Snow Plows Before And After

The doorbell rang and there was a loud knock about 7am this morning.  "Move your car from the street so we can plow" was the message.   The Municipality has plowed the streets, but has not taken the snow away, leaving berms bigger than I can remember.  

Here's what it looked like yesterday.  About five feet at the highest point and about 12 feet from street to sidewalk - yes, there is a sidewalk in front of our house and the neighbor's.

The plows went up and down the street showing snow to the side and to the middle.

Then another vehicle that churns up the snow and feeds it into dump trucks came by a number of times.  It didn't take much more than a couple of minutes, it seemed, to fill and dump truck, and then they had to wait for the next dump truck.

Then the dump trucks went off somewhere to dump their snow and come back.

Leaving the street with a berm down the middle and less snow on the sides.

When the berm was gone, it looked like this.

Compared to this before.

And let's look at the top picture again, compared to after.  BEFORE:

AFTER:

The cars, by the way, were not there when they were clearing the snow, so that's not why there is still so much.  Not sure why they didn't take it all.  Not enough trucks?  Not enough places to store it?  Or their goal was to make wide enough for two cars to pass and then go on to other neighborhoods.

What Does Fail Mean? This Ad Fails In Every Way

This ad was in the Wednesday, March 8, 2017 Alaska Dispatch News and it's full of misinformation and manipulation of the facts.  (Not sure how to link an ad so that non-subscribers can see it in the paper, but it's on page A-5)

The headline claims Obamacare has failed.  But ask the 10 million or so people who now have coverage because of Obamacare whether it failed.  It's only failed in conservative ideology whose proponents failed to block the Affordable Care Act, and failed to repeal it.   Obamacare isn't perfect, but I would argue that most of the problems are there because the Republicans, in their fervor to repeal it, refused to work with Democrats to make improvements.  What they feared, came true.  Americans don't want to lose their health insurance.

But let's look at the ad.  Here are three key claims:

• "Premiums are skyrocketing"
• "Our choices are limited"
• "Alaskans are losing coverage"

Premiums are skyrocketing

Note the quote "Skyrocketing premiums as high as 40%."   I checked the Alaska Dispatch October 30, 2016.  I could not find this article in that day's edition. (Here's the link, but you have to be a subscriber to see the archive.

But using the words in the claim, I did find this article from 2011, before Obamacare went into effect.

"HEALTH CARE: 9 percent rise far outpaces wages, inflation.
BY TONY PUGH
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON After modest increases last year, the cost of job-based health insurance for families and individuals has jumped sharply this year, even though insurers are paying less in benefi ts as cash-strapped American workers opt for less medical care.
For the estimated 150 million workers with employer-sponsored coverage, the average cost of family health insurance jumped 9 percent this year to $15,073, while the price of individual coverage rose 8 percent to $5,429.
What is clear, however, is that family coverage premiums have climbed 113 percent since 2001, compared with a 34 percent rise in workers’ wages and a 27 percent increase in inflation over the period.
Employers still absorb the bulk of insurance costs. They pay an average of 72 percent, nearly
$11,000, toward the cost of family coverage. Workers pay about 28 percent, an average of $4,129. For single coverage, workers pay about 18 percent, or $921, in premiums, while employers pay the rest, about $4,508." [Emphasis added]

 The citation mentions the Alaska Dispatch News September 28, 2016. (I think you have to be a subscriber to see the link.)  But if you look at that edition of the ADN, there's nothing there about this.  If you look harder, there's an opinion piece by Dermot Cole published  June 20,2015 and updated Sept. 28) but it's actually titled:

"17,000 Alaskans face risk of losing health insurance subsidies" (emphasis added)

So,
It's not "lost coverage"  it's "risk of losing."

And it's not losing insurance, but subsidies. Here's the beginning of the article: (this link should work)

"17,000 Alaskans face risk of losing health insurance subsidies
 Author: Dermot Cole   Updated: September 28, 2016   Published June 20, 2015
Robin Barker, a longtime resident of Fairbanks and Bethel, struggled with chronic illnesses for years that kept her from working. Her only option for health insurance cost nearly $800 a month for a policy that came with a $15,000 deductible. Prescriptions alone set her back $12,000 a year."

Why were these subsidies at risk?  Because, according to this Washington Post article:

"The challenge to the health-care law was brought by the same conservative legal strategists who three years ago fell one vote short of convincing the court that the law was unconstitutional. The latest challenge was about how the law is to be carried out."

If we could figure out who "One Nation" (the funders of this ad) is, we might find that the people who fought to get rid of the subsidies all the way to the Supreme Court were funded by the same people who now use that failed court challenge as though they had won.

A few days after this article was published in June 2015 the US Supreme Court ruled to keep the subsidies 6-3.  (Only Scalia, Thomas, and Alito opposed.)  So, in fact they didn't lose those subsidies and the quote is made up to warp people's understanding of ACA.

They are misleading readers further by saying people would lose coverage, when in fact it was a subsidy to buy the coverage, which, in fact, they didn't lose.

Limited choices with only one insurer in the marketplace

This link does take us to the New York Times story cited, which  does mostly say that five states, and parts of other states, are likely to have just one insurer in 2017.  But this article was published a month or so before the final decisions were to be made, so it's not clear how things ended up.  "Many" turns out to be in the article:

"17 percent of Americans eligible for an Affordable Care Act plan may have only one insurer to choose next year. "

Why would 17% of Americans have only one choice?  Paul Krugman argued

". . .  it would be quite easy to fix the system. It seems clear that subsidies for purchasing insurance, and in some cases for insurers themselves, should be somewhat bigger — an affordable proposition given that the program so far has come in under budget... There should also be a reinforced effort to ensure that healthy Americans buy insurance, as the law requires, rather than them waiting until they get sick. Such measures would go a long way toward getting things back on track."

He goes on to argue that if there were a public insurance option, the problem would also be solved, but that insurance companies opposed that strongly.  But if insurance companies say they can't afford to offer insurance, he goes on, then a public option should be available to provide the competition that a market needs to keep rates lowers.

And finally, this third headline - limited choice - ignores the fact that before Obamacare, many more Americans had NO choice of health insurance.  For them, one choice probably seems better than no choice.

And given that Republicans made repealing Obamacare their top priority, it's clear they wanted it to fail in order to fulfill their own prophecies.  Sure, Obamacare is not perfect, but millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn't before.

The ad tells you to call Lisa Murkowski's office and "thank [her] for fighting to repeal and replace Obamacare."  I'd suggest that you call and ask her who put out this ad in her name and that you do not support the repeal of Obamacare until there is a replacement that's at least as good (covers the same number of Americans and has the same affordability levels) as Obamacare.  The number they listed is 907 271 3735.  I got right through.  It only takes a minute to do.  It's more important for Alaskans to do this, so share the number and this post with other Alaskans.

And who is One Nation?  Not sure who funds them.  But their website (you can google it) sounds much more reasonable than our president, but basically wants to stop Obamacare and get public funds to private schools among other things.

Finally, there's the question of the ADN's responsibility to monitor 'alternative facts' in paid ads in their paper.  Especially when the ADN itself is wrongly cited.  I don't think they should ban such ads, but they should alert readers that the citations are wrong and the claims are, at best, misleading.  I know that's not part of traditional journalism, but in this time of a president who lives in an alternative reality and lies regularly, traditional journalists are learning new ways to get readers closer to the truth.

Afternoon At Elliott Bay Book Company - Scary Old Sex, The Life You Can Save, And More

While in Seattle this last time, I got the pleasure of browsing the shelves at the Elliot Bay Book Company on Capitol Hill.  Here are some books to munch on.  I hope this reminds folks that there is more to do than follow Tweets about politics,

Alec Ross - Industries of the Future


You can watch Ross talk about this book at this Ted Talk presentation.  He talks about growing up in West Virginia and teaching in West Baltimore.  He thinks the kids he saw in those place are no less intelligent than kids anywhere.  Those kids didn't fail, the system did.

Premise of the book:  If the last 20 years were shaped by the rise of digitization and the internet, if that's what produced the jobs and wealth, what's next?
The book, he says, mentions a number, but in this talk he flags three.

1. Big data analytics - land was the raw material of the agricultural age, iron of the industrial age, and data is the raw material of the information age.  Background in data analytics will get you employment for the next 20 years or so.  
2. Cyber security - just an associate degree will get you a job starting at $60,000, with college degree, $90,000.
3. Genomics - The world's next trillion dollar industry will be created by our genetic code.  

Question is:  How inclusive will these industries be?  San Jose, for instance, has 4000 homeless people.
How to compete and succeed in tomorrow's world.

Three things we can do now for your kids:

1. Do not rely on the systems to save you.  Because the system fails kids.  Create your own system to save the kids.  
2. Make sure your kids learn languages - foreign languages and computer languages.  
3. Be a life long learner yourself.  

Loss of hope and loss of opportunity is fatal.

The video fills in a lot more background.  I've just given you the barest outline.

[If I do all of these in this much detail, I'll be up way past my bedtime.  I've already decided to do this in two parts.  Each one of these is worthy of a post of its own.  But the point is to just give you a quick look at these titles, like you were browsing in the book store.]

Ngugi Wa Thiong'o - In The House Of The Interpreter

Margaret Busby, reviewing this book in the Independent writes:

"From the first pages of In the House of the Interpreter, strong and memorable themes emerge: the power of education, the rootedness of kin, the need to transform the colonialist narrative. "How could a whole village, its people, history, everything, vanish, just like that?"

This memoir takes place in 1950s Kenya as the Mau Mau are fighting for independence from the British and Ngugi is going to a school.

"Alliance High School is a sanctuary. It is an elitist establishment – the first secondary school for Africans in the country – founded by a coalition of Protestant churches and initially shaped by American charitable funding that aimed at turning out 'civic-minded blacks who would work within the parameters of the existing racial state'".

Arlene Heyman - Scary Old Sex

From a New Yorker review:

"Consider a character like the retired doctor in the story “Nothing Human,” a grandmother three times over, who takes the opportunity of a cruise-ship vacation to berate her husband for his squeamishness: “We can’t try anal intercourse because you think I’m filled with shit to the brim. You have no sense of anatomy. I can take an enema! You can use a condom!” She knows she’s being less than fair. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s half asleep; she picked a fight over his not washing his hands as he groped his way back from the cabin bathroom, and now she’s turned to nagging to cover her deeper anxieties about the relationship. Was he in there to masturbate, when they haven’t had sex since the start of the cruise? When they got together a decade ago, after her first husband’s death, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She misses that, and she misses her first husband, too. But she’s too wise to indulge in nostalgia. When she dreams occasionally of her first husband, it’s in a detached, friendly way—'like a little visit.'”

This is a description of one of the short stories in this book, stories about older women and sex.  The author, Anne Heyman, is a psychoanalyst in her 70s.  To prove that so called sophisticated magazines like the New Yorker aren't any different from other media, the reviewer spends most of the review on literary gossip about Heyman's early affair with a much older famous author and how that affair is treated in different works of fiction.

Peter Singer - The Life You Can Save 

Singer is a prolific and well known philosopher.  You can actually read this book online here.   In the Preface, he writes about this book:

"I have been thinking and writing for more than thirty years about how we should respond to hunger and poverty.  I have presented this book's arguments to thousands of students in my university classes and in lectures around the world, and to countless others in newspapers, magazines, and television programs.  As a result, I've been forced to respond to a wide range of thoughtful challenges.  This book represents my effort to distill what I've learned about why we give, or don't give, and what we should do a out it."

Ken Liu - The Paper Menagerie


I pulled this book off the shelf because Liu is the translator for the Chinese science fiction book, Three Body Problem.

Amal El-Mothar writes about the book for NPR:

"Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories is a book from which I staggered away, dazed, unable to speak. I have wrestled with how to review it, circled my metaphors like a wary cat, and finally abandoned the enterprise of trying to live up to its accomplishment. I will be honest, and blunt, because this is a book that has scoured me of language and insight and left itself rattling around inside the shell of me."

No wonder he was asked to translate The Three Body Problem.






Neil Gaiman - The View From The Cheap Seats




I know Gaiman from the graphic novel Sandman, a gift from my son.  This is a collection of non-fiction essays.  Kirkus Review writes:

"Gaiman (Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, 2015, etc.) is a fan. Of course, as a writer, he’s created unforgettable worlds and characters, but in this collection of essays, introductions, speeches, and other nonfiction works, it’s his fan side that comes through most strongly. The author writes about the thrill of discovering a piece of art that feels like it was made just for you; the way certain books or songs seem to slot into a place in your heart you didn’t know was there; the way a text can mean different things at different times in your life. If the idea of going on a long, rambling walk with Gaiman and asking him about his influences sounds appealing, this is the book for you."

Jason Heller offers a longer review at NPR.

Charles Johnson - The Way Of The Writer

From a short review in the NY Times:

"Johnson’s book, the record of a single year’s email correspondence with his friend E. Ethelbert Miller, is a piecemeal meditation on the daily routines and mental habits of a writer. Johnson describes his study’s curated clutter, his nocturnal working rhythms and the intense labor of his revisions, alongside a careful outline of a theory, reminiscent of both Aristotle and Henry James, of how plots emerge from a “ground situation.” There is a winning sanity here: Johnson wants his students to be “raconteurs always ready to tell an engaging tale,” not self-preoccupied."

As I read some of this book in the bookstore, it was one I knew I needed to get back to.


I've got another bunch of images of books from that afternoon which I'll try to get up before too long.

The White Helmets Takes You On A Short Trip To Syria

Netflix is showing The White Helmets, a short documentary about a group that rescues people immediately after bombings.  It takes you into Allepo and into a training program in Turkey.  It gives you a close up look inside Syria.

When I googled the movie to find out more, I did find an interview with a Dr. Tim Anderson of the University of Sydney who claims the White Helmets is a terrorist group and the movie is total propaganda.  I also found this article which argues that Anderson is merely parroting the Asad and Russian line.   There is also an article in the Australian which looks at Anderson's past.

Judge for yourself.  I still recommend the movie if you have Netflix.  Oh, yeah, they're showing it because it won the Academy Award for best short documentary.  It's very well made.

Remember That Muslim Kenyan? It Seems He Tapped Trump's Phone Too

Let's see.  The next step will be a call to have him removed from the US as an illegal alien.

The New York Times is reporting that FBI director Comey wants the Justice Department to deny Trump's claims:

"The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject President Trump’s assertion that President Barack Obama ordered the tapping of Mr. Trump’s phones, senior American officials said on Sunday. Mr. Comey has argued that the highly charged claim is false and must be corrected, they said, but the department has not released any such statement."

I found the next sentence interesting for what it tells us about Comey (assuming, of course, this is accurate at all):

"Mr. Comey, who made the request on Saturday after Mr. Trump leveled his allegation on Twitter, has been working to get the Justice Department to knock down the claim because it falsely insinuates that the F.B.I. broke the law, the officials said." (emphasis added)

Back in October when he told the world about reopening the Clinton email investigation, he wrote to FBI  employees:

"Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed." (emphasis added)

Comey seems to have a strong need to protect his own reputation, which may skew his judgment.  

Back to the phone tapping allegations, the Washington Post fact-checker searches down references to FISA court requests and gives Trump four Pinocchios.

Sounds to me like the heats on over Russia and Trump's using his usual tactic of a diversionary attack to get people's attention off Trump.  I guess his mother didn't read him the story about the boy who cried wolf.  

If A Bus Driver Acted Like Trump . . .

the passengers would choose from several (not mutually exclusive, nor exhaustive) options:

• Think it's exciting to have a crazy driver
• Sit tight, trust in fate, and hope to survive
• Pray
• Get off the bus at the very next stop - assuming this was a city bus with lots of stops
• Call 911 for help
• Try to disable the bus, say, by turning off the ignition 
• Get the driver out of the driver's seat
• Jump out of the emergency exit

But what does a country with democratic traditions do?  The wheels of democracy turn slowly.  We're bound by the rule of law.

We also thought we were bound by tradition, but we now have a president who ignores those traditional restraints that are necessary in a civil society.   Miss Manners can only tell us what is proper, she has no enforcement powers to prevent the child-president from violating any tradition or policy that isn't backed by statute.  And getting the Justice Department or Congress to enforce the statutes is also problematic.

This seems to be the situation we're in.  So many rules of national etiquette are being violated, but the law doesn't deal with that.  And getting enough proof of statutory violations takes time, especially with the president's nominal party in control of Congress.

Norms are enforced by enough people agreeing the driver needs to be taken out of the driver's seat.

But Republicans in Congress are hoping the driver will go by their favorite neighborhoods (where they can, say, repeal ACA or cut corporate taxes) before the bus crashes.

That leaves it up to Democrats to put up as many roadblocks as they can until enough Republicans realize the futility of this Trumpian bargain.

You can play this exercise with other occupations.

• If your doctor acted like Trump
• If your high school teacher acted like Trump
• If your pilot acted like Trump
• If your boss (of the job you really need) acted like Trump
• If your priest acted like Trump

It works less well where there is a one to one relationship - like a doctor-patient relationship where the patient could just leave.

 It works better in situations like a teacher, or a supervisor of many people, situations where one risks something if she stands up alone.

Using these analogies may help identify strategies to stop this president before he does something so terrible (where the damage can't be undone) that the timid can no longer stand by and do nothing.

Actually, that kind of damage is already happening, but to marginalized and demonized people that the majority of Americans don't identify with, so they don't feel the damage or the personal threat, yet.

And that is part of the danger - that violating the long-standing traditions becomes the new norm.

Think about how people reacted to his speech to Congress Wednesday.  Because he didn't rant and rave, they thought it was an improvement.  It's like he has been running 20 minute miles, and now he ran a 15 minute mile and people think that's great.  Except that great runners do a mile around 4 minutes. And when you are president, you shouldn't be mediocre.

This also reveals how people pay more attention to tone than to content.  Although he didn't have any outbursts, his speech was full of factual errors and generalities. No details of how he's going to get all those jobs, improve education, or pay for that wall.

I predict that as Republicans realize that the ACA is not going to be repealed until they offer a health care plan just as good or better (in which case Obama's goal is still fulfilled), as they realize that Trump doesn't care about the deficit, or international political and economic stability, they will join the Democrats in stopping this bus driver.  Let's hope this happens before there's a spectacular crash.


This Andrew Sullivan piece echoes these ideas about the reaction to Trump's speech, but he puts it in the context of how abused spouses feel when their abuser is nice to them.

"Fascism is a more natural governmental . . ."

Sun Magazine has a series of quotes, called Sunbeams, at the end of each issue.  January's were related to democracy.   Here are a few.  You can see them all here.  They are worth thinking about these days.

"Fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It’s something essentially splendid because it’s not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live."
Norman Mailer

"The most important political office is that of private citizen."
Louis Brandeis

"You lose a lot of time, hating people."
Marian Anderson

"The enemy isn’t conservatism. The enemy isn’t liberalism. The enemy is bullshit."
Lars-Erik Nelson

I've linked the people quoted, lest someone not know who they are.  (There's one I didn't know.)

The Views Were Glorious, But There Was Also An Actual "Glory"

From Weather Online:

"The Brocken spectre (or Brocken bow) is an apparently greatly magnified shadow of an observer cast against mist or cloud below the level of a summit or ridge and surrounded by rainbow coloured fringes resulting from the diffraction of light. The effect is an illusion. Depth perception is altered by the mist, causing the shadow to appear more distant and to be interpreted as larger than normally expected. 

Actually the Brocken Spectre is what meteorologists call a glory. Most air travellers have already observed glories. They are most easily seen when one is riding on the shadow side of an aircraft above the clouds."

When I studied in Göttingen, the Harz Mountains were nearby, so I like the name Brocken bow.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2185941/Rare-phenomenon-gives-airplane-heavenly-glow.html#ixzz4aEMQmKKV
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

But then we flew over the mountains to Anchorage.  Below is a picture of Flattop, from behind, at least relative to how most people see Flattop, from Anchorage.  It's the nub on the left end of the lower loaf of snowy mountain.  Denali and Foraker are in the background.  A chunk of Anchorage is in between.

Clicking on any of these images will enlarge and focus it

Then we were over the Inlet.  I thought these branches looked a bit like monsters creeping up to attack Anchorage in the background.

There was a very low tide uncovering the mudflats in the middle of the Inlet and down Turnagain Arm.  Below is another view down Turnagain Arm.  Almost no water (some was in the rivers in the mudflats).  Mostly frozen mud.

I wasn't really going to add these photos to yesterday's views, but my battery wouldn't start and after my neighbor helped me start it, I needed to drive a bit to recharge it.  So I went a ways down Turnagain Arm and got these views of the frozen mudflats from the ground.  (And I'd forgotten about the glory which seemed worth a post all by itself.)

Note:  I tweaked the exposure, saturation, and contrast in some of these images.

Unexpectedly In Cordova Airport

When we checked in for our 8am flight home from Seattle, they asked for volunteers because the flight was full.  I had been looking forward to a quick return to Anchorage, but we had nothing urgent, so we figured we'd see what they had to offer if we took a later flight.

It turns out they had an earlier flight (7:30am), but with stops in Juneau, Yakutat, and Cordova.  But for $400 vouchers for future flights it seemed like we could go sightseeing.  Not sure how much time I have left with this wifi - I'm on the plane getting it from the Cordova airport - so I'll put up the pictures, in the order of the trip, but the best ones are at near the end.

From the plane at the Juneau airport.

It was snowing in Yakutat and the visibility was below the standards for landing, so after circling a while, we continued on to Cordova.  The image above was while we were waiting for Yakutat to clear.  

Flying into Cordova was pretty spectacular.  

Almost there as we fly past the glacier.


And this last photo is for my friend Jeremy who likes towers that do radio and other electronic things.

This is at the Cordova airport.














For non-Alaskans who have no idea where these places are, here's a map.  (I'm going to post this now  and I'll add the map. UPDATE 3:30pm:  There's the map.)

Cable Car Museum

We took the cousins - our grandkids - to the cable car museum yesterday.  It's a free museum housed in the Washington/Mason cable car barn.

Most impressive are the active winding wheels that pull the cables.

There's a brief explanation of how cable cars work here on the museum site.

And here's a cable car on a very level portion of the ride.

There's more, but have been walking around San Francisco with grandkids in tow.  Sometimes on my shoulders.  There was an interesting set of posters in the museum about how the mayor in 1947 was planning to do away with the cable cars until some women got together and got a ballot initiative to prevent that.  I'll give more detail on that because it has important lessons for people today.  We even had some playtime at the Joe DiMaggio recreation center playground.