To Keep Warm, You Can't Regenerate Your Heart, But Salamanders And Zebrafish Can

I spent today mostly reading Waiting For Snow In Havana."  My book club meets tomorrow and I had a lot of pages left.  I finished it and there is much that is good in the book, but I think a good editor could have helped Carlos Eire cut lots of pages.

So I don't have the creative energy to do much here.  I did jot this done recently and so I'll leet you off easy.  A brief contemplation about your heart.

From Science:

"The price of staying warm
Among vertebrates, zebrafish and salamanders can regenerate their hearts, whereas adult mice and humans cannot. Hirose et al. analyzed diploid cardiomyocyte frequency as a proxy for cardiac regenerative potential across 41 vertebrate species (see the Perspective by Marchianò and Murry). They observed an inverse correlation of these cells with thyroid hormone concentrations during the ectotherm-to-endotherm transition. Mice with defects in thyroid hormone signaling retained significant heart regenerative capacity, whereas zebrafish exposed to excessive thyroid hormones exhibit impaired cardiac repair. Loss of heart regenerative ability in mammals may represent a trade-off for increases in metabolism necessary for the development of endothermy."

Real Snow, Not Metaphorical Snow

While Barr and Trump and others do a snow job in response to the Mueller Report, apparently giving Senate Republicans enough cover to stay silent,  nature gave Anchorage some real snow yesterday.  

But just like real snow, metaphorical snow starts to show through as people test it.

And with just a little bit of heat, it turns to slush.













And then liquid.

And what it was trying to conceal becomes visible again.

"Someday, and that day may never come. . ." How To Avoid Admissible Evidence

When teaching ethics, I found this clip from The Godfather to be invaluable.





What evidence is there here of a bribe?  I'm forgiving you a debt in honor of my daughter's wedding.  Someday.  Someday in the distant future, or maybe not so distant, or maybe never at all, I may ask you to return the favor.

Imagine the Mueller investigation trying to present this transaction to the grand jury.  Well, unless there was a recording of this, there's nothing to present.  Only the evidence.  Well, this guy had a debt that was never recorded.  And . . . maybe he does this other thing for the Godfather.  Is that quid pro quo?  Or is it just a favor?  Is it a bribe?  Is it illegal?  Is it collusion?  Would a grand jury say it was beyond a reasonable doubt?

Here's a Tweet that picks up on this ambiguity.

Resuming my live-tweet of Mueller Report. Shout out to my massage therapist who fixed my back from the first half of the reading.

Now then: Note passage says they didn't find ADMISSIBLE evidence Jr acted willfully on June 9 meeting. Suggesting they have inadmissible evidence? pic.twitter.com/burV92XDIy

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) April 19, 2019

What Does "Lightly Redacted" Look Like?

Here's a look at all the pages in the Mueller Report.  You can see it better here.

I was a bit irked that I saw headlines describing the Mueller report as 'lightly redacted' without the quotation marks.  That was Barr's office's description of it, his spin.  And it was clear that he saw his job as not just the head of the DOJ, but as a defender of the president.

So when I saw this view of the Report, I thought it was worth considering.  I don't see enough government reports like this to know if the Mueller Report is lightly redacted, moderately redacted, or heavily redacted.

If we simply go by percentage of blocked text, I suppose this is lightly redacted.
But another way of thinking about it is how it compares to other such reports.
Another way to think about it is whether the parts redacted really need to be redacted for genuine legal and security reasons, or because they reveal things the president doesn't want to reveal.

I'm not using the term 'lightly redacted' ironically, because I don't know the answers to any of those questions.  I'm just offering this visual of what has been described as 'lightly redacted.'

This Is Why So Many Establishment Politicians And Their Supporters Hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Let me just say it out front.  I think AOC is one of the best things to happen in 2018/2019.   In this post I'm going to explain why I think she's pissing off so many people in Washington and beyond. But if you aren't interested in that, just scroll down to the bottom for her positive look to the future and when it gets trashed by the president and others, you can come back and see why I think they do that.

• She's smart in the sense that she understands how lots of things fit into the larger macro picture.
• She's articulate.
• She's able to show her love of life.
• She's able to respond to her detractors with wit, humor, dance, and hope.
• She's not shy.
• She's using her new Congressional seat to actually do things this country needs.
• She's savvy with social media.  
• She's able to give voice for women and people of color and working people.
• She's beautiful.  (This isn't something that we're supposed to comment on, but we all know that it doesn't hurt.)

OK, let's take a short side trip.  When I was a junior in high school, I delivered the mail as a Christmas break job.  I delivered in my own neighborhood, my own street even.  I was fast.  My supervisor was my regular mailman.  After a couple of days he pulled me aside and said, "Steve, you get paid by the hour and when you finish your route, your time is up.  What's your hurry?  Pace yourself.  When you get to your house, take a break before starting again."  

Later, as a grad student, I learned about 'soldiering' when I read Frederick Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management.  He described how workers get into a comfortable pace or work and how frisky new workers (like me delivering mail) upset that comfortable pace.  So the workers first start to subtly hint to the worker (as my supervisor did) to slow down and take it easy.  If that doesn't work they get more aggressive, which could lead to sabotage and even physical violence.  

I think this is the reason there's so much negative press about AOC.  She's making everyone look bad.  

For the Republicans it's about everything:  

• Policy
• Climate change
• Immigration and demonization of immigrants
• Supporting the wealthy over the poor
• Style and Prejudices
• She's a powerful woman
• She's young (almost 30 years younger than the average age of Reps before the 2018 election which cut the average age by 10 years.)
• She's a person of color
• She pokes holes in all their pronouncements and her responses to their criticisms are way better than what they can do
• She's just smarter than most of them

For Democrats the issues are, perhaps, more procedural.  

• She challenges the speed they are moving toward change in Climate and Health Care etc.
• Her activity and social media savvy and presence make them look like they're doing nothing.
• She brings a bright spark of life to a job they're doing with less sparkle.
• She got elected by defeating one of their inner circle in the primary
• She's challenging the way they operate, their rules, their beliefs about what's possible

Trump's election showed weaknesses in the Democratic common wisdom.  He exploited the fact that Democrats championed people of color and women in a way that made white males the enemy.  The only terms negatively describing a group of people that Democrats didn't 'ban' were words like hillbilly and white trash.  Trump gave that group respect.   AOC's parents were poor.  They nearly lost their home to the 2008 housing crisis.  An event that led to her to find out about her congressional rep's power structure in New York.  Like many of today's college grads, she ended up doing minimum wage work.  So she's reached out to the Trump voter, whom she knows as someone who has lived their life.  

He also used social media to by-pass the press and talk directly to his followers.   And AOC is as good a politician in using social media.  She doesn't just use it, for her it's almost an art form.  

And while some Democrats embrace everything she brings to Congress and their party, others see her as interfering with their routine, their way of seeing what's possible and how to get there.  

Here's the video.  It's a bit of social science fiction. 

It looks to the future, what the world would look like if things got better because of the policies she's pushing.  And it's pretty close to how I envision things, though I'm less sanguine about what technology will do for us.  Like all predictions there are probably flaws, but the attacks on her New Green Deal are much harsher than other people's predictions of the future, predictions that are less imaginative, more mired in the past.

And the video is beautiful.  The artist [Molly Crabapple] does a great job. (If I find out the name I'll add it here.)  This format has come a long way since I wrote about The Story of Stuff and then the followup about Victor Lebow.

Campbell Creek - Still Some Snow

Biked over to Campbell Creek yesterday to see if the snow was gone from the trail as it is from the Chester Creek trail from UAA to Goose Lake and on around to Alaska Native Medical Health Consortium (ANMHC).  It's close, but there are still snowy/icy/slushy spots like this one.

I made it through on several of these patches, but decided I'll wait another week to see if my regular run up to Campbell Airstrip is ice free.  But the views of the creek from the various bridges is, as always, wonderful.

How Can This Happen? Notre Dame On Fire

The first time I visited Notre Dame Cathedral was in 1964.  Then again in April 1965. (I was a student in Germany that year.)


Then this picture (and the other two) was from a visit to Paris in 2016 for a 60th birthday party of a relative I first met back in 1964.



And today I see this on the internet.

La flèche est tombée 😱 pic.twitter.com/iU0bC5JgyB

— Solveig Godeluck (@Solwii) April 15, 2019

Whatever one thinks of religion or the Catholic church, this building and the other Cathedrals like it are monuments to human vision, science, art.  To imagine structures so huge, with indoor spaces so magnificent reflects the impossible that humans can achieve.  To know that these structures took centuries to build reminds us of humanity's patience and persistence.




How does a fire break out in such a treasure of human ingenuity and reverence?  I don't know.  With all the stone one would think that the many, many candles could do no harm.  But parts are built of wood as well.  We'll know more.

It's not the first time the Cathedral was in disrepair.  From the Cathedral's own website:

"One of the most notable monuments in Paris (and in all of Europe for that matter) is the Notre Dame Cathedral. This Catholic treasure is over 800 years old. It is located on a small island called the Ile de la Cite in the middle of the River Seine. The building of the cathedral was completed over the course of 200 years; it was started in 1163 during the reign of King Louis VII and was completed in 1345. 

As is the case with most notable historical monuments, The Notre dame Cathedral Paris has its own share of both the glorious and the tragic historical moments that will forever remain indelible in the mind of people everywhere. Among them is the crowning of Henry VI of England right inside the cathedral in 1431. The Cathedral was at one time in a stage of total disrepair and close to the point of being demolished, but was later saved by Napoleon who himself was crowned Emperor in 1804 inside the Cathedral.   

After restoring the Cathedral back to its formal beauty and in the midst of World War II, it was rumored that the German soldiers might destroy the newly installed stained glass. It was therefore removed and only reinstalled again after the war had ended. The steps were taken because of only one particular archeological glass window called the Rose window which is supposed to be the biggest glass window in the world produced in the 13th century."

Meanwhile, from CNN:

"French President Emmanuel Macron just announced that, starting tomorrow, he will launch an international fundraising campaign to rebuild the Notre Dame Cathedral.
Macron, speaking from the scene, described the fire as a “terrible tragedy," but added the “worst had been avoided." He noted that the cathedral's facade and two main towers did not collapse during the fire.
“I’m telling you all tonight — we will rebuild this cathedral together. This is probably part of the French destiny. And we will do it in the next years. Starting tomorrow, a national donation scheme will be started that will extend beyond our borders," Macron said."

Two Reading Tips - EPA Climate Change Report And William Barr's History Misleading Congress With A Summary

This post offers an introduction to two articles that I think are worth reading.  One is about an EPA report on economic impacts of Climate Change and how we can reduce them.  The other gives some background on William Barr and how he mischaracterized to Congress an internal Justice Department memo in 1989.

The Climate Change one isn't news to people immersed in the topic, but adds the weight of Trump's EPA giving the warning. And it's something to pass on to skeptics.   The Barr piece is important context ( that I haven't seen elsewhere)  for his summary of the Mueller Report

Part 1:  Climate Change

Even when the fire is raging and police and firefighters issue mandatory evacuation orders, there are people who refuse to leave their homes.   Climate change happens more gradually than raging wildfires, but the devastation is more extensive and the damage will continue to increase if we don't slow things down.   Here's an LA Times article* about a recent EPA report on the future economic impact of climate change and how a carbon pricing scheme could reduce the future impacts by half.

"By the end of the century, the manifold consequences of unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Those costs will come in multiple forms, including water shortages, crippled infrastructure and polluted air that shortens lives, according to the study in Monday’s edition of Nature Climate Change. No part of the country will be untouched, the EPA researchers warned.
However, they also found that cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, and proactively adapting to a warming world, would prevent a lot of the damage, reducing the annual economic toll in some sectors by more than half."

This is from the Trump administration's EPA!!!!!  (Do I need more than the exclamation points, each of which represent another outrageous decision by the EPA to loosen standards that help individual companies and compromise the future for the rest of us?)

Who could sit around, unconcerned about climate change?  I ask that question daily.  Here's my current version of the answer:

• people who don't know - they only know what's on the news and the media's 'balanced' coverage which gives the 1% deniers equal time with the 99% of scientists who know that climate change is real, gives them a false sense that it's still up for debate
• people who have a vested interest in not knowing - they have corporations or jobs or investments in those corporations that are maintaining their current lifestyle  (this includes politicians who get significant funding from those oil and coal interests)
• people who don't care - they think that they will be gone before the real impacts hit and they don't have kids or grandkids who will be affected; or they, for whatever reasons, can't concern themselves with the fate of others

I'm convinced that Climate Change is the most serious challenge to human existence (both in terms of surviving, and for those who survive, living in a world with a regular life with access to food, housing,  and safety.)   That's why I belong to Citizens Climate Lobby and why our local chapter was pleased that we got the Anchorage Assembly to pass a resolution endorsing the current Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.  It's true, the Assembly's resolution, by itself, does little.  But as part of the CCL's webpage of all the other endorsers, it's like a signature on a petition with many, many others.  It's telling legislators who are concerned about the politics of Climate Change, that there are many people and organizations out there that have their backs.

In any case, I'd recommend reading the LA Times article so when you talk to deniers or avoiders you have data to push them closer to understanding why we can't dawdle on this.

*Note:  There are two LA Times articles.  One was a last week in something called LA Times Science Now and it includes a useful chart.  The other is a shortened version in today's regular LA Times.

As if that weren't enough for one post, here's another piece to help people understand William Barr and his history of writing summaries for Congress.


2.  William Barr's Past Summarizing For Congress

Just Security  has an article on a 1989 situation where then Attorney General William Barr misled Congress with a summary of a Justice Department document that, when finally made public, showed Barr's deception. An excerpt:

"Members of Congress asked to see the full legal opinion. Barr refused, but said he would provide an account that “summarizes the principal conclusions.” Sound familiar? In March 2019, when Attorney General Barr was handed Robert Mueller’s final report, he wrote that he would “summarize the principal conclusions” of the special counsel’s report for the public.
When Barr withheld the full OLC opinion in 1989 and said to trust his summary of the principal conclusions, Yale law school professor Harold Koh wrote that Barr’s position was “particularly egregious.” Congress also had no appetite for Barr’s stance, and eventually issued a subpoena to successfully wrench the full OLC opinion out of the Department.
What’s different from that struggle and the current struggle over the Mueller report is that we know how the one in 1989 eventually turned out."

It got Barr off the hook in the short term and he was no longer Attorney General when it was finally made public.  My experience is that people tend to use the same strategies that served them in the past.  If Barr can keep the Mueller Report hidden until after the 2020 election, he'll have done his job.  Compare this good-old-boys-protecting-their-own behavior with the tell-it-like-it-is language of people like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

We need to see the Mueller Report!  

Remember, you're not helpless.  You have power.  You can let your Congressional Rep and your Senators see these documents and let them know how you feel.  No, your one contact (phone, email, or mail) won't change things, but along with thousands of others, it will.  (The links help you connect with your members of Congress.)

VW Van Revival - Our Camper Has Been A Big Part Of Our Lives

Here's part of an article on how early VW Vans are the new hot vehicle in the old car

LA Times

From 1950 to 1979, the German automaker churned out over 4.7 million of them under different names and models —Westfalia, Samba, Kombi, Transporter — to create one of the most beloved lines of cars worldwide. Its basic frame — a raised, boxy body, a weak engine in the back, bench seats on the inside, a plethora of windows — attracted a devoted worldwide following. Aficionados turned them into everything from surf wagons and homes to taxis and work trucks. Even movable beer gardens.
“It’s the most easily recognized van or commercial vehicle on the planet,” says Brian Moody, executive editor of Autotrader.com. “Low operating cost, low purchase cost when Volkswagen made them. Globally, you can talk to a Brazilian who has great VW Bus memories. A Mexican. A European. An Indian. Not everyone had a Mustang convertible.”
But over the last decade, this once-humble workhorse has become something it’s never been: one of the hottest “gets” in the vintage auto world.

We got married in January, but we were both teaching elementary school.  So the honeymoon was postponed until summer.  We wanted to drive (from LA) to Machu Picchu but there were no Lonely Planet guides then and the Auto Club maps were blank as you got near the Panama Canal.  We decided my VW bug wasn't a good idea and we should get a van.  As we got closer to the end of the school year, we decided Machu Picchu was probably overly ambitious if we wanted to be
back in time for the fall semester.  So we
decided to head north instead - to the end of the 'road.  We looked on maps to find out where that might be.  There was Hudson Bay on the other side of the continent and there was the Great Slave Lake and Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories.



 And then, we decided a van would still be better than my bug.  So that's how we ended up with a 1971 VW camper.  I was hoping to find some pictures of it on that trip, but I couldn't find those slides.

But the next summer we planned out a more realistic trip headed south.  We had seen an Academy Award nominated short of Mayan ruins and J fell in love with Tulum, and Palenque  and Chichen Itza looked good too.  We took around two months on that trip.  I found a slide of the van in (then) British Honduras.  We'd spent a night in the capital

We were on our way from the coast to Tikal in Guatemala.  We really didn't know if we could get there via this route until we started meeting travelers who were driving the other way and said we could.  The road from the capital (I remember it as Belize City, but Wikipedia says it change to Belmopan in 1971, the year before we got there) to Guatemala was dirt.  We saw that
there was a viewpoint a big waterfall 17 km or so off the main road.  We got there and had it all to ourselves.  So we decided to spend the night.  It rained all night and the road back to the main road was pretty muddy and we got stuck twice on hills.  A British army Land Rover towed us up to the top of the first hill and another Land Rover with tourists staying a little bird watching resort pulled us out the second time and all the way to the resort where we had lunch and saw some birds.

In 1977 we drove from LA to Anchorage.  We started out with a three year old and a three week old baby.  It was a great trip, even when the engine blew out on the Oregon/California border.  A tow truck got us to Brookings, Oregon  where the mechanic ordered parts that afternoon from Portland and we were headed out the next day about 3pm with a new motor.  We had a ferry to catch and he did everything he could so we could get it.  And we did.  Here we are after crossing the Canada/Alaska border after driving from Haines.

In 1980 I had a year long fellowship at NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and we drove to DC.  That was a great year and van gave us no trouble. We were taking the kids to Disney World over the spring break. As the  break was nearing, the first space shuttle was set to take off.    It got delayed a few times until it was close enough to our planned trip.  So we took off a day early and drove all night to arrive at Cape Canaveral by 6am for the
launch.  It was delayed again.  So we went off to our hotel room at Disney World and the next day watched the launch from the balcony of our room.  It wasn't as impressive as being right  there, but we did see the white trail as it lifted off into space.  After Disney World we went back to Cape Canaveral as tourists and this picture was at the beach there.

By 1995 the floor of the van had holes in it.  It would get wet inside on rainy days and during breakup.  Our mechanic - Kurt Schreiber in Wasilla (that's another story) - told us we'd gotten our money's worth and it was time.   A young man who was working the summer at Denali bought it and took it up there as his living space.

We looked at replacing it with a new one, but the price was 10 times the original price.  But after two years, and a visit from old friends who rented a camper on their Alaska adventure, we realized how important the van had been in our marriage.  I wanted to be in the woods in a tent.  J wanted to be in a hotel.  The van had been our compromise.  And I was getting really antsy about not being out enjoying the Alaska summers.  So we asked our kids who were in Seattle and Boston at that time, to check out new vans to see if they were significantly cheaper than one in Anchorage.  (The kids had been concerned when we sold the first van.  We'd had since before they were born, the told us, and if we could get rid of the van, we could get rid of them too.)  The VW dealers in Boston laughed at our  daughter when she asked about campers.  They just didn't sell them at all.  Our son had better luck in Seattle.  He could get one for $32K ($5000 less than in Anchorage).  So he did and drove it up to Vancouver.  We met him and our daughter and my dad and step-mom there (luckily there were good non-stop flights that summer from Anchorage).  After we all had our Vancouver reunion, we drove back up to Anchorage.  Here's our first or second night out of Vancouver.

It took a bit of getting used to the automatic (no stick was available) and power windows and different interior arrangements.  But the pop-top was a great feature, we had a lot more power on hills, and J loved that the heater warmed the car to more then 10˚F above the outdoor temperature. And it even has another heater for camping in the cold.  The first time we were camped with snow around us our little digital thermometer said "cold" in the morning.  It didn't go below 32˚ we later found out.  But I could turn on the heater and J stayed in the sleeping bags until it reached 50˚.

So the article meant a lot to me.  We didn't get it because it was a hippie van (and really the earlier models were more in that image) but people assumed that for a long time.  We just liked that we could buy a car with a bedroom and kitchen for not much above the average car price.  And yet it's not any longer that the larger sedans and it fits in most parking garages.  And we've saved a lot of money being able to sleep in the van on long trips.  Even more important, we could easily spend the night in the woods, and even cook (in the new van) and eat indoors if the weather was terrible. And yes, the second one is outside in front of the house now.  It's 22 years old.  We did have some significant preventive maintenance done two years ago, including an undercoating so we don't get wet in the rain.   We're looking forward to our annual spring Denali trip for a few nights before the buses start and they close the road to cars at Savage River.

Here's what it says right now:

Road Open To: Mile 15
The Denali Park Road is currently open to Mile 15, Savage River. If wintry conditions occur, the road may close at some point closer to the park entrance. Though many trails are snow-free, Savage River Loop and Savage Alpine Trails have significant ice.

We'll wait until the road is open to Teklanika.  

Ice On Lake, But Not On Trail

After the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby meeting this morning, I biked to Goose Lake and then down the path parallel to Northern Lights and back around past APU and then west along University Lake and on home.  The trail has practically no snow at all.  Here and there some along the edge of the trail.  A few spots still have easily avoided remnants of winter.


Monday I had checked the Campbell Creek trail east of Lake Otis and it was still covered with snow and ice.  I should check it out tomorrow.    As you can see in the picture, Goose Lake still is covered with ice.

But not the bike trail.

And the biker enjoyed his ride.