Meeting Folks And Learning Things Through Blogging - Do You Know What Psychogeography Is?

In most cases, notes from blog visitors is a good thing.  In other cases, well, it's still interesting.  

I've had several people contact me regarding the blog in the last week or so.  

John Hussey, of Liverpool, read my post on Hitler's 1942 visit to Paris and wanted to share his post on the same topic.  Mine was based a passage from on Doris Kearns Goodwin's book, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt:  The Home Front in World War II and the account of that day by Albert Speer.  I have a picture up of Speer and Hitler in front of the Eiffel Tower.  Hussey's account comes from the third person in that picture - sculptor Arno Breker.  

I finally got around to adding a link to John's post at the bottom of my original post.  But lest you think I'm trying to force you to go back to my post, here's a link to John's post on Hitler's visit to Paris. 

I also got a post from someone saying they had a rolled up canvas painting and did I know anything about it.  There was a picture of the artist's signature.  The name sounded familiar so I searched my blog - assuming the writer had seen something  on the blog that made her think I might be able to help - and found the post with the painter's first name and last name.  I googled that and quickly found an obituary of someone with the same (unusual) last name as the writer that also included the full name of the artist.  I also found out where the artist works through a LinkenIn account.  

Those two are the kind of emails I enjoy getting.  

Then there are the ones that I categorize as 'interesting.'  I learn something about internet promotion.  

A guy named Brian said he liked my post on hiking Doi Suthep in Chiangmai, Thailand and asked if I would put up a link to his website on boots.  He specifically gave me a link to long distance hiking trails in the US, but it seems like the site is really about boots.  I'm guessing he might write reviews that get him either free boots or other consideration from bookmakers, but I don't know that.  I'd emailed back to him for clarification - if I link to your site, where are you going to link back to mine.  His response:

"Thanks for your reply. I think you were misunderstood my proposal.
I will not give you a link from my site because Google hate 2 ways link
But I will share your article to thousands of my social followers after you add my link to your article."

The original email was in good grammatical English, but my questions got him off script.  So not only did he want a link from me, but he also wanted to repost my original post on his site.  Or maybe on his FB page.  I decided not to follow up on this second email.   I do get lots of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) spam, usually in the form of comments which I try to delete immediately.  This one was a little more personalized.  

And here's another, less subtle, but still more personalized request:

Hi,
I was look at your blog recently and noticed this article: whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2012/06/packaging-good-bad-ugly-tofu-bagels.html 
I noticed it's now a little outdated and thought it might be worth updating for your readers and consumers.
I just wondered if you'd consider a newer up to date article from ourselves - Direct Packaging Solutions - I'm happy to update the article and work to make it better for your readers as well as making sure everything is up to date and relevant. I'd also be open to working on anything you might have in the works yourself, that perhaps you feel would be better written from a expert point of view; We've been in the packaging industry for just over 15 years.
Let me know.
Thanks. 

Obviously another SEO guy who googles for things on packaging and then sends emails like this.  Again, more personalized and sophisticated than the spam comments with links to their sites, but still an attempt to get more hits for his client's website.  

But what about Psychogeography, your ask?

A followup email from John Hussey caused me to look up a book called Paris: the Secret History, and I found this snippet on psychogeography in a review of the book.

"The Situationists practised what they called "psychogeography", described by Debord as "the study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals". Hussey makes it sound far more exciting. ''Psychogeography' was a game, or series of games," he explains, "in which the participants set out to create an atmosphere that had the power to disrupt the routine and functions of everyday life. Drink, drugs, music, boredom, despair, fear and awe all had a role to play.'"

While I didn't have that word - psychogeography - like many Alaskans, I have been very aware of the impact of our geography on our emotions and behavior.  In geographically extreme areas, it's much more pronounced.  But the geography of cities also have their impacts on the people living in them.  

Fix Your Bike - Anchorage

I parked at my usual bike rack at UAA, but when I looked up, there was this strange new installation.

Lo and behold, it's a bike repair station.  There's a rack to hold the bike on top.  Tools hanging down at the bottom and a pump on the right.

But why here?  I can understand the pump.  But do you have to break down at this particular spot?  Fortunately, I took one more picture of this new feature.

So I could look this up.  I could buy one in red for $1,096.   But there's also a US map that shows all the places one can find these.  So I got the map for Anchorage.  (Well, it looks like I got the US map and you have to scroll up to Anchorage on your own.)





And today I got a tag-along bike through Craigslist for when my granddaughter comes to Anchorage in June.

Variations On The Theme of Knowing and Ignorance

I don't like to just repost what others have done.  I feel some need to include some sort of value-added.  The value here is fairly minimal.  It's merely putting these together with what I see as the common themes of ignorance, the difficulty of knowing, and the greater difficulty of being able to assess what you know.


I got a link that sent me to McSweeny's Internet Tendency.  It turns out McSweeney is a publishing house in San Francisco.  Had I known that last week, I might have tried to stop and and see who is behind these two posts.

• IF PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT OTHER THINGS THE WAY THEY TALKED ABOUT GENDER IDENTITY  by KAYA YORK

Here are two examples from the piece of talking about other things like people talk about gender:

Cats: “A Manx is not a cat. Cats are defined as having tails. Maybe it’s a koala.”
Ice cream: “Avocado is not a valid ice cream flavor because I’ve never heard of it and it does not appeal to me.”

There are lots more such examples.

• THAD, THE WORST STUDENT IN YOUR INTRO CLASS, HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

by RJ HAPPEL

Oh my!  There must be a kind of genius that allowed Happel to create this essay of twisted logic.

• The Tangled Story Behind Trump’s False Claims Of Voter Fraud

'Zombie Research' and how the study that led people (like Trump) to incorrectly conclude that non-citizens were voting in big enough numbers to impact election results was used to impact an election.  This comes from Nate Silver's Fivethirtyeight website.  It's about a very sophisticated ignorance - the kind that always made it hard for me to submit academic articles, because I was always certain there was some important piece that I had missed entirely.

• "The greatest enemy of knowledge is NOT ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge."

I first wrote about the  Dunning-Kruger effect  a year ago April.  This video is actually an example posted by Alberto Cairo - the professor who taught the online class I took on infographics for journalists -  of how videos are an improvement over simple graphics (Cairo's area of expertise.)  His post includes three more such video examples on:   the visualization of uncertainty, the first of  a series about elementary statistical methods titled Methods 101, and a discussion about Cairo's book, The Truthful Art.  






(The 'greatest enemy of knowledge' quote comes at the end of the video.

The notion that I had to confront the 'knowledge' my students already had embedded in their brains about any given topic before they could really consider a different 'truth' came about a third of the way into my teaching career, and radically changed how I taught. If someone 'knows' something, it's really hard to displace that 'knowledge' with something else unless you get that person to consciously confront the existing 'knowledge' and how it was acquired.

Lists Are Good

I made a list today and did most of the things on it.

Some are done:

• I copied some pages from The Camp of the Saints √ - a book supposedly on Steve Bannon's must-read list.  The library was saying I couldn't renew it.  I'd been taking notes, for a blog post, but I just couldn't finish it.  Partly because it's so disgusting.  Partly because I was reading it carefully so I could blog about.  Copying pages I'd put into my notes means I can find the quotes I want when I'm ready to post about it.  I then took it and three other books back to the library.√  
• I got the hoses out in the front√ and the back√.  Washed down the chaise lounge (not on the list, but should have been), and watered the flower beds in front√ and some in back√.  I also swept the cottonwood catkins off the deck twice.  (That wasn't on the list).  
• I picked up the seedlings we'd left with friends while we were gone.√  
• I called a couple of folks ☐☐ about things I need to do, but I had to leave messages, so they're still hanging.  (I use those little boxes to mark things I did, but didn't get completed.  I'd made the calls, but had to leave messages.  So not really settled.)
• I recorded a statement for an insurance company about an accident I witnessed Wednesday afternoon in Alameda, California.  Our friends were showing us this little island in San Francisco Bay that used to have a navy and army base.  We heard a bang.  Across the street a car had pulled out of a parking space and hit a car that was passing by.  I left my card with the driver of the car that was hit and told him I'd seen it if he needed a witness.  The insurance company called.  I realized, as she asked me questions, how little I had paid attention.  I'd focused on the key aspects - the fact that car had pulled out and hit a passing car - but I couldn't tell her what street it was, what kind of cars were involved.  That wasn't on my list either.  
• I didn't call the IRS, but I called my mother's accountant √ to let him know I'd gotten a letter saying there was a discrepancy in her 2014 income taxes.  That was the year that deductions for the caregiver got messed up and it took me over a year of monthly phone calls to the IRS and help from the Alaska IRS ombudsman to clear things up.  I didn't call the IRS because I couldn't find all the forms from that year.  I'd finally put them away, thinking that horror was behind me.  Apparently it isn't.  Calling the IRS was on the list.  Instead I went through files looking for the forms and instead I found other stuff that had been dumped in the file cabinet.  Sorting that stuff wasn't on the list.  

Lists do focus me and tend to keep me from forgetting all the things I'm supposed to do.  And from getting distracted with things not on the list.  And checking things off the list is a good feeling.  I get to see all that one did in a day and don't feel that I totally wasted the day.  Getting a blog post up wasn't on the list.  Maybe I thought I'd have the Camp of The Saints post ready.  No, I knew that would take longer.

Fighting Back And Staying Sane

We came back home to a beautiful spring day.  While we were gone I got bits and pieces of 'the news,'  but mostly I was focused on grandchildren and friends.  These and the natural world are the true antidotes to the overdose of stupid* the USA is experiencing.

So, here, I'm going to give some excerpts from recent Alaska Dispatch News pieces along with their antidotes.

From Sen. Cathy Giessel:

"Some express dislike, even disdain, for businesses that employ thousands of our fellow Alaskans.  That animosity clouds the source of our prosperity, of what made the last two generations of families and businesses in our state an astonishing success."

This sounds good enough that I'm sure many people think, 'Yeah, that's right.'  But let's get real.

• I don't know any people who have disdain for businesses that employ thousands. They have disdain for businesses that treat their employees badly, that leave the environment worse than they found it, that take the wealth of Alaska to their various corporate headquarters outside the state rather than reinvesting here.
• It wasn't generations of families and businesses that caused our astonishing success.  It was the huge deposits of oil and the fact that the state owned the oil that caused our financial success and jobs.  Yes, oil companies played a big role in extracting that oil, but they also made huge profits from that oil.

I could go through her whole commentary line by line and point out what she doesn't mention.  But not now.

The antidote?   The amazing tulip in our front yard.    (I've photoshopped these images because the backgrounds tended to be messy and photoshop can be a fun distraction.  The originals are below.)




From an Ed Rogers commentary on Trump firing Comey (originally in the Washington Post)

"What it [Comey's firing] is, however, is the president following sound advice from a serious, credentialed and experienced leader in whom he has entrusted great responsibility.
The Rosenstein memo makes the reasoning behind Comey's firing nonpartisan and completely bulletproof."

Barf bags are in the seat pockets in front of you.  Real journalists, not Trump apologists, write, also in the Washington Post and reprinted in the ADN,

"The president already had decided to fire Comey . . . Trump gave Sessions and Rosenstein a directive:  to explain in writing the case against Comey. 

Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerged from the White House Tuesday evening cast him as the prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and the president acted only on his recommendation, said the person close to the White House . . ." [emphasis added]

For severed political spin nausea, here are some hosta shoots poking out of the ground.

OK, you get the point.  I don't need to add more examples of bullshit here.  I'm sure you've got way more than enough, so just take the antidotes.  Here are some lilac buds.

Some lily leaves exploding out of the earth.

 And there was a mailbox with a week's worth of mail.  Photoshop seemed like a good way to transform these mostly pieces of junk.

Here are the original pictures.  Except for the lily leaves.  I accidentally put the final version in, but I have to move on.  I hope my pictures inspire you to go out and look closely at the wonders of nature that surround us.

*Stupid is only one of the ills we are suffering. And using terms like stupid doesn't help cut through the conflicting ways of interpreting the world around us.  Probably it's more about the evil of people who produce create bogus facts and attack truth who are rewarded by the people who eagerly feed on the alternative realities like a drug for their emotional holes.

Morning Visit To Japanese Tea Garden

We did an early morning visit with our grandson to the Japanese garden in Golden Gate Park.  A wonderful time to visit - early morning sunshine and hardly any other people.  And the koi and the various bridges over the water and the pagodas all kept the youngen's attention.

Quick SF Observations - Preschool Education, Aggressive Cars, Butterfly Wing

I've been watching a couple of kids (almost three and someone older) negotiate some pretty fancy playgrounds the last couple of days and I'm impressed at all the learning they're doing.  It's all about testing balance and strength and grip.  They're learning what their muscles can do, how far they can stretch or lean.  I watched my grandson today (the one under three) as he worked his way across a net.  He had to step on a shaky surface, keep from slipping through the holes, find handholds, and pull himself up onto a platform.  When he finally made it to the top he did a little dance shouting, "I did it!"

This is serious work.  Can you jump from rock to rock?  How do you get up different kinds of 'ladders'?  And while both the kids worked hard to master their challenges, it was also amazing the difference in ability the four months difference makes.

Sometimes they need a little help - a hand to hold, a suggested hand hold - but mostly they were better off just working it out themselves.

This is why I haven't had time to write here.

But here are a couple more pictures from the last two days.

This butterfly wing was caught while feeding on orange slices at the California Academy of Sciences rain forest exhibit.




And these two cars were in the underground garage.  These were two human-less parked cars, that struck me as appearing unusually aggressive.  Maybe there should be a special word for anthropomorphic for objects that were created by humans (as opposed to natural objects.)  And, I guess words that distinguish between living and non-living things.

Family Time And SF Street Drama Adventure

Today was a family day with our son and daughter-in-law and their two kids.  A ferry ride to Sausalito and just some good time.  I'm slowed down a lot because the heel I thought was now ok, started acting up again.  It was last a short issue last August.  But J got me a small ankle brace and a cane and I was ok.  But we didn't push it.


There was a mystery yacht in the Sausalito harbor.  J found a reference to it as Attessa III or IV.  While it has the general shape of Attessa IV - including the helicopter - Attessa IV has much more sculpted lines.  And Attessa III seems much stubbier.  So it stays a mystery.   You can compare the different Attessas (owned by Montana billionaire Dennis Washington to the ship we saw (below.)

 


We went back by bus in different groups.  I had the last part on my own.  There was a bit of a ruckus at the back of the bus.  One guy was in a slightly different world than the rest of the riders.  He had a new white t-shirt covering his face from his nose down and was physically agitated and another passenger was saying he should get off the bus.  They weren't being aggressive, but it wasn't quiet either.  A woman nearby me was catching it on her iPhone - in case it escalated I guess. They guy came to the front of the bus and sat on the other side of the woman sitting next to me.  She was in her 50s or so and acted as if all was normal.  Some younger women moved to the back.  He went to the back of the bus.  The women came back to the front.  Then got off at the next stop.  At my stop, the woman next to me got off as well as three more younger women.  And the man.  Who crossed the street with all of us.  Then he started talking to one of the women who had pulled back from the cross walk and had gotten behind a bus stop shelter.  I didn't feel any personal threat so I told the woman to just walk with me and we'd go to the small lobby of my hotel just ahead.  She did and he followed and I positioned myself between them.  He asked for money and he'd leave us alone. We kept walking, I talked calmly, and we were getting close to the lobby.  Almost there and a police car pulled up and called him to stop harassing us.  While the officer was talking to him we went to the lobby.  She just needed to get to the end of the block and across the street to pick up her mail at a postal station.  So we walked together while the officer was still there with him.  When we got her mail, the police car was gone and we saw the man ahead at the corner where she needed to get the bus.  But as the next bus left, she saw him on it.  When we got to the corner, he wasn't there and she got her bus.  When I got back to the hotel lobby - it's really a 50s style motor in - the man at the desk said the officer had asked to see the man's id  and then let him go.  I don't think he ever touched the man.  They just talked, and the man did seem aware it was a police officer.

And, apropos nothing other than San Francisco, there was a Ouija Board exhibit at the airport.  It's spelled with an 'a' at the end, but when I was a kid they were called 'ouiji' boards.

House Republicans Pass Bill Just To Say They Passed Bill To Kill Obamacare

That was my impression.  That they would say anything to anyone to get them to change their vote to yes.  What's in the bill was irrelevant.  Whether it was good policy or not was irrelevant.  Whether it made the people of the US better off or not was irrelevant.  Trump and Ryan said Obamacare repeal and replacement was their top priority.  They missed the 100 day mark, but now they got it.  Passed the House anyway.  It was just a symbol.

And as I read today's ADN on why our Rep. Don Young changed his vote to yes, it seems he believes that it was just symbolic.

From Rep. Don Young:

“'This bill we passed today will not become law. It’ll be changed as time goes by. But unless we move it, or move a vehicle, nothing’s going to happen, and that’s not good,' Young said Thursday in an interview after the vote."

He was 'promised' there would be changes to protect Alaska which reports say comes out worst of all states under this legislation.

“I got a commitment from the speaker to take care of the disproportionate cost — we and Illinois are really hurt the worst but we think we can take care of that,” Young said. 

“And I know we have the money, about $19 billion that can be dispersed” to offset costs, he said. “I’ve talked to the Secretary (of Health and Human Services) — Dr. (Tom) Price — and he assures me that (Alaska) will be made whole, if it was to become law.”

I'm not a big Don Young fan, but he is a wily politician and he either knows that this bill won't make it through the Senate as is, or even at all.  Or he believes he'll get what he was promised.  Given this administration, I suspect the former.

And Alaska's US Senator Lisa Murkowski confirms my impression:

"Murkowski said she fears the House “is basically trying to just build the votes rather than build good policy,” and get the “monkey off its back” to pass the bill along to the Senate."

November 2018 is going to be the most interesting and probably the  nastiest mid-term election in a long time.

Is Trump Turning Lemons Into Hotels?

The LA Times had a story yesterday about the lifting of a 16 year old ban on lemons from the north of Argentina.

“We were completely blindsided,” said Joel Nelsen, president of the California Citrus Mutual, an industry advocacy group. “They just flat-out ignored us, and that’s completely unacceptable.”

That doesn't sound like the Trump who was going to protect American business and agriculture from unfair foreign competition.

Meanwhile, a November CNN Money piece talked about Trump and his daughter's post election phone call with the president of Argentina.

"The question is whether Donald Trump and his children are using their newly found political power to push the deal across the finish line. It would raise questions of yet another conflict of interest between Trump's business empire and the White House.
Trump spoke to Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri, on November 14 and Ivanka Trump also briefly came on the call, according to Macri's spokesperson.
The two go back a long way. Macri has a similar background -- his father was a billionaire real estate developer, and the Macri family did a real estate deal with Trump in New York in the 1980s. Macri and Trump were friends at the time, and Macri has known Ivanka since she was a kid."

But maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions so fast.

The LA Times article on the lemons goes on to say:

"In December, President Obama’s administration said it would lift the ban, which had been imposed after complaints by producers in California that the Argentine lemons carried diseases.
But a month later, Trump’s administration issued a 60-day stay on the decision. That stay had been extended, stalling the return of imports from one of the world’s top lemon producers to its largest market."

So this was something that was already decided by Obama, and Trump stopped it for two months.  OK, at this point, Trump is going against Macri's interests and is with the lemon farmers.  Then it goes on:

“We [the lemon growers] disagreed with the Obama administration, but this rule now belongs to the Trump administration and it flies in the face of the administration’s priorities, which are to protect domestic agriculture, U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs,” Nelsen said. [Nelsen is the spokesperson for the lemon growers]

He [Nelsen] also said serious questions remain about the hazard posed by pests that could hitch a ride on Argentine fruit and damage U.S. groves.

The article mentions that we get lemons from Mexico and Chile.  Do they have better pest inspection and control than Argentina?  Or is this just 'fake news' from the California lemon industry to stop a competitor?  Good questions to pursue.

The CNN article, further down, also raises questions about the relationship between Macri and Trump.

"The two haven't always been close though. Macri threw his support behind Hillary Clinton in September."

So we don't really know all the details and motivations.  It could be that Trump held up Obama's change of policy to retaliate against Macri for supporting Clinton (who, like everyone else at that time, thought she would win.)  And now perhaps they have made up and part of the negotiations included lifting the lemon ban in exchange for hotel approval.  We don't know.

This is why so many of us are angry that Trump ignores legal and ethical standards that he  should divest his business interests and that his kids play such a big role in the business and the administration.

Even if he did everything totally above board - something that is hard to picture - there would still always be the appearance of conflict of interest, and the appearance that Trump is using the presidency to improve his business.

But Trump rejects that.  The November CNN piece ends with this quote from Trump:

"Prior to the election, it was well known that I have interests in properties all over the world. Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!"

Trump seems to think he can badmouth anyone, but if anyone turns the tables, it's a lie.  No matter what the real motivations for the lifting of the lemon ban, this man is seriously ill.