Plane Spotting - Why They're Rumbling Over Anchorage This Week

China Air

If you drive out to the very end of Northern Lights Blvd and then past Point Woronzof, you'll see guys standing by their cars with telephoto lenses taking pictures of planes at the Anchorage airport.







But this last week I've been able to do that from my back yard deck.  Instead of flying off over Cook Inlet, planes are flying over the Anchorage bowl.  LOUDLY!  And with the great weather we've been having, I've been spending a lot of time on the deck, which has become our de facto dining room and my office.

UPS

They rumble over sometimes minutes apart, sometimes more.  It's pretty loud.

Polar

So I called the airport to see what's up.


I talked to John Stocker who told me that there is construction work on the north-south runway - things that have to be done every year and in the summer - like painting markings.  The noise will continue until June 25, except for Sundays.

I asked what happens during the night (since the noise stops during that time.)  Work on the runway is from 7:30am until 7:30 pm.

Korean Air

Mr. Stocker said the project was well publicized.  That may be, but I missed their publicity.  I did try the airport website before calling, but my search didn't yield any answers.  They may be there, but even looking at a section called 'noise abasement'  I couldn't find anything specific about this week, just long term planning reports. I even looked at the pdf on construction projects which doesn't seem to include this.  Each project talks about benefits, but they don't talk about negative impacts like noise.  It's hard to even figure out that the north-south runway is involved.

In any case, until June 25 - another week - we have a steady flow of jets flying over the bowl.  

There Was A Reason I Stopped Climbing Flattop

I stopped climbing Flattop years and years ago.  Trudging up a steep gravelly slippy slidey trail with lots and lots of people got old.

But something got into me today and I decided I wanted to go up the Flattop trail.  J said she wanted to come along, despite the fact that she hates climbing up and she broke her wrist a couple years ago negotiating the sidewalk in Santa Monica.

But with our State Park parking sticker in the window, we drove up to the Glen Alps parking lot and started up.  It wasn't quite as bad as I remembered at first.

The steps from the parking lot are gone and a new winding trail starts things.  But it goes up pretty quickly.  We first climbed Flattop when we arrived to Alaska not quite 40 years ago.  Our bodies are a lot slower than they were.

J was telling me to just go on ahead, so I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures of butterflies and flowers while she moseyed along.  I'm not sure what kind of butterfly that is.  I couldn't find it in my Insects of South-central Alaska book, nor looking fairly quickly online.  But I did find this tribute to Kenelm Philip - apparently the premier collector and student of Alaskan butterflies.

Wild geraniums.

At this point it looked like the trail was leveling off for a while and it had this fancy post and chain fence.   But it was a short-lived break.

When we first got to the 'steps' we thought, wow, they've improved this a lot since our last visit.  But these railroad ties were at various angles, and the dirt packed against them had been washed out in may places, so these were tricky walking.   

I'd say except for one woman, we were probably the oldest folks on the trail that we saw.  Most were half our age or less.  And it was warm to hot still at 9 and 10 pm when we were out.  

We did run into a six year old who was not happy at all.  The man I assumed was her dad said she'd been fine to the top, but coming down she had begun to cry.  My grandpa mode is just below the surface, so I talked to her about the trail, the chocolate bar I'd left in the car, but would have given her if I hadn't, and how our kids had spent a number of years ready to turn back on our hikes, then one day, said, "We'll wait for you at the top."  I didn't get a smile, but she did stop crying and maybe her dad got a little more sympathy for her limits as a hiker.  

Somewhere along these steps J decided it was getting too treacherous for her and decided to sit on the side and wait for me.  

I went on a little further.  Below is a picture of the people climbing the ridge toward the top.

I got to the second 'saddle' and started up the last part.  We'd been going up almost an hour already and I was thinking when our son would run up and back in 30 minutes.  

I was also thinking about my heel which after several years of issues hadn't bothered me at all in several months.  (I should probably write an update on that saga.)  And  mostly I thought about J sitting on the side of the trail.  

I looked back with my telephoto lens to see if she was still in view.  

No, those two guys were probably on the 'steps' but she was well below them and that ridge.  So I turned around and found her quickly enough.  We got down, as usual, much faster than we got up. 

It was a big energy booster though.  It felt good to be out and about.    The last couple of years with us flying down to visit my mom every month made it too easy to not get out into the hills above and around Anchorage.  But I'm going to get my money's worth from our parking stickers this year.  

Using ISIS as Cover

Watch the media patterns after mass shootings and other disasters.  They start by broadcasting whatever tidbits they can find and filling in with lots of 'woe is us,'  'pray for the families,' and trying to figure which current narratives explain what happened.  Was he homophobic?  Was he Muslim?  Was he a terrorist?  An Immigrant?  Oh, he pledged his allegiance to ISIS and he's Afghan (did I forget that he was born in the US?), presto, this is a radical Muslim terrorist attack.

And, did you notice that the only facts they were sure of at the beginning weren't always right.  "50 killed"  "That number will surely grow." Now we're being told it's 49 killed and so far the rest are still alive - six in critical condition.

We all have narratives in our heads - stories that help us organize 'facts' into a coherent explanation of the world.  And it looks like politicians, and maybe eve the shooters themselves, these days might be manipulating our narratives to hide their personal conflicts and demons.  Or to divert our attention from the weapons used.

We don't know anything for certain, but one thought I had from early on, is being supported by some evidence.  NOTE:  This is a thought experiment - exploration of possible explanations.  It's NOT truth, it's thinking outlaid 


ISIS as cover. Number 1.

A few LGBT folks in the area are saying that they've seen the shooter at the Pulse, frequently.  That he's got a profile on a gay hookup app. Suggesting that perhaps this young man was a somewhat-closeted gay man.  This narrative suggests he couldn't come out to his family and was terribly conflicted and frustrated.  His internalized homophobia turned against himself and other gays who lived a life he couldn't.

What better proof of his straight masculinity than massacring gays and then using the banner of self-proclaimed Muslim saviors to cover your own personal problems?

[UPDATE June 17, 2016:  Here's some support of this idea from a Slate article:

"Orlando may be another variant, then, of what the French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy has called the “Islamicization of radicalism.” Islam is used by an individual already on the edge of violence to justify his actions and give him status to at least one audience, as indeed has already happened to Mateen. Details on Mateen’s background are still trickling in, but his ex-wife claimed he was abusive in their marriage and not particularly zealous in his faith."]

ISIS as cover. Number 2:

From The Hill:

"Instead of focusing on the weapon that was used, there should be a focus on radical Islam. The focus should not be on the weapon, it should be on the individual’s heart and the cowardly acts that he performed."

This narrative says it's all about the shooter; the guns he had are irrelevant.

Really?!  For the survivors, in the long run, it really doesn't matter if he was a self hating gay, if he was treated badly because he looks suspicious in the dominant American world view.  It doesn't matter what any of the shooter's issues were in terms of getting past the carnage.  Yes, it would help if Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian pulpits spoke to their congregations about love instead of attacking women and the lgbt community.

But if disturbed people - whatever the cause of the issues, whether it's biological or sociological - didn't have such easy access to automatic weapons, there'd be people still alive in Sandy Hook, Columbine, Roseburg, and San Bernadino, and Orlando.

Instead we hear each time about mental health and terrorists, and strong denials by politicians supported by the gun industry controlled NRA.  First it was Al Qaeda, now it's ISIS.    ISIS is the distraction that keeps us from talking about the first steps that we can do to cut down on the slaughter taking place across the United States.  And that's because of the Congress members who hear NRA money pouring into their campaigns.


This is not about logic, it's about power.  It's about courage. Or rather lack of courage.  It's about electing politicians who care more about the people they represent than about their own egos and power.  Politicians who are willing to risk their jobs for what's right.   And we're moving to a situation where anyone who opposes the gun lobby runs the risk, not only of losing their office, but even losing their lives.  Ask Gaby Giffords what she's doing about this.


ISIS as cover.  Number 3:

But bigger than the guns, is that we're living in a society that produces way too many alienated and angry men.  Again, there are lots of narratives explaining this.  Some argue we've turned our backs on God or there are too many immigrants.

The bigger, overarching context for the alienation, in my view, is our competitive society that is structured to enrich a relative few and impoverish many.  Until the system is recalibrated that alienation will continue.  We need recover some of the economic security that has been destroyed.  People need to feel economically ready to have a family.  Then they need the time to love their children and teach them to love themselves.

We also have to learn how to focus on what's important instead of the increasing number of distractions the internet offers us all.  Including this blog.  We need to take care of our selves, our families.   The people around the world both envy our material wealth and personal freedom and they fear what it will do to their own societies as the world begins to look more and more the same. As we lose the rich diversity of cultures that offers us many possible ways of living.   And that's why organizations - if we can even call it that - like ISIS become symbols of defiance.  Why guns become symbols of manhood.  Why Trumps become symbols of rebellion.  People are desperate for meaning in their lives, for something to believe in, for hope.

I remember years ago when someone in China first gave me a copy of China's Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States.  Of course, it's a response to American reports on human rights violations in China, but still it is sobering to review it.  To see what we look like in others' eyes.  We need to think carefully of the two gods that Americans rely on - the one in the bible and the invisible hand of the market.  Because those are the solutions we're given when confronted by the ISIS cover - pray to God and let the market take care of things.

It ain't working in my eyes.

Being Smart Beats Beating

How necessary is torture to get information from terrorists?  As a teenager I read about the Gulag and Nazi Germany and other settings where people got tortured.  I wasn't particularly looking for torture stories, but they came up in many books I read.  I soon realized that these stories of torture were always written by the people who were tortured, not by the torturer.  But I wanted to know what was going on in the head of the torturer.  How could one human being inflict such horrible pain on another?

It's still one of the questions I keep gathering data on (not in any rigorous manner, but I note things as they come up.)   The debates over torture in the television show "24" (skip down to "This wouldn’t have been a problem. . . in the link) were of great interest to me.  The show was one of the media that popularized the idea that torture was acceptable if the person being tortured knew about a plot that would, say, kill two hundred civilians.  Of course, that begs the question how the interrogators know the suspect knows this.  The issue came up in real life over torturing Guantanamo prisoners and John Yoo's lawyerly defenses of torture.

Stuck somewhere in my brain was the idea embedded in the Fifth Amendment - that one cannot be compelled to testify against oneself.  Our founding fathers knew that torture victimized the innocent and that subjects of torture would tell their interrogators whatever they thought they wanted to hear.

So when I read this article in the LA Times yesterday, I found evidence that supports my view of all this.  (And, of course, I recognize that we all tend to believe what we want to hear, so I'm offering this, as evidence, not proof.)  Here are some excerpts, but it's worth reading the whole thing:

"Hanns Scharff was a master manipulator, but not in the stereotypical Gestapo-like ways that usually come to mind. His tools were kindness, respect, empathy and guile. He told meandering stories, took detainees on long strolls in the countryside and left them alone in his office to read the U.S. military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. He provided hard-to-find cigarettes and even let one captured U.S. pilot take a short flight in a German fighter plane. But all the while, without them even knowing, he was swiping their secrets. .

"He died in 1992, well before the U.S. war on terror commenced. But his methods began getting a second look amid the fierce national debate over the harsh interrogation tactics used by the George W. Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks. President Obama and others have condemned some of those methods as torture. 

Former CIA officials have defended the rough techniques as useful, but a 2014 Senate report found that the agency’s use of torture failed to stop any imminent plots. 

Sometimes, it even backfired, the report concluded. At least one suspect “sang like a tweetie bird,” according to a CIA official quoted in the report, before he was tortured. But after being subjected to harsh interrogation, he provided no other useful information, according to the report. Amid the debate, the FBI-led interrogation unit began funding research to scientifically analyze various interrogation practices. It plans to soon release a report detailing best practices. 

Though Scharff’s techniques had been long known to U.S. officials, the research confirmed for the first time that it actually works better."  [Emphasis added]

A Brief Visit to Potter Marsh To Check Out The Birds

Northern Shoveler

We took a break yesterday and went to Alaska.  Well, it's just about ten minutes down the road from Anchorage and sometimes we forget to take advantage of living here.  There was lots of traffic on the Seward Highway coming back, so we decided to just hit Potter's Marsh and check out the birds.

There were dramatic clouds to the west when we turned back.  

At the end of the boardwalk (going inland) there's an eagle's nest and usually eagles nearby.  Can you see the eagle in the trees?  Hint:  look for the white head.  (You probably have to click on the picture to enlarge and focus it.)

Here's a closer shot.  In the one above there's a white tree trunk in the middle.  The eagle's in the cottonwood tree to the left of it, a little above the the midline.

And below is the nest.  There's a white head poking up.

I liked the ducks all lined up on the log, though it didn't come out that well in the picture.

And here are some green winged teals.  The green of the wing is under and doesn't show in this picture

Orlando Too Much Already

I woke up to NPR trying to talk about a story about which they had only about 20 seconds of facts, yet they kept on for minutes.  And then a few minutes later they returned to repeat their long sparse story. There's got to be a better way for the media to say "This is important" without saying the same few things plus a lot of nothing over and over again.

And how do we respond?  How do we keep on living our lives when we're assaulted by news like this over and over again?  50 people dead.  53 more in the hospital.  People's different internal narratives will lead them to rant about guns, ISIS, the NRA, immigrants, God, gays. About terrorism.  Hate.  To pray for the victims? Does that include the shooter?  To pray for the responders who have to identify bodies and clean up the horror.  For the families, some of whom might only now be finding out their loved one was gay?  Oh dear, the world is so heavy, even as far across the country as I am from Orlando.  And people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria deal with this sort of slaughter more regularly.  How do they survive?  My personal experience is that children help us survive.  We must provide for them for the youngest of them are mostly unaware of what has happened and they force us to get back to normal to attend to their needs.

Only time lessens such pain.  But the time between atrocities gets shorter and shorter.  Distractions can make the time go faster.   So let me try to distract.  A little.  The coverage I heard this morning repeated that the police were investigating whether this was terrorism or a hate crime.

I'd like to divert you to a long discussion on whether hate crimes are terrorism I put up September 14, 2012.  It looks at the legal definitions of terrorism and hate crimes and points out inconsistency of some politicians who strongly oppose hate crime legislation (and as cautious as I am about jumping to conclusions, I can't imagine how  shooting up a gay nightclub can't be a hate crime) also strongly support antiterrorism legislation.  It's one of my better posts.  

I'm already imagining reading a Bridge of San Luis Rey type book - though ten times longer - that tells the stories of all the people killed and wounded at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

Why Should The Republicans Be Stuck With Trump?

One could, and others have, made the case that Trump is simply the natural result of the lies and vitriol that the Republican Party has been supporting all these years.  From the shameful attack on John Kerry - so nasty that the term 'swift boating' is now part of the political dictionary - to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, to the non-stop attacks on our first Black president, and ruthless attacks on women's rights to obtain an abortion and on immigrants, and their allowing the crazies among the Republicans to act like thugs by playing congressional chicken with the US budget.


But all that aside, suppose they end up with a candidate most of them feel is terrible.  Yes, he followed the rules and got the required number of delegates.  But now they realize that those crazies they cultivated to defeat the Democrats have now saddled them with a man whose election, even just his nomination, is likely to cause the US and the world untold harm.  Whose rhetoric gets no better.  How long can they look the other way?  A man so vain and impulsive that many in the party have withheld their support or given it with obvious distaste.

What if you ordered something at a restaurant and you realize it was a terrible mistake.  You can refuse to eat it.
Or you go to a move that's awful, you can walk out.
Or you're on a date and it's clear you never want to see him again.  You don't have to wait, to end it.
Or the hotel you booked turns out to be above an all night disco.  You don't have to stay.

Is this different?  Well, all those examples were individual choices.  And in all these cases, you'd probably still might have to leave some skin on the table.  So my questions are:

Are the Republicans really obligated to allow this man to be their candidate?
What will they leave on the table if they walk out?


Option 1:  Find some rules in The Rules of The Republican Party that can be used to disqualify Trump.

I've skimmed through the rules and nothing popped out.  Mostly they are about the qualifications of the delegates and how the nominating process is to be run.  I could find nothing about qualities of the nominee.  That's not unreasonable.  The assumption is that candidates as problematic as Trump will never get this close to being nominated.

It might be useful to have something in the rules about the nominee being a registered Republican for a minimum number of years.

The Smoking Gun reports Trump, since 1987, has enrolled as

• a Republican
• a member of the  Independence party member
• a Democrat, 
• a Republican again, 
• "I do not wish to enroll in a party", and finally, in 2012, 
• as a Republican again. 

A five year minimum in the party would make Trump's candidacy moot.  But then someone like Dwight Eisenhower  might not have been eligible to be their candidate in 1952.  (Though I expect a last minute rule change to allow for a popular candidate would be easier than one to eliminate an unpopular candidate.)  Subjective judgments about character make it too easy to disqualify reasonable candidates.

The Democrats have their super-delegates who could be called upon to deny a candidate the nomination.  But after this election there are calls to abolish them.  Maybe after watching Trump and the Republicans, the Democrats will have second thoughts about abolishing them.

The party does have the power to appoint nominees if for some reason there's a vacancy.  Surely Trump isn't going to voluntarily vacate.  (Well, on second thought, nothing is sure with Trump.)

If Trump shoots a reporter who asks a hard question in the next month, I can't imagine that the Republicans couldn't find a way to dump him.  So there must be some line he could cross that would allow dropping him.  But he's crossed so many lines already without him being dropped. . .

The Republicans in the Alaska Legislature have 'unwritten rules.'  One of House Speaker Chenault's staff told me that when I asked to see the rules that were used to strip Rep. Reinbold of her Republican caucus status when she didn't go along with the leadership on the budget.  Perhaps these exist at the national level too and they can use them to stop Trump.


Option 2:  Leave the Republican Party en masse and recreate the party with a new name

This would leave Trump with his supporters in the old GOP, but the rest of the party could reassemble and nominate their own candidate.

I'm not sure what assets - money, property, copyrights/trademarks - they would have to abandon to do this.

Short of this, some could launch an independent run by a Republican alternative to Trump.

I suspect individual Republicans can do this, but getting 'the Party' to agree and do this would be much harder.


Option 3:  Support a third party candidate like the Libertarian Gary Johnson

I saw a letter to the editor in the LA Times that suggested one Republican strategy might be to prevent Clinton from getting enough electoral college votes to win outright and then the election would be decided in the House of Representatives where the Republicans have a big majority.  But, from what I can tell from this League of Women's Voters webpage,

"Results of the mid-December vote in each state are sent to Congress to be counted on January 6, in the presence of the newly elected Senate and House of Representatives."

There's an interesting Atlantic article from October 1980 considering the possibilities that independent candidate John Anderson might get enough electoral college votes to throw the 1980 election into the House of Representatives and what that might look like.

The Washington Post, speculating about the current election, thought that the House of Representatives would be a risky route that would do further damage to legitimacy of the electoral process.



Option 4:  Work with the religious right to have the Apocalypse happen before November.
I don't have an option 4 as you can see, but I'm sure there are other scenarios I haven't thought of.



I'm guessing that if there were rules - written or unwritten - that could get rid of Trump, we'd know about them by now.  It's only because there probably aren't,  that we're hearing talk about third party candidates, not voting for president, or even voting for Clinton.  I suspect that the Sanders' call for getting rid of super delegates, given the Republican situation, is going to have a lot of opposition.

And then there is the issue of what line would Trump have to cross.  Perhaps this is death by a thousand cuts, none of which individually is significant enough to charge him with murder of the Republican Party, and give them an excuse to rescind his nomination.

Bill Pay Glitch At Bank of America

Like many Alaskans, I only have a Bank of America Visa card because it's the only way to get an Alaska Airlines card.  And I use their Bill Pay program to transfer money from my Alaska checking account to pay my monthly Visa bill.

But my mother had a checking and savings account with BofA and there came a time when I had to get my name on those accounts too.  I was a little surprised to see those accounts pop up on my electronic  Bank of America page.  But it made sense and it made it easy to monitor those accounts. 

Early May, I scheduled a payment for June 1.  

June 8, my credit card was declined.  

I called Bank of America.   It seems my payment hadn't been received.  But I've learned to take screen shots every month that show that I paid and I even had the reference number.

So I said, "I scheduled it on Bill Pay, I have proof."  

After a while, he said, "You don't have Bill Pay."  

?????????!!!!!%%%???

He asked if I'd closed any accounts lately.  Yes, I'd closed my mom's accounts when we were in LA in May.  

It turns out that when they closed the accounts, they closed my Bill Pay as well.  And my payment, scheduled for June 1, simply disappeared.  I got no notice that a)  my Bill Pay had been shut down or b) my payment evaporated with it.  I only found out when a credit card payment was declined and I called to find out why.  

Here's how it was explained to me:

The bill pay feature is different if you only have a credit card from also having other accounts at Bank of America.

1. So, when I got added onto my mother's accounts, my old Bill Pay was cancelled and a new one was established.  (I may even have been involved.  I have vague recollections now as I write this, but if so, at the time, I thought it was just a screwup that cancelled my Bill Pay and I was just re-setting it up. 
2. A new, different kind of Bill Pay, that allowed payments from the Bank of America accounts as well as payments to the Visa account to be made from external accounts was set up.  
3. When I closed my mother's accounts, the bill pay was closed too.  Even though there was a pending, scheduled payment.  

I still can't believe they would shut down a pending, scheduled payment without telling me.  

They were nice about it and quickly removed the late fee and interest without my having to ask.  This was all complicated by a larger than normal payment I'd made with my credit card showing up twice in my pending payment list bumping me (without my scheduled June payment) above my limit. 

Fix Needed

They clearly need to add to their computer code, that when bill pay is being closed for a customer when there is a pending, scheduled payment, that the customer is notified.

I suspect not too many people will fall into this situation, but with millions of credit card holders, I'm sure there are others.  So this is a heads up.  

I did call the woman who closed my mom's old accounts in the Santa Monica branch.  She was always very helpful, and clearly on my side.  So I called her to let her know what happened.  Not to complain, but to let her know.  She had no idea that could have happened either.  

What Do All These Countries Have In Common? UPDATED

Poland Latvia Argentina Britain Liberia Austria Brazil South Korea Finland Nepal Mauritius Namibia Norway  Grenada South Africa The Bahamas

Germany China Bolivia San Marino Guinea-Bissau Philippines Haiti East Germany Nicaragua Ireland Burundi Sri Lanka Ecuador Guyana Croatia Namibia Malta

Bangladesh Chile Panama Indonesia Georgia Pakistan Liberia Chile Gabon Israel Lithuania Kyrgyzstan Costa Rica Kosovo Serbia Central African Republic

Don't you even want to think about it before getting the answer?
I'll check the comments.  I suspect lots of folks will find this easy to figure out.

[UPDATE June 10, 2016:  They all have or have had a woman as head of state.  For more details see:

http://www.theglobalist.com/women-on-top-of-the-political-world/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_and_appointed_female_heads_of_state

http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Current-Women-Leaders.htm   ]

Hmong Love

I was standing outside the post office waiting for a friend to mail his letters, when a car pulled up in front of me.

As the lady walked into the post office, I tried to figure out what this vanity plate might mean.  Alaska . . . what?   I had no idea.

She came out pretty quickly and so I asked her.  With a big smile, she said HLUB is love in my language.
What language is that?  I asked.
Hmong.


From an online Hmong-English dictionary, I found only a bit more:

I love you in Hmong

translation and definition "I love you", English-Hmong Dictionary  online

  add translation  

pronunciation:         

Translations into Hmong:

• kuv hlub koj 
  (Phrase  ) 
  
  
  

  

  affirmation of romantic feeling

It's amazing how quickly we take for granted that we can get to something like a Hmong-English dictionary via our computers in a couple of seconds. How many of us actually stop and give thanks for our easy access to the greatest library the world has ever seen?