"Stolen antifreeze, alcohol and fake fingernails: Fred Meyer shoplifting sting nabs 25 suspects

That was the headline in the story in the Anchorage Daily News about a shoplifting sting at Fred Meyer's on Northern Lights and New Seward Highway.  I'd been at a hearing on crime last year where lots of folks complained.  Particularly some guys from Home Depot and Lowe's about shoplifters regularly walking out with big ticket items like chain saws, and how the stores did nothing because of SB91that made such arrests futile.  One guy claimed they'd lost about $800,000 last year.

So this sting to catch shoplifters at Fred Meyer sounded like a good idea.  About time.  Until I read it.  The fake fingernails should have been a red flag, though they turned out to be one of the more expensive items.

This program, called "Retail Detail" is, it says, a partnership with the big box store loss prevention teams and the Anchorage Police Department (APD), and began about six months ago.  Well, that was just after that hearing I went to last October.

"Carson said about 20 police officers, both undercover and marked, took part in the shoplifting sting. The operation lasted about nine hours, from the afternoon into the night."

I don't know that all the police officers worked all nine hours or that they weren't doing other work and came when called.  But let's say 10 officers for nine hours.  Say their pay is $32-42/hour and  the State Labor Department says the mean statewide pay for police/sheriff is $39 and the median is $40. An Alaska Policy Forum report says on MOA salaries says that benefits are about 30% of salaries.  Though that's an average and I'm guessing it's a bit higher for police.  But let's use 30%.

So they'd be costing about $50/hour.  Times ten (we're being conservative and assuming not all were working all nine hours)  = $500.  Times nine hours = $4500.  This is an extremely conservative number because it doesn't count any time in preparation for this sting or follow up.  This doesn't count the time of the loss prevention team members.

So what did they get?  The headline says 25 suspects.  I'm assuming these are arrests, not convictions.  What grabbed my attention was the value of the merchandise of each shoplifter.  From the article:

#1 [the article includes name and age, but I don't see the point here] "was arrested after he ran into the side of a patrol car on a stolen bicycle. Dickson had taken the bike from outside of the store. . .  the bike brakes didn't work. #1 smashed into the side of the patrol car, causing "pretty good damage" to the rig." 

So we have to add the cost of the damage to the rig.  Not sure how much a bike with no brakes is worth.  Not much I'm guessing.  I'll put down $20 which I think is generous.  But it clearly wasn't store merchandise.  Just a brakeless bike someone left there.

#2 hid fake fingernails worth $48.25 in his jacket pocket 

#3A stole three cans of spray paint and ran from officers as #3B, sat waiting in a getaway vehicle, police say. #3A was arrested for theft, resisting arrest and violating conditions of release. #3B was arrested on two counts of misconduct involving a weapon

Fred Meyer's website wasn't very helpful (one kind of Spray Paint wasn't available at the Northern Lights store, another kind didn't have a price.)  At Walmart, spray paint ranges from $2.64 - $5.68. So let's say three cans were worth $15.

#4  and a 13-year-old girl stole $103.86 worth of food. #4 was arrested for theft, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and violating conditions of release. The teenager was arrested and released to her parents.

Age might be relevant here if these two aren't relatives.  He was 32.

#5  stole $47.83 worth of various merchandise. She was arrested for theft, and had an outstanding warrant for a probation violation.

#6A  and #6B stole $215.17 worth of food and merchandise. Both were arrested for theft; #6A had an outstanding warrant for a probation violation. 

#7  stole a comforter costing $34.99. He was arrested for theft. 

#8  stole $11.16 in food. He was arrested for theft. 

#9 stole $288.56 worth of merchandise. He was arrested for theft and failure to register as a sex offender.

#10 tried to run from the store with $40.55 worth of merchandise, but officers caught him. He was arrested for theft, resisting arrest and violating conditions of release.

#11 stole $5.48 worth of food. He was arrested for theft, and on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court.

#12 stole $13.69 in alcohol. He was arrested for theft.

#13  stole $54.99 in shoes. He had a concealed gun on him and didn't tell officers; he was arrested for theft and misconduct involving a weapon.

#14 stole $52.50 in shoes. He was arrested for theft.

#15 was recognized by employees as having an outstanding misdemeanor warrant for theft. She was arrested on the warrant.

#16  put $87.87 of merchandise in his backpack and walked out of the store. He had heroin on him. He was arrested for theft and misconduct involving a controlled substance.

#17 stole $22.98 in antifreeze. He was arrested for theft.

#18 was recognized by employees as a repeat trespass offender, and was arrested for trespassing.

#19 stole $6.59 of food. He was arrested for theft.

#20 was recognized by officers from two outstanding warrants: a felony warrant for promoting contraband and misconduct involving a controlled substance, and a misdemeanor warrant for failure to appear in court. She was arrested.

#21 stole $337.15 worth of assorted merchandise. She was arrested for theft. 

#22  stole $221.22 in merchandise. She was arrested on an outstanding felony warrant for failure to appear in court, as well as theft and resisting arrest.

The headline says 25 suspects, but the numbers only go up to #22.  There were two listed in #3, #4 (a 13 year old girl), and #6.

By the time I finished this list, I was nodding my head.  Let's look at the numbers:

Some Key Numbers
25 arrests Total value stolen = $1630 or $181/hour Average amount(mean) = $74 Median = about $38 (two middle numbers were $35 and $41) If you order from lowest to most, #16 is $19 below the average. The last six accounted for $1254. Conservative estimate of cost of sting:  $4500

We're looking at a people who stole $5, $6, and $11 worth of food.  Several people who hadn't taken anything, but were recognized by store employees as problems.  

This doesn't reflect the stories I heard about Home Depot and Lowe's.  Most of these sound like poor people - homeless? - who took small amounts. 

I'm not saying there's no problem here.  Fred Meyer is open (at least now) from 7am - 12 am, or 17 hours.  For simplicity sake, let's calculate  the other seven hours at the same rate.  We get $3070 per day in theft.  And assuming Fred Meyer is open every day, $1,123,470 a year.    (We don't really know if this is an average day, a high day, or a low day, or if the hours they didn't work the sting had the same level of theft.  So this is just a ball park guess.)

That's not peanuts.  But is the cost of preventing those thefts greater than the costs of the thefts?  For this particularly day it cost at least three times more than the value of the items stolen.  (I'm assuming that my $4500 figure is way low.)  Could the money be used in a way that prevented the most of the thefts instead of simply (temporarily for most) incarcerating the thieves.

Or, is there a certain number of shoplifters who cause the bulk of the problem  - like the ones who took over $88 each?  If they're removed would that cut the bulk of the problem?  In this sting, six people were responsible for 77% of the value of the stolen goods.   (from the table, $1254 (value taken by top six)/1630 (total value taken) = 77%)

Maybe there's some value to catching people with outstanding warrants or who violate their parole that goes beyond the value of what was stolen.  Some of these might be clever thieves.  But most sound like pretty desperate people.  Maybe some who aren't so desperate, but have some mental health needs to shoplift.  It's not clear how many of these people actually bought other items in addition to what they were stealing and how many just tried to walk out without paying anything.

I don't know the answer to this.  Obviously social and mental health services for those who are unable to work or cannot find a job or hold one  might help cut into this problem.

I just wanted to put all those costs together and match them to the cost of the sting.  There may well be costs and benefits I've missed.

It may seem like a trivial issue, but the kind of thinking through the numbers and different ways to spend the money, different ways to lessen shoplifting, is the kind of thinking we should be applying to all sort of issues from immigration to terrorism.  Arrests by law enforcement at Fred Meyer or on the border, or combat, only means that other means have failed, or haven't even been tried.  

Plant Trees While You Browse, But Does It Really Work?

Someone in Holland got here (this blog) via a browser called "Ecosia."  I'd never heard of it before so I checked it out.

The image isn't too clear, but if you click on it you'll get to Ecosia search engine and you can play around there to find out more about what they're about.

For those wondering why planting trees is a good thing, here's a list of reasons from ClimateRally

1. An average size tree creates sufficient oxygen in one year to provide oxygen for a family of four.
2. Planting trees in the right place around buildings and homes can cut air-conditioning costs up to 50 percent. 
3. Planting trees for the environment is good as they are renewable, biodegradable and recyclable. 
4. If we plant 20 million trees, the earth will get with 260 million more tons of oxygen.
5. Once acre of trees can remove up to 2.6 tons of Carbon Dioxide each year.
6. During photosynthesis, trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen.
7. Trees keep in cheek the air and water pollution.
8. Why planting trees is important is evident as they are the natural habitat of the animals and birds, as well as many endangered species.
9. Planting trees means more wood and paper products which can be easily recycled.
10. A newly planted whole forest, can change tons of atmospheric carbon into wood and other fibrous tissue, thus reducing global warming.

Here''s more from Trees Utah.

I was really excited about this, but figured I better do some checking to see how they can do this and whether I can trust them.

Does Ecosia do what it says?

Reviewopedia discusses what Ecosia says about itself, but doesn't seem to have any independent analysis.

Green Review gives a fairly harsh review, saying that Eosia uses Bing, which is owned by Microsoft and that clicks, not searches, generate money for trees.  But only after Microsoft gets its cut. It recommends Google over Ecosia.

A Path Around The World - has a long and thoughtful review.  But it doesn't mention the connection to Bing and Microsoft at all.  But it looks at Ecosia's financial reports (unaudited self-reporting) and does some comparisons of its utility as a browser to Google.

Being ethically responsible isn't easy.  Make your own evaluation.

Sleeping In Public, Immigrants, Separating Kids From Parents, Can Getting Stoned Cure All This? Sunday Reading

NPR's Ted Talk show this week* , Attention Please, was about how the world is vying for your attention.  They noted the average person sees (does that include hears) 4000 - 10,000 ads a day, all competing for your attention.  I've been writing here about how people's attention is diverted from critical issues, from learning deeply enough to understand critical issues.
*Link gets you to this week's show which will thus be out of date soon  This link gets you to one of the talks on this subject.

And I'd remind you that this blog DOES NOT TAKE ANY ADS.  The more time you spend here, the fewer adds you're subject too. :)

Here are some recent  articles that cover well issues that we either don't hear or think about enough, or at all.


1.   Sleeping In Public - Starts with a story about a Yale student calling the police because black Yale student dozed off in a dorm common room, but goes on to explore our norms against sleeping in public.  It gives some examples of where it's ok, but doesn't mention the beach, where it's ok if you're in swim wear, but not if your in street clothes.  Think about your reaction to people you see sleeping in public - when is it ok, where is it ok, does it matter how they're dressed or what color they are?

2.  Crackdown on immigrants takes a toll on federal judge: 'I have presided over a process that destroys families' - a judge talks about how soul destroying his job is.  Here's a brief snippet:

Brack also sees migrants charged with drug offenses or long criminal records and is unsparing in their punishment. But they are a minority, he said.
“I get asked the question, ‘How do you continue to do this all day every day?’ I recognize the possibility that you could get hard-edged, you could get calloused, doing what I do,” he said. “I don’t. Every day it’s fresh. I can’t look a father and a husband in the eye and not feel empathy.”
Brack, 65, is the son of a railroad-worker father and homemaker mother and earned a law degree at the University of New Mexico. He served as a state judge before being named to the federal bench by President George W. Bush.

3.  Taking Children from Their Parents Is a Form of State Terror - Masha Gessen is bi-cultural having grown up in both the US and the Soviet Union/Russia (maybe they makes her trip-cultural.)  She was a journalist in Russia and has written a searing biography about Putin.  She's someone I think understands the world better than most.  Here's a paragraph from that piece that is a relevant follow-up to #3 above.

"Hostage-taking is an instrument of terror. Capturing family members, especially children, is a tried-and-true instrument of totalitarian terror. Memoirs of Stalinist terror are full of stories of strong men and women disintegrating when their loved ones are threatened: this is the moment when a person will confess to anything. The single most searing literary document of Stalinist terror is “Requiem,” a cycle of poems written by Anna Akhmatova while her son, Lev Gumilev, was in prison. But, in the official Soviet imagination, it was the Nazis who tortured adults by torturing children. In “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” a fantastically popular miniseries about a Soviet spy in Nazi Germany, a German officer carries a newborn out into the cold of winter in an effort to compel a confession out of his mother, who is forced to listen to her baby cry."
  

4.  Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs  - Andrew Sullivan argues that psychedelic drugs help expand people's minds,  help people  experience universal love  and  see the unity of humankind. From Jesus to Lennon we've heard "All You Need Is Love."   And that's why authoritarian leaders over the same time period have wanted them banned.  (The last sentence is my thought. But the idea is connected with George Carlin's piece  )

We Should Praise The President, When Praise Is Due

If Trump ever meets with Kim Jong Un and they work out a plan that denuclearizes the Korean peninsula, the folks on the Left ought to give Trump credit.

I played with this thought as we moved toward the summit in Singapore. Then Trump's cancellation seemed to reinforce my hesitation.  I ended up writing about how it seemed to me that Trump really only cares about policy if he thinks it will burnish his image, his brand, his fortunes, his sexual reputation.  (Note, he's one of the few, if not the only high profile male who's been accused of sexual predation but hasn't apologized, resigned, or been indicted.)

Talking about policy triumphs is difficult because it takes a while to determine if something actually was a good thing or not.  The 1991 first war against Iraq that pushed them out of Kuwait seems to have worked.  But Jr.'s attack on Iraq a decade later seems to be a total disaster.  We were supposedly going in because of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be non-existent.  (Just as LBJ's premise for entering the Vietnam war was fabricated.)  We were supposedly avenging the 3000 deaths in the World Trade Center attacks.  There have been about 200,000 Iraqi civilian deaths to date.  Saddam Hussein was NOT a man to admire, but like Tito in Yugoslavia, he maintained peace among different ethnic groups in Iraq.   More importantly for some, Saddam's Iraq was a major force for keeping Iran in check.

I'm not defending Saddam here.  There would have been many civilian deaths had he stayed in power.  And one could argue that the young men he sacrificed in wars against Iran, had been civilians before they were forced into the military.  But it didn't need to be the United States' problem.  Our desire to help oppressed people is laudable (when that isn't simply an excuse to help US corporations access raw materials like oil).  But sometimes if someone is drowning, jumping in after them only results in the rescuer drowning as well as the original victim.

The Arab spring seemed like a loosening of harsh rule in various countries.  But when we look at Libya and Syria and Egypt now, the end results aren't all that good.

So, lauding Trump for arranging a meeting with Kim Jong Un seemed premature at best.  After all, any of our presidents could have met with Kim or his father.  Meeting with them is NOT a victory for the US, but it IS a victory for North Korea.  A victory for the US depends on what the US gets in return for giving the head of North Korea equal footing with the president of the United States.

Is there a chance, as Trump now hints post cancellation, that the meeting might actually happen?  The one attribute Trump has that past presidents didn't which could give him an edge, is that he's just as volatile, outrageous, and unpredictable as Kim Jong Un.  Perhaps even more so.  Thus, there's a chance that they actually understand each other.  But don't hold your breath.

Kim went to a German language high school in Switzerland.  He went to school with people from a variety of countries.  And he and his country have been focused on the US for all his life, while I'm not sure Trump could have found Korea on a map before he was president.  (May not be able to now.)  I suspect that despite appearances, Kim is far better prepared to deal with the US than vice-versa.

Furthermore, Trump reverses himself so often, that one has to be cautious.  What seems good  (or possibly promising) right now could be reversed by a tweet in an hour.  So praising our president for anything is a risky business.  Time will tell if he ever does something that improves the United States or the world.  So far, there is infinitely more damage being done than we can keep track of.  That too will take time to sort out.  (Yes, I can go through a list of things that I see as damaging, but it seems evident to me and others.  Those who are skeptical aren't likely to be persuaded by a list. But we could go into it more if you leave serious comments.)

Graham v MOA #12: Fire Chief LeBlanc Retires

First paragraphs from an ADN article:

"Anchorage Fire Chief Denis LeBlanc retired Friday after nearly three years on the job, officials said.
A successor to LeBlanc will be named in a few weeks, said Kristin DeSmith, spokeswoman for Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. Jodie Hettrick, the fire department's deputy chief of operations, is serving as interim chief.
LeBlanc, who is 70, said he told the administration of his decision in early May. He said he has loved the job, but he's been working on and off for 53 years, including a few decades in the oil industry. . ."

I'm including this hear because LeBlanc was fire chief while the Graham suit went to court.  He was never a fire-fighter (usually required for the chief's job).  He came from the oil industry, was City Manager for Begich, then went to CM2HHill (the company that bought VECO).

He was asked to get the AFD budget under control.  In his deposition he expressed no interest in reaching out to the community to increase the number of women or minorities in the AFD.  My hope is that the Diversity Mayor will be able to find a new chief for whom increasing the number of women (about 2% now) and people of color (about 12% now) in the fire department will be a major priority.

I'd note that LeBlanc was on the public administration advisory board when I was chair of the department at UAA and he is a very affable person who was always supportive of the program.

Methinks North Korea Was Always Just A Distraction Trump Used To Get The Media Off Important Stories

[Quick synopsis:  I'm proposing that Trump never intended to meet with Kim Jong Un.  He always knew he couldn't get Kim to give up his nuclear weapons.  The whole point was to have something bright and shiny with which to distract the media from covering other issues.  The time spent by NPR this morning on this summit that isn't going to happen makes it clear that Trump succeeded.]


NPR spent a lot of time this morning talking about North Korea and Trump's cancellation of the summit with Kim Jong Un.   Here's the list of segments they have on the May 24 show listings.  The Korea pieces are at the end.

North Korea Demolishes Its Nuclear Test Site In A 'Huge Explosion" 3:59
Trump Cancels U.S.-North Korea Summit 10:19
North Korea Expert Reacts to Trump's Cancellation of Summit 4:00
There Was A Lot Invested In U.S.-North Korea Summit.  What Happened? 8:40
Mike Pompeo Reads Out Loud Trump's Letter Cancelling U.S.-North Korea Summit 1:10

That comes out to a little over 28 minutes - one fourth of the show, talking about something being cancelled.  My sense is that the 'Korean Expert' covered most of this.  The rest was somewhat informed chatter.



The ten minute segment had several NPR reporters discussing the cancellation.  They really didn't say anything that couldn't have been covered in two minutes.  They didn't really seem to know more than any reasonably educated person knows.  At one point, David Greene says,

"Ayesha, I just looked at the letter, and there seems to be some important - I don't know if we call it caveats. "

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this.  Is he only now reading the letter, several minutes into the discussion?  Maybe this was more 'breaking' than I realized and he just got it.  Maybe that explains why the discussion is so disjointed - he was reading the letter and not paying attention to the conversation.  Or doing both and not really absorbing either well.   And they didn't have a script to keep them focused.

One person talks about how the cancelation was a surprise.  But Trump's been tweeting that he might not have the meeting.  So it wasn't that much of a surprise.  Why was it a surprise?


And as I listened and got increasingly frustrated by the ten minute segment, the lightbulb went off.  Trump doesn't care about North Korea or having them denuclearize.  Sure, getting Kim Jong Un  to get destroy his nuclear toys  and then become a target for US corporations would have enhanced his deal making image.  But only because it would make Trump look good, not because the world would be a safer place. And if it gets more dangerous, that's not Trump's worry.  Even as North Korea experts said it couldn't happen, others, as they did during the campaign, started saying, well, maybe  his unconventional approach will work.

I would say now that his unconventional approach DID WORK.   He got media - even the supposedly more sophisticated' NPR - to spend almost one-quarter of today's Morning Edition time covering something that isn't going to happen.  Instead of spending that time on more substantive news that Trump doesn't want them to cover.

This shouldn't come as a revelation - he's been doing this all his career.  It's the main tool of scammers and magicians:  keep the eyes of the audience away from the real action by distraction.  But it takes a while for people to realize that what was critical to other presidents - evaluation of the success of their policies (as subjective as that might be),  doesn't matter to Trump.  Policy is just one of the shiny toys he can use to distract the media.  Outrageous racist comments are another such toy.

Trump, it would seem, never expected to meet with Kim or to get him to denuclearize.  But it was a dramatic enough story that he could get endless coverage of it and thus take coverage off of the campaign's dealings with Russia, his numerous conflicts of interest, the shady backgrounds of his constantly changing sets of advisors.  You name it and there are plenty of things to cover.

Trump's career has been all about getting attention.  'Good' news for Trump is coverage that makes Trump appear like a business genius and a stud with women.  'Bad' news is only stuff that threatens his power - like the Mueller investigation.  Policy issues, whether the tax bill, DACA, climate change, Iran, or North Korean nukes, are neither good nor bad news (unless they affect his 'brand.')

The policy stuff is just glittery distractions he can use to get the media to watch his left hand while his right hand performs the real tricks.   He's a kid loose in the White House, pushing buttons, raising and lowering levers, poking here and there without any concern for the damage he might do or what costs the world will bear.

Wake up media!   Set your own agenda.  Don't let the President lead you by the nose with distracting hijinks.

For Those Who Want A Break From Watching "the downfall of democracy in real time."

I saw this tweet today.

Twitter needs a switch for when you just want to log in and read some updog jokes and not watch the downfall of democracy in real time.

— snddoɥ ʞɹɐɯ (@markhoppus) May 24, 2018

It was telling me that I don't have to discuss the end of the world in every post.

I'm adding this license plate image to my post on the Vampire History Of Alaska.

One of the workmen who helped with the house last week, showed me this accordion he found in a 'suitcase' (it looks like a suitcase, but it was clearly the accordion case) at a house they were hauling trash from.  He told the owner but she told him to take it.  He's found a person in Anchorage who can fix it, but now he's debating if it's worth the cost.  He doesn't know how to play it, but it's clear he respects good workmanship.

Speaking of the house, we're getting used to having the new light switches that you press instead of flipping up or own.  And we're enjoying the clean walls without anything on them.  But that leaves stacks of pictures downstairs.  I'm thinking of putting up some that haven't been up, and rearranging where the others go.  It's odd how changes make us aware of old habits.

And this picture is less inspiring.  I don't recall things like this in Anchorage creeks in the past.  I'm sure they were there, but I don't recall seeing them.

I thought about pulling it out, but I was on the bridge above on my bike and didn't want to ride on with cold, wet shoes and pants.  Maybe I can figure out a rope with a hook if it's still there next time I go by.

And finally, flowers are starting to bloom, perennials are poking out of the ground, and Anchorage is getting green again.  This is a rather ruffly daffodil.

Enough Cottonwoods? Electronic Health Records, Senior Joy, Climate Illogic

Some reactions to yesterday's Anchorage Daily News.  Nothing earth shattering here.  Don't have time to right now for that.

1.  How essential are electronic health records for treating patients? 

In an article on loss of FCC funding for rural health care, Anchorage Daily News reporter Annie Zak wrote:

"They rely on that connectivity for electronic health records, essential for treating patients."

I remember going to a focus group on electronic health records eleven years ago.  At that time the hospitals here didn't have EHR and were pushing to get them.  And now you can't treat patients without them?  I wonder what all the doctors who practiced medicine before EHR existed would say about this statement  or what all those doctors around the world who don't have electronic health records do?  Shut up shop because they don't have an essential tool for treating patients?

Yes, electronic health records make it easier and faster to get patient medical histories and to share records when referring patients to other doctors.  BUT they are NOT an essential tool for treating patients.  If they are essential in some settings, it's only because hospitals have now made them the only records kept.  But, if worse comes to worse, the doctor can ask the patient like they used to do.  And they also mean that confidential medical records are now highly vulnerable to hackers.  It's not a question of if they are breached, just when.

2.  Does senior joy make older folks irrelevant to the young?

Charles Wohlforth had a piece on Tom Choate who climbed Denali five years ago at age 78.  The article talks about older folks giving up ambition and competitiveness for happiness.  He then writes,

"But Angell noted that his quality [being happy and not competitive)] has the perverse effect [of] getting old people ignored, as if contentment means you don't matter."

He gives an example of being ignored in conversations with younger men.  Wohlforth muses:

"Interesting, isn't it, our tendency to patronize the old as we do the young? It's as if, like children, their joy disqualifies them, indicating they can't understand the true toughness of life. As if they don't know adulthood's difficult struggle for goals and status." 

This seems to me a giant leap to a questionable conclusion.  Is it the joy that disqualifies them?  Is it even joy he means here, or rather contentment?  I suspect other possible explanations.  One, the contented senior doesn't have the need to push himself into the conversation as much.  Or, if it is about the younger men's regard for the older, it's that he's no longer keeping current in all the details they think are important and/or he doesn't have power in the world that matters to them.  This would be more consistent with Wohlforth's earlier (in the article) note that being ignored is a condition shared by women and that form of snubbing is much more about power than it is about joy.


3.  Climate Illogic  

This was a letter to the editor.  It's short.  So I can give you the whole letter:

Is there climate change? Of course. Earth's climate has always been in a state of change. Alaska was once a sub-tropical area that became an arctic environment.
Puny man cannot stop or slow this change. One volcano eruption can put tons of greenhouse gases into the environment. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas produced by every animal that breathes air. It is used by plants and is needed by them to grow and the plants turn this CO2 back into oxygen that we animals breathe in order to live.
If you want to really make a difference, plant trees, disconnect the natural gas and electricity to your house, throw away your vehicle keys and walk everywhere.
Charles Brobst
Anchorage    [emphasis added]

There's plenty of evidence that while climate has changed over the billions of years of earth's existence, that the last 200 years or so have seen a much more rapid change than in the past and this change coincides with the beginning of the industrial revolution.

But that's not my point here.  First Mr. Brobst tells us that "Puny man cannot stop or slow this hang"  and then he makes a list of how 'you' can make a difference (which I take to mean slow the change.)  All the things he lists seem to imply - give up our modern life style.

So I'm guessing he really means to say, "If you want to stop climate change, we have to go back to the StoneAge."  This is not the case.  We just need to find alternative energy sources, cut back in consumption that isn't sustainable, an be willing to explore alternatives to how we live - and the Stone Age isn't the only alternative.  The impacts of climate change - if we do nothing - is clearly problematic for our economy.  The impact of actions to stop climate change actually improve our economy.

4.  People really do hate cottonwoods

In another letter to the editor, Patricia Wells laments to poor state of the Anchorage Coastal Trail - cracking asphalt, trash, leaves piled up on the trail, trees blocking views.  And then she says it:

"Believe me, we do not need any more cottonwood trees."

I get her sentiment - particularly now when the sticky cottonwood catkins pile up on our deck and stick to your feet as you walk on them, using you as their way into your house.  I've written a few posts on cottonwoods. (I just looked - there are 30 posts with the label 'cottonwood.'  Here's one that takes an alternative look at these trees.)  Ultimately, they are huge trees - an anomaly this far north - which grow fast (also an anomaly here) and clean the air, anchor the soil, provide habitat for birds and other animals.  But I get it.  Besides the catkins now, the fluffy cotton will start littering Anchorage later in the summer.

Graham v MOA #11 - Oral Exams 4 - Jeff Graham Passes New Promotion Exam

Although Jeff Graham won his lawsuit over discrimination in his 2012 promotion exam with the Anchorage Fire Department, the Municipality told him he still had to take the promotion exam now before he would get promoted.

After 2012 he stopped taking the exam because he figured it was futile - they weren't going to promote him.  He'd heard rumors, but they weren't confirmed until he learned that another fire fighter had heard the head of the promotion training and testing in 2012 (and later) say to him and a couple of others at the promotion academy that "As long as I'm in charge of promotion, Jeff Graham will never promote."  He only got a name of someone who heard it directly during the second week of the trial.  But that person agreed to testify.

In any case, Jeff passed the written, practical, and oral portions of the exam this time and ended up number five on the promotion list, which is much longer than the list when he last took the exam.  But five is reasonably high and if the past is a good predictor, there should be at least five openings in the next two years.

So, he hasn't been promoted, but based on the past, I'm reasonably optimistic.

I'm still writing about the 2012 exam and there have been some changes in the exam recently, but from what I've seen, there are still egregious violations of how things should be done.  I'm not sure if Jeff passed because the whole trial experience has given him a better sense of how to prepare for the exam, because there were different people grading the exam, or the word went out to make sure he passes - particularly the oral part of the exam.  And I'm sure there are other possible explanations and that none of these are mutually exclusive.

It's a step forward for Jeff and his career.  But the oral exam is still overly subjective, the scoring sheets are still bizarre, and the training materials say things that really are in conflict with merit principles and evualating someone based on job related issues only.

Tom Wolfe (1930 - 2018)

See Note About the Cover Below*

At the end of my stint as a Peace Corps volunteer, I read Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  I'm not exactly sure anymore what my feelings were about the novel itself, but I was obsessed by the question:  "Who wrote this?  Who is he?  How and why did he write this?"

From Thailand I flew to Hilo, Hawaii to work at the training program for the next group of Peace Corps teachers - Thai 30.

Early on, I encountered a new trainee with a book called Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.  The title caught my attention.  When I checked it out - I don't remember now if it was on the back cover or just reading the first couple of pages - I realized the book was about Ken Kesey.  This book was going to answer the burning questions that Cuckoo's Nest had ignited in me.

Reading Wolfe is like talking to someone who never pauses - there's no place to interrupt, to say you have to leave; there's just a steady stream of uninterruptible words.   You end up just reading until the end.  Or at least I did.  I probably violated my position as a trainer when I asked the trainee if I could borrow the book.  I don't think I even asked, I think I told him I HAD to read this book.

Here's from pages two and three of the book (online here):

ABOUT ALL I KNEW ABOUT KESEY AT THAT POINT WAS THAT HE was a highly regarded 31-year-old novelist and in a lot of trouble over drugs. He wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), which was made into a play in 1963, and Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). He was always included with Philip Roth and Joseph Heller and Bruce Jay Friedman and a couple of others as one of the young novelists who might go all the way. Then he was arrested twice for possession of marijuana, in April of 1965 and January of 1966, and fled to Mexico rather than risk a stiff sentence. It looked like as much as five years, as a second offender. One day I happened to get hold of some letters Kesey wrote from Mexico to his friend Larry McMurtry, who wrote Horseman, Pass By, from which the movie Hud was made. They were wild and ironic, written like a cross between William Burroughs and George Ade, telling of hideouts, disguises, paranoia, fleeing from cops, smoking joints and seeking satori in the Rat lands of Mexico. There was one passage written George Ade—fashion in the third person as a parody of what the straight world back there in the U.S.A. must think of him now:
"In short, this young, handsome, successful, happily-married-three-lovely-children father was a fear-crazed dope fiend in flight to avoid prosecution on three felonies and god knows how many misdemeanors and seeking at the same time to sculpt a new satori from an old surf—in even shorter, mad as a hatter.
"Once an athlete so valued he had been given the job of calling signals from the line and risen into contention for the nationwide amateur wrestling crown, now he didn't know if he could do a dozen pushups. Once possessor of a phenomenal bank account and money waving from every hand, now it was all his poor wife could do to scrape together eight dollars to send as getaway money to Mexico. But a few years previous he had been listed in Who's Who and asked to speak at such auspicious gatherings as the Wellesley Club in Dah-la and now they wouldn't even allow him to speak at a VDC [Vietnam Day Committee] gathering. What was it that had brought a man so high of promise to so low a state in so short a time? Well, the answer can be found in just one short word, my friends, in just one all-well-used syllable:
"Dope!
"And while it may be claimed by some of the addled advocates of these chemicals that our hero is known to have indulged in drugs before his literary success, we must point out that there was evidence of his literary prowess well before the advent of the so-called psychedelic into his life but no evidence at all of any of the lunatic thinking that we find thereafter ! "

I think I gave the trainee his book back the next morning, so my abuse of power was short-lived.  (Whoever I borrowed it from, thank you for having it and letting me read it.)

From Acid Test I went on to Radical-Chic and Mau-Mawing the Flak Catcher.  I suspect that The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby was next and then The Right Stuff,  then Bonfire of the Vanities and I think the last one I read was A Man In Full.  

So, Tom Wolfe, thank you for giving me great reading pleasure over the years and for shaking up the worlds of journalism and novel writing.  Here's a recollection by Paul Elie from The New Yorker of editing A Man In Full.

*The image is from Bookazon.  It's a much later edition than the one I read because it mentions The Right Stuff which didn't come out until 1978.  I know I ran across my own copy recently, but with all the mess here (the workers finished up today, but there's still plenty of stuff piled up in the downstairs bedroom.  I'm hoping much of it leaves the house rather than coming back upstairs), I couldn't find it.  Besides, it might well be on a book shelf in my mom's house in LA.  Or maybe it was really The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby that I saw.