Beets + (Less) Salt = Better Deiced Roads - True or False?

A friend sent me a link to this video, dated Jan. 7 (presumably 2014) on why adding beet juice (from the left-over pulp from making sugar that used to be thrown away) can be used at colder temperatures and drastically reduces the chloride necessary to deice roads, thus doing less environmental damage.






Of course, I checked to see what others have said and it turns out this isn't really new news. This is from a 2008 USA Today piece

By Terry Kinney, Associated Press Writer

CINCINNATI — A concoction of beet juice and salt that is kinder to concrete and metal is getting mostly favorable reviews from a growing number of states and cities looking for more effective ways to treat ice- and snow-covered roads.

It works by lowering the freezing temperature of the brine that's used to pretreat roads, experts say. And it's made from a waste product that was dumped down the drain before this new use was discovered.

Road crews learned long ago that pretreating highways with brine before a storm helps prevent the accumulation of snow and ice. Then they learned that adding beet juice to the brine could make the treatment effective at lower temperatures.

A commercial product called Geomelt uses the beet juice that's left after sugar has been extracted from sugar beets. The Ohio Department of Transportation is testing it in 11 counties, spokesman Scott Varner said Wednesday.

"Rock salt alone stops melting snow at about 18 degrees; Geomelt goes to 20 below," Varner said.  .   .   .

They use it in North Dakota where they grow sugar beets.  In Wisconsin they use cheese.  A report out of Chicago  the other day:

Many places around the country are mixing up strange de-icing concoctions, adding things like cheese brine, molasses, and potatoes.
Here in North Dakota beet juice is the not-so-secret ingredient. .  .

Of course, beet juice is abundant locally, with North Dakota's robust sugar beet industry.

Other places use the same concept, for example, in Milwaukee they use cheese brine leftover from cheese making. [cheese link added]

Potatoes?  We grow potatoes well in Alaska.  Does it make more sense to use them to clear the roads or to eat them?  And will beet or potato residue attract moose to the roads?
The Daily Iowan reported in Dec. 2011:

Effectiveness is without a doubt the most important, because human lives are the primary beneficiary. Cost is also to be considered — many municipalities, especially Iowa City, continually face crippling budget restraints. The third principal factor is the environmental impact of a given substance. For instance, road salt often makes its way into urban and other waterways, compromising drinking water and wildlife — not even to mention the detrimental effects of salt-mining.

One natural substance can make the substances we use more powerful, more cost-effective, and more sustainable: sugar beet juice. Both the University of Iowa and Iowa City recognized the advantages of beet-juice formula — often marketed as either ProMelt (pre-mixed) or GeoMelt (unmixed) — and use it to secure our streets.

"We're on our third season using GeoMelt," said John Sobaski, Iowa City's assistant superintendent for streets and traffic engineering. "We receive 1,500 of the 3,000 tons, and we treated that 1,500 tons right here on site. It doesn't take much to coat it, and we have a two- to three-day residual effect on the pavement. It does reduce corrosion, as well, and keeps the stockpile flowing nicely.

"At a cost of $10 per ton, it's been very cost-effective and beneficial."

Hold on though.   Is this just manufacturer hype that the media have eaten up uncritically?  Have the states who use this stuff  done scientific tests or are they using just anecdotal evidence to justify their expenditures on these products? 

A report by the Western Transportation Institute at the University of Montana for the State of Minnesota  is not as effusive about the  benefits of agricultural by-products (ABPs).

Additives such as agricultural by-products (ABP s) or organic by-product enhancers are also blended with these primary chemicals to improve their performances in snow and ice control. Known additives are corn syrup, corn steeps, and other corn derivatives; beet juice-sugared or de-sugared; lignin/lignosulfonate ; molasses (usually from sugar cane); brewers/distillers by- product; and glycerin. A variety of agro-based chemicals are being used either alone or as additives for other winter maintenance chemicals (73). Agro-based additives increase cost but may provide enhanced ice-melting capacity, reduce the deicer corrosiveness, and/or last longer than standard chemicals when applied on roads ( 74). Furthermore, agro-based additives utilize renewable resources and have low environmental impact. Alkoka and Kandil examined a deicing product named Magic, which was a blend of ABPs and liquid MgCl 2 ( 75 ). The working temperature of the product was found to be down to -20ºF. Pesti and Liu evaluated the use of salt brine and liquid corn salt on Nebraska highways and found liquid corn salt to be more cost- effective because it achieved bare pavement conditions quicker than salt brine and contributed to more significant road user savings (76). Fu conducted field testing in the City of Burlington, Canada of two different beet molasses based mate rials (30% beet juice + 70% salt brine) and regular salt brine (23% NaCl) us ed as pre-wetting and anti-icing agents over nine snow events. The results indicated organic materials for pre-wetting under low temperatures did not perform significantly better. With a higher cost than regular brine, organic materials can reduce the amount of chlorides released into the environment. However, the results from this study are limited to the application rates and the observe d winter conditions (77) . The Swedish National Road and Transport Institute evaluated the fricti on characteristics of three types of mixtures. A brine made with 30% sugar beet flour used to pre-wet salt resulted in no significant friction improvement. Longer term performance was observed with sand mixed with hot water (78).  Fay and Shi (19) developed a systematic approach to assist maintenance agencies in selecting or formulating their deicers, which integrates the information available pertinent to various aspects of deicers and incorporates agency priorities.

This post deserves a lot more research.  But I don't think I need to research everything.  I see one of my jobs as finding interesting possibilities and also asking questions and this issue seems relevant to Alaska.

Sunday Beach Bike Ride - Five Blog Posts In One: Heermann History, Chevron Prop Taxes, Hermosa Beach Oil, And More

B and I biked Saturday from the Marina del Rey along the beach path to the end near Palos Verdes.  What a wonderful ride.  Above are surfers from the Manhattan Beach pier.

I took this picture to show the surf board racks people have on their bikes.  When I was growing up here, the boards were much bigger and heavier and if people had bike racks, they were trailers behind the bike.  Another thing I noticed in this shot was how pale the surfers are.  Wearing wetsuits definitely blocks the sun.  These guys look like Alaskans under their wetsuits.

I liked the blue wave bike racks at the Manhattan Beach pier.  But when we got back from walking on the pier about ten minutes, a lot more bikes were parked.

Here's the pier itself.  There's a cafe and aquarium at the end.  The round house aquarium can't be very big, and even though the website calls it "Roundhouse Marine Studies Lab and Aquarium"  it seems more like a tourist attraction than a science center.  The website doesn't mention any research, but it does have a link for parties.

Further down was the Redondo Beach pier.  It's full of tacky looking tourist shops and restaurants.  I took the top picture on the way down.  On the way back it was obscured a bit by fog.  Strangely it was sunny the whole time, but if you looked ahead or back it was foggy.  I think there was just light fog all the way and sometimes it got a little thicker then dissipated.  It was probably in the high 60s. 


Based on the Seattle area's Audubon Birdweb  pictures and description, this is a Heermann's Gull.  I was eating a granola bar and it was clearly hoping I'd share.

The black feet and black tip of the orange beak give it away.  ABCBirds says:

"Close to 95% of the entire world’s population of Heermann’s Gull nests in a single location: Isla Rasa, in the Gulf of California, Mexico, which supports
300,000 breeding birds. The island is protected by the Government of Mexico as a seabird sanctuary. The other nesting locations are islands along the coast of western Mexico; there are no sites where the species has successfully bred within the U.S. The bird undertakes a reverse migration, beginning in May, when non-breeders appear off the California coast, later to be joined by breeders. It moves as far north as Vancouver Island, British Columbia, before all but a few individuals head back south during the fall and winter."

Adolphus L. Herman from here

I was curious about who Heermann was and finally found a photocopy of seven pages of Cassinia - Proceedings of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, 1907, by Witmer Stone.   Today it's posted on the Club's website, 106 years later.

He was born about 1818 in South Carolina, according to the text, and was trained as a medical doctor, but seems to have been more interested in ornithology.  He came to California in 1849.

"Upon the organization of the Pacific Railroad survey parties Dr. Heermann obtained the appointment of surgeon and naturalist to Lieut. Williamson's party, which was to explore southern California with the object of finding available passes through the mountains by which the routes along the 32d and 35th parallels might reach the coast."

The proceedings say the gull is named after him and so is a song sparrow (Melospiza melodia heermanni).  I found a Heermann's Kangaroo Rat while I was looking too that lives in California, but I couldn't document a connection to Heermann, but it's likely.  Do look at the proceedings of the Ornithological Club for the whole story on Heermann.  The author who tracked down the notes would have made a great blogger.  And his piece on Heermann has made it on line now.

And if you want to know even more, I found that Dr. Joel Weintraub

"will explore the life and accomplishments of 19th-century California naturalist Adolphus L. Heermann. You will learn about the impact Adolphus had on the natural history of California"

at Cal State University Fullerton, at Mackey Auditorium, on Feb. 24, 2014 from 10 am to 11:30 am.   I think calling him "California naturalist" is a bit of a stretch.  He did important work in California, but from the Delaware Club's publication, it seems he only spent a relatively short part of his life in California.

Moving along on our bike ride - not necessarily in chronological order - we also rode by the Chevron refinery in El Segundo. [Note:  as you go through the following on Chevron's property taxes, you'll see I missed a key point, then found it.  I leave it in so you can see the process of my thinking and writing on this, not just the cleaned up (and possible still erroneous) final version.]

I wouldn't have known it was Chevron - there was nothing that said it was - except that B pointed it out to me.  He said the massive wall with spikes on top was new.

From Chevron's El Segundo website:

"We've been a part of this community since 1911 when the main product produced was kerosene for lamps. In fact, the City of El Segundo (Spanish for "the Second") was named after the refinery, then Standard Oil's second in California. Today, the El Segundo Refinery provides jobs for more than 1,100 Chevron employees and 500 contractors, covers approximately 1,000 acres, has more than 1,100 miles of pipelines, and is capable of refining 290 thousand barrels of crude oil per day. Transportation fuels -- gasoline, jet and diesel -- are the primary products refined from the crude oil. We are responsible caretakers of our land and the environment, we operate our own electricity, steam, and water treatment facilities, and even maintain one of the only two remaining preserves in the world for the endangered  El Segundo Blue Butterfly. "

Previously it only had a chain link fence, he said.  And eventually the medieval fortress wall ended and the old fence began.




From KOLO 8 TV, April 18, 2013:

 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Tests of pipe samples from Chevron Corp.'s refinery in El Segundo found corrosion to an extent similar to the pipe that failed and caused a large fire at the company's Richmond facility.

The federal Chemical Safety Board and California Division of Occupational Safety and Health issued a report Thursday that found up to 60-percent wall loss in a pipe at Chevron's El Segundo refinery that processes the same type of crude.

Chevron voluntarily inspected pipes at its El Segundo crude unit after the Aug. 6 fire in Richmond caused by a corroded old pipe.

There's also a lawsuit over Chevron's tax deal with the city of El Segundo.  One can imagine the kind of influence Chevron has on this town.  Here's a snippet from a Daily Breeze article in October  14, 2012:

A county civil grand jury is looking into El Segundo's decision to negotiate tax deals with the Chevron oil refinery, including a 1994 pact over utility-users' taxes that has come under scrutiny in recent months.

Members of the grand jury last month interviewed former City Manager Doug Willmore, who was fired in February and alleges his ouster came in retaliation for proposing that Chevron pay higher taxes. Willmore said he met for more than two hours with five members of the volunteer grand jury.

A followup article on April 23, 2013 article says they negotiated a deal:

"El Segundo city leaders this week finalized a deal with the Chevron oil refinery that will yield an estimated $128 million in net new revenues over the next 15 years, bringing negotiations over the company's tax payments to a close.

The City Council on Tuesday passed the so-called tax resolution agreement on a 4-1 vote, with little discussion. Councilman Dave Atkinson was opposed. .  ."

Look at the dates.  This deal was reported April 23, 2013 as having happened "this week."  Above, the KOLO report on the pipeline corrosion was on April 18, 2013, just a few days before.  But KOLO is in Reno.  I can't find any coverage in the Daily Breeze on that until July 15, 2013.  (That doesn't mean it wasn't reported, only that I can't find it.  But I did several google searches and searched the Daily Breeze website.)  Just find it curious they didn't report it when many other outlets far from them did.  And the July 15 article was from the Contra Costa newspaper which is in the San Francisco Bay area.


And $128 million over a 15 year period?   That comes to a little less than $1.9 million a year for 1000 acres (according to Chevron's website, cited above) of prime Southern California waterfront property.  When you get to Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach just past the refinery, the beachfront is lined with million dollar houses.

From eConsultant, we get this:

Place: Hermosa Beach, CA
Population: 129,251
Median Home Price: $1,200,000
Average Property Taxes: $5,884 (2006)

Assuming four properties per acre - just a for a rough estimate - that would be over $20,000 of taxes per acre.  Chevron has 1000 acres.  That would come to $20,000,000 in property taxes per year.  Times 15 years, it would $300,000,000.  And they worked out a deal for $28,000,000 over 15 years.

One could argue that the Chevron land wouldn't be worth that much.  Who would want to build on top of a former oil refinery?  But that only tells us how much Chevron has cost this area.  What would it cost to clean up the land?

Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it sounds like Chevron's got a great deal going.   This is just a quick and dirty calculation, but if I lived in El Segundo, I'd want to check this out further.

As I looked more carefully, there was something I was missing - the $128 million is "net new revenues,"  but the article isn't totally clear on how much this will be.  There's this sentence later on in the piece:

"Chevron's first-year base payment totals $11.1 million - a figure that reflects its 2012 taxes with more than $5 million in added funding. "

Does that mean it's $11 million including the added $5 million?  That's still lower than the $20 million a year I estimated - but my numbers are just back of the envelope calculations and I'm sure people in El Segundo could explain the difference.  

And in Hermosa Beach, there were lots of those million dollar homes with these banners on them. 

Here's a snipped from the StopHermosaBeachOil website:

A few facts: The proposed drill site is located four blocks from the beach on Valley Drive, surrounded by family homes, small businesses, beautiful South Park and our iconic Green Belt. From this site, the oil company seeks to drill, produce, and process up to 8,000 barrels of oil and 2.5 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The company plans to directionally drill in all directions under homes and below the sea floor to the one-mile boundary of tideland that the City holds in trust for the benefit of the People of California. The oil company’s proposition is, essentially, to plant an “offshore” oil rig four blocks inland from the beach.

Our website provides well-researched information, citing source documents, which we view as fundamental to helping our community reach a well-informed and educated decision about the prospect of drilling in Hermosa Beach.

It is our belief that the City’s ban on oil drilling, which voters studied and wisely adopted in 1932, 1958, and once again in 1995, and which the California Court of Appeals unanimously upheld in 2001, remains our best assurance to secure the welfare of our community and avoid the grave risks inherent in any oil drilling operation.

The company that wants to drill the oil is privately owned  E&B Natural Resources and here's what Business Week says about their President. 

Mr. Steve Layton has been the President at E&B Natural Resources Management Corporation since 2000. Mr. Layton joined E & B Natural Resource Management Corporation in 1983. In 1983, he Layton co-founded Alma Energy and Equinox Oil. He served as President of Alma and Equinox from 1997 to 2000. In November 2000, he purchased the Alma and Equinox assets out of bankruptcy and formed E & B Natural Resource Management Corporation. Mr. Layton has been active in the Independent Petroleum Association of America, Louisiana Independent Oil and Gas Association, and the California Independent Producers Association. He served as President of the National Stripper Well Association and a member of the National Petroleum Council. He has been appointed to the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission by Texas Governors Richards, Bush and Perry. Mr. Layton holds BS and MBA from University Of Tulsa.

And as we were getting back to the Marina where B parked the car - it was about a 25 mile round trip bike ride and B didn't want to push his back more than that - we got to the rise where people were taking beginning hang gliding classes.  Fortunately - given how long this post is already - I thought I pushed the button to video tape the flight, but it didn't go on until I 'stopped' the video which got a picture of dirt before I shut off the camera.

 

 If you click on the picture, you can read the poster on the hang gliding classes.  And, if the lessons don't go well, at the end of the trail, where we saw the Heermann's gull, you can get a beach wheel chair.

This post got way out of hand.  But I think it also is revealing about how much we don't see when we wander around places.  Just trying to get a little background about the things we saw led me to all sorts of (I would say interesting, but you can fill in your own adjectives) things.  It's a reminder to me that everything is more than it seems on the surface.

Gov's Rejection of ACA Funds Like The Religious Couple Refusing Medical Care For Their Ill Child

 NPR (and others) reported in April 2013:

A faith-healing Philadelphia couple on probation after they refused to seek medical care for a son who later died has now lost a second child.

Instead of taking $2.9 billion in federal aid to expand medicaid (with a cost of about $250 million to the state over seven years) and taking about 20,000 Alaskans off the uninsured list, our governor instead relies on the "Invisible Hand" of the free market to take care of these people.

To me that's very similar to not taking your sick kid to a doctor because you believe in God's will.

How many Alaskans will suffer and die because of his refusal to take the ACA funding?

This is not to say that the free market doesn't make a very significant contribution to US prosperity, but unregulated, it also makes a huge contribution to the massive transfer of wealth to what's been popularly called the 1% from the rest. 

I've already posted about the study that the Governor himself commissioned that said expanding medicaid would cost the state  $240 million from 2014-2020
and gain the state $2.9 billion from the Feds.    And about 20,000 fewer Alaskans would be uninsured.

Instead the Governor's ideological beliefs in the miracles of the free market, apparently, have led him to not accept the Federal ACA funding to expand Medicaid in Alaska.

I have no doubt that many people will become unnecessarily ill, miss work, even lose their jobs, and many will die prematurely because of the governor's decision.  Just like this child in Pennsylvania died because of his parent's decision to let God, not modern medicine, save their child. 

I'm reminded of this because of  a new study by Chuck Burnham, Legislative Analyst from the Alaska Legislative Research Services  requested by Sen. Senator Bill Wielechowski.  It adds to the previous studies already showing the overwhelming benefits to the state of expanding Medicaid.   Here's the summary:

Summary  

Among the provisions of  the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111 ‐ 148), or ACA, when it was enacted is a requirement that states expand Medicaid programs to cover individuals with incomes of up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. 1 Pursuant to the June 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius , Medicaid expansion under the ACA became optional for the states. As you know, on November 15, 2013, Governor Parnell announced his intention to reject Medicaid expansion. Although this decision will have far ‐ reaching and, to some degree, unknown impacts, we confine this report to the specific questions you raised.

Mortality

Although we located no Alaska ‐ specific research on the possible impact on mortality of rejecting Medicaid expansion, a significant body of research shows that health insurance improves access to medical care and outcomes related to a wide range of serious illnesses and disease. Recently published research specifically on Medicaid expansion in other states suggests that rates of mortality decrease among those who are enrolled in the program as compared to the uninsured. Due to differences among populations and Medicaid eligibility thresholds, we believe applying specific numerical finding to Alaska’s uninsured population based on these results would be improper and problematic; however, it is reasonable to conclude that some of the specific benefits found elsewhere would generally accrue to newly enrolled Medicaid participants in Alaska.

Impacts on Healthcare Facilities

The ACA requires reductions in certain payments and reimbursement rates to hospitals. These reductions are more than offset, however, by the reductions in uncompensated care and increased revenues that are projected to occur through expansion of Medicaid. Nationwide, the net effect is estimated at $2.59 in revenues for every $1 in reductions. In Alaska, hospitals expect additional revenues of roughly $60 million per year and a reduction in uncompensated care of over 85 1 Text of the ACA can be accessed at http://www.gpo.gov/f dsys/granule/PLAW ‐ 111publ148/PLAW ‐ 111publ148/content ‐ detail.html . Portions of the federal healthcare overhaul are also contained in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111 ‐ 152), http://www.gpo.go v/fdsys/pkg/PLAW ‐ 111publ152/pdf/PLAW ‐ 111publ152.pdf .  L EGISLATIVE R ESEARCH S ERVICES , LRS 14.117 J ANUARY 8, 2014 — P AGE 2 S ELECTED I MPACTS OF R EJECTING M EDICAID E XPANSION percent. However, because Alaska declined to expand Medicaid, hospitals will absorb the reductions implemented by the ACA without the offsetting benefits.

Effects on Health Insurance Premiums

Research suggests that in 2009 uncompensated care added roughly $257 to premiums per privately insured individual Alaskan, or about eight percent of total private insurance premiums. We are unable to isolate the impact of rejecting Medicaid expansion on insurance premiums; however, implementation of the ACA’s health insurance exchanges coupled with Medicaid expansion in Alaska has been projected to result in savings that could reduce the premium increases associated with cost shifting from $301 in 2014 without the ACA / Medicaid expansion to $45 with the healthcare act fully implemented.

Job Creation

One study estimates that additional Medicaid spending under the ACA would result in the creation of over 1,500 jobs in 2014 with annual increases through 2020 when 4,000 new positions are expected. In that year, these jobs could provide approximately $220 million in wages.

Federal Funding

Three studies on Medicaid expansion projected resultant additional federal funding in “mid ‐ case” enrollment scenarios at between roughly $1.1 billion and $2.9 billion in aggregate for the years 2014 to 2020. Increases in state spending in the same projections ranges from $79 million to $240 million. All three reports estimated federal to state spending ratios under expansion would be over $12 to $1

LAPD's Oil Free Vehicles

I've seen mounted police around Venice Beach before, but I was a little surprised to see them as I crossed Lincoln at Rose.  Lincoln's a major four lane urban street - it's Highway 101's route through parts of LA before it gets back to the coastline.  But there they were, closing in on what appeared to be a homeless man with a stuffed shopping cart (upper right.)


The LAPD website says their

The full-time Mounted Platoon was established in 1987 as a component of the elite Metropolitan Division and is currently composed of 35 full-time sworn police personnel consisting of 1 Lieutenant, 4 Sergeants and 30 Police Officers. City funds were allocated for the purchase of 40 horses to be used by the officers during the performance of their field duties. Also purchased through funds donated by the Ahmanson Foundation were a fleet of 8 trucks and trailers to transport the officers and their mounts to the various details, and a state-of-the-art police equestrian center appropriately named "The Ahmanson Equestrian Facility."  The two-acre Ahmanson Equestrian Facility consists of:

• A forty-horse barn
• Administrative offices
• Locker rooms
• Workout facility
• Covered riding arena
• Hot walker, round pen, and necessary training equipment 

"Hot" in the last item refers, not to the person walking the horse, but, according to Wikipedia, to

"hot, sweaty horses after a workout, particularly after work on a racetrack."

 In this case it refers to a mechanical walker.

But what were the cops doing in a busy traffic area?  Here are the duties for the Mounted Platoon according to the website:

General duties of the Mounted Platoon

Demonstrations - The Mounted Platoon is used regularly at the scene of demonstrations and unruly assemblies. Over the years, squad tactics have been developed to work in concert with officers on foot, enabling the Los Angeles Police Department to control large groups of protesters in a firm yet professional manner.

Crowd Management - The Mounted Platoon is deployed frequently in crowd management situations where large groups have gathered for festivals and parades. The appearance of the Mounted Platoon at these functions provides visible security and a sense of assurance.

Crime Suppression - The Mounted Platoon provides high-profile crime suppression in targeted crime areas. Mounted officers offer an increased level of visibility to both the criminal element and to the community at large. The officers are deployed throughout the City and at various hours.
Additional Mounted Platoon duties include public park enforcement, public beach enforcement during the summer months, and search and rescue of lost or missing persons in mountainous and dense terrain areas of the City of Los Angeles.

Well, since there was no demonstration, no large crowds, and it wasn't in mountainous terrain, I'm guessing it had to be crime suppression.  So, this intersection I bike through daily when visiting my mom is a targeted crime area?    Were they just patrolling the area on horseback or were they looking for something or someone in particular?

I would imagine there's a different sort of reaction when someone is approached by cops on horseback than there is when a police car pulls up.

 Trying to find out how horses affect the people police apprehend got me to some interesting findings.  KRS-One equates overseer to officer in this video - lyrics of the chorus below.


KRS-One lyrics to "Sound of Da Police"

Overseer
Overseer
Overseer
Overseer
Officer, Officer, Officer, Officer!
Yeah, officer from overseer
You need a little clarity?
Check the similarity!
The overseer rode around the plantation
The officer is off patroling all the nation
The overseer could stop you what you're doing
The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing
The overseer had the right to get ill
And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill
The officer has the right to arrest
And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!
(Woop!) They both ride horses
After 400 years, I've _got_ no choices!
The police them have a little gun
So when I'm on the streets, I walk around with a bigger one
(Woop-woop!) I hear it all day
Just so they can run the light and be upon their way


This article from The Nation's article on the use of horses at Occupy Wall Street seems to demonstrate the lyrics: 

At least a dozen officers on horseback entered the barricaded area soon after demonstrators arrived. For a time, the horses simply stood before the crowd, not doing very much. Then, a so-called “white-shirt”—a high-ranking officer on foot —suddenly removed one section of the barricade and guided a horse directly into the crowd. The mounted officer spurred his horse forward, ramming demonstrators, and the scene quickly descended into chaos. A chant of “animal cruelty” broke out, and people were clearly frightened for their safety: horses can inflict serious harm, especially in volatile, high-density situations.
Video footage of the incident shows that at least one of the horses attempted to turn and retreat, according to Barbara Lynn Sherman, a professor at North Carolina State University with expertise in equine behavior. Professor Sherman examined the footage at The Nation’s request. The animal appeared to either slip or momentarily “spook,” Sherman said, “a common response in horses, particularly when startled in response to fearful stimuli.” In fact, she added, police horses are specifically trained to avoid the “spook” reaction while on duty.
Did the NYPD abuse its horses by bringing them into the situation? Peter Singer, the Princeton philosopher and author of Animal Liberation, a landmark 1975 treatise on the rights of non-human organisms, calls it “unethical.” Reviewing the footage, he says, “At least one (horse) appears to be forced to do something—charge into the crowd—that it tries very hard to avoid.”

Christie's Great Performance

I missed the news yesterday so I knew nothing about the emails from Chris Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly.  They indicate that the traffic study that jammed the nation's busiest bridge for a week and clogged the streets of Fort Lee, New Jersey was not the reason of the jam.

Instead it was done intentionally to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee who did not endorse Republican Chris Christie for governor.

I didn't know any of that when I got up this morning and my mom had on Chris Christie's news conference on CNN.

I haven't watched Christie closely.  I live in Alaska.  New Jersey's far away.  But my superficial knowledge was that he was the sensible Republican among those being mentioned as potential presidential candidates.  He worked with President Obama and praised his hurricane Sandy response just before the 2012 election causing other Republicans explode.  He seems to be able to work with Democrats and won reelection as governor by a wide margin in a Democratic state.  He was, I understood, the most likely Republican to be able to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, but the question was whether he could survive the Republican primaries.

So that was the background I watched the news conference with.

I was impressed.  He sounded sincere.  He didn't seem to be using any notes.  He said the right things about his responsibility - he didn't know anything until yesterday, but he's the governor so he's responsible - and he'd fired the Kelly as soon as he learned about the incriminating emails.

He went on and on - almost two hours.  It was riveting television.  He was good.  He's obviously both intelligent and experienced.  In response to a question about why he didn't ask Kelly about what actually happened before firing her, he said he fired her for lying to him, not for what she did.  Since there were state and federal investigations already announced, if he questioned her it actually might be seen as inappropriate.  He mentioned his own experience as a prosecutor.

He expressed his sadness and disappointment with a close associate he trusted who lied to him.  

But we saw the Wolf of Wall Street the other night. Leonardo DiCaprio as Wall Street huckster Jordan Belfort makes me pause in my judgement.   Belfort could sell anyone anything.  There's a scene that everyone should see.  Belfort is starting his own brokerage firm and he's teaching his crew how to make cold calls to sell penny stocks - ones where the broker gets 50% commission - that are worth basically nothing.  He's got a client on the speaker phone and smoothly tells him the thickest lies about about the potential of the stock, while his body language to his employees tells the story about reeling in the fish and then screwing him.

Everyone should see this scene and have it implanted in their brain so that it rises to one's consciousness every time a car salesman, a cable tv or phone salesman or a stockbroker opens his mouth.  People should see DiCaprio thrusting his pelvis for his salesmen while he so sincerely assures the client that nothing could go wrong. 

I walked out of the three hour movie telling my wife that as skeptical as I already am, this movie makes it hard to trust any one.

And so that's what I brought to this news conference with Christie.  Christie's performance was perfect.  But I also wondered if he were thrusting his pelvis in his head.  There are so many questions.


Was Kelly the culprit or the scapegoat? 

How could he have a staff person he worked closely with for so many years who would lie to him like this?

How did he misjudge who she was so enormously?

Why would they jam up the 'busiest bridge in the world?' to punish a political opponent who, according to Christie, wasn't even on his radar?   This reeks of the kind of dirty tricks that, while both parties commit them, have become more associated with Republicans since Watergate and then the rise of Karl Rove.  

Politics attracts people who need or want power, power over others.  People who need power, I suspect, feel some inferiority, some lack, that this power will help them overcome, that will show others that they are somebody.  And such people seem particularly vulnerable to using their power inappropriately.  This was truly a petty act of retribution.  Petty only in the sense of inappropriately demonstrating one's ability to take revenge for some assumed slight.  But the impact on people was hardly petty.  I saw petty people like this with giant chips on their shoulders in 2011 when I blogged the state legislature in Juneau. 

Was this even a plot by the more conservative wing of the party to derail Christie's presidential campaign?  Or less likely, but plausible, a Clinton plot?

The biggest question outstanding seems to be whether Christie's performance today was genuine or whether he actually knew about this.  If he knew, and today's news conference was just a giant lie, I don't see how he can recover as a presidential candidate.  I don't see how he could stay in office in New Jersey for four more years.

If follow up investigations support his claims of innocence, I'd say today's performance shows him as a very competent leader.  People will still attack him for letting Kelly into his inner circle.  But lots of people have secrets that they hide from those around them and other politicians have had close aides resign because of scandals.

I would note that CNN had a feeding frenzy over this story, repeating parts of the news conference over and over again.  


[UPDATE 9pm - whatever the outcome, this political cartoon by Bill Bramhall of the NY Daily News is priceless:

click image to go to the source:  Bill Bramhall/NY Daily News

"Did you realize that 'gnu-dung' is a palindrome?" Or Hyenas' Bum Rap

I'm about halfway through Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoirs. Nearby where Sapolsky's studying baboons in southwestern Kenya, Laurence of the Hyenas is studying hyenas.  At first Sapolsky

"had given him wide berth, as I was terrified of him.  He was a large hulking man with a tendency to sequester himself in his tent at length to bellow hideous stark Scottish folk dirges.  Even more unsettling, when perturbed or irritated, he had the unconscious habit of thrusting his chin and heavy dark beard at bothersome males in a manner than any primatologist instantly recognizes as a very legit dominance display." (p. 121)

But eventually, in the midst of thousands of migrating wildebeests* at Sapolsky's camp, Laurence appears with the gnu-dung question.  Sapolsky goes on,

"In fact, I had not.  The ice was broken.  In the twenty years since, he has taught me to bellow Scottish folk songs, made futile attempts to chip away at my ignorance about car engines, tended me during times of malarial attacks and failed experiments and homesickness.  He's the nearest thing I have to a big brother, and he's been damn good at it."  (p. 121)

It's a reminder that we shouldn't project personalities onto people we don't really know.  There are enough people in my life whom I've made wrong assumptions about at first, but eventually, we connected, they turned out to be different from what I assumed,  and we became good friends.  And a few weren't the good folks I thought they were.  But  I've learned that under whatever facade I'm seeing, there's a real human being and if I can connect to that person, things will be fine.  But that also includes no ulterior motives on my part and my willingness to give to that person as much as I get from them.

With Laurence and Robert, gnu-dung broke the ice.

Hyena screenshot from Marlin Perkins' Wild Kingdom

But I really wanted to get to the hyenas.

Another case of changing one's view of, in this case, a species.  This blog is about knowing and recognizing that we know a lot less than we think.  And a lot of what we know is just wrong, as in this example.   (Of course, we should take the new information with a grain of salt too.)

"Hyenas are neither canines nor felines and have doleful beautiful eyes, wet noses, and jaws that can snap off your arm in a second.  They also have gotten an utterly bum rap in the media.  We know all about hyenas:  it's dawn on the savanna, there's something big and dead with a lion feeding on it, and Marlin Perkins is up to his elbows in the gore, filming the scene.  You know the score.  Ol' Marlin is waxing poetic about the noble lion and his predatory skills, said king of the jungle, covered with his usual array of flies, is munching away at somebody's innards, and the camera will occasionally tear itself away from this tableau of carnivory to pan the edges.  And there they are, skulky, cowardly, dirty, snively, skeevy, no-account hyenas lurking at the periphery, trying to grab a piece of the vittles.  Marlin practically invites us to heap our contempt on the hyenas:  scavengers.  Now, it's not entirely clear to me why we laud the predators so much and so disdain the scavengers, since most of us are hardening our arteries wolfing down carcasses that someone else killed, but that is our bias.  Lions get lionized, while hyenas never get to vocalize at the beginning of MGM movies. (p. 122)

(He's having his fun with Perkins, but in the video from which I got the screenshot above Perkins says the hyena is a formidable hunter.)


We learn that a carnivology revolution occurred when the army unloaded some early generation night goggles on zoologists and they could now watch what happened at night.

"Redemption for the hyenas.  It turns out that they are fabulous hunters, working cooperatively, taking down beasties ten times** their size.  They have one of the highest percentages of successful hunts of any big carnivore.  And you know who has one of the worst?  Lions.  They're big, conspicuous, relatively slow.  It's much easier for them just to key in on cheetahs and hyenas and rip them off.  That's why all those hyenas are lurking around at dawn looking mealy and unphotogenic - they just spent the whole night hunting the damn thing and who's eating breakfast now?"   (p. 122)

*from National Geographic:   

The ungainly gnu earned the Afrikaans name wildebeest, or "wild beast," for the menacing appearance presented by its large head, shaggy mane, pointed beard, and sharp, curved horns. In fact, the wildebeest is better described as a reliable source of food for the truly menacing predators of the African savanna: lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and hyenas.

**Ten times their size?  Well I checked.  Adult hyenas weigh about 150-180 pounds (Wikipeda  and National Geographic differ.) An adult giraffe weighs 1800 (female) to 2600 (males) pounds.  But can a hyena kill a giraffe?  Yes, but only young ones says What Eats?  However, I did find a video and some posts that said hyena packs can kill cape buffalo and they weigh up to 1900 pounds. 

[This post, like the previous one seems to be having Feedburner problems.  I thought these had been overcome, but they are back.] 

National Right Wing Context Of Alaska State House Sustainable Education Task Force Report

This is Part 2 on the Task Force.  Part 1 gives an overview of the different contexts of this report and focuses on the task force membership.  All three House members are Republicans and the other members, if not all Republicans, heavily lean that way.  This is clearly a House Majority task force (as the url says) and not a House task force.

In this post I want to look at the national context of this report which includes advocating for school vouchers and charter schools as well as cutting the education budget. 

Nationally the attack on public schools comes from different aspects of the right. 

• There’s the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
• There’s ALEC’s free market educational philosophy and agenda.
• There’s the religious right’s attempts to get vouchers to pay for private religious schools, and ongoing efforts to add prayer and 'intelligent design' to public schools. 

No Child Left Behind - had standards that were guaranteed to label more and more public schools as ‘failing.’  There's plenty out there on this point. You can look at this example in Vermont  or this one about Texas.

Diane Ravitch served as Assistant Secretary of Education under George H.W. Bush and advocated for NCLB testing and for charter schools.  Since then she's changed her assessment and written a book called:  The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.  Here's a bit of what Diane Ravitch told NPR.

RAVITCH: When I believed that they would work, they hadn't been tried. Once they were tried, I was convinced that they didn't work and, in fact, not only were they failing, but they're ruining American education and they're actually leading the way today towards privatization of public education, which I think would be a disaster.  [In the context of the interview, 'they' refers to 'these ideas,' which seems to refer to standardized testing and charter schools.]

Many people, like Ravitch, believed this would help schools.  But I believe there were others who intended this to label public schools as failing so that it would be easier to get voters to approve voucher systems that would take public money and give it to private schools.  We’ve seen what a monumental failure that was with higher ed where private, for profit schools popped up, helped students apply for federal loans which went directly to the schools, and left the student to pay off the loan whether they succeeded in school or not. 


ALEC - is a Koch Brothers funded organization that focuses on state legislatures.  I first noticed and blogged about ALEC when I attended a lunch presentation they gave in Juneau in 2011.

ALEC has taken as its apparent structural model the non-partisan National Conference of State Legislatures, whose mission is to:

• Improve the quality and effectiveness of state legislatures.
• Promote policy innovation and communication among state legislatures.
• Ensure state legislatures a strong, cohesive voice in the federal system.

and Council of State Governments which

"fosters the exchange of insights and ideas to help state officials shape public policy. This offers unparalleled regional, national and international opportunities to network, develop leaders, collaborate and create problem-solving partnerships."

While no organization is free of some sort of ideology, the NCSL and CSG have had as their key 'ideology' good government in general without a right or left wing bias.  Both Republican and Democratic legislators are members and attend their conferences.

ALEC, on the other hand, uses the NCSL and CSG model and inserts a highly ideological right wing agenda.  ALEC has corporate members as well as legislative members.  Reading their September/October 2013 Educational Edition of Inside ALEC plus what I've learned about them over the last two years, I'm convinced their educational strategy is basically to

• Declare Public schools as failures, and
• Use the language of choice to transfer public education money to private schools

1.   Declaring Public schools failures

ALEC does this subtly in its September/October 2013 Inside ALEC Education Edition.

Traditional US public schools, it tells us:

“are local monopolies with all the attendant inefficiencies and perverse incentives common to such entities.”   The solution to local monopolies “shifted control over the schools further away from the parents and children to distant state and federal bureaucracies.” (p, 9)

Basically they are saying, since the local system didn't work, it got taken over by state and federal bureaucracy which also doesn't work.   Thus, there is no way for public schools to work. - locally run is bad and state and fed run are also bad.  Just like with NCLB, public schools are failures.  The solution is private schools. Of course, there is some truth to what they say because every solution comes with unintended side effects.  However, they fail to acknowledge any such negative side-effects with their solution - the market.  We've seen in the last decade some of the serious problems of letting the market solve our problems. 

2.  Using the language of choice,  their strategy is to destroy public schools by transferring public money to private schools.


Inside ALEC’s Education Edition has a couple of articles that highlight programs that transfer money from public schools to private schools.  For example:

“Educational Savings Accounts

Eligible parents can choose to withdraw their child from the assigned public school if they feel the school is not meeting their child’s learning needs. Arizona deposits 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child in the public school into the parents’ Empowerment Scholarship Account. Parents can then use those funds to pay for private school tuition and a host of other education-related services and expenses.
That flexibility is what makes an ESA unique: the accounts are distinct from school choice options like vouchers or tax credits because they allow a parent to divvy-up their funds and purchase educational products, services and schools in an à la carte fashion.” (pp 10,15)

It's that easy.  We take 90% of the money from the public school and let the parent spend it on private sector options.  The articles raise important issues, but ignore the problems with vouchers.  That's a whole other discussion.  Now I'm just putting the Alaska Task Force Report in context of these national forces. 

Religious Right

I know.  Such labels are tricky.  I'm referring to those members of (mainly Christian) denominations who believe their view of the world is the only correct one,  that everyone else is just wrong, and who fight legislation and court rulings that separate (Christian) religion from state sponsorship such as prayer in school, public displays of religious symbols, religiously based bans on abortion and homosexuality, etc.

These folks send, or want to send, their kids to private religious schools instead of public schools.  Or they run the private religious schools.  In either case, in addition to their religious beliefs, they have a financial interest in spending public funds on private religious schools.  I can understand a parent not wanting their kids to go to schools that teach them values different from what they believe.  But inserting Christianity into public schools does the very same thing to the kids of non-Christians.  As a democracy, public schools should be the place where people learn to respect people of other faiths and backgrounds.  But that's a discussion for another day. 

A number of Christian schools encourage their members to take advantage of existing voucher programs.  For example:

"Many families desire a Christian education for their children; but limited finances have prevented this from being an option – until now!
Indiana’s recently passed School Choice (voucher) program allows qualifying families to receive a credit (school voucher) toward their education at a private school. If you are such a family and you meet financial and admissions qualifying criteria, now is the perfect time to consider Blackhawk Christian School for your child’s education." 

(I find this Christian school's 'brand' interesting. Blackhawk was  Native American who fought with the British against the US.   Blackhawk is also the name of a military helicopter.  WWJS?)

More examples of the transfer of public money to religious schools through vouchers can be seen here.

One school in North Carolina made it a policy to refuse public vouchers.  Their reason:  to maintain the right to refuse students - like the children of gay couples. 

Even Orthodox Jews often support vouchers,  The separation of church and state seems to be less important than financing their religious schools  But Conservative and Reform Jews  whose kids are more likely to go to public schools, do not support vouchers.

But some of the supporters of vouchers in Tennessee and Louisiana had second thoughts when they found out that Islamic schools would also be eligible for public funding.   

These reactions against Islamic schools getting voucher funding demonstrates my points above.  These are folks who, despite the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion,  believe that this is a Christian nation, and those guarantees only apply to Christians.   Their proclamations about religious freedom really are about Christian freedom.


For many, it's less about education than it is about being anti-government and about moving public education money over to private, Christian, schools.



Conclusion

The national trends affect Alaskan Republicans.  Some attend ALEC conferences and use ALEC's model legislation to write their own.  These national ideas get into their Party Platform.   Here are some excerpts from the education section of the Alaska Republican Party platform:

"A. We support parental choice of public, private, charter, vocational and home-based educational alternatives for Alaska’s students.  .   .

B. We support accountability in public education, including measurement of student academic achievement and cognitive ability by standardized testing in reading, writing and mathematics. We support local control of public education provided it does not limit competition or parental choice. We oppose all federal control of or influence on education. We support the parental right to have access to all educational information reaching their child.

Accountability sounds good and some kinds of testing are necessary.  But the language that comes next echoes ALEC's proclamation about local government control being problematic along with federal control.  Notice, they don't oppose state control though.

C. We support daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, including the words “under God,” proper display of the United States and Alaska Flags, and active promotion of patriotism in our schools. We also support teaching the accurate historical Judeo-Christian foundation of our country and the importance of our founding fathers, the Declaration of Independence, federal and State constitutions, and other founding documents."

To their credit, they also support learning about Alaska Native people.

"D. We support the teaching of Alaska’s history and geography with appropriate acknowledgment and respect for Alaska Native people, cultures, and languages."

But, then they also support Creation Science:

"F. We support teaching various models and theories for the origins of life and our universe, including Creation Science or Intelligent Design. If evolution outside a species (macro-evolution) is taught, evidence disputing the theory should also be taught."

That national context seems to have had its influence on this Alaska task force.  I'd note that one of the co-chairs - Rep. Tammie Wilson - was one of only four legislators to attend (well, to stick around after getting a sandwich)  the 2011 ALEC presentation in the Capitol in Juneau (along with Reps. Gatto and Keller and Sen. Dyson.)

Any person who pays attention knows that American public schools have serious problems.   The left and the right agree on this.  I have lots of issues with the public school system and I suspect that a number of them overlap problems people on the right have.  It's the solutions we seem to disagree on.

The anti-government philosophy of many on the right would destroy public schools altogether.  The Starve The Beast philosophy that arose in the Reagan era is alive and well still today even though the facts would say it doesn't work.  These folks want to move public education money into the private sector. 

In the final installment on this Task Force Report, I'll look at the full two page report and what it says. 

Hong Kong Film Legend Run Run Shaw Dead at 106 or 107

My son sent this link to me.  When we lived in Hong Kong, Run Run Shaw's presence was everywhere.  Particularly close to home for us was the Run Run Shaw auditorium on the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus where we lived and I worked.  My son agreed to go see a traditional Chinese orchestra performance there if I would see the first Die Hard movie there with him. 

Run Run Shaw, Father Of The Kung Fu Movie, Dead At 107

AP Photo / Kin Cheung

KELVIN K. CHAN – January 7, 2014, 9:26 AM EST728

HONG KONG (AP) — Run Run Shaw built a Hong Kong movie and TV empire that nurtured rising talents like actor Chow Yun-fat and director John Woo, inspired Hollywood filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino and produced the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner."

Shaw's prolific studio helped bring kung fu films to the world but he also passed on the chance to sign one of the biggest names in that genre: the young Bruce Lee.
The missed opportunity was a rare misstep for Shaw, who died Tuesday, according to a statement from Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which he helped found in 1967. No cause of death was given.
His studio gave his age as 107, but his age according to the Western counting method may have been 106 because Chinese traditionally consider a child to be 1 at birth. TVB said he was born in 1907, but would not provide his birth date.
His Shaw Brothers Studios, once among the world's largest, churned out nearly 1,000 movies and gave young directors like Woo their start. He produced a handful of U.S. films that also included the 1979 disaster thriller "Meteor."

 The rest is at TPM.

When It Comes To Clouds, You Have To Be At The Right Place At The Right Time - And Wear Your Bike Helmet!

I think these might be altocumulus clouds.  They were there as I did a late afternoon bike ride a couple of hours ago.  They were gone soon after. 


In the photo below, I liked the way the trees were silhouetted and a little sunlight touched them.  But the way it came out here is very different from what I saved.  I guess you always have to play with the screen - the street should be very much in the shade. 

 J was walking about where I took the cloud photo about 30 minutes earlier. A guy on a fancy bike with biking shorts and shirt came speeding along toward her (he was in the bike lane and she was on the side walk) when all of a sudden he flew over the handle bars and hit his head on the street.  She called 911 on her cell phone and waited until they arrived.   She said he didn't get up, his head was bloody, and he was talking but not too coherently.

This is a flat, recently repaved section with a good marked and separate bike path and little traffic on a wide street (not the one above).  It was light still when he went down, but J said it was dark when the emergency folks arrived.  It was just at that time between sunset and dark.  So even on a day with great weather, on a good smooth, level road, with no traffic around, something can happen.  I'm not suggesting people should stay in bed, but wear your helmet!  J talked to the emergency folks and then walked on home before they took him away. 

Northierthanthou Stopped By

I loved the name.  He's from Barrow, it turns out, so he can get away with it.  He left comments here on pictures (not mine) that I really like too.

I checked his blog.  There's lots of good stuff there.  I'm adding it to my Alaska blog list.  Something I haven't done for a while.  His current one looks at atheism in a way I'd never thought of before:  Silencing the Base Villains and Sending us Back to the Old Narratives: Yep ‘Atheism’ Again

His "About Page" has a long, long list of of comments from people thanking him for leaving a comment on their blog.  When I first started blogging, one of the recommendations for increasing blog traffic was to stop at other blogs and leave comments.  It often got the other blogger to leave a comment at my blog.  In those days when I didn't have a counter the only way I knew if someone had visited was a comment.

I checked out some of the blogs he's visited.  My first thought was to make a snarky comment about living in Barrow and spare time to live on the internet, but people who live in snow-covered houses should throw . . .

And besides, he's visited a lot of interesting blogs.  Here's a brief sample of snippets:

A lot of the blogs he leaves tracks on have lots of images and I don't want to take others images if I can help it.  But I couldn't help it with this one from  Maxpics: 

borrowed from Maxpics

From Jasmine Tea and Jaozi, a reflection on how English speakers say thank you so much:

A year or so ago my teacher Annie told me that I was doing something that most English-speaking westerners do – which is not usual in China – I was saying ‘thank you” too often.
I didn’t really take much notice of  her remark until recently, when I suddenly became aware that I did seem to be saying ‘xie xie’ rather a lot, and it set me thinking.

[UPDATE Jan 16, 2014 - Here's a follow-up post on the too much thank you theme - this time in southern Sudan.  See also the comments below.]



Here's a very insightful (that means I agree) thought from NotebookM:

"As I have said before in other posts, digital communications – the Internet, apps, etc. – represent wonderful technology but also serve as the biggest con since Ponzi. The con amounts to this: Give us everything we need to effectively and dramatically market you and we will tell you who won the 1976 World Series, the best way to make waffles and the number of Academy Awards won by Robert Di Niro."

Really, people worried about the evil of 1984's tv monitoring every move in their room.  But, hell, that was nothing compared to the iPhones people pay for themselves and voluntarily use to let the world to track their every move.



A View From My Summer House:

On the morning that I had to return the trailer I simply forgot it was there. I put the car into reverse and backed out of our driveway as I had done a million times before to do the morning school run (rushing as usual) except that this time a sickening thud, both felt and heard, stopped me in my tracks. I hardly dared look in my wing mirror but as I did so I could see the jack-knifed trailer nicely embedded in the side of my brand new Suburban.

Ouch.


From Simply Sustainability:

As a matter of fact there is a Dutch research project on this: Playing with Pigs. The project is an outcome of research on “Ethical room for manoeuvre in livestock farming”, a collaboration between the Utrecht School of the Arts, Wageningen University and Wageningen UR Livestock Research. Within the project, a game which allows interaction between pigs and people was developed; see it in a clip on vimeo here. The researchers say one of the things they’ve discovered is how much pigs like to play with light.

You get the picture.   I don't need more distractions, but Dan, thanks for stopping by and leaving your thoughts.  Let me know when you're passing through Anchorage. Maybe we can share a meal together.