Did we remember all the things we need to take? Is it too much? (We always try to keep everything down to two carryon rolling suitcases and two backpacks so we can always handle our own stuff.)
Meanwhile the guy who replaced our old front steps - great job - was gone for the winter by the time the railing was finished in October. So he's back in town. Was coming Monday night, but we had a funeral to attend. Then yesterday morning, but never made it. He just called, he's coming now. (He's here! Yeah!)
And my wristwatch screen went blank last night with a tiny REM on the screen, which I assume means I should replace the battery. I got the screws out this morning so I could see what kind of battery I need. (Yes I bought a kit of tiny screw drivers long ago and it's occasionally useful.) But one screw escaped. [Recaptured!]
I'm excited. As much as I like to have everything planned out, I know that lots of surprises will occur. Good ones as well as minor (I hope) ones.
This afternoon we head for LA, Friday night for Argentina. Still trying to get what I need from my laptop onto the new iPad. And figure out how to use the iPad. It's Apple enough that it's no big surprises.
I keep updating notes for the house sitter as new issues arise. Tried to get a library book back to the library last night, but their new automatic drop off system said something like 'waiting for sorter.' Is that a human being? After hours?
So that's why I don't have more. But here are some presents from the garden.
First daisy bud opening yesterday.
The lilacs close.
And these little blue flowers whose name I once knew.
The sun's been out most days. Today it was something over 70. And there's lots of flower blooming all over town. But particularly amazing right now are the lilacs and mountain ash trees.
Less showy, but no less beautiful are the wild geraniums. Here are two in our back yard. (The picture above is downtown, NOT in our yard.)
Saw lots of people today and busy prepping for our trip.
It's amazing what some human beings can imagine, and then accomplish. This video is short but it will lift your spirit. And everyone needs a lot of spirit lifting these days.
But it's also depressing how so many get stuck with the routine, and refuse to use the imagination they were born with to do the things that need to be done - like fighting climate change. And we're in a particularly difficult time where people focus on stopping things rather than making the world a better place.
Yesterday was the monthly Citizens Climate Lobby meeting and the speaker was Dr. Shi-Ling Hsu. His book,The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy pulls together all the issues to show why a carbon tax with dividend is the most effective and most likely single act people can take to slow down climate change.
It's a little pricey, but maybe you can find it in your library. The author has his own eight page precis of the book online here. I'm sure most of you will never read it, so here's my outline of Chapter 1 which pulls together all the key points:
Chapter 1: IntroductionGlobal Climate Change the dominant environmental issue of our time. Basic Dynamic and ImpactGreenhouse effect - GH gases like carbon dioxide trap the heat. Balance disturbed by CO2 emissions since Industrial Revolution.
Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius reported build up of ‘carbonic acid’ in the earth’s atmosphere 1908 creating the possibility of earth growing warmer. As Swede, he thought this was good.
But since at least 1970s people knew of possible dire consequences. Not just warmer weather, but heat waves and droughts, water shortages, more violent storms, rise in sea levels ‘jeopardizing trillions of dollars of real estate worldwide.” Heating causes more heating as warm temperatures unlock methane from the frozen tundra “unleashing a GH twenty-five times more powerful than carbon dioxide.” Societal Impacts Political DilemmasIncreasing inequity as equatorial countries impacted harder, mostly less developed, less wealthy. Northern, mostly more developed and wealthy have less impact. Leakage problem: If developed Northern nations cut back, price of oil drops, developing countries will snap it up and little gained. Also, most of the problem caused by Northern developed countries which have used the most oil. Developing countries believe the rich countries used their allotment already and now it’s poorer countries’ turn. Thus the need for world wide cooperation. But there’s resistance to a global response:
China v. US - Both, together, largest emitters - 40% of world’s CO2 emissions. in 2006 when China became the world’s biggest emitter. China sees itself as developing country and wants to catch up with what the US has used already. But they have engaged the climate change problem. The US has contributed 240 gigatons into the atmosphere from 1950-present. US still uses 4X the carbon per person than China.
Rest of the world. (Even if China and US agree, saving is only 40%)
Generously assuming that European Union would support bilateral US-China agreement, brings us to 55%, with 45% left over. India? 5% Russia? 5% Brazil?
The Big Question: How will diverse nations come together to curtail emissions of GHes? Burning carbon products and emitting CO2 is such a part of our economies, hard to imagine changing. “ . . .most developed countries [are] taking some steps to address climate change.. Most developed countries seem to accept that their participation in an agreement to reduce emissions is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition to bring about global cooperation in addressing climate change.
Alternative to do nothing without knowing if others will reciprocate = do nothing. So developing countries could undo reduction efforts. US doesn’t know its efforts will succeed, but does know if it does nothing the world “will hurtle toward an historic and frightening climatic experiment.”
Climate change poses security threat - “poor countries left with nothing to lose by violence, and the sheer numbers of dispossessed could overwhelm the ability of rich countries to insulate themselves from climate-induced unrest.” US Department of Defense is “developing policies and plans to manage the effects of climate change on its operating environment [and] missions.”
Imperative to act - what could work? - “Because of the leakage problem, global engagement with the reduction of GH is absolutely necessary, and almost every country, developed or not, has to be a party. What can possibly be proposed, that could satisfy almost every country in the world”
Purpose of the book: - explore the options and argue that a carbon tax is currently the most effective means of reducing emissions. Tax is levied on emission of quantity of carbon dioxide.
Basic level: levied on fossil fuel, at some transaction point before combustion, basically a sales tax on the carbon content of fuel. CO2 most abundant GH, regulating it the most important aspect of controlling GH. CO2 is most long lived GH gas - remaining in atmosphere 100 years after emission - need to start now.
Book proposes a “carbon tax on fossil fuels, expanded to include a few other sources of GH emissions that can be monitored and measured with relative ease.”
Why right now? - Politically difficult. No perfect policy. Some others more popular, but can’t stop climate change. Tax would start out modest and gradually increase allowing less drastic adjustments.
The longer we wait, the more difficult and disrupting it will be to fix things. “Doing something modest now is vastly preferable to finding just the “right” GH policy.
Not the only needed policy. Other options also needed. Carbon tax doesn’t preclude other options. No jurisdictional conflicts between feds and states/provinces. No problem having carbon tax AND cap and trade. No legal obstacles to carbon tax. “More work will certainly need to be done in addition to a carbon tax, but there is no first step more important, more effective, and more flexible than a carbon tax.”
Carbon tax idea not novel, - but all the arguments for it never collected together before. Easy to cherry pick flaws of carbon tax, but real task to comprehensively compare carbon tax to other alternatives. This book does that reducing the most important considerations down to ten arguments for a carbon tax and four against.
Explores psychological barriers to carbon tax - Reviews human cognitive bases when processing information and weighing different options, biases that are mutually reinforced by public opinion polls that ask questions that contain subtle but powerful bias against certain policies. Economists’ assumptions that humans act rationally is false. People’s bias against taxes causes misjudgments and misperceptions about policies. Book applies research findings that come closest to answering ‘why people dislike the carbon tax as a way of addressing climate change.”
Chapter 2 describes “a typical carbon tax and three alternative policy instruments: a cap-and-trade program, “command-and-control” - type policies or standards and government subsidies. Chapter 3 sets up ten considerations for choosing a policy to reduce GHes. Chapter 4 explores challenges to carbon taxes including political barriers, including its perceived regressiveness and how to pay off industries that will be disadvantaged, such as the coal industry. Chapter 5 addresses the psychology of carbon taxes. Approaches thus far have hidden the real cost of mitigation. Chapter 6: Changing Political Fortunes? Chapter 7: Conclusions
Why do I write about Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) so often?
Here's why. CCL:
Has the right objective
Goes after that objective as efficiently and effectively as any organization I've ever seen
Uses constituents from its local chapters (in 87% of all congressional districts) to lobby their members of congress to pass the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
Focuses on building relationships with members of congress through respect and providing the best available information
Embraces an inclusive approach that treats everyone as a human being and a potential ally
Works with many other climate change groups
Studies show that people who believe that climate change is real, often have no idea of how they can meaningfully work to slow it down. Well joining CCL is an easy and empowering way.
Like the guys dancing on the bar in the video, the founders and members of CCL have used their imaginations to come up with a viable idea and they are doing an heroic job to make it happen.
They need your help. You don't have to join CCL to lobby your member of congress, but it doesn't cost anything to join. And finding all the other people working for this goal is very gratifying. And it's empowering. Over 1500 volunteers are in Washington DC for the CCL annual conference and to lobby Congress.
We have never had cable, though I've seen it at my mom's and in hotels. I remember when they were first starting to promote something called "Pay TV." The big advantage was going to be "no commercials."
I finally broke down and signed up for Netflix. It was to show my mom a movie when she was no longer able to get out of the house much. Netflix has a lot of good movies and shows. I'm amazed at the amount of raw talent that exists in the world. We get to see it because the cost of making a movie has dropped drastically with modern technology as have the distribution costs. And films we have access to nowadays, represent many different world views and show many different images of heroes. It's great.
But I really don't think I need to spend any more time on the computer beyond Netflix and my blogging and other non-entertainment activities. I just don't need Prime or HBO. I can't watch everything. And I'm particularly concerned about Prime after reading an article in The Sun that suggests it's the 'free sample of consumer heroin" to hook people into buying everything via Amazon, which, this article argues is trying to become the world marketplace and take a cut of every transaction there is. (This is an eye-opening interview!)
But with all the hype about GOT, I began to wonder if there was something so important, that not watching it makes me less capable in important ways. I've heard that it is riveting. That it's about ruthless people. Perhaps there's something to learn about our current national and international politics. But in what I have heard, no one has said it presents ideas and insights that you can't get anywhere else. Is it just really good story telling that plays on human emotions in a way that gets people hooked for however many seasons?
But then I began to wonder how many people who gave up other events so they could watch the latest episode of GOT, have also read War and Peace or Crime and Punishment? I'm sure many have done both, but many haven't. Is missing one more significant than missing the other? What about seeing a performance of King Lear?
I also wonder how many people who don't have time to read the Mueller Report, did watch Game of Thrones. How many of those folks are members of Congress?
I have enough to keep me distracted. I think I'll survive. I might miss some comedic references to characters or events in the series, but I don't think that will be debilitating.
Binary choices are where there are only two options: war or peace, socialist or capitalist, democratic or socialistic, us or them, friend or enemy, win or lose, old or young, rich or poor, good or bad.
But the world is much more complicated. When have we not been at war since WWII? When have we had peace? I'd say we have had varying degrees of both for the last 70 years.
One of the most socialistic institutions in the United States is also one of the most celebrated: the US military. Members of the military hand over all the major decisions in their lives for relatively little pay - where they will live, what they do, when they do it. Health care. It pays for their education. It also requires them to kill other people and risk being killed as well.
Is Russia a friend of the US? Is North Korea? Is Cuba? Mexico? Canada? Or are they enemies? Or can they be friends some time and enemies other times? Does it make sense to even use those words? Would it not make more sense to say supporters at times and opponents at other times?
Some of the greatest scientists, artists, business leaders who made great contributions to the world, also did terrible things at times. Are they good people or bad people? Or can we all be both good and bad simultaneously? Should we reject their contributions to humanity because they also were sexist, or racist, or had sex with the wrong people, or cheated one way or another?
A person's stature varies from year to year, from age to age, depending on how well their good deeds are publicized and their bad deeds suppressed and the changing norms of the people in power.
If you want to understand what's happening on the border, I suggest you know about one of Steve Bannon's favorite books - The Camp Of The Saints -which I posted about here - and apparently was taken to heart by Trump advisor Stephen Miller. The book is hateful and pits the world between 'them' (the dirty masses of the poor nations) and 'us' (the white defenders of Western civilization.) The post has excerpts to give you a sense of that binary mindset to give you a sense of what truly sick people are helping to run this country, without having to read it all. But those who know nothing about this book, can't really understands the depths of depravity that Trump has been surrounded by, and probably is submersed in himself.
The book also shows the sort of propaganda strategies that the far right is using to turn enough people into haters so they can stay in power.
A friend suggested that when we head south next week, that I just not blog for a month. That was in the context of my looking for an alternative to taking my laptop with all the stuff that's on it. We were talking about my visiting little locally owned computer/telephone repair shops that sell used equipment too. I already posted about High Frequency where I bought my wife's phone and more recently my on upgrade from having to text using a phone keyboard and not being able to see the whole conversation. Just the most recent text. High Frequency has moved from Gamble and 15th (with a hard to get into parking lot) to 36th and Old Seward. Much more convenient for me.
But I also learned about Device Pitstop over at Arctic and 36th next to Jens. Chris, in the picture, didn't have quite what I was looking for. He had another option for a higher price, but then asked if I had any layovers on the trip.
I mentioned LA and he was on the phone trying to find me cheaper options there.
I'm really impressed with these smaller stores. They all had much more personal service than the national chain stores. I also visited Computer Renaissance on King and Dimond. They didn't have any Apple products, and it seemed easier to stay with what I know. Today I went to where I should have gone - the Mac Store. This is the closest place and it's Mac. But he didn't have anything either - though it's nice to know he's there for repairs and help and he's a registered Apple repair service. That store used to be off Dimond between New and Old Seward on the north. But he did tell me about an iPad for sale at Walmart. But I don't want to shop at Walmart. No problem, he said. Best Buy will match competitors' prices.
So I biked over today - such great biking weather. Big thunderheads rising up from the mountains. Thunder is pretty rare in Anchorage
And now I have a new iPad for a decent price. And I suspect when we get back, it will be what I use when I go out of the house and need my computer. It weighs much less even with the keyboard/case I bought with it. And Best Buy gave a discount on that too. I hate buying new tech stuff and took my time. Actually I hate buying new stuff. We (people in general) have too much stuff.
Tomorrow our house sitter comes over for lunch. OK, the trip. I'm excited, but I have mixed feelings. I hate to leave Alaska in the summer and this week eating three meals a day out on the deck has been like a little paradise. After 32 years, the old deck was starting to have some structural issues. Moss had made the holes between the boards large enough in places for things to fall through. Some of the steps were not rotting out. So we had it rebuilt and with years of experience, we added a little more so that we could follow the sun. That took a lot of time - we had a builder, but still there was some disruption. Even though the builder put down plywood every night so we could use the deck the whole time.
So the trip. My daughter got us into this. I'll leave it at that. But she wanted to go to Argentina this summer to see the total solar eclipse in early July. We were invited. My granddaughter was involved, so we said yes. But we decided if we were going that far, we should stay a little longer and see more of the country. So we'll only overlap a little bit with them. But I've never been further south than Guatemala in the Western Hemisphere. But I wanted to travel lighter and without all the data that's on my computer. I was reading stories on line of people being robbed. And even though I've taken my computer a lot of places, I decided it was time to think about this more. Identity theft is a bigger issue these days. So with a much cheaper model, without much personal info on it, there should be less risk. And I can still keep you posted about what we see.
I've been thinking about how to introduce the trip and so now I have. Our front yard flowers have started their annual show.
And earlier this spring, a moose chomped on the leaves of these lilies. But apparently it wasn't tasty and the buds hadn't started pushing up yet. Because there are lots of buds.
OK, here's one more picture I don't know where else to put. Saw it biking yesterday along 40th. They were on every 2nd or 3rd pole. I have mixed feelings about Assange. I don't think I'd like him as a person, but enough people I respect - like Daniel Ellsberg - feel prosecuting him is a serious attack on the First Amendment.
I can't help feeling that this is more about the anger against leaks in general. Under Obama it was embarrassing to have so much diplomatic gossip go public and as I've pointed out in earlier posts, no one has identified anyone who died because of the leaks. But they argue that he endangered many lives. Under Trump, anything Trump doesn't like published, he'd censor if he could.
Impeachment isn't something that either happens or doesn't. It's a series of deliberate steps. Robert Reich explains them simply and clearly in this short video.
With impeachment on everyone's mind right now, here is the 10-step process for impeaching the President of the United States. It could come in handy very soon. pic.twitter.com/BxNFIY1bfx
June 4, 1989 is just called by the date in Chinese. Like 9/11. It's å…å›› liù sì. It's the date the Chinese army cracked down on the Tiananmen Square (and much more of Beijing) protests.
Here's a new article by the then LATimes Beijing bureau chief.
"From the windows of a deserted coffee shop at the Beijing Hotel, a few hundred yards east of Tiananmen, I could look toward the square and see several hundred soldiers forming lines across the capital’s broad main street. In front of the hotel was an angry and brave crowd of a couple thousand Beijing residents. These protesters were furious at the army for shooting its way into the city center, tanks and armored personnel carriers smashing obstacles, soldiers spraying bullets at crowds blocking its advance. Now I watched as the soldiers periodically fired into this crowd.
For me, what the Chinese call simply “June 4” — a date that fundamentally shaped today’s China — had begun the previous evening.
I was the Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau chief then, and had overseen the newspaper’s coverage of the pro-democracy protests since they began in mid-April. The Times’ team had been taking turns staking out the square, and my shift was to begin at midnight. Before leaving home late on June 3, I learned that the army had begun smashing its way through crowds several miles west of Tiananmen."
You can compare Steven Holley's account with others on the scene at the time in this post I did three years ago about the meaning of the term 'iconic photo' that examines the context of the Tank Man photo, which Holley discusses in this article. Holley's account seems pretty consistent with what I found out doing that post.
I'd note that I arrived in Hong Kong for a year's sabbatical about one month after Tiananmen and was able to talk to several people who had been in Beijing at the time. I didn't get to Tiananmen until May 1990 when I took a group of Hong Kong students for a study tour. We had to go in May because people were worried that something might happen on the first anniversary.
Here's a very different recent China story I found the other day and put into a draft post until I could find some related posts.
"China has reportedly reassigned over 60,000 soldiers to plant trees in a bid to combat pollution by increasing the country's forest coverage.
A large regiment from the People's Liberation Army, along with some of the nation's armed police force, have been withdrawn from their posts on the northern border to work on non-military tasks inland.
The majority will be dispatched to Hebei province, which encircles Beijing, according to the Asia Times which originally reported the story. The area is known to be a major culprit for producing the notorious smog which blankets the capital city."
Bird pictures -especially birds that aren't very close - have been iffy for the years I've had my Canon EOS Rebel T3i. With my old film Pentax I could just twist the focus until I got what I needed, but these digital cameras are much more complicated. Manual focus is not intuitive. It's worse than that. And the auto focus simply does not know what precisely I want to focus on when a bird is surrounded by leaves in front and behind.
I gave up on my manual a while back, finding I could usually get clearer instructions via Google and YouTube. Today I printed out some internet pages on how to manually focus my camera, including some from an online manual, to take to Potter Marsh. I really wasn't expecting to see the Falcated Duck that was reported still here as of May 30 (and I was right), but I figured it would be a good chance to maybe get closer to learning how to manual focus. And if you hang out an hour or more there, things happen.
These pics today are better than my last couple of attempts, but some of these birds were relatively close. The flying pictures came out better than others have. The one thing I suspect that helped was that I figured out how to pic the spot (in the view finder) the camera uses to focus. You'll find much more precisely photos all over the internet, and I'm working on that. But I don't have a 400x lens, and that perfect sharpness isn't necessarily the goal either.
The Terns
Arctic Terns are amazing birds. The fly from one pole to the other each year. They're sleek and their black heads and orange beaks and feet contrast sharply with the rest of their white feathers. And they can hover in one spot - like a hummingbird - before diving to catch a fish.
A friend invited me several weeks ago to come to the weekend market to see his do-nut stand. I finally made it today.
Do-nuts are not a temptation and haven't been for years. Some foods I'm able to put on my mental do-not-eat list because of their negative nutritional value. But I'm not an absolutist. I did have a hot malasada in Maui last year - as a nostalgia snack. And today I bought a "baker's dozen" - there were a lot more than twelve of the little guys. They were good. But look at all that fat they're swimming in.
But the machine that carries them from dough ball to do-nut, is made in Minnesota.
I also met Jessica who was trying to take short videos of the do-nuts being flipped over for her instagram site. She must have more than one because the link on the card she gave me gets you pictures of dogs of Alaska. (Good pics, btw.)
Then I wandered around looking at what else is there. Since the market is walking distance from the downtown hotels, it's always full of tourists from around the world, though there were a lot of empty spaces. There are some Alaskan artists and craftspeople as well as imported kitsch.
And prices all around seem a bit steep. But my 'normal' range was set long ago and is resistant to inflation. $23 for a styrofoam box of deep fried battered halibut seems wrong. But I'm guessing no one gets rich selling stuff at the market.
Well, let me check how much halibut costs in actual restaurants where they serve you on a plate and at a table.
Alehouse Halibut and Chips 18.99 Alaskan halibut, dipped in humpy’s famous ale batter, and flash fried to perfection. Served with our zesty alehouse made tartar sauce.
But do you get as much halibut? There's a lot in that white box.
Simon and Seafort (dinner) has a much fancier halibut dish for a lot more:
F Street Station has something similar for quite a bit less, but we don't know how much halibut:
Beer Battered Alaskan Halibut Or Shrimp$15.50 chunks of alaskan halibut or shrimp, deep fried with a beer batter crust to a light golden brown, served with tarter sauce, lemon and fries
I'm also wondering how many people can tell the difference between halibut and cod when it's deep fried like this.
