Would More Women Police Officers Reduce Police Violence?

My previous post looked at FBI Director Comey's comment that crime was going up and the only single cause he could correlate with this was that police were more timid because of fears of viral video tapes.
I went through a number of issues that affect crime and people's response to police.  After posting, my mind kept rolling on.  I'm a big proponent of the idea that many of our intractable problems stem from people's models of the world, which cause them to draw different conclusions from the same facts.  And this year's media coverage of white police killing unarmed black men illustrates my hypothesis.

Police easily get jaded about human beings. They see people at their worst - when they are pulled over for traffic violations, when they crime victims, when they have committed crimes.  And if an individual officer grew up in a household that had racial stereotypes, that saw things in absolutes, then it's easy to think about the world as made up of good guys and bad guys.  Anyone who doesn't cooperate with the good guys (the police) is automatically a bad guy.

African Americans all have stories of being treated differently - whether it was a lowered expectation by a teacher, being followed by security in a department store, or in any of hundreds of other small slights.  Lynching stories are in every African-American family history.  For many if not most blacks, the kind of treatment they've seen in those viral video tapes is surprising only because the national media are actually covering their story. 

While I think that there are lots of different factors that affect the crime rate in any particular community at any particular time, I think those two different interpretations of police action are the underlying cause of the tension between police and blacks at the moment.  And why the New York Times and others, came down so strongly against Director Comey's statement.

So, to the title question:  Do Police Have To Be Violent And Macho?

I googled 'demographics of US police' hoping to get some data on the economic and education background of  US local police officers.  Yesterday, I quoted the Department of Labor saying that a high school diploma and GED are required everywhere, and that some places wanted some college or even a bachelor's degree.  I was trying to get information on the actual number of officers at different educational levels because I think this is part of the problem.

But what google gave me were stories about women in law enforcement and I think this Washington Post article is a good start for answering the question about violence.  I'll give you a couple of quotes that I don't think need any comment from me.  The first is from David Couper, the former chief of police in Madison, Wis

• "As David Couper, the former chief of police in Madison, Wis., recently wrote: Women in policing make a difference — a big difference — they make for a better police department. Haven’t you wondered why women police are not the ones involved in recent officer involved shootings? After all, they are usually smaller, somewhat weaker in physical strength, and yet they don’t appear to shoot suspects as often."

• ". . . In fact, over the last 40 years, studies have shown that female officers are less authoritarian in their approach to policing, less reliant on physical force and are more effective communicators. Most importantly, female officers are better at defusing potentially violent confrontations before those encounters turn deadly."

•  "One of the earliest studies, sponsored by the Police Foundation in 1974, found that women encountered many of the same kinds of situations (involving angry, drunk or violent individuals) and were as capable as men. The study’s most important finding, though, was that 'women act less aggressively and they believe in less aggression.'”  

• ". . . In a 1988 article in the Journal of Police Science and Administration researcher Joseph Balkin reviewed the U.S. and international research spanning 14 years on the involvement of women in police work. He found uniformly that women not only perform the job of policing effectively, but are better able to defuse potentially violent situations: 'Policemen see police work as involving control through authority,” he wrote, 'while policewomen see it as a public service.'”

• ". . . the 1992 Christopher Commission report on police brutality in the Los Angeles Police Department. The commission was created in the aftermath of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent devastating riots: “Virtually every indicator examined by the commission establishes that female LAPD officers are involved in excessive use of force at rates substantially below those of male officers.” The commission explained: “Many officers, both male and female, believe female officers are less personally challenged by defiant suspects and feel less need to deal with defiance with immediate force or confrontational language.”

• ". . . A 2002 study by the National Center for Women & Policing of excessive force incidents in seven major city police departments found that “the average male officer is over eight and a half times more likely than his female counterpart to have an allegation of excessive force sustained against him … [and] two to three times more likely than the average female officer to have a citizen name him in a complaint of excessive force.”

 The author, Katherine Spillar, then points out:

"local police departments averaged just 12 percent women in their ranks, only slightly higher than the 7.6 percent of women in local departments 20 years earlier."

 She says larger police departments have a higher percentage - 18% - but that's only because of many anti-discrimination law suits from the 1970s which are now beginning to expire.

She blames the lack of women on three things:

"Misguided recruiting practices, ongoing discriminatory hiring processes and hostile work places."

I would also raise again, the issue of education.  Is there a way to get better educated police officers?  Police work, because of high level of conflict inherent in the job, tends to isolate officers from the rest of society  Thus, there is probably more camaraderie among police.  This might be another obstacle to women.

One of my older posts that still gets lots of hits and may offer more insight on women in law enforcement is Early Women In The FBI.

[Sorry for reposting - Feedburner problems.]

Blaming The Victim: FBI Chief Uses Gut Rather Than Data To Blame Protesters For Increasing Crime

Here, from the NY Times (I read it in the Alaska Dispatch), titled, "F.B.I. Chief Links Scrutiny of Police With Rise in Violent Crime":

"The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

With his remarks, Mr. Comey lent the prestige of the F.B.I., the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency, to a theory that is far from settled: that the increased attention on the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion and that it may be just one of many factors that are contributing to the rise in crime, like cheaper drugs and an increase in criminals who are being released from prison.

“I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year,” Mr. Comey said in a speech at the University of Chicago Law School."

This is so bad.  So outrageous.  I know, I should settle down before I post this.

--------------------------------

That's how I started this post.  Actually I wrote very indignantly about the FBI chief.  And then I stopped and decided I needed to read the whole article, not just what was on the first page.  I also decided  I needed to read Comey's whole speech to see if they reported it accurately.

Having done that I still think that Comey is mostly wrong.  And I think the NY Times is right to call him out on it.  They quote people at the Justice Department and other police chiefs who disagree with him on the impact of greater police scrutiny and they disagree that crime is even going up.  It varies among different kinds of crime and different cities.   

So, I've edited and added to what I wrote earlier today, and at the end I'll try to summarize some conclusions. 

-----------------------------------

Cops have been killing unarmed black men for years and years.   Killing unarmed black men while wearing white robes went out of style  (translation:  it was harder to get away with) in the late1960s and 70s.  But if you did it wearing a blue uniform, it was still ok.  But cell phone cameras have changed the narrative and this year the media have suddenly paid attention to the "Cops kill unarmed black men (and sometimes women)" story.

Now, Comey thinks, that geez, cops reacting to the bad press and not beating up and shooting  suspects is causing crime to go up, with the implication that people saying "black lives matter" are the problem.  And he did say 'all lives matter' several times in the speech. 

Give me a break.  The LA Times recently reported that crime had gone down in LA because the cops under-reported crimes by mis-classifiying them to lower level crimes.   Now that they are reporting them more accurately, maybe that's the cause of the increase.

OK, I understand.  There are lots of mean nasty dudes out there and there are times when the cops have to be tough.  But the last year of reporting has demonstrated that there are also lots of cops whose brains are programmed to see bad motherfuckers when they are really looking at decent, law abiding, citizens. Sometimes irritated law abiding citizens, who get pissed when, say, the cop tells them not to smoke. We've seen cops who can get mad easily and start taking it out on kids who don't obey them immediately.

Maybe there's an issue here about policing shifts that put cops under great pressure, about understaffing due to years and years of cutting budgets.  

Maybe the problem is how police recruit and train their cops.

Maybe it's the whole message the federal government sends to Americans: glorifying the military and the idea of getting 'bad guys' around the world, bringing back a lot weapon savvy, but mentally and emotionally unstable vets to the US and funneling them into police jobs,  and selling military equipment to local police departments to make the cops look like movie robo-cops rather than humans.  Maybe it's the macho cop story we see over and over again on television and movies and internet.  Maybe it's the violent video game industry which teaches kids to shoot as quickly as they can.  All these messages matter;  they infiltrate our brains and alter how we see reality.

But dammit, blaming the protesters (yes, that's what he's doing, because he's implying without them, cops would still be shooting unarmed black guys with impunity, I mean, being appropriately aggressive when needed) is just wrong.

This is like saying Americans are becoming less religious because of all the accusations and lawsuits against the Catholic church.  It's the people complaining, not the church that's the problem.  But I say, if the church hadn't tolerated priests abusing little girls and little boys, adolescents, and grown ups, there wouldn't have been any protest.

And if police violence hadn't been tolerated all these years, there wouldn't be any protests now.

And note - this is a 'theory'.  Actually, it doesn't reach the level of theory.  This is a defensive, gut reaction.  It reveals a lack of real police science and inability to break out of old policing modes so they can objectively reevaluate the role of policing in the US.  In fact policing cannot be isolated from everything else going on - particularly the fact that the US has 16 million kids living in poverty.
I know, for Ben Carson, this is a minor challenge, but for many people it is insurmountable.

These law enforcement officers' 'theory of good policing' is roughing up the 'bad guy' and making him scared of the cops.  I'm sure that's part of the thinking with all the Darth Vader riot police costumes.   When cops think in terms of good guys and bad guys, they aren't seeing people as whole human beings who have good and bad all wrapped into one person.  I know cops will tell me there really are bad guys.  And I'd respond, I'm sure there are, but they were once cute little babies.  How did they get that way?  Why do so many boys and men think their best choice is to join a gang?  It's probably because they live in dangerous neighborhoods where if you don't join a gang, your life is even more in jeopardy.  And if cops lose their cool and get violent with kids, why should we expect kids not to do the same thing? 

And Comey has the nerve to publicly voice a 'suspicion' he has that crime has gone up because cops aren't being violent enough.  Of course my tone is angry.  This is the best Obama can do for the head of the FBI?  
---------------------------------------------------

OK, that's when I went back to see Comey's whole speech.  It's on the FBI website here.
I wanted to see if he gave more possible causes than the protests against cops.  He does, but then he says, that for him the change in policing in response to protests is the real answer:

Maybe it’s the return of violent offenders after serving jail terms. Maybe it’s cheap heroin or synthetic drugs. Maybe after we busted up the large gangs, smaller groups are now fighting for turf. Maybe it’s a change in the justice system’s approach to bail or charging or sentencing. Maybe something has changed with respect to the availability of guns.
These are all useful suggestions, but to my mind none of them explain both the map and the calendar in disparate cities over the last 10 months.  (emphasis added)

He came to this conclusion, he says, by talking to cops.

"But I’ve also heard another explanation, in conversations all over the country. Nobody says it on the record, nobody says it in public, but police and elected officials are quietly saying it to themselves. And they’re saying it to me, and I’m going to say it to you. And it is the one explanation that does explain the calendar and the map and that makes the most sense to me.
Maybe something in policing has changed.
In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?"

There is something to be said about getting on the ground and listening to what people say.  And I'm a firm believer about saying out loud what people are whispering.  But only if what they are whispering makes sense.  He talks, in his speech about getting data.  But random anecdotal accounts are not good data.  They may be useful for suggesting what data to pursue, but they reflect the biases and fears of the people who report them as much as, and often more than, the 'truth.'   I suspect if Comey had gone around the country and talked with people living in high crime areas, law abiding citizens and gang members too, he would have gotten a totally different account of why crime was going up.  Well actually, some of those folks would have agreed that they need somebody to stop the gangs and other violent characters in their neighborhoods.  And in Comey's speech he does talk about doing this in particular neighborhoods where he was in gang busting units.  But there are also neighborhoods where people are relatively safe from gangs and it's the cops they fear. 

Law enforcement has been fighting gangs seriously since at least 1982.  Maybe if the time and money spent on fighting gangs had been used for Head Start and school lunch programs, for parent training and after school programs, fewer kids would have felt they had no choice but to join a gang.

But as I say, anecdotal data, isn't any good for making policy.  And how prepared are today's police to think through complex socioeconomic and political issues to determine the causes of crime and the solutions?  The cops on the beat are too close to the problem and not really trained to do good diagnosis of the causes of crime.

Back in the 1970s the LEEP program gave police departments lots of money to send their officers to college and graduate school.  Those funds dried up long ago.  Today's police officers are not particularly well educated.  Here's from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Standards Handbook on police work:

Education

Police and detective applicants must have at least a high school education or GED and be a graduate of their agency’s training academy. Many agencies and some police departments require some college coursework or a college degree. Knowledge of a foreign language is an asset in many federal agencies and in certain geographical regions.
Candidates must be U.S. citizens, usually be at least 21 years old, have a driver’s license, and meet specific physical qualifications. Applicants may have to pass physical exams of vision, hearing, strength, and agility, as well as competitive written exams. Previous work or military experience is often seen as a plus. Candidates typically go through a series of interviews and may be asked to take lie detector and drug tests. A felony conviction may disqualify a candidate.

Are these they guys Comey spoke to?

"I spoke to officers privately in one big city precinct who described being surrounded by young people with mobile phone cameras held high, taunting them the moment they get out of their cars. They told me, “We feel like we’re under siege and we don’t feel much like getting out of our cars.”

These cops and these kids need to be playing basketball or pool together, like Comey said he did in law school.  They need to get past the facades of tough guy on both sides and relate as human to human.  Back to Comey's speech:

I’ve been told about a senior police leader who urged his force to remember that their political leadership has no tolerance for a viral video.
So the suggestion, the question that has been asked of me, is whether these kinds of things are changing police behavior all over the country.
And the answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know whether this explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind blowing through American law enforcement over the last year. And that wind is surely changing behavior."  (emphasis added)

And it should change behavior.  Cops should be going after criminals, but they shouldn't be treating law abiding citizens like criminals.  Cops now are increasingly isolated from the people they are supposed to protect.  Cops can no longer be this separate unit to take care of problems after the fact.  They need to be working with parents, with schools, with social workers, and with kids.  They need to be part of the neighborhood.  They need to part of a community health and educational team that prevents crime by helping kids stay healthy, stay fed, stay in school, stay off drugs, and get legal work that is enough to pay the bills.   We need more Mr. Rogers cops than Terminator cops.

Conclusions 

1.  Did the Times misconstrue what FBI Director Comey said?
No, but they left a lot out which shows Comey to be a lot more sophisticated than the article suggests.  The structure of the story stacked the worst stuff in the first paragraphs and then quoted all the folks who disagreed with him.  Only then did it give more context of what he said.  But that context of other possible causes of the increase in crime were basically dismissed in favor of the 'theory' (basically what cops have been telling him they were experiencing) that crime was rising because cops were afraid of viral Youtube videos.
The Times also pointed out that in most places most crime (except for murder) has actually been dropping not rising.
 But the Times didn't mention Comey's story about integrating the neighborhood basketball team in the south side of Chicago when he was in law school.  (It would be nice to hear what his teammates thought of him.  Did he keep in touch with any of them, or is this just a good story he uses?)  They didn't mention his long discussion about how crime has dropped dramatically since 1990 and cities have been transformed.  People could sit on their porches and get on with their lives because lots of criminals had been put in prison.  He also acknowledged that many of those put in prison were black, because, he said, many of the criminals were black.  He also pointed out that many of those killed by criminals were black, so that by putting those violent criminals in prison, many lives were saved.  He talked about Richmond, Virginia in detail and also about northwest Arkansas.

2.  Is Comey's analysis of the cause of the increase in crime reasonable?
No.  I don't doubt that there are cops who tell him that they are afraid of breaking up a bunch of guys standing on the corner at 1am because the encounter might go viral.  I know college professors who were afraid to say anything about race or religion in class because they were worried about a student saying they were discriminating.  But those aren't the best cops or the best professors.  Those are people who don't get the bigger picture.  Comey says:

“Lives are saved when those potential killers are confronted by a police officer, a strong police presence and actual, honest-to-goodness, up-close ‘What are you guys doing on this corner at 1 o’clock in the morning’ policing,” Mr. Comey said.

I'm sure that's true.  But too many of those folks who have been confronted this year were unarmed, ,  decent folks of the wrong color in the wrong place at the wrong time.   And they died because of the police, not because of criminals.

Comey gives stats showing increases in crime rates this year.  The Times cites other law enforcement leaders disputing the kinds of increases he mentions and disputing that increased scrutiny causes the increases.

3.  Should Comey bring to light the things cops are saying among themselves?
I think such discussions, if they are widespread, should be brought to the public and allowed to be scrutinized.  But Comey went further than that.  He essentially says he thinks the cops are right - that he can think of no other single cause for the (disputed) increase in crime.
I would argue that there probably isn't one single reason, that there is a myriad of reasons.  And that they differ from location to location.

Comey could have raised this and not taken a stand on it.  He could have said it needs to be studied further.  He did acknowledge there wasn't any data to prove this.

4.  Is Comey's characterization of crime increasing because cops are less aggressive because of the protests and fear of viral video tapes a good one?
No.  It blames the victims.  If you blacks wouldn't complain so much about police violence, there'd be less crime.  Women are being blamed for being raped too.  What was missing for me in his speech, was the acknowledgement, not just that there were some bad cops, but that the whole world view of most cops - we're the good guys fighting the bad guys - helps cops justify their bad behavior.  And even 'good' cops carry racial prejudices in their heads that lead them to be more confrontational with blacks.  And I recognize that cops often have good reason to fear people on the street.  It's not easy.  But innocent black men and women shouldn't have to fear cops and most black mothers of sons worry every time their kids go out - worry how the police will treat their sons.  That's a fact.  If cops think the mothers are wrong, well the mothers think the cops are wrong.  Maybe they should have cops and black mothers sit down and talk.  A lot.

5.  Is the media coverage of all this fair?
No.  It wasn't fair back when cops were always believed and it isn't fair now when the worst is believed of the cops.  But we really only hear the stories that are backed up with video tape.
And I think we should listen to the people of Ferguson who complained that all their peaceful demonstrations got very little press.  It was only when there was violence that the media jumped on the story.  That's a problem the media needs to deal with.
Most reporters have word limits, so they have to choose what to cover and what to leave out.  Comey's speech covered a lot more than what the Times focused on.  What they left out gives nuance to who Comey is and how much he understands about neighborhoods and crimes and getting to know people better.  But I couldn't find a link in the Times  online version to Comey's whole speech.  That's the least they could have given.
Finally, even if the reporters wrote a longer story, would the public have read it?  If they hadn't packed the most sensational parts of the story in the beginning, would anyone have read it?  I have the luxury of not worrying about selling blog posts.  That means I can be lazier about cleaning up what I write and about organizing it (like this rambling story), but I can also write longer pieces and those couple of readers who want to read the whole thing can. 

River of Smoke - A Word Junkie's Heaven - What A Tamasha!

"Everywhere you look there are khidmatgars, daftardars, khansamas, chuprassies, peons, durwans, khazanadars, khalasis and lascars.  And this my dear Puggly, is one of the greatest of the many surprises of Fanqui-town - a great number  of its denizens are from India!  They come from Sindh and Goa, Bombay and Malabar, Madras and the Coringa hills, Calcutta and Sylhet - but these differences mean nothing to the gamins who swarm around the Maidan.  They have their own names for every variety of foreign devil:  the British are "I-says" and the French are "Merdes".  The Hindustanis are by the same token, "Achhas":  no matter whether a man is from Karachi or Chittagong, the lads will swarm after him, with their hands outstretched, shouting:  "Achha! Achha! Gimme cumshaw!'
  They seem to be persuaded that the Achhas are all from one country - is it not the most diverting notion?"

In Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke the pages are sprinkled, sometimes dripping, with words odd to the American ear.

Some, like Achha, are explained, as you can see above, in the text itself.   And we'd learned a couple of pages earlier about Fanqui-town:

"And so at last to the foreign enclave - or 'Fanqui-town' as I have already learnt to call it!"

And we'd also just learned about the 'Maidan':

"And so, following my young Atlas, [a coolie carrying his luggage from the boat] I stepped upon the stretch of shore that forms the heart and hearth of Fanqui-town.  This is an open space between the factories* and the river-banks: the English speak of it as 'The Square', but Hindusthanis have a better name for it.  They call it the 'Maidan' which is exactly what it is, a crossroads, a meeting-place, a piazza, a promenade, a stage for a tamasha that never ends. . ."

But many other words are left there for the reader to either figure out or skip over, or gradually pick up through hearing it used, just like we learn words in our own language.  And, after all, the basic linguistic ingredient in this book is English. 

It was about this point - page 173 of a 500 page book - that I thought perhaps I should look up some of these words to see how much actually knowing what they mean adds to the reading.  I googled up a couple:

"las·car

ˈlaskər/

noun

dated

noun: Lascar; plural noun: Lascars; noun: lascar; plural noun: lascars

1. a sailor from India or Southeast Asia.

Origin early 17th century: from Portuguese lascari, from Urdu and Persian laškarī ‘soldier,’ from laškar ‘army.’"

and

"ta·ma·sha

təˈmäSHə/

noun Indian

noun: tamasha; plural noun: tamashas

1. a grand show, performance, or celebration, especially one involving dance.

   • a fuss or confusion.

     
     

     "what a tamasha!"

Origin via Persian and Urdu from Arabic tamāšā ‘walk around together.’"

But when I started jotting down a list, I was on the page with the quote at the top and quickly my list was:

khidmatgars
daftardars
khansamas
chuprassies
durwans
khazanadars
khalasis  

I'll never finish the book if I have to look up all these words.  But, I thought, maybe someone has already done this.  

It turns out Neel [one of the characters in the book] did.  While it's not in the book, it's on Ghosh's website.  It's not a glossary, he calls it a  chrestomathy.

"The Chrestomathy then, is not so much a key to language as an astrological chart, crafted by a man who was obsessed with the destiny of words. Not all words were of equal interest of course and the Chrestomathy, let it be noted, deals only with a favoured few: it is devoted to a select number among the many migrants who have sailed from eastern waters towards the chilly shores of the English language. It is, in other words, a chart of the fortunes of a shipload of girmitiyas: this perhaps is why Neel named it after the Ibis.
But let there be no mistake: the Chrestomathy deals solely with words that have a claim to naturalization within the English language. Indeed the epiphany out of which it was born was Neel’s discovery, in the late 1880s, that a complete and authoritative lexicon of the English language was under preparation: this was of course, the Oxford English Dictionary (or the Oracle, as it is invariably referred to in the Chrestomathy). Neel saw at once that the Oracle would provide him with an authoritative almanac against which to judge the accuracy of his predictions. Although he was already then an elderly man, his excitement was such that he immediately began to gather his papers together in preparation for the Oracle’s publication."

I learned about the Chrestomathy at The Asia Collection which adds this insight into the language:

"It wasn’t until I had almost finished the book that I came across a glossary – and not just a regular glossary but a chrestomathy (technically, “a collection of literary selections, especially in a foreign language, as an aid to learning a language”), no less! The Chrestomathy, appearing at Ghosh’s website, was originally compiled by Neel, a character in both the first and second books of the Ibis triology, but also an ancestor of Ghosh, who passed down to him his love of words. Neel, according to Ghosh, “was of the view that words, no less than people, are endowed with lives and destinies of their own,” and his Chrestomathy “is not so much a key to language as an anthropological chart, crafted by a man who was obsessed by the destiny of words.” Like a number of Neel’s earlier descendants, Ghosh was given the task of not actually recreating the Chrestomathy but of “provid[ing] a summary of a continuing exchange of words between generations.”
It was in the Chrestomathy, then, that I found all those words and phrases that had challenged me while I was making my way through the book. Neel’s research and documentation in the late 19th century and Ghosh’s “summary” must have entailed painstaking work, indeed. And if you think all the above is a goolmaul, a gollmaul, atamasha – a puzzle, also, an uproar or a big fuss – try and work it out as I did with Ghosh’s masterpiece, or better still, read the book! And by all means use the Chrestomathy to ease your way through it."

Here's another example of mixing languages. 

"Patrão, the munshi's here - Freddy sent him.
Achha, munshiji, he said.  Why don't you sit on that kursi over there so we can look each other in the eye.
As you wish Sethji
In stepping up to the chair,  Neel had a vague intuition  . . . ."

Patrão comes from the Portuguese because Vico is from Macau and this is how he addresses his boss
Kursi, like some words, becomes clear in the next sentence, as Neel steps up to the kursi.

But what about munshiji?

From the Chrestomathy

+ munshi/moonshee: see dufter

+ daftar/dufter: This was another word which had already, in Neel’s lifetime, yielded to an ungainly rival, ‘office’. This too carried down with it, a lashkar of fine English words that were used for its staff: the clerks known as crannies, the mootsuddies who laboured over the accounts, the shroffs who were responsible for money-changing, the khazana-dars who watched over their treasuries, the hurkarus and peons who delivered messages, and of course, the innumerable moonshies, dubashes and druggermen who laboured over the translation of every document. It was the passing of the last three, all concerned with the work of translation, that most troubled Neel: those were the words he would cite when Englishmen boasted to him of the absorptive power of their language: “Beware, my friends: your tongues were flexible when you were still supplicants at the world’s khazanas:  now that you have the whole world in a stranglehold, your tongues are hardening, growing stiffer. Do you ever count the words you lose every year? Beware! Victory is but the harbinger of  decay and decline.”

Shroff was actually a word we learned the year we lived in Hong Kong.  To get your parking ticket validated at the mall, you had to go to the schroff.

I'd note the warning here to the British about their language.  Ghosh is a Bengali Indian.  English was imposed upon his country and in these books he's stretching his tongue (and maybe sticking it out a bit at the British) and saying, you left this here so don't tell us how to use it.  We're going to spice up  this language you left behind with all sorts of exotic linguistic ingredients.  

Just as the English have discovered how bland their food was when they started eating Indian found, they will discover how bland their language was too before the Indians stopped worrying about writing it 'properly'. 

But it's not just words from the subcontinent that flavor this book.  Other former British colonies also contribute phrases.

The Cantonese we learned in Hong Kong helped in other parts of the book.   Here's where Neel begins writing the Chrestomathy.  He meets the Chinese printer who is the author of a book Neel has seen often in the hands of Chinese trying to speak pidgin to the foreigners:

"The title of this short booklet was translated for Neel as "The-Red-Haired-People's-Buying-and-Selling-Common-Ghost-Language'.  It was more commonly known however as 'Ghost-People-Talk' - Gwai-lou-waah - and it sold very well . . ."

He does explain the words, but  Gwai-lou is what white foreigners are still called, and waah is the word for language. Both still alive and well in my brain.  Does it add to one's appreciation of the book to also independently recognize the words?  Made me feel good anyway.

That night Neel wonders why a similar book hasn't been written for the foreigners.  He decides fate has brought him together with Compton, the printer, and the next day he proposes they do it together.  Compton says he had thought of it too but couldn't find a foreigner to partner with him.

"'They think-la, pidgen is just broken English, like words of a baby.  They do not understand.  Is not so simple bo.'
'So will you let me do it?'
Yat-dihng!  Yat dihng! [Somewhere from my dusty brain I heard "Certainly! Certainly!"]
'What does that mean?' Neel inquired a little nervously.
'Yes. Certainly.'
Do-jeh Compton. [And thank you was one of the first words we learned, though Cantonese has a thank you that is only for physical gifts and another one for helpful actions.]
M'ouh hak hei  [This is obviously, 'don't mention it'.  I get the M'ouh  which means 'not' or 'nothing' but I don't remember the hak hei.]

Neel could already see the cover:  it would feature a richly caparisoned mandarin.  As for the title, that too had already come to him.  He would call it:  The Celestial Chrestomathy, Comprising a Complete Guide to and Glossary of the Language of Commerce in Southern China."

One other link to an interesting discussion of the language in River of Smoke from a bi-lingual culture blog. 


A final note on doing something I've never done before 

Words and books are semi-sacred to me.  Highlighting books always seemed like a desecration and I still don't mark books with anything more than a pencil.  So it was with a giant effort today that I ripped out the first 115 pages of the book.  I told myself what I used to tell students:  You should do something you've never done before, every day.  I try to do that, but this one was a particularly big one and I put it off as long as I could.  But I've invited a friend to be a guest at our book club when we discuss River of Smoke.   I've tried to get him a copy but neither Title Wave nor Barnes and Noble had copies.  The public and university libraries didn't have available copies.  Amazon wanted $46 to ship it in two days.  So I decided to give him a chunk of the book I'd already read.  If I gallop through the rest, maybe I can finish it before he needs more pages.  

I know for many this is no big deal.  I've even heard of travelers who would rip out the pages after they read them so their book was lighter.  That's not me.  

Why I Live Here - Chester Creek (Lanie Fleischer) BikeTrail

I had a workshop at Rural Cap yesterday and since it was sunny out I figured it would be an easy bike ride.  And it was though there were a few spots where the trail was icy - some bridges and along Gambell. 

Riding home, particularly, I was reminded how wonderful our trail system is, at least for those traveling in the areas there are these trails.  Right in the middle of the city you are out of traffic, away from buildings, in the woods, on a trail that serves not just recreational users, but also people going to work and other errands. 

Here's the lake just before you get to the tunnel under Lake Otis Parkway.   The ducks and gulls seemed to be enjoying themselves.














And here's the trail as it skirts Goose Lake and then gets to UAA.

As I rode along this route, I realized how infrequently I see this now that I'm not running any more.  I used to go on the first part of this trail twice a week and the other portion once a week.  While regular daily exercises have gotten me to the point where my Achilles tendon doesn't interfere with walking any more, I'm not ready to push it for running.  When I've tried, it's been a problem.  So I've switched to bike rides, and the best trail for that near the house is the Campbell Creek trail, not Chester Creek.  Also a beautiful trail, but they offer different experiences.  Chester, along this part, is more birch and Campbell is more small Spruce and Chugach views.

If you look carefully at the shadows in these photos, you can see it's late October.  The sun crosses the sky fairly low to the south and the shadows go to the north.  But it will get lower still over the next several months. 

AIFF 2015: Looking Back As This Year's Festival Nears- Link To Alex Gibney Interview

The first year I blogged the Anchorage International Film Festival (2007), I was already disagreeing with the judges. I was taken by Cam Christiansen's visuals in I Have Seen The Future an animated short that didn't get any recognition from the judges, but soon after got accepted at Sundance.   And I thought that Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side should have won the best documentary.  No doubt in my mind.  But it didn't.  However, it did go on to win the Academy Award for best documentary. The Anchorage International Film Festival has seen some great films.  Some have gone on to a wider audience, many others got lost in the fierce competition for screen space, and we were lucky to get to see them.  I've seen a few showing up in other venues - Wildlike, which was best feature in 2014 has been released in theaters recently, for example. 

I mention Gibney's film because there's an LA Times interview with him Wednesday on his winning the first Christopher Hitchens award. And this seems like a good introduction to the 2015 Anchorage International Film Festival which posted its selections for the December 4 - 13, 2015 festival. 


You can take your first look at all the films selected for the 2015 Anchorage International Film Festival.  You can also see which ones are "in competition" which means the screeners thought them worthy to go to the juries to be reviewed for prizes.  Here's the link.

And since this first post on the 2015 Festival was pushed into being by the Alex Gibney interview, here's a list of the documentaries in competition this year.  First the longer docs:

Children of the Arctic	Nick Brandestini	Switzerland	93 min.
Circus Without Borders	Susan Gray, Linda Matchan	United States	69 min.
Lost & Found	Nicolina Lanni, John Choi	Canada	82 min.
Love Between the Covers	Laurie Kahn	Australia, United States	83 min.
Madina’s Dream	Andrew Berends	United States	80 min.

 And these are the shorter ones:

Bihttoš	Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers	Canada	14 min.
Man in the Can	Noessa Higa	United States	38 min.
Superjednostka	Teresa Czepiec	Poland	20 min.
The House is Innocent	Nicholas Coles	States	12 min.

I'm not sure if the shorter ones are in competition with the longer ones or not.  I suspect that may be the case, though I think they should be in separate categories.


The Feature Films in Competition this year are all from outside the US - Turkey, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.   Should be interesting watching.

And here's the trailer for this year.  Last year's was a departure from previous years.  It was a compilation of clips from different films in the festival with some very catchy music that made me look forward to seeing (and hearing) it before each showing.  This one is the same genre though in the first couple of listens, I don't think the music is quite as catchy as last year's.  But take a look and as you see films in the festival you'll start recognizing the clips in the teaser. 


All this is a reminder that I need to get moving if I'm going to be ready by the opening date of Decemer 4, 2015. I have started a page in the header for AIFF 2015.

I've tried over the years to give general tips on how to best take advantage of having this festival in town as well as give specific guidance on what's playing each day and what things I like.  I'll also be putting up pictures and videos of film makers, AIFF organizers and volunteers, and audience members.  

[Feedburner probs, so reposting]

Ice Leaves

I've been waiting for the deck to dry off a bit and the lack of rain for the last three days seemed like a good time to take in the table for the winter. 





I went to brush off the leaves.

But they didn't brush off easily.

They were stuck.

So I had to peal them off and found these lovely ice leaves left on the table.

Elephants Cooperate, So Do People, Which Is Why I Couldn't Tell You About This Experiment Six Years Ago

From the new* Scientific American (I can only read the intro without paying):

"At the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, tucked away in the trees near Chiang Mai, a pair of Asian elephants gazes at two bowls of corn on the other side of a net. The corn is attached to a sliding platform, through which researchers have threaded a rope. The rope's ends lie on the elephants' side of the net. If only one elephant pulls an end, the rope slides out of the contraption. To bring the food within trunk's reach, the elephants have to do something only humans and other primates were thought to do: they must cooperate. Working in synchrony, each elephant grabs its end of the rope in its trunk and pulls, drawing the platform and the treats within reach."

photo from my April 2009 post

We met Josh Plotnick, the experimenter, in Chiangmai, in 2008.  We went to visit the elephant conservation center in 2009 where we saw his elephants and the experiment he was doing.  But I could only hint back then.  Here's from my first post on the elephant sanctuary in Lampang then:

"JP is a doctoral student doing his dissertation research here at the center. We met him last year and finally got a chance to go out and visit him in the center. His research is very interesting but I was sworn to silence until his work is published."

Here's a link to the second post on the sanctuary which focused on the hospital and nursery.


*It's hard figuring out online what the date of this Scientific American is.  It says, "

Liberals Take Strong Majority In Canada

From CBC news:

"Justin Trudeau will be Canada's next prime minister after leading the Liberal Party to a stunning majority government win, dashing the hopes of Stephen Harper, who had been seeking his fourth consecutive mandate, CBC News has projected."

From CBC

 From CBC election reporting:

Red is Liberal 

Blue is Conservative

Orange is New Democrat

Light blue is Quebec

From CBC

You wouldn't know the Liberals won from this map if you didn't know Canada a bit.  The big red area on top is sparsely populated Arctic region.  But the red is also in the major cities - Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec - where most of the population is.

The original map on the CBC website is interactive, so you can see those tiny city pockets of red easier.


Here's Trudeau's victory speech, alternating between French and English.

Gov Wants Special Legislative Session To Do Three Things

Alaska's governor has sent the legislature an 'agenda' for the special legislative session that begins in Juneau on Saturday.  Here are the three key things he wants:

"The three items for consideration in this special session are: 
(1) passage of legislation lifting the tax holiday on real property leased from the State containing threshold volumes of gas in order to ensure that producers are incentivized to commit their gas to Alaska LNG, or to make gas available for purchase if Alaska LNG does not proceed with all current project participants on previously established timelines; 
(2)  an appropriation to pay TransCanada its development costs and terminate its participation in Alaska LNG, so that AGDC can take over TransCanada’s current equity position in the gas treatment plant (GTP) and pipeline;  and
(3) appropriations for the State to make cash calls on the GTP and pipeline components of Alaska LNG to continue pre-front end engineering and design (FEED) work necessary to reach a FEED decision, and for the other State agencies involved in Alaska LNG to fund the work to continue efforts to negotiate and reach final agreements necessary to reach a FEED decision."

He offers a little more detail in the rest of the letter, but no numbers.  That's coming later, the letter says.  If I were a legislator, I'd want as much time as possible to read all the numbers and try to figure out the implications, though in today's political climate, from the governor's perspective, that means more time for opponents to attack.  But really, we want all the questions to be asked and then answered. 

Item #1:  I think ending the tax holiday is easy to understand.  The gas is in the ground, but the oil companies don't have to pay property taxes.  The initial exemption from property taxes was that the oil companies would pump the gas.  But the governor argues, as have others in the past, that without the tax, they have no incentive to do anything.   

Item #2:  I generally like the idea that the state acts as a real partner in this and I guess buying out TransCanada's share is part of doing that.  But, how much does TC want to sell?  If they are happy to to get rid of it, shouldn't we be able to get a discounted price?  Are there any other potential buyers?

I also like that unlike Parnell and Murkowski, Walker seems to represent Alaska and not the oil companies.  That doesn't mean he's making good decisions, but it does mean he's not playing patsy to the oil companies. 

This is going to be big money.  And you need big money in the oil and gas business.  But the state has a history of bad investments in enterprises from the Matsu Dairy to the Seafood Processing Plant in Anchorage.   Is this different?  If so, what can the governor tell us to convince us?  How long will a pipeline take before gas flows?  Will it come on line before ice melts enough for tankers to just fill up directly on the North Slope? 

And, I for one, need assurance that Walker plans to run for reelection, so all this doesn't fall apart.  Should another oil company lackey become governor again, this would all be for naught. 

Item #3:  Some specifics and some numbers would help out here.


Now, the Republican majority in the legislature is full of oil company supporters, even some oil company employees.  Walker has to entice them to vote his way.  The special session on Medicaid expansion earlier this year wasn't exactly a show of bi-partisan support. 

But let's all remember that this is precisely what Walker campaigned on.  A politician who is keeping his promises.  From the EnergyWire last December:

During the campaign, Walker suggested that, if elected, he might renegotiate the gas line contracts to give the state a leadership role. Industry supporters warned that such a step could set the project back by a decade (EnergyWire, Nov. 6).
Continued tensions over the pipeline issue were apparent last month when Walker's team held a town-hall-style transition meeting in Anchorage to draft recommendations for the new administration.
During oil and gas panel discussions, industry representatives called for Walker to endorse the Alaska LNG contracts that Parnell signed with BP Alaska, ConocoPhillips Alaska, Exxon Mobil Corp. and TransCanada Corp.
But Walker supporters protested that the incoming governor shouldn't be asked to sign off on contracts that neither he nor the public has seen in their entirety. Instead, they wanted Walker to push the oil companies to guarantee they'll build the pipeline.
"We'd like to achieve a commitment to build because the agreements we have right now aren't binding," noted Anchorage energy attorney Robin Brena, who served as chairman for the transition conference's oil and gas panel.
Despite their differences, Walker spent the days after the final votes were counted reaching out to Alaska oil industry groups. He held private meetings with the Alaska Oil and Gas Association and the Alaska Support Industry Alliance.

How Big Is A Costco Large Egg?

I was moving eggs from the 18 egg carton to a 12 egg carton that fits in our egg tray.  I couldn't help but wonder at the different sizes.  These eggs all came from a Costco egg carton that said Large.

But these eggs were radically different sizes as you can see.

I looked up how big eggs should be for each grade and found this useful piece in the Kitchen blog - though its focus was on whether you could substitute a large egg for a medium in a recipe.  Not on honest labeling.

I don't have a food scale - though my new bread book strongly suggests I get one - so I just had to eyeball it.  One egg is about 2 inches long and the other closer to 3 [2.5] inches.

Costco, who's grading your eggs?