Alaska Gov Becomes Pro-Choice, Declares Year of Education[Privatization]

In his State of the State Address Wednesday night, Alaska's Gov. Parnell declared the Year of Education and spent the largest part of his speech talking about education.  He was going to make a deal.  He'd raise the money going to education in return for giving parents the choice to take the public money allocated for their children's education and spend it on private schools, including religions schools.

He's opposed to women making intimate choices about their own bodies when they become pregnant.

He's opposed to gays and lesbians making choices about whom they marry.

He's opposed to local communities making choices about the kinds of development that takes place in their communities.  (Local Coastal Zone Management has been gutted, and HB 77, that the Governor is pushing hard, would eliminate lots of local say in development projects.)

What is the real agenda here?  I can't get inside of the Governor's head, but if you take the old political advice from Richard Nixon's attorney general John Mitchell, "''Watch what we do, not what we say,'' I'd have to conclude that the Governor's agenda:

• Mirrors a lot of Tea Party agenda - strongly pro-evangelical and anti-federal government
• Mirrors a lot of corporate agenda 
•  remove federal and local obstacles to development (to hell with environmental protection or local say)
• Transfers as much government money to the private sector as possible (the $2 billion a year tax cut for the oil companies, public school money to private schools, etc.

Of course, this starts a slippery slope.  If parents can transfer public money from public schools to private schools because they don't like the public school program, some people are going to want to take their share of the federal budget that supports war and transfer it to support programs that encourage peace and cooperation.  Others are going to want to take their part of the budget that supports things like the Knik Arm Bridge and spend it on things like better maintenance of existing roads.  

By using a Republican majority in the legislature (enabled in the Senate by playing with just enough districts by the redistricting board to break the bi-partisan coalition) to force a conservative, pro-corporate agenda on Alaskans rather than find ways to work with the opposition (that does still represent a significant portion of the Alaska public), the Governor is rejecting civilization for force and balkanization.  

He would give us an education system where kids go to schools that indoctrinate them into their parents' ideology instead of public schools where people meet with other students and with teachers who don't necessarily share the same world view.  In a democracy, that's a good thing.  In fact it's the only possible way.  

He would give us a state in which corporate profits (most of which leave the state) would trump the will of the people who live in Alaska and consider it their home.  This would take us back to the days before Statehood, when Alaska's resources and landscape were trashed for corporations which had no long term stake in Alaska or its people.  

Fortunately power isn't forever.  When you abuse it, when you don't hold it as a responsibility to improve the lives of all,  when you listen only to your ideological colleagues and your corporate sponsors, you get isolated and think everyone thinks like you.   The natural world finds equilibrium.  When things go too far in one direction, they eventually snap back.  Humans are still part of the natural world and those rules apply to humans too.   When things go too far, nature  pulls things back into balance.  Even the powerful Soviet empire overextended its power until it snapped.  The Middle East has seen unthinkable recent shifts in power.  Revolution doesn't always work out the way the revolutionaries want.  It doesn't cure the underlying ideological or economic divisions.  But it does stop the momentum and offers a chance for a realignment.  It would be much easier if those in power respected the interests of those out of power, if they didn't use their power to force their agenda on others.  Precisely what they complain about Obama and ACA.  Though I would argue that Obama is more in alignment with the population.  Without the constant Fox lies and meanness, things would have rolled out much more smoothly.    The Republicans in Juneau don't even realize how extreme they are, how far from the average Alaskan and from the spirit of the Constitution.

I'm afraid that the Republicans have picked up where they left off when the Corrupt Bastards Club was exposed by the FBI.  There was a short break in the oil companies' total rule of Juneau.  But it seems it was only a small bump in the road and now that they have a former Conoco-Phillips lobbyist in the governor's seat, they have a smoother ride.  

But I suspect things are being stretched too far in their direction and people who normally don't pay attention are being negatively impacted.  There are 20,000 people the governor has prevented from getting medical insurance by not expanding Medicaid.  There are many folks who are finding their local communities have no say on corporate development projects in their communities.  

Let me say also, that capitalism isn't 'the enemy', but capitalism with no checks on its failures can do serious harm.  The free market's most popular proponent, Milton Friedman, identified flaws in capitalism, which he said justified three needed government functions:  "government as rule-maker and umpire, technical monopoly and neighborhood effects, and paternalism."    The problem I have with those who would whittle down government to nothing and 'let the market take care of things' is the problem that these folks have with government - power.  Power is a human issue and corporations are run by humans.  As they become more and more powerful, they make rules and decisions that take away our liberty.  Without a counterbalance, they become the new government.  A government, though, where people have no say in who's in charge and what the rules are.  What we need is much better accountability of government and more balance between the public and private sectors.  Declaring that government is bad and the market is the cure of all ills is simple minded.  As simple minded as saying that corporations are all evil and government should have all the power.  

I'd also say that our current education system has lots of flaws.  First, it's way too oriented toward academics from early on.  It sets up kids as failures if they are not ready to perform at an arbitrary level from the first grade on.  There aren't adequate options for kids with non-academic strengths (except sports).  Its mass production assembly line tends to reject kids who don't arrive at school without the specs the curriculum requires.  They don't get thrown out like a bad part would, but they fall further and further behind and are taught they are failures even if no one says it out loud.   Our system demands kids adjust to the system, not the system adjust to the needs of the kids.  

So, I'm all for serious education reform.  But not simply transferring public money to unproven private organizations that have no responsibility to take on all the children, including those that don't fit the ideal mold (social problems, physical problems, etc.)  I also see inclusive public schooling as the incubator where people learn to get along with all their fellow citizens, a necessary part of democracy.  And public schools also don't necessarily do that good job of this either. But at least the ideals of tolerance of other people and other ideas is taught.   Perhaps the biggest conflict is whether schools should teach kids how to think or to teach kids what to think.  I don't think the public schools do a great job yet in teaching how to think (though some do quite well), but I have grave doubts about it happening in most religiously oriented private schools.   Do you really want public money paying tuition at Jerry Prevo's Anchorage Baptist Temple?  And does Prevo want public money to pay for Muslim school tuition?

There's lots more to say about the State of the State.  Most of it was generalities about how things have gotten better the last year, but there was no evidence I heard that would connect those benefits to the things the governor did.  And it seemed to me significant things were misrepresented.  If everything has gotten as rosy as the governor suggests, then why is the Anchorage School District being forced to cut teachers next year?  I need to go through it more carefully and see if I can figure it out.  

Laurie Hummel Announces Bid For State House Seat - Laurie Who?

I get emails.  Today one told me that Laurie Hummel is running for the Alaska State House in  northeastern Anchorage District 15.

I first 'met' Laurie Hummel when she was interviewed by the Alaska Redistricting Board with two other finalists for the executive director position last year.  I put 'met' in quotes because I was listening in by phone from my mom's house in LA.

The result of the interview was one of the more effusive blog posts I've written.  She had all the qualifications for the position and more.  A PhD in cultural geography which meant she knew all about mapping.  When they asked her if she knew the software program they used to do the mapping, her response was, "Well, I've never taught a class on it."  That wasn't a cheeky answer.  She'd explained that she'd taught classes in GIS in general just before.

Laurie Hummel

What about her experience with Alaska Natives?  At that point the federal Voting Rights Act section that required Alaska to get pre-clearance from the Justice Department hadn't yet been struck down by the US Supreme and so knowledge of Alaska Native regions was important.  Her answer - she wrote her doctoral dissertation on the impact of the military on Alaska Natives. 
What kind of experience did she have in dealing with sensitive situations?  Well, while in the army (she retired as a colonel), one of her projects in Afghanistan was to help integrate women into the Afghan military. 

She was ready for every question with a perfect response in a very modest and respectful tone.  For specific Alaska administrative procedures she hadn't worked with - like travel rules - she checked online and had the regulations.  I couldn't believe the Board had found such a perfect applicant.  I was  blown away with how amazingly she handled the interview.  Apparently the Board was too.  So much so that soon after they announced they decided not to fill the position.  My guess is that they were afraid of someone so well qualified, head and shoulders above most of the members of the Board to do this job.

So I found her email and asked if she'd talk to me when I got back into town.  I wanted to meet this woman.  We had a very pleasant conversation and I went away convinced that my first impression was right.  We talked a few more times over the phone and by email.  I learned that she was being recruited to run for office.  That was not in any of her life plans she said.  She was particularly turned off by the idea of asking people for money.  In the end, it seems like the appeal to service got to her.  If she thought politics was so bad, didn't she have a responsibility to do what she could to make it better?   Is Juneau easy compared to Afghanistan?

I don't know her views on many issues, but I do know that she's a well educated candidate with significant military and Alaska experience. She's spent a good part of her military career in Anchorage where she served as the Alaskan Command’s Chief of Operations Intelligence.  She's been on the West Point  faculty (her alma mater.)

People who complain about the lack of good candidates should check out Laurie Hummel.

Norm's on Bragaw and Debarr noon to one Thursday, January 23, 2014

    The email I got also said that she's talking at the      Bartlett Club tomorrow at noon.  I think I've been to one or two such meetings in the last 30 years, but I'm planning to see how she does. 

1972 - The Book

Here's a transcript of Nixon talking to Haldeman that came in an emailed promo on 1972  [the real title I think is The Nixon Tapes] from the Richard Nixon tape archives.

December 14, 1972

President Nixon and Bob Haldeman, Oval Office 1:05 p.m.

Audio: http://bit.ly/1hJikFG

Haldeman: There are a lot of good stories from the first term.

Nixon: A book should be written, called “1972.”

Haldeman: Yeah.

Nixon: That would be a hell of a good book. And somebody should have thought of it. It should, you know, that should be on its way. And it should either be a monograph or a book. You get in China, you get in Russia, you get in May 8^th, and you get in the election. And it’s a hell of a damn year. That’s what I would write as a book. “1972,” period.

1972 was a big year for me.  I celebrated my first wedding anniversary, we spent the summer in our VW camper wandering through Mexico, British Honduras, and Guatemala.  I was in my second semester as a graduate student in at USC.  I remember the summer before in our first big summer camping adventure driving through Idaho in the evening alongside a river as President Nixon announced on the radio that he was going to China.  I had to stop the car to be sure of what I heard.  It was such an unexpected and incredible announcement.   And a day before [a couple of days after (never totally trust your memory)] my son was born, in 1974, Nixon resigned.  And that's the day they're releasing the book.

Out of SE Asia Now Protest- around 1972 - LA

I'm not sure how I got on the mailing list - maybe I looked through the Nixon tapes archive online for this blog once - and I don't normally pass on these kinds of things.  But this one promises to fill in some gaps in what I knew at the time.   Nixon is one of those great Shakespearian figures - so flawed yet also doing great things,  like going to China.  And flawed as he was, divided as the country was over the war, Republicans and Democrats in Congress socialized, worked together, and got things done.



The clutter war is going well enough that I was able to find, without much trouble, this photo I took around 1972 of an anti-war demonstration in Los Angeles.

Here's what else they say about this book:

Our book will not rehash old stories. It will be the first to put a substantial quantity of the Nixon tapes within easy reach of the public, focusing on the major foreign policy achievements of 1972: 1) the opening to China, 2) reducing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union, and 3) ending the Vietnam War and bringing our POWs home.

Here's a bit about author Luke Nichter from his website.

Luke’s current book project is The Nixon Tapes, co-authored with Douglas Brinkley, to be published in 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation (August 9, 2014). He is also currently revising a book manuscript tentatively titled Richard Nixon and Europe, based on multilingual research in 16 archives in six countries. Luke is finishing work on a series of book-length presidential biographies for Nova's First Men, America's Presidents series, including volumes on George W. Bush (2012), Lyndon B. Johnson (2013), and Richard M. Nixon (2014). 

Luke is a former founding Executive Producer of C-SPAN's American History TV, which debuted in 2010 and is seen in approximately 41 million homes on C-SPAN3. There, he created programs such as "American Artifacts," a weekly series that takes viewers behind the scenes to museums, archives, and historic sites to see items they would not normally be able to see.

Anyone asking "What happened on May 8, 1972?"  From Day In History:

Vietnam War – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announces his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation. 

I guess he still thought he was going to win the war.

Markings - LA

Here are some pictures of pictures and words from LA.






























The red arrow in the picture above points down to this picture on the right.  I'm not sure how this non-commercial painting of four folks at the beach got put up in among the bill boards.









Here's looking at the structure holding up the bill boards.

And on the back side there was this fake owl protecting the limes. 

This caught my eye.  I've been paying more attention to graffiti.  It's more than just some kid with a spray can.  And when I looked up MESH BKC-TNG  I found it was a lot more. 

Mesh at The Left Handed Vandal

Mesh BKC at Street Art SF

This graffiti like mural is on the wall of a car repair place and stands at an intersection of two an alleys.  The panel below turns the corner is around the corner to the right of the top panel. 

The Science Guy Takes On The Creationist - A Preview Of Ham's Arguments

[This post is not yet another debate whether they should have a debate, but to look at what Ken Ham actually says.]

Background for those not following this:  Bill Nye (the science guy) is scheduled to debate with Ken Ham (the creationist) February 4.  It's going to be live online.  (First it was going to be $5 to watch online, but now it's free.)  There’s been some debate about whether it makes sense to debate someone who doesn’t believe in logic, but rather in the infallible word of God.  Lot's of folks think this just gives Ham a lot of publicity and will help raise money for the Creation Museum.  "It will help Ham's resume, not Nye's"  is the theme.  You can see an example of the basic evolutionist online discussion of the debate here.



In any case, I thought I should check out what Ham has to say and how he says it.  I have no doubt that Nye and his team are doing the same.   Below is the video  I watched:




In this video, Ken Ham argues that the earth was literally created in six days and that the earth is 6000 years old, not millions or billions of years old.  He knows this, as he says over and over again, because God tells us that in the bible. Basically he argues that those who want to impose man's 'facts' (there are no facts, just interpretations he also tells us) on the Bible are undermining the authority of God by substituting the authority of man. 


His main target is Christians who reinterpret the Bible to accommodate evolution and other scientific evidence by reading the six days of creation figuratively, not literally.  He takes quotes from about ten or eleven of them and explains what’s wrong with what they are doing.  [The exact number isn't important enough for me to go through that 76 minute video again.  For the same reason the quotes below, from the video, are close but not exact.   But I don’t think anything distorts what is said in the video.]

The basic problem, Ham tells us, is that the Christians, who are willing to see the six days of Genesis as figurative rather than literal, so that they can stretch them into the millions of years that science would suggest, are substituting the fallible word of man for the infallible word of God. 

Ham’s arguments demonstrate a number of rhetorical tricks and fallacies.  I make an attempt to point out some of those fallacies and give examples, but Ham’s examples often include more than one, or even two, of the fallacies. 

Let's start with a circular argument - basically appeal to authority:  The bible is authoritative because it is the word of God.  (This isn't necessarily a fallacy, but the premise and the conclusion are the same.  It doesn't prove anything.)

He argues that those who try to claim the earth is millions of years old have no place to fit those millions of years into the  Bible except Genesis.  The rest of the Bible can be calculated by counting the ‘begats.’

“Where do you fit millions of years into the bible - you have all the begats.  The only place you can do it, is before Adam, before creation.”

But, he argues, using the consequence of the action to invalidate the action,  if you put them before Adam, then you end up blaming God for all that’s wrong on earth when in fact man is responsible. Because, of course, God is infallible.


He uses straw man arguments.  He attacks those who say the world is millions or billions of years old by saying:

 [People ask me] Don’t  you have all these dating methods that prove the earth is millions and billions of years old?  Well actually, I say, what about the majority of dating methods that go against the secular accepted dates right now.  90% of the methods you can use, and there are hundreds and hundreds of methods you can use, to age date things on the earth, but 90% of them actually contradict the commonly accepted secular dates.

 Click to enlarge         Screenshot from video

Thus the Bible is right.

There are problems in all dating systems because they are based on assumptions - that’s the point.  Which leads us back to the main circular argument - Are you going to believe the fallible word of man or the infallible word of God?

Why would you take man’s fallible dating methods and use them to judge God’s infallible word? 

He even makes science the straw man, by defining it his own special way:

"Science - What I mean by science is operational science, in the present, you know, using your five senses.  He’s talking about big bang theory, billions of years, that’s stepping out of that sort of science."

And, he says, that’s how the word of man has supplanted the word of God. 

"In the 1700’s the door was unlocked and it’s gone on and on until today the bible is not looked on as the absolute authority."

He uses semantics to confuse and in some cases seems to move to a biased sample fallacy  - There’s lots of discussion of the meaning of ‘day’ in English and some about the meaning of ‘yom’ in Hebrew.  Much of this is like a verbal version of hiding the pea under one of three walnut shells and moving the shells around and around so fast that the observer can no longer follow.

"The point is, the word day can mean something other than an ordinary day.  You know what?  That's true.  I had a pastor who once said, "The word day can mean something other than an ordinary day and I said that's true.  But it can also mean an ordinary day.  He said, "That's true but it can mean something other than an ordinary day."  And I said, "That's true, but it can also mean an ordinary day."  I said, "Look Pastor, does the word day ever mean day?  Can day mean day or doesn't day mean day? And if it doesn't mean day when does it ever mean day?  Can you give me an example of when day means day?"

This is more like Abbot and Costello's "Who's on First?" routine than a logical argument.  And his audience laughs.  But while Abbot and Costello's audiences laugh at the absurdity or the word play, I suspect Ham's audience is laughing at how cleverly they think Ham has dismissed the argument.

“When is a day a literal day?  Why is it accepted as a day in the other 2300 times it’s used in the Old Testament, but not in Genesis?  They only want to reinterpret the meaning of day in Genesis. 

He may be right or maybe not.  Someone would have to check up on those other uses of day in the rest of the Old Testament.  And while we're checking up on the literal meaning of 'a day' let's look at all those biblical figures who lived to be hundreds of years old.  Are those literal years too?  

God didn’t create the sun until the fourth day.  People ask, how can you have a day without the sun.  You don’t need the sun for day and night, you just need light, and there is light on day one.  Why didn’t God tell us where the light came from?  There’s lots he didn’t tell us. 

If we look at the words of Genesis used to tell us about the first six days, there are a number of seeming inconsistencies like this.  But since the word of God is infallible we're supposed to just accept it.  Literally. 

He says to look up the words in a Hebrew dictionary, which in my experience with foreign languages is often a sure way to misinterpret the meaning of a word, because the meaning of a word in one language does not exactly correspond with the meaning of a similar word in another language.  See 15 myths about Bible translation.

He does at one point acknowledge that “I’m not a Hebrew scholar.”


He constantly goes back to the assumption that the word of god is authoritative:
comparing the fallible word of man to the infallible word of God - this way, the literal meaning of the (English) bible has to be the truth. 

He can also change the subject with an ad hominem joke:

"A pastor came to me and said how could so many scientists be wrong, and how could they be soooo wrong?  And I said, “The majority of scientists didn’t survive the flood either.”  

 The audience ate that one up.

But how does that answer the question?  There were no scientists as we know them today at the time of the flood.  Or is he saying, they (the scientists) weren’t around for the flood?  If so, then that applies to him as well.

In fact, he likes to taunt scientists by saying, "How do you know?  You weren't there."

Using the consequences to prove his point.  Basically he says that if the earth wasn’t created in six days, then there will be negative consequences - a) the authority of God is compromised and b) there will be no basis for morality.  The Bible must be literally true because if it’s not, serious negative consequences would be the result. 

“If you tell generations of people the bible means something, but it doesn’t mean what it says because of outside influences, you’ve just unlocked the door. And the door you’ve unlocked is you don’t have to take the Bible as written and you can take man’s fallible ideas outside the Bible to reinterpret the Bible.”  

“The Bible is the basis for morality - if we say the world was created in six days, then we are saying that God’s word is authoritative and we have a basis for the meaning of life, for moral standards, for marriage, for laws . . . “Six days, Thousands of years” - God’s word is authoritative.  We believe in the Bible and don’t take man’s words and impose them on the Bible.
But if you believe millions of years, then you believe that man determines truth by himself without revelation, because you don’t get the millions of years from the Bible.” 

“If you use millions of years - instead of six days - you then blame God and not man for all the problems on earth, because many problems would have happened before Adam and Eve ate the apple.”

That's like saying, "I can't be adopted, because if I am, then you aren't my biological mom."   I can see why he wouldn't want the authority of God to be challenged, just like after 20 years of believing you're my mother, I don't want to believe you aren't my mother.  But if the facts are at odds with what I've always believed - in this case the biblical text - then perhaps what I believe needs to be reassessed.  

So that’s what Nye is up against. 

A man who starts with the assumption that the Bible is the literal word of God and that God is authoritative and infallible while man’s word is fallible.  So from his perspective, Nye’s word, when it doesn’t confirm the literal words of the Bible, can't be right. 

Nye could ask how Ham knows that God wrote the Bible.  Was he there to see God writing it?  My understanding is that what is now called the Old Testament was passed on for centuries if not millennia orally. and eventually put in writing by many different people.  Surely over that time period, some, if not many, words got changed. If you've ever seen people pass on information orally from one person to the next, and so on,  you know that the meaning of a short sentence can be radically different after passing through only a few sets of ears and lips.  Yes, we're told they were inspired by God.  But lots of people have claimed to be inspired by God, people who tell us contradictory things - just as Ham himself disputes what other Christian leaders tell us about the Bible.  How do we know whose claims to believe?  Ham's answer seems always to be, because I'm only telling you what's written in the Bible.   

And even if we accept that the writers of the Hebrew Bible were inspired by God, what about the people who translated the Bible into Greek and Latin and then to English?  If they were all inspired by God, why aren't all the translations the same?  Which one is actually the literal word of God that Ham cites as infallible?  Also go back to the link on 15 myths about Bible translation.

Nye will face a man who can speak with ease, moving words around in ways that seem to make sense unless one is paying close attention.  And untangling his words may be hard to do on the fly. Which is why I'm sure he's doing what I'm doing here - going through Ham's video tapes to prepare. 

Nye willl face a man who puts down his opponents as a way of winning his arguments.  He does it gently, but they are still put-downs. And he'll be on Ham's home court.  We don't know who got tickets, some claim atheists were shut out, but Ken Ham says that's not so.

But Nye doesn’t have to win over Ham, he just has to get some of the listeners to see that Ham’s arguments are fallacious.  He just has to plant some seeds of doubt about the literal word of the Bible.  But many of these folks will be judging what he says - if the Hams of the world have done their work well - by whether it contradicts the literal words of the Bible, not by the rules of logic. 

However, people Ham himself cites as compromising the Bible, by accepting the millions of years argument of science, include many biblical scholars and evangelists - including James Dobson of Focus on the Family.  Ham bills himself as an outlier even among evangelical Christians.  It may well be that those who follow him are very literal thinkers for whom black and white are the only options and abstract thought - such as logic - is a stretch.  Or maybe they just haven’t been exposed to other perspectives.

Bottom Feeders

I got this spam email, I've xxx'd out most of the name and gotten rid of the links. 

Exxxxxxxx   xxx

Smoking Is Sexy Again.

Looks and Feels like a Real Cigarette

• No Tar
• No Bad Breath
• No Odar [no spell check either]

Try It NOW!

Do I even have to explain why this is so disgusting?  I understand smokers using e-cigs as a less toxic alternative to real cigarettes, but this is marketing smoking as sexy.  That's my big objection.


Here are some excerpts from what Clarence Page, the generally right-on-target Chicago Tribune columnist wrote (today) on this topic:

As a recovering nicotine addict, the rising tide of local bans against puffing in public on electronic cigarettes makes me wonder what lawmakers have been smoking.
By an overwhelming 45-4 vote last week, Chicago's City Council followed New York, Los Angeles and other cities that have passed or are considering limits on e-cigarettes that banish their use in restaurants, bars and most other indoor public places.
Retailers also are required to sell e-cigarettes from behind the counter so that it's harder for minors to get their hands on them.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered fake cigarettes. They contain no tobacco, require no combustion and, after exhaustive health studies, appear to cause no physical harm — compared to real cigarettes, at least.

You can't even call their use "smoking." Some users call it "vaping" for the vapor the devices create by heating up a liquified nicotine mix. When puffed and exhaled, the white, misty vapor resembles smoke — like your breath on a cold day.
By duplicating the rituals of smoking, the devices are designed to help wean users off the nasty habit. . .

You can finish it here.  (He does see marketing this to kids as a problem.)


Here's what WebMD said about e-cigs in 2009.

The FDA, on a page updated 1/10/2014, says:

Electronic Cigarettes (e-Cigarettes)

What are electronic cigarettes? 
Electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, are battery-operated products designed to deliver nicotine, flavor and other chemicals.  They turn chemicals, including highly addictive nicotine, into an aerosol that is inhaled by the user.


Most e-cigarettes are manufactured to look like conventional cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. Some resemble everyday items such as pens and USB memory sticks.

E-cigarettes have not been fully studied so consumers currently don’t know:

• the potential risks of  e-cigarettes when used as intended,
• how much nicotine or other potentially harmful chemicals are being inhaled during use, or
• if there are any benefits associated with using these products.

Additionally, it is not known if e-cigarettes may lead young people to try other tobacco products, including conventional cigarettes, which are known to cause disease and lead to premature death.

FDA Regulation of e-Cigarettes

Only e-cigarettes that are marketed for therapeutic purposes are currently regulated by the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).  The FDA Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) currently regulates

• cigarettes,
• cigarette tobacco,
•  roll-your-own tobacco, and
• smokeless tobacco.

FDA intends to issue a proposed rule extending FDA’s tobacco product authorities beyond the above products to include other products like e-cigarettes. For further details, please see the Unified Agenda entry describing this rulemaking.

eCigarettes and Adverse Events

What is an Adverse Event?
An adverse event is an undesirable side effect or unexpected health or product quality problem that an individual believes was caused by the use of a tobacco product.
Reporting an Adverse Event
Anyone can report an adverse event to the FDA. In fact, these reports help us identify safety concerns with tobacco products that could cause health or safety problems beyond those normally associated with tobacco product use.

Please report adverse events with e-cigarettes via: 

• The HHS Safety Reporting Portal or
• By calling 1-800-FDA-1088

It's Hard To Believe It's A Year Already

Why The Senator Who Opposed Torture, As President Says "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"

In Obama's talk this morning he used the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques."   What he means is torture.  This post speculates on why he uses that term.  I don't come up with a final answer (as if anyone ever does), but I wanted to think this one through a bit and maybe some people will be reminded not to be distracted by euphemisms. 

In an interview with Time magazine, Ralph Keyes, the author of  Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms, said people use euphemisms:

 "to deflect us — and maybe even themselves — about what they're doing. .  .

David Lloyd George — he was Prime Minister of Britain during World War I — once said that if we ever spoke plainly and clearly about what was going on on the battlefields, the public would demand that we bring an end to war."

The euphemism is bad enough, but at the CIA it's been shortened to EITs. 


Am I exaggerating about this being torture?

From ABC News in 2005:

"The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt."

 But is that torture?   Remember, these are just the things they talked about openly. 

One of the CIA agents quoted in the story uses the word 'torture':

"It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough," said former CIA officer Bob Baer." 

Judge for yourself with this example: 

"According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals"

The piece goes on to say the prisoner actually had no knowledge of what the interrogators wanted but made things up

  "because he was terrified of further harsh treatment"

An NBC investigative report on the movie Zero Dark Thirty which put American torture of terrorist suspects on the big screen for all to see, reports:

Working with Mitchell Jessen & Associates, the CIA soon developed a menu of 20 enhanced techniques – a list that was ultimately whittled down to 10, mainly because some of proposed techniques were considered too harsh even for terrorists.
“Not everything they proposed was part of the final menu,” said a former senior intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity. “They came up with some stuff people didn’t like and were not approved. … There were legal tests. … Does it shock the conscience?  Does it lead to deep long-lasting injuries?”

I guess the question is whose conscience?  An average citizen or a psychopath?

But let's stop beating around the bush.  Here's what the UN Convention Against Torture, Part I, Article 1 says:  

For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. 

There's no doubt that by international standards, "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" are torture.  


Why does Obama use this term?

It's depressing that the senator and presidential candidate who opposed  torture, now as president not only condones it, but he hides behind the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques." 

I assume that his many security advisers have convinced him that certain activities are necessary, or at least have given him enough doubt that he hasn't outright banned torture.  And he's also been told, I'm sure, that he can't use the word torture or he will make the US and perhaps himself, vulnerable to international sanctions and perhaps

The US is a signatory to the UN Law Against Torture, but has a long list of official 'reservations.'  Perhaps we can call them quibbles about the meaning of 'torture.'  Thus, using Enhanced Interrogation Techniques is a way of saying that we are not using torture.  From the United Nations Treaty Collection:

       II. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following understandings, which shall apply to the obligations of the United States under this Convention:
       (1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.
       (b) That the United States understands that the definition of torture in article 1 is intended to apply only to acts directed against persons in the offender's custody or physical control.
       (c) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the United States understands that `sanctions' includes judicially-imposed sanctions and other enforcement actions authorized by United States law or by judicial interpretation of such law. Nonetheless, the United States understands that a State Party could not through its domestic sanctions defeat the object and purpose of the Convention to prohibit torture.
       (d) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the United States understands that the term `acquiescence' requires that the public official, prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.
       (e) That with reference to article 1 of the Convention, the Unites States understands that noncompliance with applicable legal procedural standards does not per se constitute torture.
       (2) That the United States understands the phrase, `where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture,' as used in article 3 of the Convention, to mean `if it is more likely than not that he would be tortured.'
       (3) That it is the understanding of the United States that article 14 requires a State Party to provide a private right of action for damages only for acts of torture committed in territory under the jurisdiction of that State Party.
       (4) That the United States understands that international law does not prohibit the death penalty, and does not consider this Convention to restrict or prohibit the United States from applying the death penalty consistent with the Fifth, Eighth and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, including any constitutional period of confinement prior to the imposition of the death penalty.
       (5) That the United States understands that this Convention shall be implemented by the United States Government to the extent that it exercises legislative and judicial jurisdiction over the matters covered by the Convention and otherwise by the state and local governments. Accordingly, in implementing articles 10-14 and 16, the United States Government shall take measures appropriate to the Federal system to the end that the competent authorities of the constituent units of the United States of America may take appropriate measures for the fulfilment of the Convention.
       III. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following declarations:
       (1) That the United States declares that the provisions of articles 1 through 16 of the Convention are not self-executing.

I can't imagine that the US Congress would put up with external inquiries into US torture.  They simply would refuse to comply and start withdrawing support for international organizations that tried to enforce sanctions against the US.  The US is still powerful enough to do that. 

But it would be embarrassing and it would officially lower the status of the US world wide.  I'd note that most members of Congress seem to dismiss the opinions of people who oppose what they believe.

For more on this topic, the ACLU has a number of links.

Here's also a CATO Institute comment on torture. 

[This post is evidence of my blogging addiction.  I have other things to do today, but the President's euphemism wouldn't let go of me until I wrote this.  A (bigger?) issue that will have to wait til later is the unspoken acknowledgement that what Snowden did was important.   It's not as proofed and checked as most posts.  I'll check on it again when I get my to do list done.  Your help in fisxing things is appreciated.]

Thank You - Another Culture Where It's Not Used So Much

"It was time for dinner. The old woman outside, his wife, fed us beans and cabbage, and there was all the water one could dream of.  I thanked hiim, and he said, "You are our guest.  You do not say thank you.  Would you thank your mother?" (p. 152)

This comes from Robert Sapolsky's A Primate's Memoir.  I've already posted about the book here and here.  He'd just

"lurched through 110 - degree dust for the [last] twelve hours, covering 130 miles"

from the desert of Juba, Sudan up into the mountain logging town of Katire.  This happened some time in the 80's but Sapolsky is loose with when things happened, or else I just missed it.  (You can see some recent pictures of Katire here.)

He'd just had an interaction at the police station about his right to be there.  Then, it's resolved.  He gets his passport back.

"We relaxed, his job over.  Suddenly, he lunged at me, said, "We must go now."  Wha, wha, what did I do?  It was time for dinner."

I'm posting this as a follow up to an earlier post that included a snippet on how Chinese think Americans say thank you way too much.

And because of the turmoil going on now between the new nation of Southern Sudan (Juba is the capital) and the Sudan it broke from.  Below is a map.  I added Katire, that's approximately where it is.

Sapolsky's work with baboons was initiated by his interest in the social causes of stress and here's a link to a three minute video of Sapolsky - a Stanford professor now - talking about stress in humans compared to other animals.

Gonna Be Hard Going Home - The Beach, Then Spanish Lessons [UPDATE: Fire and Film]

LA weather isn't helping me prepare to go back to Anchorage.  The picture is from yesterday afternoon at Venice Beach.  The temperature was back in the low 80s again.  The air was clear.  And on Monday, the beach wasn't too crowded.  The surf was much lower than it was Saturday when I biked with B. 

It was a good chance for J and me to relax a bit and catch up after her quick trip to Seattle to see our daughter and Z and the others.

On the way home we stopped at La Fiesta Brava to pick up some Mexican food for

Spanish Teacher and Chef

dinner.  The chef wouldn't let me speak English.  And forced me to dredge up my 50 year old junior high school Spanish.  I could tell him that "Mi Español es muy malo" and I could understand most of what he said, but the one saving grace of Thai and Chinese is that you don't conjugate the verbs.  I couldn't remember how to do past tense or future at all.  Another employee there said that the customers who come every day have learned to speak enough Spanish to do all their ordering and chit chat in Spanish.  I believe it.  As bad as I was, I still am surprised at what still lives in my brain.

As I juggled the bags of take out on the bike ride home, more words began to emerge - things I could have said.

Here's the card - for good food with free Spanish lessons.  



I'm hoping we can find a little more time at the beach this afternoon, though  so far I'm inside prepping for class on Friday in Anchorage - my first for credit UAA class since I retired.  I'm looking forward to it.  It's the capstone class, so it only meets six or seven times over the semester, but there is lots of consultation with the students.  In the past I've always known the students, but not this time.  There will be other faculty helping.  We also have some errands to run before we leave tomorrow.  But it's too nice a day not to hit the beach once more, even if just for an hour. 


UPDATE Tuesday 5:30pm (PT)  - After doing our errands, we biked back to the beach about 4pm today in time to see smoke billowing up somewhere north of the Santa Monica pier.  Two planes were bombing it with water then turning around and going out to sea to get more water.  We never saw them getting the sea water - they disappeared at a certain point - but from maybe two miles away we could see the water being dumped.

The fire was to the right of the photo from yesterday.  The plane disappeared from our sight against the mountains where they start to go down to the lest.

Right near us on the beach was a film crew.  A guy was standing in trunks with a gal in front of him.  She'd put out her arms and move like she was falling.  I couldn't figure it out as they did it a couple of times.  But then the last time someone threw a bucket of water on the woman as she was 'falling.'  That's when I saw they were standing on a surf board on the sand.  I'm assuming they were getting them and the sand in the background.

I forgot my camera at home so my fire shot - below - is from Santa Monica Patch which seems to have gotten it from KCAL - 9.  The report says it was just a brush fire, but if they hadn't been bombing it every three or four minutes, it would have been more.  From our vantage point much further away, there was lots of brown smoke that was blowing out to the ocean.  The temps were in the 80s today and the humidity down below 10 percent - with red flag fire warning for all around the LA area. 


Tomorrow we visit an old friend in Portland for a few hours before continuing on back home.