Where To Invade Next

We saw Michael Moore's Where To Invade Next Wednesday night.

It's simplistic.  It's silly.  The premise is that Michael Moore is going to invade other countries and take home their best ideas.  He plants an American flag in these various nations and claims their good ideas for the US.  And most of the people he talks with, tell him with a big smile, he's welcome to take the ideas.

In the end, I thought the films strongest point was that the different parts of the world are doing many things better than we do in the US.  While one could quibble that Moore cherry picks the best examples and ignores the problems, the overall impact is simply showing Americans the level of services that people get in other countries, and he quite cleverly gets many of his foreign informants to say that the idea originally came from the US.  Presumably to appease those Americans who can't deal with the idea that the US isn't number one for everything.

It reminds of me of when the Chinese showed American films that displayed the levels of crime and discord in the US, what the Chinese saw were typical American kitchens, that everyone had a car, etc.  That's what this film has to leave Americans with - the realization that there places around the world where they have figured out how to do things much better than we are doing them.   Even Trump supporters can't help but see that the rest of the world isn't living in poverty under evil socialist tyrants.

We see, for example, vacation time for workers in Italy,  school lunches in France, mid-day lunches at home in Spain, prisons in Norway, schools in Finland, drug enforcement in Portugal (no one is arrested or imprisoned there for using drugs;  instead they have treatment programs), and women's health clinics in Tunisia, as well as the position of women in Iceland where he interviews the first woman president who was elected back in the 1970s.  

I was wondering whether I should even try to write about this film.  And then I saw this article in the
 Los Angeles Times today by a visiting professor whose kid spent time in a Finish school.  It really backs up everything Moore was trying to present.

"In Finland, children don’t receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day. Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. According to one Finnish maxim, 'There is no bad weather. Only inadequate clothing.'”

"In class, children are allowed to have fun, giggle and daydream from time to time. Finns put into practice the cultural mantras I heard over and over: “Let children be children,” “The work of a child is to play,” and 'Children learn best through play.'”

Now we need more first hand experience articles say for Norwegian prisons and with American students getting free education at the University of Slovenia (well, Moore did interview some who went there to avoid the high cost of US college tuition.)

I suspect the segments that will irritate believers in hard work and discipline the most are the Norwegian prisons and Finnish schools.  For some conservatives, treating people with respect is difficult.  Kids and prisoners should be disciplined and punished if they disobey the rules.  But these examples suggest the hardline discipline and control models may not be as good as the decency and respect models.

Despite the political rhetoric, we aren't the best at everything.  We're good at a lot of things, but we can learn a lot from other countries.  This film is a good start for folks who consciously or unconsciously think, while complaining, that we are the best at everything.


After writing this I found the NY Times review, which is more or less on the same vein as mine.  Though he felt it was more a bad reflection of the US rather than a good reflections of the places Moore visited.

Mouthful

It's not good when the dentist says, "This was the most difficult filling I've one this year."  OK, it's only March, but still.  I inherited relatively good teeth and soda just wasn't part of my growing up or adulthood.  Cavities have been rare and slow to develop.  So I'm not used to the dentist saying you have a cavity, particularly a bad one.  But somehow this one didn't show up clearly in last year's X-ray, but did with a vengeance this year.

It was a surreal experience.  The cotton swab with what looked like congealed blood on it, used to numb my gums worked.  I really didn't feel the needle that killed the pain and feeling.  I just lay back on the chair as fingers and tubes filled my mouth.  Didn't feel the drill at all.  But another device that vibrated strongly brought my full attention back to my mouth.  But I felt somehow disconnected from what was going on in there.  In was only at the end that I thought about pulling out my camera and documenting the invasion.
And apparently this one is just a temporary filling until we decide what the next steps are.

Just for the record, here are stats on dental health from the National Institutes of Health:

"Prevalence ( Table 1)

• 92% of adults 20 to 64 have had dental caries in their permanent teeth.
• White adults and those living in families with higher incomes and more education have had more decay.  [This is a surprising finding.  Perhaps they're more likely to see a dentist and get recorded.]

Unmet Needs ( Table 2)

• 26% of adults 20 to 64 have untreated decay.
• Black and Hispanic adults, younger adults, and those with lower incomes and less education have more untreated decay.

Severity ( Table 3 and Table 4)

• Adults 20 to 64 have an average of 3.28 decayed or missing permanent teeth and 13.65 decayed and missing permanent surfaces.
• Hispanic subgroups and those with lower incomes have more severe decay in permanent teeth.
• Black and Hispanic subgroups and those with lower incomes have more untreated permanent teeth. 

Tables 1 through 4 present selected caries estimates in permanent teeth for adults aged 20 to 64 years and for selected subgroups.
Units of Measure: Dental caries is measured by a dentist examining a person’s teeth, and recording the ones with untreated tooth decay and the ones with fillings. This provides three important numbers:
FT (filled teeth): this is the number of decayed teeth that have been treated, which indicates access to dental care;
DMT (decayed and missing teeth): this is the number decayed and missing teeth that have not been treated, which measures unmet need; and
DMFT (decayed, missing, and filled teeth): this is the sum of DMT and FT, and is the measure of person’s total lifetime tooth decay.
In addition to counting decayed and filled teeth, this same information can be gathered at the tooth surface level. Since every tooth has multiple surfaces, counting the decayed or filled surfaces provides a more accurate measure of the severity of decay. The following tables list both methods of measuring caries."

Talking With Republican Members of Congress About Climate Change

South Florida Republican Representative Carlos Curbelo was the speaker on Saturday's international phone-in Citizens Climate Lobby meeting.  He talked about his bi-partisan committee on climate change in the House.  If you're a Republican who wants to join, you must invite a Democrat to join at the same time, and vice versa.

Since I wasn't in Anchorage, I checked online to find the local chapter contact info for  Bainbridge Island.  The group was very welcoming and I enjoyed getting to meet people there who were also CCL members.  They gave me some ideas to bring back to Anchorage for our chapter work.

Bainbridge Island CCL meeting March 2016

Curbelo's interest comes from representing South Florida. He knows that without strong, immediate action, rising oceans due to climate change will inundate his district.  He even jokes with his House colleagues that they need to act because when his district is underwater he'll move to their district and run against them.

He identifies two extremes - the deniers and the alarmists.  As a Republican talking to Republicans, I guess that is helpful.  But I would take exception to arguing that those extremes are equivalent.  While there are people who may claim exaggerated dangers for climate change, many of those who were called alarmists in the past have been proven to have understated the dangers or how quickly things like Arctic ice cap melting was going to happen.  "Alarmists' are, at worst, exaggerating the truth.  Deniers are flat out wrong, and some have knowingly lied publicly to cast doubt on the very real dangers of climate change.

But it's not the policy of CCL to argue with partners, but to find what they have in common, and you can get the sense of that if you listen to Saturday's meeting which you can do below.

The most positive message I got from Rep. Curbelo was when he said there are many Republicans who are ready to come out of the Climate Change closet and support efforts to cut carbon.  He suggested that once the primaries are over, more Republicans will get on board.




Curbelo likes the carbon fee option because it's a market based solution.  He even pointed out that we already have a default carbon tax - the cost of the EPA - and that a market based fee would be more predictable than EPA regulations.

As I've said before, I joined CCL because I think climate change is the single most important issue facing the world and that CCL is one of, if not the, most efficient and effective organization I've ever come across.  And it takes a fairly Buddhist approach to connecting with other people who are normally considered adversaries.

After Curbelo, there's a connection with one of the Canadian members who talks about Trudeau's visit to Washington, and also his plans for a nationally integrated carbon fee program.  Then preparations for district meetings and the national conference in DC in June.  A key issues is learning to listen rather than try to respond immediately when talking with congress members and their staffers.  Mark, the coordinator, also talked about the explosion of international members in Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America which has happened since the climate summit in Paris.

Supreme Court Showdown

McConnell in February:

“'The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President,” McConnell said in a statement."

And today we get from NPR:

"HATCH: What I know about Judge Garland - he's a good man, but he shouldn't be brought up in this toxic environment. I'm tired of the Supreme Court being used as a battering ball back and forth between both sides.

Which toxic environment is he talking about?  The one that began with McConnell saying that the Republicans' top priority was to make Obama a one-term president?  The one where Republicans have been holding up hearings on most Obama nominated judges?  The one where Republicans have voted over 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act?    I think if sometimes Obama gets a bit touchy, it's understandable.   But if one really believes a piece of legislation is detrimental, shouldn't they fight to prevent it?  Yeah sure, but when every piece of legislation is a crisis and no judges can be approved in the first, second, or third, let alone fourth year of Obama's term, then you have to rethink your position.

MCCONNELL: It seems clear that President Obama made this nomination not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election."

Scalia died.  Obama is responding to that vacancy on the court, by doing his constitutional job of nominating Supreme Court judges.  Obama didn't pick when Scalia died.  The judge he's nominated - Merrick Garland - appears to be the least political judge he could have found who would also be acceptable to his own party.  The Republicans have had a long term strategy through the Federalist Society to turn out judges who will be decidedly more conservative in their decisions.  Leaving vacant judgeships is less of a concern for Republicans in the Senate than preventing liberal or even apolitical judges from being appointed.

There's no question that Democrats are just as concerned about a judge being appointed who would overturn Roe v Wade and other key issues as the Republicans are concerned about approving judges who would affirm Roe v Wade.  But the president was elected and his level of popularity is higher than the Senate's, despite how much he's been bashed by the right for the last seven years.

It is the job of the US Senate to approve or reject the president's nominations to the court.  Not holding a hearing is a form of rejection.  One could argue the constitution doesn't require them to hold hearings, but if they refuse to confirm most judges (and other appointments) there comes a time when government is unworkable.  And the dysfunction becomes worse than any specific appointment could be.  Presidential year and  yearlong vacancies are rare.  The last Supreme Court approval in an election year  was  Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy  in 1988.   The last year long (363 days) vacancy on the court was over 45 years ago - in 1969.

Obama's nominee - Merrick Garland- appears to be the most appealing nominee (to today's Republicans) a Democratic president could make.  He's white.  He's male.  And he's 63 years old. That makes him older than Roberts (who has served 10 years already), Sotomayor (who has served six years), and Kagan (who has served five years.)  He's apparently not ideological.  But still, even if he makes decisions based on the law and the facts, that's not good enough for Republicans.

Republican intransigence has paid off for them by forcing Obama to nominate someone with a less liberal bent than he might have preferred.

But refusing to even hold hearings could backfire on the Republicans.  First, it could look like - to independent voters - as though they were simply blocking the candidate in hopes a Republican president will give them a better option.  And few would argue believably that this isn't the case.  Such voters might sit out the election or vote Democratic.

Second, if they don't win the presidency in November, then the next president is likely to go for a much more liberal supreme court nominee.  And given the meltdown in the Republican party, there's a good chance that many conservative voters could simply sit out the election.  If that happens, the Democrats could even take back the Senate making confirmations easier.

The Republicans do have an out.  They can wait to see how the November elections go and then approve Merrick after the election.  Should the Democratic candidate win along with a change in party leadership in the Senate, I suspect they will quickly ratify Merrick before the new president is in office.

It would be nice though, if McConnell would just say:  "We are going to block this nominee because we're hoping a Republican president will fill this position with someone who will vote the way we want him to vote."  Well, he's getting as close to that, and it's obvious to most people that that's what he means.

Winter Isn't Over Until It's Over, But This Snow Is Pitiful

I can think of many March and April days when most snow was gone, followed by a day with enough snow to prolong winter significantly.

So, give the predictions of overnight snow,  I took a picture of our yard yesterday.  But the snow we got was barely able to cover the pile of moose poop.  The driveway was showing asphalt already.  But I did go out, just to get fresh air and exercise, to shovel what there was.   It was wet and heavy.  I suspect I could have let the above freezing temperatures do the snow clearing, but it felt good.  Clearing snow from the driveway and sidewalk is always a satisfying job.  You can see that you actually did something.    And who knows, there could be another seven inches on the ground tomorrow.  

According to Archeoastronomy  the vernal equinox is only three days off here in Alaska.  They peg it at 8:30pm Alaska time on March 19 this year.  We're already at 11 hours 54 minutes of daylight according to the Alaska Dispatch News.  Though that's a bit misleading since that really means from official sunrise to sunset and our twilights go well beyond those times.  But after Saturday, when the whole world has an equal amount of day (thus equinox), we'll have longer days than everyone to the south.  Until the next equinox in September.  

I'd also note that Chevrolet seems to have done some serious SEO (Search engine optimization), because the first page and a half of google hits for "equinox 2016' brought up a Chevy car I'd never heard of called the equinox.

The Long Day Coming Home

Got to take my granddaughter to the playground this morning before leaving.  We had a long discussion about schools - there's elementary school, middle school, and high school, then college I told her.  She told me she goes to pre-school, but when she's older she'll go to elementary school.

Then we walked her to pre-school and went on to catch the ferry.  I always marvel at the mental distance the 35 minute ferry ride takes me.

Bainbridge is heavily wooded and semi rural - though lots of houses are hidden behind the trees.  A fake wilderness.  But this was the view from the ferry leaving the island.

Half an hour later, the weather was different and we were pulling into downtown Seattle with its big buildings and homeless street people.

But crossing water is almost always good for the soul.

We scooted our suitcases up the hill to the train to the airport where we spent more time than we expected.  Our plane was an hour late leaving.  Our plane came into Seattle from San Francisco 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off.  Our flight out of San Francisco last week to Seattle was an hour late too.

But it was about five Seattle time when we took off and circled back over Puget Sound.

It was cloudy much of the way and I had stuff to work on.  But I looked out and big white mountains were peeking through the clouds.

It kept getting clearer.  This is a massive glacier with icebergs floating in the waterway in the middle.  If you click on the picture it will enlarge and focus.  I think this is the Malaspina glacier.   The Jet Propulsion Lab says

"Malaspina Glacier in southeastern Alaska is considered the classic example of a piedmont glacier. Piedmont glaciers occur where valley glaciers exit a mountain range onto broad lowlands, are no longer laterally confined, and spread to become wide lobes. Malaspina Glacier is actually a compound glacier, formed by the merger of several valley glaciers, the most prominent of which seen here are Agassiz Glacier (left) and Seward Glacier (right). In total, Malaspina Glacier is up to 65 kilometers (40 miles) wide and extends up to 45 kilometers (28 miles) from the mountain front nearly to the sea."

The picture they have shows it from further north (left).  In my picture you can't see the Seward glacier on the right

And finally the mudflats at low tide as we approach the Anchorage airport with the sun penetrating the veils of clouds.

The tug of home pulls one way and  the tug of our granddaughter (and grandson who we also got see on this trip) another.

To Know The Son, Know the Dad - So What Can We Learn From Trump's Dad?

The biblical citation below with attributions to Matthew and to Luke.

"No one truly knows the Son except the Father, and no one truly knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."

Not quite what I had in mind, but the concept is there, even if it refers to one specific son and father.

But there are other similar beliefs scattered throughout our culture.

Attributed to Alexander Pope:

'Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.’

The Free Dictionary tells us about:

'Like father, like son.'

Idiomeanings offers:  [At first I thought they were trying not be sexist by offering a mother/daughter example, but since it involved shopping, I think not.]

'The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.'

There are lots of sons who have distanced themselves from their dads and worked to be exactly the opposite of them.    Psychology Today has a long article tracing the changes since the industrial revolution that have changed the relationships between the father and the son.  Fathers today have fewer connections with their sons, resulting in what the author calls "Father Hunger."

Life for most boys and for many grown men then is a frustrating search for the lost father who has not yet offered protection, provision, nurturing, modeling, or, especially, anointment. All those tough guys who want to scare the world into seeing them as men and who fill up the jails; all those men who don't know how to be a man with a woman and who fill up the divorce courts; all those corporate raiders who want more in hopes that more will make them feel better; and all those masculopathic philanderers, contenders, and controllers--all of them are suffering from Father Hunger. They go through their adolescent rituals day after day for a lifetime, waiting for a father to anoint them and treat them as good enough to be considered a man.

I think the author generalizes a lot here, and he doesn't offer any hard evidence in this essay.  But my own sense is that the love of parents - often the father - is a yearning that many men have.  They want father's approval and blessings and not getting it as they need it often plays a big role in men's lives.  They never feel truly comfortable with themselves and act out in many inappropriate ways.

What does Trump's relationship with his father tell us about this idea?

Trump's grandparents came to the US in 1885 from Germany.  Fred Trump, the father,  was born October 11, 1905 and became a real estate developer in partnership with his mother at age 22, who helped finance the company.

In 1927, sometime before his business partnership with his mother, he was arrested at a KKK and Fascist demonstration where two people were killed.  The Washington Post wrote about this after Trump claimed ignorance about David Duke and white supremacist support for Trump.  [I checked out the NY Times June 1, 1927 article* they cite, and the story, with Fred Trump's name is there.  He would have been 21 years old at the time.]

By World War II, with the US going to war against the country where his parents were born, Fred stayed in the US building barracks for soldiers among other things.  He was 35 and all men between 18 and 45 were required to sign up for the draft.  The National World War II museum site says 50 million men had registered for the draft by the end of the war and 10 million had been drafted.  I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to make the case that his work was important for the war.

He continued to get government contracts after the war and Woody Guthry lived in one of his buildings for a time.  He wrote a song about it:

"I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project"

Wikipedia adds Justice Department findings to the accusations.

In 1973, the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division filed a civil rights suit against the Trump organization charging that it refused to rent to black people. The Urban League had sent black and white testers to apply for apartments in Trump-owned complexes; the whites got the apartments, the blacks didn't. According to court records, four superintendents or rental agents reported that applications sent to the central office for acceptance or rejection were coded by race. A 1979 Village Voice article quoted a rental agent who said Trump instructed him not to rent to black people and to encourage existing black tenants to leave. In 1975, a consent decree described by the head of DOJ’s housing division as "one of the most far-reaching ever negotiated," required Trump to advertise vacancies in minority papers and list vacancies with the Urban League. The Justice Department subsequently complained that continuing "racially discriminatory conduct by Trump agents has occurred with such frequency that it has created a substantial impediment to the full enjoyment of equal opportunity."[12]

We do have to put this in context.  At the time, housing discrimination was common everywhere.  I remember hassling my realtor uncle about not selling to blacks and his response was that he'd be in trouble with the realtors association if he did.  To his credit, he later helped get anti-discrimination practices adopted.  [My google searches can't find this quickly.  It's what he told me and he didn't make things up.  But I'm putting it on my todo list to find out more details about when Los Angeles realtors adopted anti-discrimination policies and if I can find any references to his role.]

Nevertheless, there were people who were more and people who were less aggressive about this.  The Fred Trump  example appears pretty aggressive.  (Yes, I know, I tend to understate things.)

The Wikipedia piece also tells us that

The couple [Fred Trump and his wife]  had five children: Maryanne (born 1937), a federal appeals court judge; Frederick "Fred" Jr. (1938–81); Elizabeth (born 1942), an executive assistant at Chase Manhattan Bank; Donald (born 1946); and Robert (born 1948), president of his father's property management company. Fred, Jr. predeceased his father when he died of complications of alcoholism in 1981.

The daughters seemed to do ok.  The first son would seem to have had some serious problems if he died in his forties of alcoholism.   How hard was it for Donald to get his father's positive attention?  From my own family, I know that Germans believed that kids should not be praised, that it would go their heads.  Fortunately, my father didn't follow that philosophy.

Trump seemed to act up a lot as a kid.  From another Washington Post piece:

"Before military school, Trump was famous for breaking the rules. Long before buildings would be named after him, schoolmates used the Trump name as shorthand for getting into trouble. 

"We used to refer to our detention as a 'DT' — a 'Donny Trump' — because he got more of them than most other people in the class," said Paul Onish, one of Trump's grade school classmates.

Then came military academy.  This article compares his classmates' impressions with Trump's.  As you can imagine, Trump's version is that the others lied and he was a natural leader who got a great education, even knew more about the military than people who fought in wars.

My guess is that Trump was acting out because he wasn't getting his father's approval.  Living at boarding school and then military school away from the family at such an early age does let us know that he wasn't particularly close to his parents at that time.  

The Wikipedia quote just above mentions that the youngest Trump child took over the father's business.  What does it mean that Robert, two years younger than Trump, became president of his father's company?  Wikipedia explains some of it:

In 1968 his 22-year-old son Donald Trump joined his company Trump Management Co., becoming president in 1974, and renaming it The Trump Organization in 1980. In the mid-1970s he lent his son money, allowing him to go into the real estate business in Manhattan, while Fred stuck to Brooklyn and Queens. "It was good for me," Donald later commented. "You know, being the son of somebody, it could have been competition to me. This way, I got Manhattan all to myself."[2]

Maybe that's what happened and they parted on amiable terms.  Or maybe Trump was putting a positive spin on a difficult partnership.   He does say they avoided competing.


Does birth order matter?  The research I found in a quick google search was too contradictory to base any generalizations to fourth-child-of-five Trump.


I'm not sure what conclusions we can take from this.  I haven't read Trump's book, which should give some insights even it if is full of spin.  What I've found is not inconsistent with my belief that he's still seeking dad's approval by trying to be a rich winner in the same field as his dad.  I know, his dad is dead, but he lived long enough (until 1999)  to see some of Trump's financial triumphs (and failures.)  Nor do the data prove my hypothesis.  Did Fred ever praise Donald for his achievements?  I'd guess if he did, it wasn't effusive enough or it was just too late.  Or maybe they got along well, but Fred's behaviors weren't very good models for Donald to follow.  And there are lots of other possible interpretations.

[UPDATE March 14, 2016:  It appears to me, after reading the NYTimes article Kathy mentions in the comments, that the 'bad role model' explanation may be the closest.  The article says that the oldest son just wasn't ruthless enough and Donald, who thrived on the constant criticism and sparse praise, became the favorite son.  Dad didn't like wimps and Fred Jr.'s family was written out of Fred Sr's will.]

Please take this as bits and pieces of data that may or may not point accurately at Trump's motivation.

*Since I had to sign in through the UAA library to get the article, I'm not including the link which wouldn't work on here.  But for those of you who want to check, it's June 1, 1927, page 16.  In that same issues there are stories about the Soviets spying on the Chinese, Lindberg being feted in France, a British researchers findings that blue eyed blonds tend to commit the vast majority of crimes, and that  the Yankees won both games of their double header, with Babe Ruth hitting two home runs.


I note that I've broken down and added a Trump label to this blog.

[More feedburner problems.  I thought it might just been too much html code imported when I cut and pasted, so I'm being careful about that, but it doesn't seem to matter today.]

Play Day In Seattle, Including Otter and Sturgeon

We ferried into Seattle yesterday and then bused to Volunteer Park.  First some playground time, then the conservatory.  (My camera battery was mostly dead, but came to life if I left it off, but only for a picture or two.  So no conservatory pics.)  An old high school friend met us for lunch, then we bused back downtown and to the aquarium before getting the ferry back to the island.  We had sun, rain, and in-between.  A good adventure with our granddaughter.  She's keeping us busy, so this will be short and sweet.

From the aquarium where the otters were active and close.

And in the underwater room where you have to trust the power of glass between you and the water all around you, including above, we sat and watched the sturgeon.



From the World Wildlife Fund site:

One of the oldest families of bony fish in existence, they are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. They are distinctive for their elongated bodies, lack of scales, and occasional great size: Sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3½ m) in length are common, and some species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m). Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders, spawning upstream and feeding in river deltas and estuaries. While some are entirely freshwater, very few venture into the open ocean beyond near coastal areas. 

A threatened species 

Some species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe, which is made into caviar. The late sexual maturity of sturgeon (6-25 years) makes them more vulnerable to overfishing. It is estimated that the number of sturgeon in major basins has declined by 70% over the last century. During the 1990s, the total catch was dramatically increased by unprecedented illegal harvest. Poaching activity in the Volga-Caspian basin alone is estimated to be 10-12 times over the legal limits. Further problems are caused by water pollution, damming, destruction and fragmentation of natural watercourses and habitats which affects migration routes and feeding and breeding grounds.

Standpipes - You've Seen Them, But Do You Know What They Do?

Walking San Francisco streets last weekend, I was struck by the pipes coming out of the walls of buildings.  Things I'd seen many times but never really paid much attention to.  So, camera in hand, I paid more attention.  They come in lots of varieties and they're labeled 'standpipe' or sometimes 'dry standpipe.'

From Fireking:

Wet and Dry Standpipe Systems 

Description: A Standpipe is a type of rigid water piping which is built into multi-story buildings in a vertical position, to which fire hoses can be connected, allowing manual application of water to the fire. Within buildings standpipes thus serve the same purpose as fire hydrants. Well maintained fire standpipe systems are highly reliable and provide people protection as well as property protection. Fire King Fire Protection, Inc. specializes in Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Fire Sprinkler Systems. 

Dry standpipe: Dry standpipes fixed into buildings, the pipe is in place permanently with an intake usually located near a road or driveway so that a fire engine can supply
water to the system. The standpipe supply pipe extends into the building to supply fire-fighting water to the interior of the structure via hose outlets, often located between each floor in stairwells in high rise buildings. 

Dry standpipes are not filled with water until needed in fire-fighting. Fire fighters often bring hoses in with them and attach them to standpipe outlets located along the pipe throughout the structure. 

Wet standpipe: Wet Standpipes are filled with water and is [sic] pressurized at all times. In contrast to dry standpipes, which can be used only by firefighters, wet standpipes can be used by building occupants. Wet standpipes generally already come with hoses so that building occupants may fight fires quickly.

And after reading about the standpipes, I realized I needed to get a picture of the hoses inside a building.  Fortunately I was in a building and found the hose.

A 2007 NYTimes article, after a fatal Deutsche Bank fire, caused by bad standpipes, went on to explain standpipes and their maintenance in more detail.

"A typical standpipe system begins with the street-level connection, known as a Siamese, which is connected to pipes that run vertically or horizontally inside the building and connect to vertical pipes that run to the top of the building. The vertical pipes are what most people think of as the standpipe.
Standpipes are required in all buildings in New York City that are more than 75 feet tall, or higher than six stories, Kate Lindquist, a spokeswoman for the Buildings Department, said.
The vertical pipes, often painted red, are exposed in a building’s stairwells, and there is a connection on each floor to which firefighters can hook up hoses.
Water, and water pressure, are supplied by the Fire Department. When there is a fire in a building equipped with a standpipe system, the first engine company to arrive connects a hose to the nearest hydrant and another to the Siamese connection in front of the building, according to Firefighter Jim Long, a department spokesman. The pumper boosts the pressure of the water being fed from the hydrant to the Siamese and then to the vertical standpipe."

It also says standpipes were first used in New York City.

". . . standpipes originated in New York City about the time of the Civil War, along with sprinkler systems, 'as buildings grew taller and as the philosophy of firefighting evolved.' Before that time, he explained, 'most fires were fought from the outside.'”

"Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows."

“I went into the street with the cup in my hand. A slight feeling of unease arose within me at seeing it out here, the cup belonged indoors, not outdoors; outdoors, there was something naked and exposed about it, and as I cross the street I decided to buy a coffee at the 7-Eleven the following morning, and use their cup, made of cardboard, designed for outdoor use, from then on.”

We get seemingly meaningless details like the passage above. Bits of thoughts and actions of My Struggle author Karl Ove Knausgaard come in seemingly random detail, or is it random? How does one figure this out and pin it down? Is this the masterpiece some say or a loose rambling with occasional bits of interest? Is this a lazy self-indulgent soap opera, or  has he found a way to illuminate the depth of humanity through his intense, intimate autobiographical novel?

[An aside:  As an Alaskan, it’s comfortable to be in Knausgaard’s Swedish environment of winter snow and dark, summer lush and endless light, all the more so because the northern latitudes are such a rare fictional setting.]

The passage above does go somewhere. With his coffee in hand he describes the details he sees from his new office in suburban Stockholm, then pulls back to put those details into the perspective of the perpetual ebb and flow of people in the city.

“On the school playground that lay squashed between two blocks of flats twenty meters up from my office the shouts of children suddenly fell quiet, it was only now that I noticed. The bell had rung. The sounds here were new and unfamiliar to me, the same was true of the rhythm in which they surfaced, but I would soon get used to them, to such an extent that they would fade into the background again. You know too little and it doesn’t exist. You know too much and it doesn’t exist. Writing is drawing the essence of what we know out of the shadows. That is what writing is about. Not what happens there, not what actions are played out there, but the there itself. There, that is writing’s location and aim. But how to get there?”  [Emphasis added.]

The writer is asking himself these questions as he observes the waves of people and vehicles flowing in and out of the streets and offices and restaurants and schools and shops as the sun itself shifts its rays from one side to the other.

“So strictly regulated and demarcated was life here that it could be understood both geometrically and biologically. It was hard to believe that this could be related to the teeming, wild, and chaotic conditions of other species, such as the excessive agglomerations of tadpoles or fish spawn or insect eggs where life seemed to swarm up from an inexhaustible well. But it was. Chaos and unpredictability represent both the conditions of life and its decline, one impossible without the other, and even though almost all our efforts are directed toward keeping decline at bay, it does not take more than one brief moment of resignation to be thrust into its light, and not, as now, in shadow. Chaos is a kind of gravity, and the rhythm you can sense in history, of the rise and fall of civilizations, is perhaps caused by this. It is remarkable that the extremes resemble each other, in one sense at any rate, for in both immense chaos and a strictly regulated, demarcated world the individual is nothing, life is everything. . . “

I immediately thought about how we have people today ready to abandon regulated and demarcated life and throw us into chaos.  Most Americans have never experienced a government failure - when things fall apart into chaos.  It's happening in different parts of the world all the time, right now for people in Syria, where the carefully constructed order has collapsed and people are dying and fleeing.

And the best writing draws out the essence out of the shadows, but for most it's hard to tell which essence is the true essence.

I suspect we today, as probably always, are divided into people who only see events at face value and those who see events as part of a larger pattern. And how many different patterns do the pattern seers see?  [And, of course, all such dichotomies ignore that most such characteristics lie on a continuum.  They aren't either/or.  And that people are complex, seeing patterns in some cases but not others, at some times, but not others.]

I'm only on page 200 of the first book of this six volume set, so who knows where it will go?  It was a huge hit in Norway (he's Norwegian, but lives in Sweden).