As Of 10:16 Report - Democrat Adam Wool Ahead of Incumbent Pete Higgins

District 5 race in Fairbanks, Dem. Adam Wool is leading incumbent Pete Higgins by 276 votes with 66% of precincts reporting.

District 15 Democratic challenger has moved up in the latest report to within 30 votes.  She was 95 votes behind in the earlier reports.

The initiatives continue to be well ahead.

Begich continues to be 5% behind Sullivan.

Early Results - Tammy Wilson in District 3 Is A Winner

Most races have from 0% to 50% of precincts reporting.

The initiatives - marijuana, minimum wage, Bristol Bay, and repeal of Anchorage's Labor Ordinance -  are ahead.

It says that 100% of the precincts are in.  There's 5030 votes.  And Wilson has 79%, so this one looks like a wrap.

UPDATE:  9:35pm they've put up another set of results and despite having 100% in the race, they added about 260 votes.

 Another race that looks like it's over is Fairbanks District 1.  Scott Kawasaki, with 90% of precincts reported looks comfortably ahead by percent, but he's only.

[I'm having trouble with feedburner, so I'm reposting this.  I'm seeing if I change the images from .png to .jpg it will work.] [It didn't.]

An Explanation for Nancy Dahlstrom's Harsh Response To National Guard Complaints

Let's connect some dots.

Among the many emails released by Gov. Parnell over the weekend in response to a court order was this one from Rep. Nancy Dahlstrom quoted in part in the Alaska Dispatch News Monday:

“Your statements are reckless and have the potential to cause irreparable damage to these fine officers,” Dahlstrom said in an email dated Aug. 25, 2009, to Debra Blaylock, a just-retired lieutenant colonel in the guard. “I take great offense to your statement that it is a ‘good old boy’ network with corrupt leadership. I believe the current leaders are outstanding and have made tremendous advancements in improving the overall morale, day-to-day operations, direction, and relevancy of the organization. I have never seen it function better. As a citizen of Alaska, I am truly proud to call them my National Guard.”

 Laura Pierre and Rules Chair Nancy Dahlstrom (Image Source)

Dahlstrom concluded her email with even stronger language: “There is no room for mean spirited, unsubstantiated, and malicious correspondence targeted towards the undermining and destruction of the excellent reputation and character of Alaska’s leadership.”

This is pretty harsh.  Not the kind of letter that legislators usually write to the public, even if they aren't their constituents. 

I have a strong suspicion why this email supported the Guard so strongly and so meanly chastised Debra Blaylock:  Laura Pierre.

 
Who is Laura Pierre?


Laura Pierre is the wife of McHugh Pierre.

McHugh Pierre was,  until his recent forced resignation, Civilian Deputy Commissioner for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.  This is the state department that includes:

• US Property and Facilities Office,  
• Alaska Aerospace Commission 
• Army National Guard 
• Air National Guard 
• Homeland Security and Emergency Management
• Alaska Youth Academy
• Veterans Affairs
• Alaska State Defense Force
• Alaska Naval Militia, 
• Office of Facilities Management.

The ADN, in a long article on McHugh Pierre's forced resignation wrote that investigators found

"Pierre had also inserted himself into the efforts of whistle-blowers who were working to alert Parnell to serious concerns about how sexual assault cases were being managed. "

Source

While McHugh was working in the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, his wife Laura Pierre was on Nancy Dahlstrom's legislative staff.





Some Background

When I went down to Juneau to be a volunteer staffer for Max Gruenberg in 2010, the Rules Committee was telling Max Gruenberg that he could not have a full time volunteer staffer.  I didn't know this until the afternoon of the day of new staff training.  At the end of that session - there's a description of the panel with a photo at the bottom of this 2010 post -  I asked one of the panelists a question.  She asked me which office I was going to be a staffer in.  I answered I would be a volunteer for Rep. Gruenberg.  At that point Laura Pierre jumped into the discussion and, in a very forceful voice, said something like, "There will be no volunteer staffers."  I was taken aback not only by the message, but even more by the vehemence of her tone. And it was the first time that I realized that my volunteer position was in jeopardy.

I had introduced myself to Nancy Dahlstrom during the break that morning and she had been very polite and cordial.  Rep. Dahlstrom also treated me warmly when the final decision came down that Rep. Gruenberg could not have a full time volunteer staffer.  She welcomed my proposal that I would stay in Juneau as a blogger and told me that if I needed anything to let her know.   Later we did have a long, very friendly, and interesting discussion in her office.

Finally, Connecting The Dots

All this background causes me to suspect that Dahlstrom's view of the Guard and  Lt. Blaylock was strongly influenced by her staffer, Laura Pierre, who was in turn influenced by her husband who the investigators said, as quoted above, "inserted himself into the efforts of whistle-blowers who were working to alert Parnell to serious concerns about how sexual assault cases were being managed."  And since staffers often draft communications for their legislator bosses,  I wouldn't be surprised if Pierre drafted the email in question.

If that is the case, then Dahlstrom's response and apology reflects well on her professionalism and leadership.  She took full responsibility for the email without a hint that someone else might have written it.  And, of course, as the boss whose name was on the email, that's how she should respond.  But there are other legislators who would have shifted the blame to a staffer, even if the staffer hadn't written it. 

Pennsylvania Computer Nerd Claims Berkowitz Lost Because of 2008 Election Fraud

With the 2014 election climaxing tomorrow, it seems appropriate to look at John Foelster's claims about the 2008 election in Alaska.  Foelster left comments on some Alaska blogs, including this one, last week, with a link to his website  [UPDATE Nov 23, 2016: his website now has restricted entry]  where he spells out the data that underlies his assertions. He writes

The fraudulent vote count would have resulted in Don Young being wrongly seated in a House seat actually won by his Democratic opponent Ethan Berkowitz, and would certainly have changed the outcome of the District 7 Lower House Race so that Democrat Karl Kassel would have beaten Republican Mike Kelly. [Note Kassel lost by four votes.] Democrats Andrea Doll of the 4^th lower House District and Val Baffone of the 28^th Lower House District were also likely the actual winners of the races they officially lost.

At what point do we take assertions seriously?  After all, I had had emails about the National Guard scandal as far back as 2010 and I'd seen Blaylock's long list of allegations on line.  But I didn't write about it for lack of further information and lots of other things to do.

My experience with the 2012 Municipality of Anchorage election (see list of posts at bottom of this post) showed me how vulnerable the voting machines are.  While I tend to think the problems in that election were more related to incompetence and not tampering with the voting machine software, the situation exposed the many vulnerabilities of the procedures and the machines.

I've read Foelster's claims.  They represent a lot of painstaking work, not only in gathering and interpreting the data, but also in how to present it.  He has a series of video tapes that walk you step by step through his hypothesis and the evidence backing it up.  While the conclusion is sensational, his presentation is not.  It's painstakingly detailed, self aware and self effacing, and outlines exactly how he went about getting to his claims.

I've sent the information to a couple of good data people and got a long response from one who knows a lot about elections and the computers. While this person didn't read it all, and raised some questions here and there, he allowed it was a possibility and was concerned about the greater environment of election fraud vulnerability of the nation as a whole.  I've also had some email exchange with Foelster to follow up with questions I had.

Problems with Reporting Computer Crime

Manipulating computer data is the kind of crime that doesn't emotionally effect people like murder, armed robbery, kidnap, and rape.  Television footage of computer code just isn't compelling. Computer crime is all hidden in 1's and 0's inside the computer, in computer code that most people don't understand.  It's also something we don't want to believe is happening because it violates our sacred belief in American democracy.  There are lots of websites that give details on how the voting machines can be hacked.  Bradblog covers all sorts of voting issues including problems with voting machines.  Here are some others.

• Votescam -  large overview of electronic voting issues
• What Really Happened  
• There's a great video - Hacking Democracy - but when I tried to look at the video just now on their site it said it "The uploader has not made this video available in your country."The website is still worth visiting. 
• Even conservatives are now using voting machine fraud arguments.
• How Many Ways Are There To Steal An Election? And Why Doesn't Anyone Care?
  This is a post I did in 2012 when I was covering the Anchorage Municipal election problems. 

I list all these sites just to remind people that there are legitimate and serious issues with voting machines that should be understood by everyone.  Citizens United is one issue, but the vulnerability of the voting machines may be an even bigger one.

So, back to Foelster's allegations.  Here, from his website, is the outline of his evidence:
[UPDATE Nov 23, 2016: his website now has restricted entry]

"The lines of evidence are as follows:

1. The polls in 2008 indicated that the Democrats in Alaska would do much better than they did in the reported results.
2. In 2012, there was a large swing to President Obama, one that was too large to have been caused by Governor Palin no longer being on the Republican ticket.
3. The number of Democrats in the electorate in 2012 was significantly lower than the number in 2008.
4. The report on electorate composition this information can be found in appears to have been reformatted in an attempt to draw attention away from it.
5. The 2008 results are unique in recent Alaska history for having very Democratic Absentee results and very Republican in precinct results.
6. A variation on a known technique for compromising AV-OS machines would have produced the effects described above, and this hack could have been introduced by one person working in Juneau.
7. The size of the above anomaly varies from district to district based on the number of registered Democrats in precincts with AV-OS voting machines.
8. The State Review Board’s Hand Count Audit of the paper ballots could also have been compromised by this same single person."

Each item links to further information.  

As I read this, I see him taking two main approaches:

1. Technical:  The data show anomalies that indicate votes in 2008 were tampered with.
1. In 2012 there was a significant boost in votes in Alaska for Obama than in 2008.  This runs counter to every other state where the support for Obama went down in 2012. This happened because in 2008, a large number of Democratic votes in Alaska were switched over to Republicans. 
2. How the voting machines work and how to hack them to get the results he thinks happened
2. Human:  The narrative of who might have been involved, how, and why

For me, the human narrative part is weak.  But that doesn't really matter.  He doesn't have to prove who did this.  What he has to demonstrate is the problem with the data and technically how votes could have been manipulated.   And that part I think he's done - at least to the point that others with the appropriate expertise should follow up and determine if his allegations have merit.  It may lead to a dead end, but even then it would help expose the vulnerabilities of the process and technology further.

The technical part isn't necessarily flawless.  Perhaps other explanations would account for what he found.  For example, if enough Democrats switched parties to vote in the Republican primary race between Murkowski and Miller, would that accounts for the dip in Democrats that 2008?  I don't know. 


Who Is John Foelster?

Foelster identifies himself as a 'nerd' who lives in Pennsylvania and has never been to Alaska.  He also has Aspbergers. And experience in computers and voting technology. I don't see that he has any particular interest in Alaska politics other than he saw this inconsistency and then obsessively pursued it. My sense of Foelster is that this anomaly caught his attention and he ran with it.    I don't believe he works for any party or has any particular personal interest in Alaska.  It's just a puzzle that came his way and he got deeply into it.  I understand that.  I did something similar with the redistricting board.

Computer crimes are hard to prove - first that they happened and second who did them - without lots of access, patience, and savvy.  

Even if all his allegations proved to be correct, I don't see Ethan Berkowitz being retroactively sworn in to the House of Representatives.  But if this really did happen, we ought to know about it and take steps to do something to protect us better in future elections.  And if it didn't happen here the way Foelster says, there are other possibilities where it might have happened.

Can it happen in tomorrow's election?  Yes, but there were patches made, according to Foelster, in 2011 that would preclude the particular hack he describes as for 2008.


What Next?

I see two things that should be done here:

1. We need a technical election committee that reviews every election in Alaska.  It looks at the hardware, the software, and makes a statistical analysis of voting results to find any suspicious anomalies.
2. That committee could start by reviewing Foelster's work.

I would note that the Municipality had such a committee - though its charge was not quite this thorough - but it was abandoned before the 2012 election.

I would also note that in that election there were lots of sloppy practices - plastic seals on ballot bags that easily broke off, voting machines and ballots being taken home by election workers overnight - that opened up many opportunities for fraud.  Barb Jones, the new municipal clerk (after the 2012 election) and the election official Amanda Moser, have eliminated some of these practices and have been accessible to me as a blogger to exactly how each step of the process works.  But we're still too much in the small town, we trust each other, level that our procedures originally came from.  We're still leaving a lot of windows open and doors unlocked.

2012 Municipality Election Posts To Show Where My Concerns Come From

I have put together a list of posts I did on the 2012 Municipal election.  (The posts were not well labeled and I had to poke around to find them.)  I offer this list to help readers understand my experience with elections and why I'm willing to give John Foelster some attention here. 

The Myth of the Big Election Turnout 

Guadalupe Marroquin, Former Anchorage Election Chief Talks About The Election... (10 minute video on how to tamper with the machines and how they work from the previous election chief)

What Do The Election Percentages and Numbers Tell? Maybe Nothing

Polling Gap - Dittman Confirms It's the Biggest 

Brad Friedman Rips Apart Election Commissioner's Testimony 

Jacqueline Duke, Elections Chief, Fired by Assembly

What's Happening With The Anchorage Election? 

Assembly Exchanges Barbs: Barbara Jones To Replace Barb Gruenstein.

Citizen Group on Election Meeting Now with Assembly Attorney

Hensley Report on Election Now Available - Form Over Substance 

141 "Potentially Uncounted Ballots" Found July 11 (From April Election)
(August)

How Many Ways Are There To Steal An Election? And Why Doesn't Anyone Care?
(This is marginally about Anchorage - trying to link us to bigger national issues)

Alaska Election Through Spanish Eyes

"Alaska es tres veces más grande que España, pero tiene menos población que la ciudad de Zaragoza. Para salir elegido senador en ese estado bastan 151.767 votos, que es los que sacó Mark Begich en 2008. Por comparar, Diane Feinstein necesitó 7,7 millones de papeletas en 2012 para renovar su escaño por California. Paradojas de los sistemas electorales.

Pero hacer campaña en Alaska es mucho más difícil que en California. En el caso de Begich, mucho más. En 2008 ganó por los pelos: menos de 4.000 votos de diferencia frente a su rival, el senador Ted Stevens, que estaba procesado por corrupción. Solo ese escándalo permitió a Begich derrotar a la formidable maquinaria política que Stevens había construido en sus 40 años de senador. El demócrata le derroto, además, con una innovadora estrategia: se fue a buscar votantes al Polo Norte."

My high school Spanish gets me more than I would expect - the first sentence is clearly "Alaska is three times bigger than Spain, but has a smaller population than the city of Zaragoza."  But  Bing translator fills in the blanks I can't quite make out, and does it with a distinct computer accent.

Alaska is three times larger than Spain, but has less population than the city of Zaragoza. To exit elected Senator in that State are sufficient 151.767 votes, which is what Mark Begich released in 2008. By comparison, Diane Feinstein needed 7.7 million ballots in 2012 to renew his seat to California. Paradoxes of electoral systems.

But campaigning in Alaska is much more difficult than in California. In the case of Begich, much more. In 2008, won by a whisker: less than 4,000 votes against his rival, Senator Ted Stevens, who was prosecuted for corruption. Only that scandal enabled Begich to defeat the formidable political machinery that Stevens had built in their 40 years of Senator. Democrat defeated him, also with an innovative strategy: went to find voters to the North Pole.

Here's a little more:

. . . Ahora, en 2012 [sic], la historia se está volviendo a repetir. Solo que más intensa. El republicano Dan Sullivan ha decidido disputar a Begich el voto rural. O, más bien, remoto. Y se ha ido, por ejemplo, a Barrow, un pueblo a 2.100 kilómetros del Polo Norte geográfico en el que el 56% de la población es esquimal. Solo hay 10 núcleos urbanos situados más al Norte en el mundo. Canadá, Noruega y Rusia tienen cada uno tres, y Dinamarca oros dos, en Groenlandia. Por su parte, Begich ha reforzado su campaña entre los pescadores, una comunidad extremadamente importante en Alaska.
Así es como los candidatos al Senado se dedican a celebrar reuniones con los patriarcas de las tribus y a aceptar banquetes tradicionales de carne de ballena en pueblos en cuyos basureros no merodean ratas, sino osos polares. Lo que está en juego, sin embargo, es mucho más. Lo más obvio es el control del Senado. Con las elecciones legislativas más inciertas en décadas, todo puede acabar dependiendo de quién gane en Alaska, y eso, a su vez, puede acabar siendo determinado por cualquier pueblo como Barrow.

And a little more humor from Bing translate:

Now, in 2012 [sic], the story is becoming to repeat. Only that more intense. The Republican Dan Sullivan has decided to contest the rural vote to Begich. Or, rather, remote. And a town 2,100 kilometers from the geographic North Pole in which 56% of the population is Eskimo has been, for example, Barrow. There are only 10 cities located more to the North in the world. Canada, Norway and Russia have each three, and Denmark two gold medals, in Greenland. For his part, Begich has strengthened his campaign among fishermen, an extremely important community in Alaska.

So as candidates to the Senate are devoted to meetings with the Patriarchs of the tribes and to accept traditional banquets of whale meat in peoples in whose garbage dumps do not roam rats, but polar bears. What is at stake, however, is much more. The most obvious is the control of the Senate. With legislative elections more uncertain in decades, everything can be finished depending on who wins in Alaska, and that, in turn, can end up being determined by any people as a Barrow.

El Mundo (The World) is Spain's second biggest print newspaper and biggest online paper according to Wikipedia.

The whole article is here.

The Ebola Volunteer Watch Resort

Medical volunteers are desperately needed to help with Ebola patients.  But long quarantine periods are making it more difficult to get volunteers. From the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM):

"Médecins sans Frontières, the World Health Organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and many other organizations say we need tens of thousands of additional volunteers to control the epidemic. We are far short of that goal, so the need for workers on the ground is great. These responsible, skilled health care workers who are risking their lives to help others are also helping by stemming the epidemic at its source.

But many people and politicians are fearful that returning medical volunteers will spread Ebola in the US.   This worry is overblown as the NEJM article also says:

"Health care professionals treating patients with this illness have learned that transmission arises from contact with bodily fluids of a person who is symptomatic — that is, has a fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and malaise. We have very strong reason to believe that transmission occurs when the viral load in bodily fluids is high, on the order of millions of virions per microliter. This recognition has led to the dictum that an asymptomatic person is not contagious; field experience in West Africa has shown that conclusion to be valid. Therefore, an asymptomatic health care worker returning from treating patients with Ebola, even if he or she were infected, would not be contagious. Furthermore, we now know that fever precedes the contagious stage, allowing workers who are unknowingly infected to identify themselves before they become a threat to their community. This understanding is based on more than clinical observation: the sensitive blood polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) test for Ebola is often negative on the day when fever or other symptoms begin and only becomes reliably positive 2 to 3 days after symptom onset. This point is supported by the fact that of the nurses caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who died from Ebola virus disease in Texas in October, only those who cared for him at the end of his life, when the number of virions he was shedding was likely to be very high, became infected. Notably, Duncan's family members who were living in the same household for days as he was at the start of his illness did not become infected." [emphasis added]

The NEJM argues that adding lengthy quarantine periods for returning volunteers simply makes it that much harder to recruit volunteers.

Thus, I offer an alternative:  The Ebola Volunteer Watch Resort.

 Locate or build isolated resorts where Ebola volunteers will be sent to relax and enjoy a vacation while they are watched for symptoms before returning to their home country.  The resort will offer options for various outdoor and indoor activities while the volunteers' temperatures are checked regularly.

Those who get a fever would be immediately moved to an isolated medical ward so they do not infect the others at the resort and so they can be treated. 

Volunteers could work on personal Ebola volunteer observation reports and work together with other medical volunteers to develop plans, based on their experiences, for improving the response to the Ebola outbreaks now and in the future.  This would allow Ebola medical volunteers to get some needed rest AND to have time to reflect on their experiences alone and with others and develop programs that would help with the Ebola situation and future health emergencies.

I suspect that much of the work needed does not necessarily require highly trained Western experts and that much of the volunteer work should be spent on training Africans how to do their work, thus eliminating the need for so many out-of-country volunteers.  The resorts could also be used for this sort of training.

The costs of the Watch Resorts could be born by those states that would prefer not to have Ebola volunteers return without a strictly enforced quarantine.  Or the people of those states could just read the medical literature and be more rational. 

Notes:
I tend to be a skeptic about most things, including claims of medical science.  But skeptic doesn't mean rejecting out of hand.  It means asking for detailed explanations and then deciding.

The  pictures are original to this blog and are just examples. 

Good Design Or Just An Accident?

This was the view from the room where the complexity presentation was held.  It's really a peaceful landscape.  What impressed me was . . . well look at the next picture.

Yes, there is a road that goes through this landscape.  But from this room, at least,  you don't see the road.  When there's no car, you don't even realize it's there.

So, I was wondering - was this designed this way?  Or just an accident?  From the second floor, you won't have this same illusion that it's just an unbroken field to the trees.

Now, on the way to the presentation, I did pass an accident.  There were at least two other cars behind me that were also involved.  I didn't see an ambulance and you couldn't crash much closer to the emergency room than this intersection right between UAA and Providence hospital.   Not sure how this car got in this position.  Well designed intersections have fewer accidents. 

 
And putting some thought into land use can avoid making terrible mistakes too.

At the complexity talk, Dr. Jamie Trammel's presentation was titled: Alternative Landscape Futures: Using Spatially-Explicit Scenarios to Model Landscape Change.

OK, that title sounds pretty academic.  Basically, he was looking at ways to look at land use by gathering data, then projecting maps of the landscape with different possible futures based on different conditions.  If you, for example, see where threatened species live, leave wilderness corridors, look at the best land for urban areas, you can make maps that show different possible land use patterns.  He gave examples from Australia, Las Vegas, and the Kenai Peninsula.   This slide probably gives a better sense of how this works. 

Clearly Trammel's work is to try to bring some sense and order to future land use rather than letting things just happen haphazardly.

This was the slide that I didn't quite understand and I didn't have a chance to ask him to explain it more fully.  But it's a diagram, as I understand it, for developing these alternative futures so that people can visualize all the data that normally is too dense for most people to make sense of. 

This is a little late, but UAA at 11:30 today - Alternative Landscape Futures

Title: Alternative Landscape Futures: Using Spatially-Explicit Scenarios to Model Landscape Change.
Presented by: Dr. Jamie Trammell. UAA. Geography and Environmental Studies.
When: October 31st 2014 11:30-12:45
Where: CPISB 105A (see map)

There are ways to strenuously stretch your mind  in Anchorage.  

Jamie was one of the new faculty I worked with a couple of years ago and this should be good.  Parking is free at UAA on Fridays.  The last one I went to, two weeks ago, was really good.  

Don Young And The Non-Apology Apology

When I blogged the Alaska legislature in 2010, a staffer was treated very rudely by a committee chair.  Later, the staffer's boss told the chair to apologize.  What the staffer got was:  "I'm sorry you were offended."  The staffer was irate.  That wasn't an apology he told me, essentially that means, "I did nothing wrong, but if you were offended, I'm sorry."

I realized that he was right.  I hadn't really paid close attention to that phrase before.  But now I do. 

From today's Alaska Dispatch News:

A week ago, in a speech to the Alaska Federation of Natives, [Don Young] was “profoundly sorry for those that took offense at what I tried to say because they did not and will not take time to understand we have to stop” suicides.

Not only does he not own up to doing anything wrong, but he blames the people who were offended for not taking the time to understand.


He's got this routine down pat. 

From his press release on October 24, 2014:

“Because of my comments, I am profoundly and genuinely sorry for the pain it has caused the Alaskan people. I am genuinely sorry for the pain I have caused the individual, as I have experienced it, and hope that you won’t have to experience that.

Here again, he did nothing wrong, but he's sorry "my comments" caused pain.  The hidden message, "Get over it, you're overly sensitive."  He doesn't even apologize for the bad grammar which is excusable when talking, but not in press release.

I realize that Young is running for reelection next week and most people in such a situation would attempt to phrase the apology in the best light.  But sometimes the best light is to actually apologize.  People are starting to see through the fake apology.

In a Washington Post article in August 2014 titled GOP Rep. Don Young apologizes for strong-arming staffer we get another non-apology apology.

“While returning to the GOP conference meeting to discuss the ongoing situation on our southern border, I was caught off guard by an unidentified individual who was physically blocking me from re-entering the room,” Mr. Young, 81, said in a statement, Politico reported. “Regardless, my reaction was wrong, and I should have never placed my hands on the young man.”

 I was caught off guard - unidentified individual - physically blocking me.  Even though the Post calls it an apology, I don't see an apology.  I do see an acknowledgement that he did something wrong, but only after being severely provoked.  And no apology.  Maybe there was more that was edited out. 

Washington Post  March 29, 2013

“During a sit-down interview with Ketchikan Public Radio this week, I used a term that was commonly used during my days growing up on a farm in Central California,” he said, as reported by the Alaska Dispatch. “I know that this term is not used in the same way nowadays, and I meant no disrespect.”

This sort of non-apology apology actually has an entry in Wikipedia. 

A non-apology apology is a statement that has the form of an apology but does not express the expected contrition. It is common in both politics and public relations. It most commonly entails the speaker saying that he or she is sorry not for a behavior, statement or misdeed, but rather is sorry only because a person who has been aggrieved is requesting the apology, expressing a grievance, or is threatening some form of retribution or retaliation.

Contrition.  A good word. 
 

Winter Creeps In

When we got back to Anchorage Friday night, it was still warm enough to be comfortable in a fleece jacket over a shirt.  It was about 35˚F. I know for the people we left behind in LA, that sounded frigid.  But without much humidity and no wind, it's no big deal.

But it's dropped down a bit since and night time temps are down into the teens.  Still not too bad without wind and a good jacket, hat, and gloves.  But it does mean ice on the windshield.  There was an opaque crust Tuesday, but yesterday it was just this light pattern of crystals. 

One of the benefits of the rapid loss of daylight that comes this time of year, is that it's much easier to see the sunrise.  We do still have 8 hours and 40 minutes between sunrise and sunset, which means we still have three hours to lose in the next 50 days or so.