Exxon-Valdez Almost 25 Years Ago - Plus Some South African Courage

In anticipation of the 25th anniversary (March 24) of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, retired UAF professor Richard Steiner has a Huffington Post reflection piece Exxon Valdez 25th Anniversary: Lessons Learned, Lessons Lost.

Here are the titles and you can go to the piece to get the details.

1. Oil spill "cleanup" is a myth:
2. Oil spills can cause long-term environmental damage:
3. Oil spill restoration is impossible:
4. Officials habitually understate spill risk, size, and impact:
5. Prevention is key:
6. Citizens' oversight is critical:
7. Liability motivates safety:
8. Oil money corrupts democracy:
9. It's time to end our oil addiction:
10. Need for a sustainable society:

Steiner essentially lost his job for standing up against the oil companies.



Another man who stood up at great personal risk is Horst Gerhard Hermann Kleinschmidt.  From South African History Online, here are some excerpts of a life of a man who stood up to unjust power.

Kleinschmidt comes from a family of missionaries, the earliest of whom arrived at the Cape in 1811. In 1814, Missionary Hinrich Schmelen married one of his catechists, a woman of Khoi-khoi origin he met in Pella on the Gariep, later the Orange River. They lived in Komaggas, Northern Cape where one of their three daughters married Missionary Heinrich Kleinschmidt in 1842.

n particular, three events clouded his career prospects: he had organised for a black speaker to address the students on campus – something the authorities disallowed; he wrote articles about black education, had these published in the local student magazine and provided hundreds of extra copies for students at black campuses where publications containing dissent were not allowed. In 1969 he and other leaders led a student march to the infamous John Vorster Square police station where Winnie Mandela and 20 other people were being held without charge or trial. The protest was against detention without charge or trial. For leading the march he and others were arrested, charged and found guilty under the Riotous Assemblies Act (General Laws Amendment Act). The Rector of the Education College warned Kleinschmidt that he had placed his education career in jeopardy.

In 1971, Kleinschmidt was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act for possession of banned (forbidden) literature after a raid on his flat in Cape Town. The raid resulted from the arrest and murder by the police of Ahmed Timol. Timol appeared to have an address list on which Kleinschmidt’s name appeared. Kleinschmidt was acquitted in court with a warning. . .
In 1972, he started work for the South African Christian Institute led by Dominee Beyers Naude, the dissident White Afrikaner leader. Appointed at the same time was Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness movement in South Africa. The two had collaborated since student days. In that year, the authorities permanently withdrew Kleinschmidt’s passport, preventing him from traveling abroad. When Winnie Mandela was imprisoned for six months in 1974, for breaking her banning order, Nelson Mandela (from prison on Robben Island and through his attorney) and Winnie Mandela, appointed Kleinschmidt as the legal guardian of the two Mandela daughters, Zindzi and Zenani. 1974, the all-white Parliament of South Africa appointed a Commission to secretly probe the activities of the Christian Institute and other organisations. Together with the other leadership of the Christian Institute, Kleinschmidt refused to testify unless the proceedings were held in the open. For this they were charged under the Commissions Act. In Kleinschmidt’s case a ‘mistrial’ was recorded due to technical errors committed by the prosecution. His wife at the time, Ilona Aronson was sentenced to six months imprisonment. But when she presented herself at the prison, she found that an anonymous person had paid her fine. It later transpired that a white politician had arranged payment to prevent her from becoming a martyr to the anti-apartheid cause. In 1975, Kleinschmidt was detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act that gave the police powers to detain and interrogate persons without charge or a court hearing. He spent 73 days in solitary confinement. The police suspected him of having been recruited by an underground organisation led by the Afrikaans poet, Breyten Breytenbach who was arrested on the grounds of forming an illegal organisation. When no links between the two could be established, Kleinschmidt was released.

Read the whole bio here.


Makes me feel like I should get to work. 

Taking a Break on a Snowy Day

Wet snow.  Fog.

Ravens gather in cottonwood.

Short break.  Change of scenery.

Russian Jack greenhouse.

Add a little color to gray white day. 

AIFF 2013: Iranian Film Makers Talk about Their Future

Plot 1
She's won a fellowship to leave Iran to study in Berlin.  Her fiance is happy for her.  She's planning her trip when she's raped.  And nothing is the same.

 Plot 2

Film makers' movie gets accepted in film festival in Anchorage, Alaska.  They travel to the festival and meet a lot of people including a blogger who covers the festival.  "Everything is Fine Here" wins honorable mention in the feature category.  They meet with blogger after the festival to talk about their film and their future plans.  

How often do you get to talk with Iranians?  I wanted to know more.  I talked with Pourya Azarbayjani and Mona Sartoveh for about 90 minutes partly in English, but also with the help of a local Farsi speaker. 

Finally I asked them to just talk on camera, without being interrupted with interpretation.  We'd get the interpretation later.

A couple of weeks or so ago, I met with the interpreter and we discussed her interpretation and played around with different words to express what they had said.  And we decided not to try to add subtitles to the video, but rather put the English translation below the video in the post.

So, watch the short video and see how much you can pick up from the body language and tone of voice.  Then read the translation below.





The translation:

Steve:  Ok, you have come to the US and you plan to stay for the moment, you have a sister in Boston, So what do you expect to do for the next three years?

Pourya:  We have decided for now to stay here for a couple of reasons.  The first is to learn how to speak English well, because we can reach more people if we can tell our stories in English than we could in Farsi.  And it is easier to tell these stories in English because there are so many people here who have come from all around the world. We believe we have come to the right place, because of all the people who have come here with the American dream to build their lives and because they have so many different backgrounds and cultures, there are so many different stories to tell.  And I believe that here it’s possible to tell these stories. 

We decided in the next three years to make a film, a very good film, Mona and I together. And we’re hoping that first we can raise the money, and second, we can learn how to reach the American audience, and then the rest of the world. 
Mona, do you agree?

Mona:  I agree with you completely.  I hope we’ll succeed.  I’m sure we will. 

Pourya:  The most important thing is this.  As two Iranians, we love all the people from around the world from any nation, religion, and race.  We believe it’s time that borders and religions should not separate human beings.  We, before anything else, are human.

Exxon Valdez Case Study on Environmental Accounting

There are a couple of opportunities at UAA this week to hear Dr. Mark Brown from the University of Florida.

 TUESDAY, MARCH 4
7 p.m. Rasmuson Hall, Room 101

 

Energy & the Economy: Reflections on Sustainability
Using systems principles, the economy from a biophysical perspective is a hierarchical interconnected system of resource and monetary flows, driven by available energy and resources. The ability of the environment to support human society is limited, and we need to reconsider the ways we use, measure, and economically value the material resources we consume. We must understand the limits of sustainability as a solution to our energy needs, and develop guidelines for a “prosperous way down”.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5

Noon,
Eugene Short Hall 214

“Emergy” Values of the Marine Ecosystem:
Environmental Accounting for Recovery of Ecosystem Values after Disasters, Using the Exxon Valdez as a Case Study

“Emergy” is an environmental accounting methodology that evaluates goods and services based on the environmental and economic work needed to make them, not human preferences or utility. The Exxon Valdez oil spill will be used to demonstrate this methodology, and assess and discuss the costs of several mitigation strategies to avoid spills in the future.

DR. MARK BROWN is a professor of Environmental Engineering Sciences and director of the Center for Environmental Policy at the University of Florida. His research is focused on the interface of humanity and the environment including systems ecology, ecological engineering, ecological economics, and environmental policy. For six years Dr. Brown was a consulting ecologist to The Cousteau Society, working with research teams to develop solutions to a wide array of resource management problems that affect marine resources throughout the world.

From Kiev to Crimea is about the same as from New York to ?

The Russians have moved into the Crimean Peninsula, but I'm guessing only about two or three Americans out of a thousand could point to Crimea on a map.  So here's a post to raise those numbers.

First, here's a map of Europe with Ukraine in the black box.

Basic map from Infoplease

The black square is enlarged below, with the Crimean Peninsula highlighted in the black box. 

Just to get a sense of things, Kiev is about 430* air miles from Sevastapol.  Here are some other cities that are about the same distance apart.

Paris to Munich New York to Detroit Mumbai to Bhopal St. Louis to Ann Arbor Hanoi to Chiengmai Seattle to Calgary*

I understand that Russia's action is a big deal.  But it's also, apparently, a common event in this region.  From Wikipedia:

Crimea, or the Crimean Peninsula, located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, currently under the jurisdiction of Ukraine, has a history of over 2000 years. The territory has been conquered and controlled many times throughout this history. The Cimmerians, Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, the state of Kievan Rus', Byzantine Greeks, Kipchaks, Ottoman Turks, Golden Horde Tatars and the Mongols all controlled Crimea in its early history. In the 13th century, it was partly controlled by the Venetians and by the Genovese; they were followed by the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire in the 15th to 18th centuries, the Russian Empire in the 18th to 20th centuries, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. In 1991 it became part of independent Ukraine, as the Autonomous Republic Crimea.

And while there will be calls for the US President to take decisive action, it makes sense to look at the geography of the Crimean Peninsula first.  It's almost inside Russia. It's as close as Mexico to the US.  You know how the US would respond to a military incursion by Russia or China in Mexico.  Russians will respond the same way.  Realistically, there's not a lot we can do militarily that wouldn't cause far more harm than doing nothing.  (But then Iraq and Afghanistan are distant memories for many.)  Our response will have to be patient and more nuanced than missiles and bombs.  First we should look at maps and maybe read some history.  Diplomacy and economics will be far more effective weapons in the long term. 

We tend to remember a place first by our own involvement in it.  If Americans know anything about the region, it's from Yalta and from the Crimean War, whose lasting legacies through the English to the US, include  Florence Nightingale,  and the Charge of the Light Brigade, a terrible debacle for the British.

The Charge Of The Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854


Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred! - See more at: http://www.nationalcenter.org/ChargeoftheLightBrigade.html#sthash.cuFNI4jM.dpuf

The Charge Of The Light Brigade

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854
Written 1854

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

From the National Center.

*I got most of these from Time and Date's distance tables which are air miles.

Working Hard To Get Back To Normal - Viddler Shuts Down Free Accounts

Blog videos need to be hosted somewhere on a server. (So do photos - but Blogspot automatically puts them on Picassa.)  When I put up my first video - about ten seconds of a street scene in Amritsar, India - I put it on YouTube.  But YouTube was the big player and I as I looked around for other video server platforms, I found Viddler.  It let me put up bigger files, they looked better, I could insert comments.  There were lots of advantages.

So I opened an account and began loading up my video on Viddler.  Over time, YouTube got bought by Google (who also owns Blogspot), but I stayed loyal to Viddler.  A while ago - maybe a year, maybe a little longer - someone at Viddler sent me an email saying they were shutting down their free video hosting service and I could by a professional membership.  I wrote back I'd been an early supporter and that I have a lot of hits on my blog and people get to see Viddler's name on my videos.  I also talked about how hard it would be to download all the videos, upload them onto YouTube, and then re-embed them into my posts.  I suggested grandfathering in people like me.  They said fine and dropped their plan.

But I got nervous and began uploading most of my video onto you YouTube.  And a couple of weeks ago I got the email I assumed would eventually come:  They're dropping the free video hosting and I have until March 11 to download my videos before they close the account.  Or I can pay $300 a year to keep being hosted by them.  Is that a lot for the video hosting?  I don't know.  I tend to be an anti-consumer.  I think too many people are willing to shell out whatever their cable or phone company tells them.  They just have to have the latest goodies.  Even when the company is making huge profits.  Even when it means the consumer goes further into debt each year.  And that $300 a year is forever if I want to keep the videos showing up on my blog.

So I'm spending a lot of time now downloading my videos from Viddler.  (I do have them on external hard drives, but this way I'm getting them in chronological order with dates that will make it easier to figure out which posts they are in.  And then I'll have to upload them to YouTube.  And then I'll have to re-embed them into the posts they're in.

So, I get to do all this work - there are 535 videos on Viddler - and it will take from blogging time, and I'm sure it will take me longer than the deadline to get them all back into the posts they are in.


Here's a screenshot of my Viddler account.  This is eight of the 535 videos.  I have to hit edit, then manage, the click on the file.  In some cases there's a different file format and I have to play with that and change the name from Viddler's identification (numerical) to what I named the video. 


I figure about 8-10 hours to download, then the time to get them up on YouTube and embedded back here.   If it were just a one time $300 charge, it would be worth it.  But a continuing charge forever?  No.

Working hard just to stay where I am.

And I suspect a lot of stuff people are storing free on 'the cloud' somewhere, is going to get a fee one day.  And you're going to have to make a similar decision about whether to pay or find another way.  And there's no guarantee that YouTube won't do the same thing one day.  And slowly, but surely, the easy access we've had to be our own publishers, is going to disappear.  

[UPDATE March 11, 2014.  It was more than 10 hours, but it's mostly done.  Here's a new post on what I've done and replacing the old Viddler videos with YouTube videos.]

Why I Live Here - Walking Over To Catch iditarod

After a Citizens' Climate Lobby meeting this morning at UAA, I walked over to Goose Lake to catch a bit of the Iditarod's ceremonial start.  There were a lot of long tongues hanging out. 

#19 Allen Moore's dogs

I brought my 'good' camera for this, but I wasn't prepared for how hard shooting the moving dogs would be.  The camera let me pull out a few reasonably focused shots. 

#22 Robert Sorlie

#20  Scott Janssen's dogs

#25 Norman Schroeder coming over the Northern Lights bridge at Goose Lake

Names are based on the ADN list of mushers and their numbers which I'd link to, but I can't find online.

Smarts and Humor Versus Dumb Power

[Warning:  It's early Saturday morning, so I'm not quite as even-handed here as I normally attempt to be.]

Sometimes there's a letter to the editor that perfectly captures what's going on.  I admit I wasn't there and didn't see the exchange.  But Rep. Stoltz is the same guy who held up funding for school lunches because, well, it's hard to know why.

I really don't have a clue about what makes Rep. Stoltz do what he does.  I have to be careful not to generalize.  I did watch him once at a Legislative Council meeting (see item 12) take up ten minutes to say, basically, I know nothing about Facebook and I'm opposed to letting legislative computers access it.  Ten minutes to talk against something he said he knew nothing about!

My guess is that he likes being someone important.  Likes seeing his name in the paper.  Likes being able to wield power over others.

I can't remember the last time I posted a letter to the editor, but here's one that deserves to be read widely:

Lisa Demer provided excellent coverage of Tuesday’s House Finance Committee hearing on SB 49, a bill to limit state funded abortions. However, Demer omitted the final remarks made by Rep. Bill Stoltze when he flogged Rep. Les Gara one last time for the manner in which Gara framed his questions. Co-chair Stoltze suggested Gara watch the game show “Jeopardy” for guidance in forming questions.
How would that sound? Gara: “For a hundred points, Commissioner Streur, can you tell me (through our game show host, Stoltze) how many times the state of Alaska intends to run afoul of the Alaska courts in attempts to limit abortion? For 200 additional points, what will the litigation cost the state?”
Stoltze marginalized the female representatives of his own party when they asked thoughtful questions. Perhaps he should take his own advice. “For 300 points, Commissioner Streur, can you tell me how many times Rep. Holmes has to ask the same question (about the need to redefine medical necessity) before you answer her?”
Let’s put the buzzer away and have a conversation.
— Vicki Turner Malone
Bethel

Thanks Vicki.  And Rep. Stolze, I'd love to sit down with you one day and have you explain to me your idea of the role of government in modern society and how you further that notion.  

I can't help wondering whether Stoltze really reflects the thinking of people in Chugiak or are they mostly just unaware of what he says and does and they're turned off of politics altogether?  BTW, he now has a Facebook page.

His website lists his record of service. 

Bill Stoltze

• Lifelong Alaskan
• Co-Chair, Finance Committee: 2008 – present
• Vice-Chair, Finance Committee: 2005 – 2008
• Member, Finance Committee: 2003 – present
• Member, Legislative Council Joint Committee: 2005 – present
• Vice-President, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks, Baseball Boosters
• Board Member, Special Olympics
• Charter Member, Chugiak Lions Club
• Life Member, Chugiak Senior Center, Inc.

Notice, it's just a list of positions.  There's nothing about what he actually accomplished in any of those positions.  Service implies you make the world a better place by doing what you do.  I'd like Stoltze to convince me that it's true in his case.  What little I've actually seen or heard about suggests otherwise. 

Tents, Trailers, and Vans

Making movies (and other entertainment) is big in LA.  Here's what I saw riding to, along, and from the beach Wednesday and Thursday. 

The Cirque du Soleil tents are up just north of the Santa Monica pier right along the bike trail.  And yes, I did some photoshopping because the grey sky was just too boring.  And the whole picture was a bit faded.  

Here is the tent for the ISFA (Independent Spirit Film Awards) which will happen Saturday, March 1.  This tent is on the bike trail about a quarter mile south of the Santa Monica pier.  And you can see on this picture why I played with the sky in the first picture. 

And at Rose Avenue hosted these trailers  for a commercial they were filming on the sand.  Those are bags of ice melting in the lower right. 

And less than a mile up Rose inland (this picture was taken the next day) there was another film crew at Superba restaurant. 

 

And this less commodified form of art was parked on Rose too.

We Arrive Home To 44˚F [UPDATE - Yosemite]

Wednesday I biked to the beach before the darkening clouds let loose.  But instead of rain, I got sun again.  But the rain did come during the night.  With sun again in the morning along a last beach ride before we took off for the airport.  Here are some photos from the flight.

This is a group of waves coming into a beach in the Malibu area.




[UPDATE: I checked and this is Malibu Lagoon State Beach.   It's the pier that nails it.]

I was struck by this massive wall of rock guarding this canyon in what I assume are the Sierra Nevada mountains in California.

UPDATE Feb. 28:  I was hoping we'd fly over Yosemite, but didn't see Half-Dome which usually gives it away.  But as I looked at this picture again, there appears to be a waterfall in the upper right hand corner.  So I went back to the original which I had cropped to highlight the rocks in the lower left.  When I looked at the original, I saw I'd cropped out Half-Dome in the upper right.  So, here is the picture recropped (there's a lot in the lower left that wasn't necessary.)

So that means, yesterday, Alaska Airlines gave me a tour from Malibu, past Yosemite National Park, Mt. Hood National Forest, to Mr. Rainier National Park.  I probably saw Sequoia National Park too, but that's something you need to be on the ground to appreciate.  It's why I like the window seat.]

I assumed this was a cloud shrouded Mt. Hood and then the pilot said we'd just past Portland.

A little further north, with the peak poking through the clouds.  You can see the camera was having trouble figuring out what to focus on, but I like the abstract look of it.

And Mt. Ranier, just after sunset. 

The next flight, to Anchorage, was dark.  But our new plane had electrical outlets at each seat.  And when the pilot said it was 44˚F (7˚C), I didn't even look for my jacket when we went out to find our ride home. I've been inviting our Chicago friends to come visit and warm up all winter.  I just checked - it's 30˚ colder there now. 

LA was expecting a big storm Friday.  Wednesday night's rain was the first since the summer.