a change.  And to believe things that fit their expectations, even without checking the facts. 

Lick Your Rat Pups: Epigenetics, Methyl Groups, DNA, Evolution

Can behavioral change of a parent be passed on to children and grandchildren?  Darwinian evolution would say no.  But scientists today are finding this a lot more complicated. 

Think of this post as some notes to myself.  I don't even remember what caused me to google 'epigenetics.'  I'm a little behind the curve on this, but I suspect I'm not the only one.  And it seems like something I should know more about.  Here are some tantalizing quotes in fairly understandable English. 



From Discover Magazine:

"Until researchers like Razin came along, the basic story line on how genes get transcribed in a cell was neat and simple. DNA is the master code, residing inside the nucleus of every cell; RNA transcribes the code to build whatever proteins the cell needs. Then some of Razin’s colleagues showed that methyl groups could attach to cytosine, one of the chemical bases in DNA and RNA. 

It was Razin, working with fellow biochemist Howard Cedar, who showed these attachments weren’t just brief, meaningless affairs. The methyl groups could become married permanently to the DNA, getting replicated right along with it through a hundred generations. As in any good marriage, moreover, the attachment of the methyl groups significantly altered the behavior of whichever gene they wed, inhibiting its transcription, much like a jealous spouse. It did so, Razin and Cedar showed, by tightening the thread of DNA as it wrapped around a molecular spool, called a histone, inside the nucleus. The tighter it is wrapped, the harder to produce proteins from the gene."

From the University of Utah

These records showed that food availability between the ages of nine and twelve for the paternal grandfather affected the lifespan of his grandchildren. But not in the way you might think. Shortage of food for the grandfather was associated with extended lifespan of his grandchildren. Food abundance, on the other hand, was associated with a greatly shortened lifespan of the grandchildren. Early death was the result of either diabetes or heart disease. Could it be that during this critical period of development for the grandfather, epigenetic mechanisms are "capturing" nutritional information about the environment to pass on to the next generation?

From Epigenome:

"Male lions are among the most sexually active of mammalian beasts. In captivity they have even been known to mount female tigers. The resulting liger offspring make their parents look like pussy cats, often exceeding twelve feet in length and doubling parental weight. In contrast, if you mate a male tiger with a female lion, the resulting tigon is considerably smaller. What makes the liger so big and tigon so small?"

From the Johns Hopkins Center for Epigenetics Website:

Understanding how the information in the human genome is utilized is one of the central questions in modern biology. It has become clear that a critical level of gene regulation occurs through the chemical modification of both the DNA itself and the proteins that organize eukaryotic DNA into chromatin. This form of gene regulation, termed epigenetics, refers to cellular "memory" other than the DNA sequence alone, and occurs through mechanisms such as the addition of methyl groups to DNA, as a way of marking specific genes as active or silent. The Center for Epigenetics has brought together investigators in genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, biostatistics, epidemiology, and clinical medicine to develop new technologies to apply to both basic science and population-based epigenetic studies. The center has developed several new genomics, biostatistical, and biochemical methods and is applying them to cutting-edge studies of epigenetic mechanisms and disease research.

From Radio Lab:

As we reported, the duo's lab work shows that when a mother rat licks a pup (her sign of "I love you"*), the action sets off a Rube Golberg-esque cascade of hormones, which ultimately wind up all the way down at the level of the DNA.

Image from Radio Lab

What do those hormones do down there? It turns out, they change the chemical markers, or epigenome, surrounding certain areas of the DNA. And the end result of these changes hinges on how much the rat pup is licked: if a rat pup gets a lot of licks, the epigenetic changes cause the pup to grow up and lick its own kids a lot; if a pup doesn't get a lot of licks, the chemical changes cause that pup to be a low-licker. In both cases, the pattern of maternal behavior is carried across generations -- from grandmothers to mothers to grandkids. Or, in the words of Radiolab producer Soren Wheeler, "It's as if the epigenetic information leaps up out of the mother's genes through a tongue and lands back on the babies' genes." (Interested? Go listen to the show for more!)

From Science we get warned about calling every nongenetic system as epigenetic:

"The cells in a multicellular organism have nominally identical DNA sequences (and therefore the same genetic instruction sets), yet maintain different terminal phenotypes. This nongenetic cellular memory, which records developmental and environmental cues (and alternative cell states in unicellular organisms), is the basis of epi-(above)–genetics.

The lack of identified genetic determinants that fully explain the heritability of complex traits, and the inability to pinpoint causative genetic effects in some complex diseases, suggest possible epigenetic explanations for this missing information. This growing interest, along with the desire to understand the “deprogramming” of differentiated cells into pluripotent/totipotent states, has led to “epigenetic” becoming shorthand for many regulatory systems involving DNA methylation, histone modification, nucleosome location, or noncoding RNA. This is to be encouraged, but the labeling of nongenetic systems as epigenetic by default has the potential to confuse (see the related video at www.sciencemag.org/special/epigenetics/)."

I don't know what this all means yet.  As I said, notes to myself.  

When Is It OK To Hold Public Meetings In Secret? The Coliseum Case

The ultimate reason for government openness is to allow the public to keep their public officials accountable.  It's a value I hold strong here at this blog.  This is a story about a government agency not being open. 


The other day I had a photo and personal comments on the LA Coliseum.  Today, the LA Times has

an article enttitled: 

"Coliseum incurred big expense in trying to keep USC lease talks secret"

It begins:  

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was flirting with insolvency, but that didn't stop its government overseers from incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expenses to keep secret their deliberations on a new long-term lease for the stadium.

Starting with the US Freedom of Information Act and going through various state and municipal open records acts, there is usually an exception for private negotiations.  If you're bargaining over a lease, it generally isn't a good idea to let the other side know what your last best offer is.

But, apparently, in this situation, the two sides were not adversarial.  The Coliseum Commissioners, according to the article, 

"The emails, along with others obtained earlier under the California Public Records Act, show the Coliseum's top executive granting nearly every wish USC had for the negotiations and then helping the university build and maintain political support for the lease."

About the Coliseum

Background from Wikipedia (which reflects the agreement that was negotiated in secret):

The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, colloquially known as just "The Coliseum", is a large outdoor sports stadium in the University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, at Exposition Park, that is home to the Pacific-12 Conference's University of Southern California Trojans football team. It is the largest football stadium in the Pac-12.
It is located next to the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Exposition Park, across the street from the University of Southern California (USC). The stadium is jointly owned by the State of California, Los Angeles County, and the City of Los Angeles, and is managed and operated by the University of Southern California. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, which has board members drawn from the three ownership interests, provides public oversight of the master lease agreement with USC. Under the lease the University has day-to-day management and operation responsibility for both the Coliseum and Sports Arena. The 98-year lease took effect on July 29, 2013 and was signed by the parties on September 5, 2013. The agreement requires the University to make approximately $100 million in physical improvements to the Coliseum, pay $1 million a year rent to the state of California, maintain the Coliseum’s physical condition at the same standard used on the USC Campus, and assume all financial obligations for the operations and maintenance of the Coliseum and Sports Arena Complex.^[7][8]

Disclosure versus Confidentiality

There are some legitimate reasons not to release some government information.  Individuals who cooperate with the government and legitimately fear retaliation should be protected.  Say, when there is gang violence or shakedowns of shop owners, and someone offers help to the police, that person's identity should be protected if it's likely there will be retaliation.  And businesses who provide the government environmental or safety information about their company, should have trade secrets that are involved, kept secret so their competitors can't use it to their advantage.  Without such protections, businesses are less likely to cooperate, just as in the previous example, witnesses are less like to cooperate.

The 1966  Federal Freedom of Information Act sets out a list of exemptions using the kind of reasoning I've outlined above. 

Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security.  The material must be properly classified under an Executive Order.
Exemption 2: Information related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.
Exemption 3: Information that is prohibited from disclosure by another federal law. Additional resources on the use of Exemption 3 can be found on the Department of Justice FOIA Resources page.
Exemption 4: Information that concerns business trade secrets or other confidential commercial or financial information.
Exemption 5: Information that concerns communications within or between agencies which are protected by legal privileges, that include but are not limited to:

1. Attorney-Work Product Privilege
2. Attorney-Client Privilege
3. Deliberative Process Privilege
4. Presidential Communications Privilege

Exemption 6: Information that, if disclosed, would invade another individual's personal privacy.
Exemption 7: Information compiled for law enforcement purposes if one of the following harms would occur.  Law enforcement information is exempt if it: 

• 7(A). Could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings
• 7(B). Would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication
• 7(C). Could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy
• 7(D). Could reasonably be expected to disclose the identity of a confidential source
• 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions
• 7(F). Could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual

Exemption 8: Information that concerns the supervision of financial institutions.
Exemption 9: Geological information on wells.

Ultimately, we're weighing the short term public interest in knowing versus the long term public interest in having people cooperate with law enforcement and other government officials.   We have to find the balance between keeping secret or revealing certain kinds of information.   We want businesses to voluntarily provide information (including sometimes trade secrets) to government agencies that monitor them.  We want clients to be honest with their attorneys.  We want presidential advisers to be candid with their policy advice.  If allowing that information to be confidential, and it's not critical to government accountability, then no problem.  But sometimes the public needs to know some of that info in order to evaluate public decisions. 

The public interest is so important that California makes it the test in some cases of disclosure or not.

"In order to withhold a record under section 6255, an agency must demonstrate that the public’s interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public’s interest in disclosure. A particular agency’s interest in nondisclosure is of little consequence in performing this balancing test; it is the public’s interest, not the agency’s that is weighed. This “public interest balancing test” has been the subject of several court decisions. In a case involving the licensing of concealed weapons, the permits and applications were found to be disclosable in order for the public to properly monitor the government’s administration of concealed weapons permits.

The last example, of course, highlights the reason, in a democracy, for transparency:  the public's ability to monitor the government's decisions and actions.  They give a number of other examples of cases where they ruled for disclosure because the public interest was so strong. 


The problem with secrecy

But whenever there is secrecy, there is the temptation to abuse that secrecy.

In the Coliseum case it appears the secrecy was used to hide how the public's representatives (the coliseum commissioners) gave USC all the advantages at tax payers' expense.  (I say apparently because the LA Times was part of the lawsuit to get the information.  They have a vested interest in showing that their lawsuit was legitimate.  I've no evidence their report is biased.  Evidence in their favor is the court's decision to make the data public.  But we should take nothing for granted.) 

The public interest is so important that, California makes it the test in some cases of whether to disclose or notn-disclosure.

"In order to withhold a record under section 6255, an agency must demonstrate that the public’s interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public’s interest in disclosure. A particular agency’s interest in nondisclosure is of little consequence in performing this balancing test; it is the public’s interest, not the agency’s that is weighed. This “public interest balancing test” has been the subject of several court decisions. In a case involving the licensing of concealed weapons, the permits and applications were found to be disclosable in order for the public to properly monitor the government’s administration of concealed weapons permits.

The last example, of course, highlights the reason, in a democracy, for transparency:  the public's ability to monitor the government's administration. 

My sense is that negotiation with an adversary is a good reason to keep information secret - though not necessarily the negotiation meetings.  In any case, after the negotiation is done, there's no reason not to make all the proceedings public. 

But, in this Coliseum case, the participants definitely did not want people to know what they did.

The question now is, if the public representatives do not work for the public in good faith, shouldn't that invalidate the agreement? 


Sham public hearings

USC Senior Vice President Todd Dickey, who also received the email, responded: "If you want us to hold an open house … and listen to 500 people speak for 5 hours, and maybe answer a few questions, I guess we can do that, but I see no value in that at all."

I think this attitude is pretty common among people used to having power and getting their way.  USC is a private university that has raised $3 billion in its current campaign to raise $6 billion.  The senior vice president is pretty used to dealing with very wealthy people who tend to get their way.  Some examples of the kinds of people he probably works with comes from the USC fundraising page:

• An anonymous $20 million gift will endow student support at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the USC School of Social Work and the USC Marshall School of Business. 
• Selim Zilkha has pledged a gift of $5 million to the Keck School of Medicine of USC to fund a new endowed chair in Alzheimer’s disease research. 
• A $1 million donation by USC Dornsife alumni has established the Linda and Harlan Martens Endowed Director’s Chair for the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute.

Not only is the top of the USC hierarchy used to dealing with wealthy folks, they also can get those folks to lobby for them.

"Some of the emails the government sought to keep under wraps show that the stadium officials and USC collaborated in securing backing for the lease in City Hall and Sacramento.
In one exchange, Sandbrook asked Dickey if he knew an alternate commissioner who represented then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and might attend a lease meeting.
"Damn, no I don't," Dickey replied. "We need to get to the Mayor so he can encourage her to support the lease."
After receiving a report that Villaraigosa was miffed at not receiving advance notice on the lease terms, Dickey wrote to Sandbrook and then-commission President David Israel, that USC President Max Nikias and others had been lobbying the mayor:
"Tom Sayles has been in constant contact with the Mayor's office trying to get them to support the term sheet," Dickey said in the correspondence, referring to a USC administrator. "We even had President Nikias call the Mayor and he got him today."
Villaraigosa's two representatives on the commission voted for the lease.

And they can reward those who cooperate with them:

The former mayor, now a USC faculty member, did not respond to interview 

I'm not saying this was a quid pro quo deal.  The former mayor certainly has a lot of knowledge to share with students and he makes USC's diversity stronger.  But there is the appearance of something fishy here. And, for my own disclosure, I would add that I graduated from what is now the school he was appointed to.


What's my point? 

This isn't a gossip blog.  When I post stories about specific events it's usually to either document what's happening and/or to make some larger point.  Since the LA Times has already done the documentation here, I need to put this in a larger perspective.  So, my points probably boil down to:

1.   The openness of public information is a cornerstone of democracy.  Without it, there is no way to keep public officials accountable.
2.   When information is not disclosed, people should be suspicious and should demand its release.  
3.  People everywhere should remember what the secret emails reveal in contrast to the public statements:

private communication	"If you want us to hold an open house … and listen to 500 people speak for 5 hours, and maybe answer a few questions, I guess we can do that, but I see no value in that at all."
public communication	"To support a public and transparent process, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission and the University of Southern California are jointly releasing a list of points of agreement that will serve as the basis for continuing negotiations on a modified lease between USC and the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission."

Both those quotes come from the emails that the LA Times lawsuit revealed.



THEN, I hope people apply this to their own local and state officials.  Recognize when you hear people proclaim their support of transparency, especially after opposing requests for more openness,  that what they actually said in private was probably the opposite. 

I think about how the DOWL Engineering group has held public hearing after public hearing with fancy charts and how they took public testimony which showed over and over again that the vast majority of the people were opposed to extending Bragaw through the University.  Yet despite that testimony Anchorage's mayor managed to work a last minute deal to get $20 million to put the road through anyway.  And then we hear it will actually cost yet another $20 million.  The public process was a total sham.  It was only to meet legal requirements.  

I think about how the Anchorage Assembly allowed weeks and weeks of testimony on an ordinance to add gays and lesbians to our local anti-discrimination ordinance.  People in  were even bused in from Matsu to testify against the ordinance.  And the hearings continued long enough that we changed mayors - from one who said he'd sign the ordinance to one who vetoed it.

And then that same mayor exclaimed about changes in the Labor Ordinance, "This was one of the most open, comprehensive public processes."   Sounds a lot like the qote above.  Fortunately, the audience at the Assembly meeting that night was heavily labor and they knew the truth.  

Is LA Air Less Polluted? Yes, But . . .

Jacob commented on yesterday's post with extremely clear views of LA:

"Don't think I've seen LA air look so clear. Was it wind pushing pollution away or are environmental regs really making that much difference? A bit of both seems likely, but what's going here?"

nswfm commented that it was a bit windy.

But I haven't experienced any wind since I got here.

The answer, according to an LA Times article yesterday on the San Jaoquin Valley is that pollution is down, but EPA standards are up.  

After spending decades and hundreds of millions of dollars cleaning up

DOT map San Joaquin Valley

stubbornly high levels of pollution, air quality officials in the San Joaquin Valley are telling federal regulators that enough is enough.
San Joaquin Valley officials say that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unfairly blaming locals for air fouled by outside sources and is failing to take into account the pollution-trapping topography of the mountain-ringed basin.
"Once we've done everything we can, we should not be penalized," Seyed Sadredin, executive director of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, said in reference to fees his agency has imposed on local drivers and businesses in recent years after failing to meet federal deadlines to curb smog.

The local officials argue the smog they get comes from pollution blowing in from Asia and non-local vehicles driving through the San Joaquin Valley.  The Valley reported that they now meet EPA standards.

"The EPA says that readings at two of the most polluted air quality monitoring sites are flawed and do not prove that the region's air has been cleaned up enough to reach the agency's 1979 standard for ozone. The EPA says that it will hold the San Joaquin Valley to the same standards as the rest of the nation and has asked the district for more data to back up its contention."

You can read the whole  LA Times  article, but interestingly, the print version has graphics that are not online.  They show a steady, but inconsistent decline. 


The San Joaquin Valley starts north of LA.  ABC News  in April 2013 said that

 "Los Angeles Tops ‘Dirty Air’ List for 13th Time in 14 Years"

They cite a report from The American Lung Association (Key Findings) where you can look up air pollution information on any state and city in the US.  I say "look up" but it doesn't mean you'll find it.  All of Alaska, for instance is labeled either INC (indicates incomplete monitoring data for all three years) or DNC (ndicates that there is no monitor collecting data in the county).


But they do have information on Los Angeles.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to copy the table and preserve the format, so I'm posting a screenshot and the links below don't work - the image is just an image.  But if you click on it, it will take you to the Lung Association page and you can read more.    As you can see, despite getting failing grades, there are significant improvements.

So, Jacob, I hope that answers your question. 


[Note:  Just when I thought the Feedburner problems had been fixed, this post hasn't made it to other Blogrolls for over 7 hours now.]

AIFF 2013: Two Fine Films: De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) and Hank and Asha

This is a continuation of this post on "What Makes A Good Film?"


My 1's (movies that had me walking out of the theater going 'wow!'):

7 Cajas (7 Boxes)

Die Nieuwe Wereld (The New World)

Hank and Asha

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (明天記得愛上我)


All four of these movies pulled me in so completely that I wasn't watching the movie making - all the technical stuff worked to tell the story, not distracted from the story (either because it was bad or so spectacular that it distracted.)

All four, I left the theater with the feeling of having seen a really good film.

Of the four,  I probably was the least swept away at the moment by The New World.  But it wouldn't let go of me.  Scenes kept coming back to me.  When I saw Hank and Asha I walked out pumped.  What a great film.  But then, I wondered was there enough depth?  Was this just a well made, but light romantic comedy?  The New World seemed more important, but I didn't walk out with the same elation.  Was I just being shallow?

At this point, I think they are both very fine movies.  The New World told a complicated story deceptively simply.  It quietly took us on a tour of two people's broken hearts.  We slowly learn about Mirte and Luc and their similar losses that allowed her to reach out to help him. At the same time helping herself.  On the surface though, it almost seems like a documentary about life at the airport's detention area for asylum seekers waiting for the decision whether they can enter Holland or not.  It's so understated.  Even the colors are muted.  One audience member told me his initial reaction was negative because there was no humor.  But the humor was there.  It was just so quiet.  Like a little dab of yellow in a grey-brown world.  For example - people are coming in the door at the end of the hallway where she's just mopped the floor.  She waves her hands at them to stay on the side - these are immigrants who probably don't speak Dutch.  She makes 'chhhhhh...chhhhhh" sounds at them.  An African stares at her as he walks down the hall.  She again goes, "chhhhhhh. . .chhhhhhhhhh."  He smiles and goes, "chhhhhhh. . .chhhhhhhhhh" back to her as though he were learning to say 'hello' in her language.   It's such intimate cross cultural communications that make this movie so powerful.  Two low level people in a political no-man's land at the airport, but not technically in Holland. In another scene, she catches him staring at her and she waves him off and tells him not to look at her.  He comes up to her and in complete innocence says, "I've never seen a white cleaning woman before."

This is a movie where you have to look closely or you'll think nothing is happening, but it's just happening at a lower volume and slower pace than we're used to in US film.  Slight gestures fill the screen with meaning if you're attuned to them.  When they get to the scene where she's washing the glass wall and he dances on the other side along with her motions it's like an explosion in another movie.

We get glimpses behind the scene in this asylum center - the workers making bets on who's lying, the attorneys trying to find ways to mesh the clients' stories with the specifics of the law, the impossible responsibility of determining if someone is telling the truth.  We see the healing relationship between the mother and her young son.     There's the motor bicycle she rides everywhere.  There's so much.  I was only able to see this film once and I know that a second and third viewing would reveal so much more I didn't see.

Actors Bianca Krijgsman and Issaka Sawadogo were superb.   This was, for me, one of the gems of the festival.


And then I saw Hank and Asha.  This is a feel good movie.  It's a video romance between two strangers, played by actors (Mahira Kakkar and Andrew Pastides) loaded with charm.  It's all told in the videos they - two budding film makers - send back and forth to each other between New York and Prague.  There's no nudity, no sex, no violence, just two well adjusted 20 somethings falling into an unexpected friendship that gets to the edge of something more.  Everything worked for me as they shared their lives with each other via video.  There's nothing heavy here, no imminent deportations, though there is appropriate cultural and parental conflict.  The epistolary film, that uses an exchange of videos rather than letters, is itself a comment on what we have lost as we've moved to instant global communication.   Everything worked for me.  The story, the characters (I never thought of the actors as actors it was so real), the way it was all put together seemed so natural.  We were simply eavesdropping as two people opened their video mail from their new found friend across the Atlantic.

The film makers - James Duff and Julia Morrison - were at the festival and I was able to learn more about the film.  You can see my video with them in Anchorage discussing the film here.  Most surprising was that the two actors only met after the filming was done. In fact Mahira did all her video in ten days in Prague before any of Andrew's video was made.  This speaks well to the scripting, the acting, and the editing.

James and Julia said Hank and Asha will be available on Netflix in April and people should put it on their lists now.  This is the kind of film I feel pretty comfortable recommending - it's hard not to like.  We did see this one twice and it held up nicely the second time.  I saw lots of things I'd missed the first time.

Next, two films that were not in competition because they were special selections - invited films, not submissions.